Nuclear War - Annie Jacobsen

[Vicus]

Washington pushes China into Russia’s arms, pushes Iran into Russia’s arms October 02.2024

All discussion in the Washington foreign policy establishment on how the Ukrainian war has pushed Russia into China’s arms and made it a ‘junior partner’ is utter nonsense. My contention is that a hubristic U.S. foreign policy that pays no attention to what adversaries are saying because that is ‘disinformation’ has pushed China into Russia’s arms.

This took time to achieve: two years plus of the Special Military Operation, to be precise. And this is not due just to blunders of the incompetents manning the top posts in the National Security Council and the State Department. No, the bipartisan majority in Congress has also enabled the incoming disaster for U.S. global standing by its full-voiced approval of punitive sanctions on Chinese goods and approval of what constitute kinetic war plans against Beijing as well as the formation of a military alliance directed against China in its neighborhood.

The handwriting is on the wall. Beijing must support the new robust nuclear doctrine of Russia to ensure its neighbor’s victory over the U.S.-led coalition supporting Ukraine.

By the same token, unqualified U.S. support, including active participation in Israel’s latest atrocities in Lebanon that resulted in the death of Hezbollah’s high command has pushed Iran into Russia’s arms. The liberal-minded new president of Iran has reversed his recently declared readiness for dialogue with the signatories of the now suspended Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on nuclear arms. We saw the proof of that yesterday when Iran moved from wait-and-see mode into retaliatory mode for the humiliations Israel has inflicted on the Axis of Resistance. One hundred eighty ballistic missiles were fired at Israeli military targets and it would appear that they got through both the Iron Dome and air defenses provided by the U.S. fleet and by French anti-aircraft systems.

I contend that Iran’s missile attack on Israel was approved in advance by Moscow when Vladimir Putin sent his envoy to Teheran a few days earlier. It is unthinkable that Iran would challenge Netanyahu so directly without the certainty that Russian air defense systems give it the best protection known on this planet.

After serving as a reliable if unacknowledged guarantor of the state of Israel for decades, Russia has clearly changed sides.

There are also other important conclusions that we can draw from the above observations.
One of these relates to the open discussion I am having with John Helmer over Vladimir Putin’s commitment to defend Russia’s national interests. Does he or does he not have backbone? I insist that Russia’s backing for Iran, which surely made yesterday’s attack possible, is proof positive that the Russian president is ready for a fight with Washington that he previously avoided at all costs. It is inevitable that Russia’s support for Iran will bring it into direct confrontation with Washington.

Who will blink first? Given the vulnerability of all U.S. assets in the West Asian region starting with the aircraft carrier task force, I believe that Washington will blink first.

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/10/...-russias-arms/

[grapevine]

Nuclear Expert Predicts How Launching a Single Nuke Could Wipe Out All of Humanity - Tucker Carlson and Ivana Hughes

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rpQop5vPm24

"It’s a measure of their insanity that leaders around the world are seriously considering nuclear war. Ivana Hughes of Columbia on what that would mean."

Chapters:
0:00 How Powerful Are Nuclear Weapons?
9:46 What Would Happen if a Nuke Detonated Over Times Square?
19:53 What Is Nuclear Winter?
24:56 Ozone Layer Destruction
27:06 What Would Happen if a Nuclear Power Plant Was Hit With a Nuclear Weapon?
29:08 How Many Times Have We Launched Nuclear Weapons?
33:57 The Horrifying Effects of Radiation
41:29 Is Nuclear Testing Infecting Our Food and Causing Cancer?
49:41 How Many Nuclear Weapons Exist Today?
51:14 Close Calls With Nuclear War and Lost Nukes
54:47 The Cuban Missile Crisis and JFK’s Attempt to Ban Nuclear Weapons
1:02:03 Why JFK Wanted to End Israel’s Nuclear Program
1:06:16 North Korea’s Nuclear Program
1:08:20 Is Iran Actually Trying to Build a Nuclear Weapon?
1:11:48 The Moral Debate About Our Nuclear Defense Policy
1:19:59 Are World Leaders Calling for Nuclear War?
1:29:50 Should America Lead the Charge in Eliminating Nuclear Weapons?
1:36:50 What Is the Doomsday Clock?
1:41:26 How Much Money Is Spent on Nuclear Weapon Development?
1:43:29 The First Step to Eliminating Nuclear Weapons

If only we could compel all world leaders to watch these videos. . .

[Bill Ryan]

Sharing this here, the new Netflix drama A House of Dynamite, premiered a couple of weeks ago. It's really quite good.

No spoilers here! Just a few comments:

1) It's well worth watching. The focus is on the exceptionally well-portrayed and very human reactions, and all the dilemmas and personal problems faced when a sudden nuclear crisis comes right out of nowhere. One Rotten Tomatoes critic wrote, I think very accurately:

The acting is first-rate in this movie. The actors do a marvelous job of showing how people might behave in a situation where there is not enough time, or enough information available to make a good decision, and all the options are bad ones.

2) There are no current world leaders named or featured.

3) The uncertainties and ambiguities that the movie portrays are all very purposely scripted.

4) The director (Kathryn Bigelow) and writer (Noah Oppenheim) started working on the film while Biden was still president. They were motivated by the apparent lack of interest and concern about issues of nuclear war or attack among most young American people, and the absence of recent realistic and thought-provoking nuclear-themed films, which were frequently made and shown during the Cold War.

5) The Rotten Tomatoes critics' rating is 79%. The consensus stated:

Playing out a nightmare scenario with nerve-wracking plausibility, Kathryn Bigelow's masterfully-constructed A House of Dynamite is an urgent thriller that's as distressing as it is riveting.

6) The same story is told three different times, in sequence, from three different points of view: a White House situation room, a military command center, and finally the President and his entourage.

~~~

Here it is, free to download for 3 days:

• https://we.tl/t-2NCEyDI9EX (2.1 Gb MP4 + subtitles)

I found the subtitles useful and interesting, as the dialogue is sometimes fast-paced and often quite technical. (I view movies with subtitles using VLC, which can be downloaded here for free.)

[Inversion]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
4) The director (Kathryn Bigelow) and writer (Noah Oppenheim) started working on the film while Biden was still president.

The names Noah & Oppenheim are interesting considering Robert Oppenheimer was the father of the atomic bomb. Idris Elba plays POTUS in A House of Dynamite and his last name anagrams to Baal. There was a prophet Idris mentioned in the Quran. The president of the WEF Børge Brende name translates to Baal Burn. Cliff Simon who played Baal in Stargate SG-1 died in a kiteboarding accident on Topanga Beach.

Google AI

Yes, J. Robert Oppenheimer was the scientific director of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is widely known as the "father of the atomic bomb" for leading the team that designed and built the first atomic bombs during the Manhattan Project. While he was the lead scientist, the creation of the bomb was a massive effort by a large team of scientists and engineers.

Google AI

The name Oppenheim is a habitational surname derived from the town of Oppenheim in Germany, meaning "open home" or "open settlement". It originates from the German words oppen (open) and heim (homestead, home, or settlement). The name is common among both Germans and Ashkenazi Jews, as many Jewish families took their surname from the town where they lived.

Production of the TV movie The Day After started in August and September of 1982 and was aired on ABC on 11/20/83.

The dates suggest the movie was conjured as a fear porn tactic to ensure funding. Ed Dames who was known as Dr. Doom played the same role. Rumors state SDI was to fund space craft. Since Reagan had to take Bush senior as his running mate it's a tossup whether the money went to the USN controlled SSP or the Nazi's Dark Fleet which translating to Nacht Waffen.

The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was authorized by President Ronald Reagan when he announced the program on March 23, 1983. The program was later officially established with the creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) in 1984, according to Wikipedia.

Reagan & Bush terms

Start of term: January 20, 1981
End of term: January 20, 1989

07/27/25 (9:29)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=erGDWkQzV5s

[Inversion]

The Day After was watched by 100 million people when it originally aired. The population of the United States in 1983 was 236 million. Jason Robards looking into his rearview mirror and seeing a nuke go off is the dominate memory I have of that movie, but I can't locate it. There's talk on the Internet of other people remembering things that aren't in the version they've currently watched. It could be blamed on editing, which was originally three hours long, Mandela effect, AI tinkering or parallel universe.

Bleedbacks, Avataring & Other Memories

When I was in junior high art class one of the male students walked over to me and showed me a drawing he did. It was a reproduction of the scene out of the 1983 TV movie The Day After where Jason Robards looked in his rearview mirror and saw a mushroom cloud. I didn’t really know the guy and something external must have made him imbue it into my line-of-sight. I couldn’t find that image on Google or YT.

wiki

The Day After is an American post-apocalyptic television film that first aired on November 20, 1983, on the ABC television network. More than 100 million people, in nearly 39 million households, watched the program during its initial broadcast. With a 46 rating and a 62% share of the viewing audience during its initial broadcast, it was the seventh-highest-rated non-sports show up to that time and set a record as the highest-rated television film in history—a record it held as of 2009.

The film postulates a fictional war between NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact countries over Germany that rapidly escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The action itself focuses on the residents of Lawrence, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, and of several family farms near nuclear missile silos.[4]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MOFsOA9VsBk

Google AI

Yes, many scenes were cut from the original 1983 TV movie The Day After, primarily for being considered too disturbing by the network or for political reasons. Some of the original, more graphic scenes involving burn victims and radiation sickness were removed for the broadcast, though some were restored in later home video versions. A rough cut of the film that appeared online confirms the existence of even more scenes that were never officially released.

Scenes cut from the original broadcast

More graphic violence: Scenes depicting burn victims and radiation sickness were initially trimmed or altered to be less intense.
Political cuts: A scene showing the U.S. Army shooting scavengers was removed for political reasons.
Other "disturbing" scenes: A scene showing a hospital patient abruptly sitting up screaming was removed from the broadcast but was restored for home video releases.

Controversial details: A scene involving a character obtaining a diaphragm was also cut from the original broadcast.

A football scene: A scene showing Dr. Russell Oakes' son playing football was filmed but ultimately cut.
What exists in other versions

Rough cut: A "rough cut" of the film, which is a workprint, has appeared online and includes many new or alternate shots, as well as extended scenes that did not make the final version.
Extended/restored scenes: Some scenes, like the hospital patient screaming, have been restored in home video releases that are different from the original TV broadcast.

Director's cut: An early laserdisc version was advertised as a director's cut and included a commentary track.
General information about cut scenes
The original version was longer, and a three-hour version was significantly trimmed down to create the final theatrical and home video releases.

The cuts were made due to a combination of network pressure (ABC), which was concerned about viewer reaction and considered some scenes too disturbing, especially for a younger audience, and political sensitivity.
The filmmakers and the network acknowledged that the film deliberately downplayed the true effects of nuclear war to make it a more manageable story.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Inversion (here)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=erGDWkQzV5s

I've watched them all. In my very strong opinion, shared by almost every other critic and viewer, Threads is by far the most harrowing and traumatic of them all. One critic wrote that it makes The Day After seem like a Sunday School picnic in comparison.

If anyone hasn't seen this and still chooses to, it genuinely deserves a warning. There are some scenes in there which you may never be able to wipe from your mind. I'm not joking or exaggerating.

I saw it once all the way through on live TV in 1983, and to this day I remember involuntarily exclaiming out loud in horror from the comfort of my sofa — the one and only time in my whole life I've ever done that. I re-watched the first quarter or third several times since then (but no further!), and I absolutely never intend to see it again.

It's here in the Avalon Library.

NOT mentioned in the short video review above is Special Bulletin, which is superb. It's the only one of all these films which I'd be happy to watch many times over. It depicts the fictional live news coverage of a developing domestic nuclear event, which was SO very well done, well acted and realistic that despite the regular messages displayed on screen when it was shown on live TV in 1983, tens of thousands of highly alarmed viewers believed it was real.

Here it is, and I can't recommend this too highly:

Special Bulletin (1983) [HD and enhanced]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Wn7WC3zsEZk

Edit to add:

I've just watched it again, I think the fourth (or maybe the fifth!) time in all these years. It's VERY VERY good. The realism is extraordinary. Roxanne Hart, who played reporter Meg Barclay on camera live from Charleston harbor, deserved an Emmy for her acting. No kidding.

It all escalates slowly, but the denouement starts half an hour before the end. For those short of time or simply curious to check out what I've been sharing, you could start in pretty much at exactly 1:10:00 when news finally breaks that the situation has been resolved. Watch to the very end.

[Bill Ryan]

Back to A House of Dynamite, this has stimulated a whole bunch of video reviews and discussions with experts, easily found. Most of them are really very interesting to listen to.

Most everyone has

1. confirmed that the way the formal chain-of-command processes and protocols work (often with unforeseen problems!) is very realistically depicted;
2. agreed that so much can easily go wrong, even in an accumulation of small ways, when everyone is taken by surprise; and
3. stressed the REALLY REALLY worrying fact that while military command posts practice this kind of thing dozens or not hundreds of times a year, the US President (who has sole decision-making authority) never practices this at all and is only superficially briefed about the whole process for a few minutes when he first assumes office.

Below are just 3 of the discussions which some may find interesting to listen to. (There are dozens more!)

(For written reviews, here's a long list of links: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_h...namite/reviews)

Netflix’s ‘A House of Dynamite’ sparks discussion about nuclear threats

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ogv8HpHOGog

Sam Harris: This is a Realistic Nuclear War Scenario

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=NwSoA-284Sc

This will Change how you think about Nuclear War

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=JUMefrW4Yck

[Mike Gorman]

Threads is harrowing I think because it does not seek to sensationalize the technical aspects, it shows very ordinary folks (yes, Normies) coping with 'then' daily life, planning a wedding, elderly parents, next door neighbors heading to the country to escape nuclear explosions, people reading how to prevent 'fall out' entering their modest houses with plastic sheeting & how to bury people in the garden if they pass away during the emergency - local officials preparing in town hall basements...very mundane & plausible! Then of course the major exchange takes place & cities are incinerated with the high wind that would inevitably follow. All very stark, ordinary & terrifying, as they say 'the living shall envy the dead', only watch if you feel very grounded & non mentally threatened, just a friendly caution, Bill is absolutely right about "Threads" - it is a bit dated culturally, but still harrowing.