"Nobody Wins a Nuclear War" But "Success" is Possible (fwd)
Great stuff!
//Alif
--
"Never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public
plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to
the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always
be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by
predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty."
Joseph Pulitzer, 1907 Speech
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 00:43:12 -0500
From: National Security Archive
On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 12:21:57AM -0600, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Great stuff!
Hysterical. I'm glad that particular madness is mostly over. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
On Sat, 19 Feb 2011, Eugen Leitl wrote:
On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 12:21:57AM -0600, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Great stuff!
Hysterical. I'm glad that particular madness is mostly over.
Me too. Practicing "Duck and Cover!" at school always left you with a particularly grim schoolday. //Alif -- "Never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty." Joseph Pulitzer, 1907 Speech
On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 12:59:45AM -0600, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Me too. Practicing "Duck and Cover!" at school always left you with a particularly grim schoolday.
On the other side of the Iron Curtain, it wasn't the duck and cover exercises (that never happened, or was before my time), but the nuclear weapon education posters on the walls. Yeah, these did really cheer you up. I also found the AK-47s in the weapon education chamber in our school slightly unnerving. No idea where the older kids got trained on weapon handling if at all, that must have been at higher grades than 7th. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
On Sat, 19 Feb 2011, Eugen Leitl wrote:
On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 12:59:45AM -0600, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Me too. Practicing "Duck and Cover!" at school always left you with a particularly grim schoolday.
On the other side of the Iron Curtain, it wasn't the duck and cover exercises (that never happened, or was before my time), but the nuclear weapon education posters on the walls. Yeah, these did really cheer you up.
What exactly was on these posters? Self-defense information, or weapon how-does-it-work type stuff?
I also found the AK-47s in the weapon education chamber in our school slightly unnerving. No idea where the older kids got trained on weapon handling if at all, that must have been at higher grades than 7th.
HOW COOL IS *THAT*! Weapon education chamers? Shit! I grew up in NYC, where there are *zero* legal guns, unless you're LEA or one of the under 100 people who could afford the weekly $500.00 bribe! Not that handguns weren't all over the schools - almost everyone in my class carried at IS44 (IS == "Intermediate School". Kinda of like junior high school and high school all in one: grades 6-12), since the likelyhood of needing to defend yourself was very close to 100% NYC schools in the 60's were horror shows, even in the better neighborhoods (which I certainly didn't live!). Our "weapons education" was going out at night and shooting out street lamps (at $1.00 per shot to the betting pool - first to take the light gets the pool. Not so easy with a <3 inch barrel on a saturday night special!). I am in envy of you and your schools :-) //Alif -- "Never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty." Joseph Pulitzer, 1907 Speech
At 01:20 PM 2/19/2011, Eugen Leitl wrote:
On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 12:59:45AM -0600, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Me too. Practicing "Duck and Cover!" at school always left you with a particularly grim schoolday.
On the other side of the Iron Curtain, it wasn't the duck and cover exercises (that never happened, or was before my time), but the nuclear weapon education posters on the walls. Yeah, these did really cheer you up.
A friend of mine was in a rough airplane landing many years ago, and after the pilot had gone through the usual steps of "seat belts on, seat backs up, lean forward and hold on to the seat in front of you" safety instructions, she and half her fellow passengers responded with "and kiss your ass goodbye", which is the punch line of the hippie version of the American nuclear war education posters.
At 10:59 PM 2/18/2011, J.A. Terranson wrote:
On Sat, 19 Feb 2011, Eugen Leitl wrote:
Hysterical. I'm glad that particular madness is mostly over.
Me too. Practicing "Duck and Cover!" at school always left you with a particularly grim schoolday.
Yeah. Al-Qaeda and their ilk were really wimpy terrorists compared to forty years of "we can blow up the world N times over and we've got the crazy generals to do it!" nuclear terrorism. I was a kid during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and one of my neighbors had dug up their back yard to put in a bomb shelter. It was really freaky the first time I heard the Emergency Broadcast System come on the radio in the ?early 90s? and say "this is not a test" - they were using it for flood warnings during a storm, which is a sensible thing to do, but before that it had always been "this is a test of the 'let you know that the Russians and Americans are trying to blow up the world' alarm system", whether it was EBS or CONELRAD or whatever, so by the time they got to the "flooding" part, I'd already mentally been through the "WTF? The politicians haven't been saber-rattling at each other, is this some surprise attack? How fast can I get home to my wife?" panic attack. They'd probably been using it that way for several years, just not at times I'd been driving with the car radio on.
On Sat, 19 Feb 2011, Bill Stewart wrote:
It was really freaky the first time I heard the Emergency Broadcast System come on the radio in the ?early 90s? and say "this is not a test"
Interesting: I have *never* heard the EBS et al used other than for testing. Had I ever heard it, it would have scared the crap out of me - I don't know if I'd even hear past that point, having spent a childhood listening to that damned system being "tested" all the time (?I believe it was weekly or bi-monthly?). Like most Americans alive through the period, I can still recite, word for word, the text of the EBS "test" announcement: "This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test. The broadcasters in your area, in voluntary cooperation with the FCC and other authorities, have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed where to tune in your area for news and other local information. This concludes our test of the Emergency Broadcast System." I can't even imagine the panic of hearing "this is *not* a test"! Interestingly, the EBS had at least one accidental activation in the late 60's or early 1970s, which I fortunately missed out on: good for me!
using it for flood warnings during a storm, which is a sensible thing to do,
Very. But then we wouldn't have paid any attention to it when the Russians were finally ready to end it all! //Alif -- "Never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty." Joseph Pulitzer, 1907 Speech
On Sat, 2011-02-19 at 18:34 -0600, J.A. Terranson wrote:
I can't even imagine the panic of hearing "this is *not* a test"! Interestingly, the EBS had at least one accidental activation in the late 60's or early 1970s, which I fortunately missed out on: good for me!
Growing up, I heard it used a couple of times here locally during severe
weather events. But I don't dispute at all that the tests were more
common than real activations. I'm glad testing of the EAS is a bit less
obtrusive.
--
Shawn K. Quinn
participants (4)
-
Bill Stewart -
Eugen Leitl -
J.A. Terranson -
Shawn K. Quinn