Today we had a Seminar on the film Fail Safe, the article Fat Man, and the film Dr. Strangelove. The opening of our seminar was asking small questions we had on the text. One of the first questions asked was "Was Kahn for or against nuclear war? Where did he stand?" As a group we concluded that Kahn believed in second strike deterrence. He believed that we should let someone else strike first and survive then retaliate and win, second strike deterrence. He also believed that nuclear war was not only survivable but winnable as well. One question I had was "What was the doomsday machine?" A doomsday machine was something mentioned in the Fat Man and in Dr. Strangelove. This machine was positioned around the world and once a nuclear attack is made it would automatically go off. Once it was set off it was impossible to take back. This fictional machine was used as a threat to the other country and was used as a type of deterrence. This discussion led to another question raised by Zach, "Do you think the US was being paranoid by continuing to make weapons when they had little to no proof that the Soviet Union had weapons?" At first I believed that the US wasn't being paranoid and that they were just trying to be safe. But as I started to hear more people's opinions it started to become clear that the Americans were kind of being paranoid because they had no proof, but on the other hand if you were being threatened with nuclear weapons don't you think it's better to be safe than sorry? One thing that kind of made me think the other way was when Mirit said that paranoia led them to make more because they didn't have facts which is pretty much true when you think about it. This question is still kind of a struggle for me to answer. But in the end the Soviet Union only had four missiles.
Still Need to Finish.
3-5 Pictures Related to Dr. Strangelove.
Site: http://forrfiles.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/fallout.jpg
Site: http://thisdistractedglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/DrStrangelove2.jpg
Site: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/73/Slim-pickens_riding-the-bomb_enh-lores.jpg
Site: image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/pictures/2007/10/17/strangelove460.jpg
The bomb shelter photo is great. It is very telling of the time period and how people were fearfull/paranoid about nuclear war. It seems like you took great notes in seminar. As far as the last point in your post, maybe people they overestimated the threat because they were paranoid (or at least had there own preconceptions) to start with. It was not nukes that led to paranoia. It was paranoia that led to nukes.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work.
Peter