Almost Everything in "Dr. Strangelove" Was True

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/01/strangelove-for-real.html

by route66 • 13 years ago

241 133 13 years ago

newyorker.com

daveslash• 13 years ago

Colonel Batguano - man, that guy was crazy. Like, seriously bat-shit crazy!

mrspeaker• 13 years ago

I'd like to hold off judgement on a thing like that, sir, until all the facts are in.

arethuza13• 13 years ago

Gentlemen. You can't fight in here. This is Hacker News.

sroerick2• 13 years ago

I think we're well overdue for a surveillance DrStrangelove.

Is it impotence that causes people to surveil? Some other voyeuristic impulse? Could be fun to explore.

lmkg• 13 years ago

Strongly recommend The Lives Of Others. It's not absurdist like Strangelove, but it does address the psychology and motivations of those doing the surveillance.

dredmorbius• 13 years ago

Absolutely. Phenomenal movie.

It also gets at the culture of corruption surveillance and power engender.

Though when you realize that the surveillance required dedicated observers and resulted in paper records, you realize how vastly more capable current US operations are.

mcguire• 13 years ago

Not to mention something on "our precious bodily fluids".

arethuza13• 13 years ago

Are there any contemporary figures as "interesting" as Curtis LeMay, Herman Kahn or Thomas Power - the latter being the man who said while head of SAC:

"Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power

hindsightbias• 13 years ago

Look up Gen. Boykin among others.

Zigurd• 13 years ago

Dianne Feinstein is way over on the side of the surveillance state, while the BRIC market share withers out from under her constituents' companies. You have to wonder where that is coming from.

jnazario• 13 years ago

came here to suggest people who are interested in where kubrick got his model for the character dr strangelove to study herman kahn. just read a book about him - 'the worlds of herman kahn' - and cannot recommend it enough for this subject. his book 'on thermonuclear war' was widely talked about when it came out in the 60s, one of the huge impacts that RAND had on our society.

it was an absurd time as the world changed so radically so quickly and strategists scrambled to figure out doctrine, policy, strategy, and how to use the emerging thinking of game theory.

another book on the evolution of nuclear policy is 'the dead hand', which looks at the emergence of nuclear deterrence from the first bomb through the recent years following the breakup of the USSR. the dead hand referred to in the title is the failsafe the soviets built to strike back once they had been demolished.

bonemachine• 13 years ago

I think we're well overdue for a surveillance DrStrangelove.

It wouldn't work. No film depiction could possibly be as absurd as what has already been foisted onto our everyday lives already.

baconner• 13 years ago

Ever see he SNL bit where Tina fey just read word for word quotes from Sarah Palin revealing their complete absurdity? Hilarious and very pointed commentary in one.

Oh yeah. It could work.

sroerick2• 12 years ago

Dr Strangelove started as a drama. Then Kubrick was reportedly overwhelmed by it all one day and realized it was a comedy.

vezzy-fnord• 13 years ago

The Cold War in general was full of all sorts of insanity no one would ever imagine to be possible. Prime example of truth being stranger than fiction.

That and all good satire has truth in it. The more truth and the better illustrated, the better the satire. Kubrick was a visionary for a reason.

timr3• 13 years ago

The book from which this is adapted (Command & Control) is fascinating and terrifying. Everyone should read it. You'll wonder how it is that we've managed to escape truly catastrophic accidents with these weapons.

rosser• 13 years ago

Command and Control kept me up reading well past when I should have been asleep many a night. I have a friend who grew up not far from the Damascus, AR silo, the story about which the book is structured around, which made it that much more compelling.

After reading it, I'm convinced that sheer dumb luck has been the deciding factor in not having seen so very many unplanned nuclear detonations over the years.

arethuza13• 13 years ago

Have you read "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War" - I found that a lot more alarming than Command and Control (although I agree that Command and Control is an excellent book).

matthewmcg• 13 years ago

Agreed. I've read pretty much every book I can get my hands on covering Cold War nuclear history and Command and Control has lots of new and terrifying details.

aaronem9• 13 years ago

I don't wonder. It's simply that, while certainly no one is perfect, almost everyone is better than almost anyone imagines that anyone could possibly be.

mildtrepidation• 13 years ago

I think you have a very, very optimistic view of humanity. It's entirely possible you and I have completely opposite experiences, because while I've known plenty of good, decent people, I've known more that fell somewhere between mediocre and horrid.

I'm also not sure how you could consume any sort of news for any period of time and still hold on to this belief. Of course we hear about the worst, and it's put as shockingly as possible, but with all the terrible things that happen every day, "almost everyone" just doesn't seem to me to work in your statement.

timr3• 13 years ago

You should read the book. It will challenge your imagination.

hudibras• 13 years ago

The story from Command and Control that sticks in my head is how, a few months after WW2 ended, the Truman Administration wanted to get an exact count of how many A-bombs the U.S. had available in their inventory. The answer came back from Los Alamos, "Hmm, we could probably put together one or two in a couple weeks."

This quickly led to a crash program in standardization of atomic (and later, nuclear) weapons and increasing their shelf-life.

Kequc• 13 years ago

The same incompetence that leads to accidents being possible also keeps us safe.

caf2• 13 years ago

The Dead Hand is also worth a read.

tfigueroa• 13 years ago

I think it's heartening, in a sense - and this goes beyond nuclear weapons - that as close as we are to danger, dangerous events are pretty rare.

Of course, whenever I have that thought, part of me fears that I'll ironically be vaporized by an errant nuclear weapon, moments later. I reassure myself that, at least, it will be a quick end.

bo1024• 13 years ago

Survivorship bias. The people who were wiped out by dangerous events aren't around to tell us how dangerous they were.

throwaway_yy2Di• 13 years ago

Not at all! Most deaths would be slow and horrific, from radiation burns (thermal or ionizing), radiation sickness, or blast effects like being crushed in a collapsed building. Only a lucky few would be vaporized instantly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_bombs_and_health

And you haven't considered the risk of not dying!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MCbTvoNrAg ("Threads redefines the word grim...")

fennecfoxen• 13 years ago

This is also why the old advice of "duck and cover" was actually very relevant and good advice. If you're not vaporized, you'd prefer to avoid the oncoming blast as much as possible (and yes, even the flimsy newspaper-over-the-head helps reflect thermal energy and could seriously mitigate your burns).

phaus3• 13 years ago

They lost me at this:

Force pilots were allowed to fire their nuclear anti-aircraft rockets to shoot down Soviet bombers heading toward the United States.

Nuclear anti-aircraft rockets?

totalforge• 13 years ago

Correct. The Genie anti-aircraft nuclear weapon had no guidance system, and was therefore a rocket, not a missile.

joyeuse6701• 13 years ago

I was kind of in surprise at the wording too, I didn't believe they would use a nuclear anti aircraft weapon, it seemed overkill, and then I read the rationale of the genie. I'm surprised to say the least.

maxerickson• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nuclear_anti-aircraft_...

arethuza13• 13 years ago

During the Cold War there were nuclear anti-aircraft missiles, nuclear anti-missile missiles, nuclear depth charges, nuclear artillery shells, nuclear torpedos, nuclear man-portable demolition charges, even nuclear recoilless guns:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device...

Crazy times....

ceejayoz5• 13 years ago

The Davy Crockett makes a pretty good rebuttal to the "nuclear suitcase bombs are impossible" people. That would easily fit in a large suitcase.

phaus3• 13 years ago

During the Cold War there were nuclear anti-aircraft missiles, nuclear anti-missile missiles...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-26_Falcon

I guess it wasn't the author's fault, but that's the one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen. Until about 1990, anti-aircraft missiles were horribly inaccurate. I read somewhere that the chance of scoring a hit with a korean-war era air-to-air missile was about 5%. Why would anyone want to launch a nuclear missile that's pretty much guaranteed to not his its target?

ceejayoz5• 13 years ago

In the early days of guided missiles, having a kill radius of a mile or so rather than a few hundred feet had quite the appeal.

drivers99• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nike

Anti-aircraft missiles with optional nuclear warheads. Basically, the idea was to nuke their nuclear bombers.

guizzy• 13 years ago

Project Nike... Somehow, "Just Do It" doesn't strike me as a reassuring slogan to associate to nuclear weapons.

mikeash7• 13 years ago

Make up for accuracy with power. It doesn't mater if your missile can only make it within a mile of the target if it destroys every aircraft within a mile when it detonates.

run4_too• 13 years ago

AR-2 Genie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie

coldcode• 13 years ago

Except of course dropping a bomb on Russia (with a guy riding it).

sehugg• 13 years ago

The arguments are the same as today: We don't want more controls and oversight, because our enemies could use our limitations against us to neutralize our capability, and in any case strict military discipline and comprehensive personnel screening will eliminate abuse. Sound familiar?

jarrett3• 13 years ago

There is one very significant wrinkle, though: The difference between ongoing practices and hypothetical, emergency actions.

In the former case--ongoing practices--it is hard to make a credible argument against oversight.

Some details may need to be withheld from the public to protect basic operation security. For example, the identities of overseas informants ought not to be disclosed, lest they be immediately imprisoned or executed by their governments. Nor should there be a Twitter feed giving up-to-the-minute location data on US special forces teams. These examples seem farcical, but they illustrate the point that at least some operational details genuinely deserve secrecy. (Unless you reject the underlying premise that the United States should conduct intelligence and military operations overseas at all. But that's a very different discussion.)

But even though specific details may need to be kept secret--for a reasonable amount of time, until they're no longer actionable by enemies--the nature of the government's ongoing practices ought to be disclosed.

The latter case--wherein lower-level officials are permitted to make judgment calls in time-sensitive emergencies--is rather different. This is the situation contemplated by the White House during the Cold War.

As the reasoning went, the American nuclear deterrent must be credible, or else the Soviets would seize the opportunity and launch an unprovoked attack on the US, Germany, or both. If a communication breakdown between the White House and the military could render the nuclear arsenal unusable, that would tend to diminish the credibility of the deterrent. On the other hand, the risk of a lower-level official making the wrong judgment call and starting a world war is appreciable.

Given these considerations, reasonable people could disagree on what the optimal policy would be. It is not unreasonable or morally repugnant to conclude that certain trusted military officers should be granted the authority to make a judgment call when a) the situation is an emergency, and b) the chain of command has broken down.

Again, the key distinction here is between ongoing practices and emergency measures in a hypothetical, worst-case scenario. That distinction must affect our moral judgment of the respective policies.

ctdonath2• 13 years ago

Nor should there be a Twitter feed giving up-to-the-minute location data on US special forces teams. These examples seem farcical

Prime real-world example: During the Munich Olympics hostage crisis, police prepared to raid the occupied rooms with overwhelming force (a la "SWAT team"). The raid was called off at the last minute when they realized reporters were broadcasting live video of the preparations & locations, and the terrorists were watching it on TV.

jimktrains28• 13 years ago

I mean, why not though? Why is it OK for the government to have any secrets? Contrast to a person, the government is an entity that is representative of and responsible to the people it governs (at least it should be, here). How can it be responsible or representative if it has secrets.

Maybe we shouldn't be sending out special forces teams or covert operatives. If there is something the government wants to keep secret, perhaps they shouldn't be doing it.

It is not unreasonable or morally repugnant to conclude that certain trusted military officers should be granted the authority to make a judgment call when a) the situation is an emergency, and b) the chain of command has broken down.

Or perhaps systems should be built with redundancy and decentralization. It shouldn't be up to any one person to make the decision to launch a nuke, or any other attack. We have methods such as Shamir Secret Sharing that would require multiple people to agree to something before being able to provide something to authorize a use of force.

Again, the key distinction here is between ongoing practices and emergency measures in a hypothetical, worst-case scenario. That distinction must affect our moral judgment of the respective policies.

Unless that "hypothetical, worst-case scenario" is the government going awry and surveying it's entire populace and killing its citizens without going through any process set down by the constitution of said country. In that "hypothetical, worst-case scenario" is it really OK to be giving the government more power and leeway while decreasing the transparency?

a3n• 13 years ago

Nor should there be a Twitter feed giving up-to-the-minute location data on US special forces teams. These examples seem farcical,

Ahem ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldo_Rivera#Fox_News_to_pre...

"Controversy arose in early 2003, while Rivera was traveling with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. During a Fox News broadcast, Rivera began to disclose an upcoming operation, even going so far as to draw a map in the sand for his audience. The military immediately issued a firm denunciation of his actions, saying it put the operation at risk; Rivera was nearly expelled from Iraq. Two days later, he announced that he would be reporting on the Iraq conflict from Kuwait."

Somewhere between the generality of Murphy's Law and the specificity of Rule 34 is an observation that states that an idiot will always arise to complete an idiotic possibility.

mikeash7• 13 years ago

In addition to that, I think it's also important to understand exactly what the realistic worst-case scenarios actually are for any given situation.

For the nuclear deterrent, the worst-case scenario was basically the end of the world as we know it. Either the USSR takes over the world, or global civilization is entirely wrecked. I'm not sure which one would have been considered worse. Either way, hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, die.

For counter-terrorism operations, the worst-case scenario is orders of magnitude smaller. There appears to be no credible threat of any terrorists obtaining WMD, so they're pretty much limited to casualties in the thousands.

I think that much of our current woes come down to applying cold-war thinking to terrorism. The situations just aren't comparable. We were facing a true existential threat from a powerful enemy that outclassed us in many ways. Now, we're facing a minuscule threat that can, at most, kill a small number of our citizens from time to time. There were realistic scenarios that end with, "and the US was destroyed/defeated by the USSR", but there are none that end with, "and the US was destroyed/defeated by al Qaeda".

caf2• 13 years ago

  As the reasoning went, the American nuclear deterrent must
  be credible, or else the Soviets would seize the 
  opportunity and launch an unprovoked attack on the US, 
  Germany, or both. If a communication breakdown between the 
  White House and the military could render the nuclear 
  arsenal unusable, that would tend to diminish the 
  credibility of the deterrent.

If you wanted the pre-delegation of Presidential authority to increase the credibility of the deterrent though, the Soviets had to know about it. Which makes you wonder - did they strongly deny it to the public whilst quietly informing the Soviet Union about the true situation?

vaadu• 13 years ago

Our Looking Glass aircraft(EC-135C) flew 24x7 for many years with 2 launch officers. They could launch the minuteman missiles from the air and didn't require NCA approval. It also could contact the subs via LF/VLF and tell them to launch.

Their mission assumed DC and SAC HQ were already taken out.

arethuza13• 13 years ago

Sounds very like the UK Trident submarines which couldn't be dependent upon explicit authorization from a central authority.

In a very British way, our ultimate deterrent relies on hand written letters from the serving PM carried by each sub:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort

Nursie2• 13 years ago

And surfacing every so often to see if Radio 4 is still on the air :)

JoeAltmaier2• 13 years ago

I dunno - I think we were safer with dedicated airmen manning Minuteman silo switches. Morale dropped after the PALs were installed. They disrespected the whole idea - entered a launch code of 0000-0000. Still they knew they'd become administrators (alcoholism, spousal- and drug-abuse etc) and not the last link in the chain preventing nuclear war. How was that an improvement?

aaronem9• 13 years ago

In 1983, Gospodin Colonel Stanislav Petrov saved the world.

Somehow I don't see the value of a system which would've made it impossible for him to do so.

JoeAltmaier2• 13 years ago

Confused; Petrov was a human in the loop, thus saved the world? I agree with that view.

bdunbar• 12 years ago

we were safer with dedicated airmen manning Minuteman silo switches.

Competence is fleeting. A hundred years after Napoleon France produced the generals who 'fought' WW I.

bananacurve• 13 years ago

Hopefully Russia doesn't have a doomsday machine.

dreamfactory2• 13 years ago

According to the article they do, and just as in the movie they kept it secret.

arethuza13• 13 years ago

Bad news I'm afraid:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_%28nuclear_war%29

jamessb• 13 years ago

There's an interesting chapter on Nuclear Command and Control in Ross Anderson's Security Engineering: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SEv2-c13.pdf

Nursie2• 13 years ago

You can't fight in here, this is the war room!

hexagonc• 13 years ago

Problems with poor morale on missile bases? The second in command at Stratcom[1] with gambling problems? Looks like we need to take humans out of the loop when it comes to nuclear decision making. We need something that will not be subject to emotions. Something that makes decisions based only on cold hard logic. . .

[1] Strategic Command - in charge of, amongst other things, global strike and strategic deterrence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Strategic_Command

nathos• 13 years ago

Then you read about men like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov and are are somewhat comforted that cold hard logic doesn't launch nukes.

polemic• 13 years ago

"Shall we play a game?"

fuckpig• 13 years ago

I used to use this movie to test out prospective girlfriends. If they found humor in it, they were worth a second look. If it was WTF face all the way, there was never going to be any compatibility.

asgard1024• 13 years ago

Sounds like DRM (Digital Rights Management) problem. We have these locks on things so you wouldn't do anything questionable, but of course we can't send MPAA representative everytime you try to watch a movie, so here are the keys as well..

GarvielLoken• 13 years ago

And how was it on the Sovjet side? The article failed to explore that part. Genuinely asking.

josefresco• 13 years ago

How about "Everything in Dr. Stangelove was Plausible in Hindsight"

Less link-baity of a title but much more accurate.

Almost Everything in "Dr. Strangelove" Was True

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