Please Take A Moment To Share Your Plans For Armageddon...

Good Evening,

As we watch the Georgian crisis escalate, and as we see endless presser after presser from John "Vote For My Trembling, Angry Finger To Be On The Button" McCain, I thought I would refresh myself on a hilarious educational video on what to do, and what not to do, in case of Nuclear Holocaust. I highly recommend it:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2023790698427111488

"Threads", I think it's called...

I was born in 1975, and so was just at the right age when "The Day After" came around to be scared so badly that I wet my pants in horror at what could happen if the wrong people were in charge. But "The Day After" is an episode of "Spongebob Squarepants" compared to "Threads".

After seeing the news on the magic talking box at work today, and after reading the increasingly frightening series of news articles posted here afterwards, I thought I would take a drive down the beach after work and see what everyone was up to. As it turns out, not much, other than flying kites and taking a cool dip in our dangerously polluted Galveston Bay waters.

I guess 18 or so years since the era of MAD makes people forget what we and Russia have pointed at one another. Whereas a Cold War Survivor doesn't have any trouble seeing the risk at all...

So, without further time-wasting, and with a loud, wavering siren to announce its debut, I give you a thead to post your Cold War memories and current Civil Defense Emergency Action Plans.

Tell me about the nightmares you had when watching the movies mentioned above.

Share with us your freak-outs when they tested the air-raid sirens in your home town in rural Arkansas, at 12 Noon every Wednesday, but you forgot what day it was, and thought you were about to die.

List your plans about what roads you plan on taking to Mexico when Georgia gets really bad, (because you know you've looked at that atlas and planned it out like I have over the last few days).

Share your Cold War memories and thoughts for everyone to see, because those that did not live through any of it need to be taught what it means to live in fear and constant dread. They need to see the video above and know what we need to do--we need to get rid of the bombs once and for all.

They need to know what we know--that there is a final war that isn't made up of footage of pretty, colored fireworks going off in the air over Bahgdad--that there is a final war that kills all of us, and destroys our future in a fire like none of them has ever imagined.

Because right now we are playing with fire. And ducking and covering won't keep us from getting burned if we aren't careful.

Jeffrey

Be it of the blast, the fallout, or of starvation in the chaos to come. There will be no life after a Nuclear War.

And sooner, rather than later. At that point, there is no hope of a better world. And yes, the events of this week have me thinking along these lines, too.

I can never forgive those who have fucked up the world so badly that everyday, normal Americans think this way. May those of this regime die a slow, painful, debilitating death of entirely natural causes that could have been prevented with stem-cell research.

Dying is the easy way out.

As scared as I was watching those movies as a child, I am fascinated by them as an adult. If you look past the bad special effects, and poorly written melodramatic back stories, they are amazing, sickening, commentaries on where we were as a world at that time.

Gene Roddenberry included a nuclear war in the backstory of Star Trek. According to him, it took that kind of war to make us wake up and realize where we were headed. Only that kind of shock would make us change our ways and finally head towards some bright future.

I think I would like to survive to see the results if it happened, and not because I want it to happen, but because I would want to understand it all. That moment, when if we do it, we will probably have gotten what we deserve..

If you want pop post-apocalyptic scifi you have to watch BSG. In reality whoever survived a Nuclear war might eventually build a better world. It would take thousands of years and numerous generations, supposing that life would even be sustainable in the aftermath.

As for those who survived the event itself... We the living would envy the dead.

You're forgetting the Vulcans. Won't they come and save us after we defeat the evil Borg?

I love BSG. I also always liked Babylon 5. San Diego, wasn't it--nuked in a terrorist attack? Somehow that scenario always struck a chord of fear in me more than Cylons did.

Testament was mentioned. I've read reviews and looked for a copy, or an online link for a long time. If anyone has any information on how to get it or where to watch it, I would enjoy seeing it posted in this thread.

Always wonder why as ComicCon is there every year. Yeah, that scares me more than Cylons too, nuclear war is the devil we know.

:nuke: = :evilgrin:

Hopefully we know it through a friend of a friend, and never meet it in person...

"You know, when we fought the Cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction. But we never answered the question, why? Why are we as a people worth saving?"

I never knew the answer until my daughter was born. I look into her eyes (She's 15 mos. old now) and see a kindness and an innocence that does not deserve annihilation. So often we look at the vile and cruelty of our fellow beings that we fail to see the good. It is for the good, for the possibility of the good in us in our rising generations that we are worth saving.

Sounds fun.

They were constantly tested like that for tornado warnings. I lived in tornado alley and it's the norm for most towns where disasters like this aren't uncommon.

Loved 'The Day After'. Yeah, it had a realistic bite to it, but most folks I knew believed that the USSR were no more interested in nuking us than we did them.

I have no doubt, though, there are some christian types who are frothing at the mouth over this whole business with Russia and the US. They've been batshit crazy for Armageddon for some time now they're hoping to get it.

So, if we're fortunate and they get raptured I'm heading across the street to my nutjob neighbor's and borrowing their riding lawnmower.

That's my plan.

Where I grew up as a child, Russellville, AR, on the outskirts of tornado alley, but near the ominous Arkansas Nuclear One, we didn't get air raid siren tests every Wednesday. More like one Wednesday a month. The other three Wednesdays were storm sirens.

However, not many 10 year olds wore watches, (or as we called them, swatches), during those times. That odd, once-a-month Wednesday did see many a kid, including myself, pee in their pants.

I started streaming this film and oh my God is it boring and slow... Now I understand why Hollywood is so successful... A bunch of working class Brits talking about their domestic life forever and ever...

I've always thought that "Threads" was different in two fundamental ways from "The Day After". "Threads" is more dark and honest about what would happen. Also, in "Threads", when the bombs do finally fall, you are actually relieved that most of the cast die.

:P

To be fair, "The Day After" had it's annoying sub-plots that made me happy when the bombs dropped as well. Jo-lene!

a nuclear strike - people getting ill and dying, collecting the bodies, the birds and small animals going silent -

It is truly a meditation on the horror of the end of "ordinary life"

It is a GREAT film and should be screened by the powers that be.

She still shudders from seeing it.

to take to the mass grave at the edge of town...It is heartbreaking.

Her daughter asks her about marriage, and love and sex and the monologue the mother gives, the sense of loss and the growing awareness between the two of them that the daughter will never see marriage or children is one of the most painful things I have ever seen on film.

The movie has almost no violence - a guy gets killed over gasoline....(of course). Everyone else slowly dies from lack of medicine, despair, radiation poisoning. Most people panic and run, the movie concerns the people in a neighborhood who decide to stay at home.....

The nuclear strike in the beginning of the movie is never seen. It is a momentary silence. No flash, no noise. just a sudden silence.

I saw this once, in about 1990 as a rental and I still get misty when I think of the dignity and care this horror is granted. It is astonishing.

We the survivors will end up envying the dead.

It kills me how after all these years there are still advocates that a nuclear war is survivable. RAND corp. has spent how many years trying to calculate how to win. One would think that after 60 years of doing the math we'd realize that the only outcome to this chess game is stalemate. Hell, I was born in 1982 and managed to figure that out! But nah, just like compulsive gamblers we have to keep playing the game...

They are going to kill us all.

Maybe we are just self-conscious lemmings.

researching nuclear war. It was a light hobby for a while. Some women crochet; others paint.
I thought it would be interesting to dabble in researching the effects of nuclear war.

Basically, it's a depressing hobby.

You just can't go there. You can't know the reality and stay sane.

So...you go back to painting or crocheting--or, in my case--making cakes out of disposable
diapers, which I am doing as a side business.

Carry on...

I was just wondering how you make cakes out of disposable diapers?

:hi:

wildflower

Armageddon the good foot ! Oh get on the good foot !

or a vapor....

We were taught "duck and cover" which was bullshit, they installed sirens in my town, I had friends who's parents built fallout shelters....

I assumed that there was going to be nuclear war all my life, basically...I'll be 57 in November.


Over the last 15 years or so, the low lying tension of that reality has receded- but in the last 72 hours is back with a vengence.

And these pricks think Jesus will come back after the conflagration.....

I lived for the first 14 or so years of my life thinking it would happen sooner or later. I'm 33 now. I can't imagine what it would have been like to have thought that for longer than I did.

We do share one thing in common, the last 72 hours has brought it rushing back into my mind like nothing has ever done before...

A flash with not even a sizzle of surprise.

I remember looking through a brochure on fallout shelter designs that my daddy had back in the missle crisis days and feeling the fear of frying. You too can live in a lead box til the fallout quits falling out and the daisys bloom again.

The Day After scarilly depressed me. The image of the missles going up was spooky shit. I used to drive by the silos in Arkansas and wondered what I'd do if something shot out of there.

I used to have nuke war dreams a lot.

And I had read Pat Franks' Alas Babylon, set near to where I lived.

We had regular "Duck & Cover" exercises, made plans with my family on where to meet in case of evacuation, and generally lived in a state of fear for that period. We just knew that there would be a war and that we would be in the middle of the first strikes. While my parents tried to make plans for survival, we all knew the chances were pretty slim given our location - directly east of MacDill AFB in Tampa. Radiation from that strike would have killed us quickly if the bomb did not immediately.

The Movie "Matinee" treats that period with humor but also shows the impact it had on children the age we were at the time. While it was set in Key West, it had the same emotion I remember.

In college I knew people who planned to move to New Zealand since they thought it had the best chance for survival. I had made the decision that I would rather die immediately than try to live in the aftermath of a nuclear war - and I had not even seen "On the Beach" or "Dr. No".

Fill them with helium and turn them lose as the fundies are leaving church.

Left behind. So sad.

and maybe chips as well because I'm in the Bay Area and you know damn right well, we're going to get hit

Never saw "Threads," but have heard about it.

My most vivid Cold War memory was living near an Air Force base and hearing fighter planes going overhead - not an unusual occurrance near an Air Force base, of course, but there were times when I'd startle awake thinking it was the Russians flying in to drop nukes. I would freeze and hold my breath until they passed. (Come think of it, after 9/11 I had the same reaction to hearing planes going overhead, especially when coming out of a solid sleep; I was sure they were on a direct route to crashing into my apartment building.)

Plans for survival? None, where nuclear war is concerned. Catastrophic sudden climate change, yeah, I've got a plan for that - but not for the global inferno. I don't think there's anyplace one can go where the fallout wouldn't reach.

You need to. See the link above. But, do it the night before you have a day off. You won't sleep much after viewing.

(as I haven't any, really) but SOME people are MORE than prepared for what could come:

http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/21812/Thoughts_on_Day_After.pdf

They're starting the "survivable/winnable" meme again. These idiots are actually saying a nuclear attack on the Bay Area could mean less than 100K dead!

Those types of idiots are always wrong. Survivable indeed. Of course people would survive, but they wouldn't enjoy having done so. Those studies always seem to make it stupidly sound like it would be worth surviving.

haul off a year's supply for four. That's my first move.

Okay people, let's get serious now.

I want to hear serious stories. Let's hear more about the jet flyovers that woke someone up at night holding their breath. Let's hear more about people caught by surprise when the air raid sirens were tested.

Those kids walking along the beach earlier need to hear this stuff...

I'm in my late 40's. I saw "The Day After".

Let's just say that I still occasionally hear those jets, and it makes me wonder what's happened now.

Julie

And thank dog. Though thanks to Bush, her generation has plenty to deal with.

I know why Bush is in power. It was the Cold War propaganda pumped into our minds 24x7. You fuck with a generation like that and most of their minds belong to whoever can weld the most fear or bullshit.

Armageddon or being nuked into oblivion was always in the back of my mind growing up. Always. We lived near Kirkland AFB, and they also tested the air raid sirens every day at noon. What a terrible, chilling sound. It sure didn't help ease my fears. Can you imagine not growing up wondering when you would have to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye, as that famous poster used to say?

On top of that, I grew up with a parent who was a religious fanatic. Not only did I wake up in the middle of the night fearing a nuclear attack, but I also would wake up fearing Judgment Day would come and Jesus would show pictures of me on the toilet taking a poo. The horror!

There was what we thought was a crazy old woman who would wander around our neighborhood in a night dress. Turns out she wasn't crazy, just poor. We would invite her over for dinner. She had survived the Holocaust, unlike her entire family. Her name was 'Esther', but she went by 'Elizabeth' and I suspect she was Jewish, but she never mentioned it. She spoke 14 languages and taught us a little French and Hungarian, and had worked for the UN in the 50's or 60's. She told us how she ended up at a Himler rally and would not do the salute. She was asked why and told the person she had hurt her hand. Another time, a group of people she was with were gunned down by soldiers and she had to pretend she was dead while they poked the bodies with their guns to make sure. She told stories of mass hallucinations (people in her town in Hungary saw a giant, and a demon possessed girl's screams could be heard for blocks). She also lived in New York when the crime was really bad and had stories of that, too.

There are people amongst us who've been through hell, be it a World War, or the Great Depression. They are a testament to survival, and they give me hope.

I've slowly inched my way up to the Pacific NW for a reason. There are a lot of places to hide up here. I'm sure many of you probably had those Armageddon dreams. I know I did, and when I started getting a stream of deja vu after Bush took power, I was kind of taken aback. Hell, I'd even dreamed in the 80's that New Orleans was destroyed, and about "terrorists", because in my dreams, someone was yelling, 'Terror! Terror!", except the "terrorists" were the ones getting their bodies blown apart. Anyway, when you see your worst nightmares unfolding, then it's time to make a contingency plan.

I've known people like your Esther. Stunning how much those seemingly crazy people have to teach us about the human condition, and about human mistakes, in the end sometimes, isn't it?

Your daughter is lucky, while she doesn't have to fear what you did, she does have you to watch over her. It's enough that you know. As for moving Northwest, I didn't follow that path. Coming out at 19, I wanted to move away from my fundamentalist family to bright city lights. There was a danger in that, as pulling up old copies of outdated FEMA blast maps shows. Where I live now is a major port, near our fourth largest city, and I live under a bullseye. All the more reason for my having pulled out that atlas.

But did our leaders learn the same lessons that we did from growing up during those years? I wonder.

This was the kind of story I wanted to read. Please post more, if anyone has any.

locate my kid and parents give/receive comfort. smoke some weed maybe have a few drinks for old time sake. possible fornication. ask God for my forgiveness and the world's forgiveness. smoke some more weed and have some more drinks. armageddon sounds very interesting.

What were your plans if you had survived?

organize a community pantry and a makeshift triage/clinic. i would seek out law enforcement and those w/medical knowledge. i would seek out those w/cb radios and try to establish communication with the outside world. then i would ask God for forgiveness again while i fornicated, smoked and drank more liquor. ( i watch way too much sci fi)

And hoping the wind from Oak Ridge is blowing towards North Carolina.

More gritty stories, or current plans, if anyone cares to share. For those that are lurking, feel free to enjoy a little more lighthearted look at our past:

Conelrad

*Hic*

Personally, I plan on stocking the car's trunk with 5-liter boxes of that cheap stuff for Mexico. It's got to be better than what they have.

You know what they say, "don't drink the water". But then again, those may be wise words no matter where one finds oneself after the bombs come...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053137/ - morose but I always find myself watching it when it airs.

That's another one I haven't seen, but have tried to find. If you ever hear of it being broadcast again, drop me a line.

Someone above discussed a scene in Testament showing a discussion with a mother and daughter about a life that the child would never have. I prefer the gut-punch that "Threads" offers.

The mother holding the scorched body of a baby in the ruins. Children born speaking gibberish and thinking that death means nothing. "Threads" need to be show again. People need to know.

Netflix has it available but I'm not a Netflixer (yet lol).

Let's see, they have the 1959 version and 2000 version too if you're really, really interested.

Good classic movie though.

Is "Panic In The Year Zero".

I bookmarked this thread - there's a few movies here I'd like to check out.

I rarely think to look for these films, and am probably missing out on a chance to find them when they come up somewhere. I should check more often. I'm bookmarking, too, just to remind myself of the titles.

in the thawing northland and wait for Russia to take back the land they sold to the US so cheap back in 1867. It really was a steal at 1.9 cents per acre.

I do remember those Cold War movies well. I used to have nightmares about big chunks of the earth just being blown out into space by a nuclear holocaust. They really did try to scare the crap out of us back then, maybe even worse than today.

You'll be the first hit. Don't get to comfortable.

We've got a ton of military here, too. I'm not really going to worry about it, though. There's not much I can do. At least marijuana is legal here, so I guess I'll just kick back and relax until the time comes.

Then, I'm probably going to get drunk.

...two hookers and an eight ball.

But whoever put up that sticky of The Doctor and the Dalek with the text "Can't we all just get along", needs a round of applause.

Independence Day was more like my nightmares but no aliens, mostly just black-armored troops-like in Medieval paintings or on Ancient Greek vases. Harmageddon is one version of the name, for the city of Megeiddo.....an old trade route or a crossroads. Harma-Greek for chariot, or a net, as for giddo there are variations that I've looked at jiddo, jedi, jeddah, jiddah, jaddah-Arabic for grandmother......Eve of the Old Testament/Koran/Torah(n) says her grave is in the city of Jedda. Athena was called grandmother out of respect for her wisdom & her similar abilities in weaving & other "grandmotherly duties".

I would beware a straight reading of "revelations" because the Bible is the "Scary Movie" version of other religions. Februa being a name for Pisces & fever & wormwood being the pre-modern cure for fever getting the devilizing treatment in Revelations is a great irony.

being in 2nd grade in 1962, and having to go through the "line-up-on-the-letters-on-the-playground-so-the-block-mothers-can-(rapidly) walk-your-groups-home" thing, seeing cartoons interrupted by those eerie civil defense alerts (high pitched tones followed by instructions to "tune your dials to...," watching two of our neighbors build underground bomb shelters, that kind of stuff led to some sleepless nights...

We live within sight of Travis Air Force base (on a really clear day)...if I have time I'll probably lean a ladder up against the roof, climb up with my favorite beverage, and get vaporized...

ON EDIT: If I happen to think of it, and can muster enough breath control, I might take a run at "Time to Say Goodbye."

Armageddon is more likely if McBomb gets (s)elected.
We need to make the American people aware of that.



We need a new "Daisy" ad!

This is the original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKs-bTL-pRg

I was thinking right after I started this thread that we needed a "Daisy"...

I tried to find a way to save it and link to it here, but I can't.

To anyone that reads this, you have got to hear this rockin' jingle. Click the link below:

http://www.conelrad.com/index.php">Conelrad

Scroll down to the bottom 1/3rd of the website. There are two audio players. One is titled "Atomic Secrets". Click on the play button and enjoy.

I have too many friends asking for rides to work everyday that are going to get sick of hearing this. I'm going to burn out my iPod battery playing this, faster than any EMP ever could.

I'm going to gather 'round a few of my feminist friends and during the time of chaos and death we're going to create a new feminist oriented world.

My plan calls for a new world that I get to found! When the radioactive dust settles, I plan on starting my own Secular Humanist society. You and your feminists will be welcome.

Maybe we can establish diplomatic relationships.

I don't like the way that you are not directly under my sphere of influence. I have an idea. It goes like this:

Get some friends to back up your country and make you feel popular while I complain and run military practice exercises in your back yard. Then, take a stab at ethnically cleansing some of my people that live in any disputed areas. I'll amass my troops at your borders while you do this.

Then, once your party has begun, I'll enter your territory and stop your genocide. Then, I'll offer you a ceasefire while directing my forces towards your capitol, pillaging any villages I find along the way.

Then you can tell your lobbyists to go back to their governments and tell them that they need to make a big stink about the disproportionate response I am taking. Poor crybaby--it's not fair that I was waiting for an excuse to invade and take over your country. Maybe some President or Presidential candidate from some other country can get involved and threaten us. See, it's fun!

Maybe that nation's President can even offer humanitarian aid to your people, and send its own military forces to distribute it, as opposed to the post-apocalyptic UN's peacekeeping forces.

But we'll have to be very careful on my end not to accidentally shoot or bomb one of your military aid workers, because that would be a shame, and you might shoot back. And then we would have to have World War IV...

we have to kill you before you start. Okay. I know some feminists who are pissed off enough. Some are sharp-shooters. We'll begin that way so we can remove the problem before it begins. Women are good at cleaning up. /snark

Where will you be when all this hits the fan?

:evilgrin:

Well, if you've read any of this thread, when it all hits the fan, I'll be in Mexico.

And grew up in constant fear of nuclear war. My elementary school had a fallout shelter and we had the sirens, too.

In 1979, I had the ultimate freak-out a few weeks short of my 14th birthday. The sirens went off for real. I lived 15 miles from Three Mile Island.

Scariest. Thing. Ever.

Fortunately, the worst didn't actually happen, the cold war ended, and those particular scary demons were pushed to the back of my mind for many years now (having been replaced by the demons of the 21st century).

When I started hearing the news of the situation in Georgia last week, all that cold war fear came flooding to the surface in a big way.

Not pleased. Not pleased at all.

P.S. Thanks for the link to the conelrad site. Trip down memory lane, there. Bert the Turtle, oh my.

The one thing I have always wanted to do was tour a fallout shelter. Always remember the signs, one under the post office, local library, city hall, school buildings. Never got a chance to go in.

Conelrad's a great site. Most of the material is a little before my time, but it's a great resource.

Here's another neat link:

http://www.civildefensemuseum.org/cdmuseum2/shelter.html