BS: The War Game

Subject: BS: The War Game
From: Amergin
Date: 21 Jun 04 - 10:33 PM

My god, I just watched this and it's quite possibly the most disturbing film I have ever seen...It is a British documentary from 1965 about what may occur before during and after a "limited" nuclear attack on Britain. It talks about the flash and the fallout, the dead and dying and the survivors, troubles with medical care and food.

It talks about how those too hurt would possibly be left to die and roving bands of armed police shooting them out of their misery. It talks about food riots and martial law. It talks about those left behind to move on, turning into desperate men women and children lost in the dark of a post nuclear world. I thought The Day After was disturbing...but this exceeds it...

Subject: RE: BS: The War Game
From: CarolC
Date: 21 Jun 04 - 10:46 PM

For a new scary scenario, you might want to check out this thread:

BS: The Pentagon on Global Warming

Also, since you mentioned that the film was about a "limited" nuclear scenario, it might be worth mentioning here that some of the people who are driving foreign policy in the US are suggesting that "limited" nuclear warfare could be a good thing.

Subject: RE: BS: The War Game
From: Bobert
Date: 21 Jun 04 - 10:46 PM

Well, the problem is that most of folks just don't see how we are quickly arriving at a similar scenerio with a buldging world population, limited water, geneticly engineered food, an industrialized world dependent on oil and way too many guns. Bad mix.

Unless the world's leaders start preparing for those realities like very soon then what you have seen in "The War Game" can and will become a reality. Heck, look at Sudan. The world is allready desensitzed to genocide to the point where it is idly sitting back watching upwards of 2,000,000 prople die this coming summer...

So mankind is in its own creepy way ready for the games to begin...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: The War Game
From: nutty
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 02:47 AM

I went with a friend to see this film when it was released in the 60's.

The threat of nuclear war was all too real at that time and I remember that we left the cinema in a state of shock.

We were both in our teens and the scenario was one that brought the global hostilities very close to home.

The film was matched, in my opinion, by Neville Shute's On the Beach.

Subject: RE: BS: The War Game
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 03:39 AM

The War Game was made for BBC TV, but was considered too disturbing to be broadcast. (They'd rather we didn't know??) It was released in the cinema shortly after, as the people who made it were determined to get it shown. I saw it, and I didn't sleep for a week. I saw it again nine years later, when it was shown at a CND event; then it was braodcast as a "period piece" a few years back when the Beeb made an updated docu-drama about a nuclear war. I skipped it that time.

If you live in the US, it's a big place; if you head for the hills, you could conceivably survive and even thrive after a "limited" strike: this is why it's considered a viable option. In the UK you couldn't escape, as it's too small and too densely populated.

Of course, these days we only have to fear very small atacks by terrorists, say; or the fall-out from India/Pakistan or North/South Korea, or when the Israelis finally lose it and nuke the Arabs.

Oh dear, I'm starting to get ironic now: I'd better shut up!

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: The War Game
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 03:00 PM

The trouble was that all the orthodoxies were in place in the 60's. I grew up in a CND/Quaker family and whilst maybe middle class people relished the outlaw stance that CND afforded them, my father's - for the main part working class colleagues, who had just fought a war, were genuinely upset and bitter about his views.

But were we right?

After all Russia did dominate and bugger up an awful lot of Eastern European peoples'lives with its iron curtain policies and in the main, it wasn't in a mood to respect freedoms, opinions, etc. Perhaps its as well us peaceniks didn't get our way.

Subject: RE: BS: The War Game
From: beardedbruce
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 03:11 PM

I have seen it. It is optimistic.

Subject: RE: BS: The War Game
From: Peace
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 04:46 PM

There was another by Helen Caldicott that was shocking. I grew up in the age when we expected nuclear war, and people were trying to say we could survive it. I think it was Einstein who said that in the event of a nuclear war, the living would envy the dead. If it happens, I really hope I'm at ground zero somewhere.

beardedbruce, I haven't seen the movie, but I agree with you--the others were optimistic IMHO.

Subject: RE: BS: The War Game
From: mack/misophist
Date: 23 Jun 04 - 12:02 AM

As great an ass as Maggie Thatcher was, Mutual Assured Destruction worked. If there can be no winners, there's less chance of a fight.

Subject: RE: BS: The War Game
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 Jun 04 - 06:13 AM

As I have stated in other threads, MAD only works when the damage you can inflict is unacceptable to your opponent, and that opponent is sane ( enough to realize that).

There are a number of rather good fictional novels about the effects of a nuclear war- A Canticle for Leibowwitz, Level Seven, Alas Babylon... But fortunatly, we have no direct experience with it. I hope this remains so- but fear that there are those for whom the destruction of (Western) civilization would be desired.