Cold War Kid here. This is cute. Y'all now just figuring out the nuclear apocalypse is only ever minutes away? I grew up with this shit being shoved in my face every single day. I was the generation where they stopped doing atomic bomb drills at school because we had thermonuclear warheads and there was no point - and they told us that!
Then they wonder why Gen X is so apathetic. Between Nixon and The Bomb how else did they expect us to turn out? It's a natural self-defense reaction.
And there was a bunch of primetime TV content about the nuclear apocalypse when a large part of Gen X was at an impressionable age.
"Threads" (UK), "The Day After" (US) are two big ones. Two lesser known ones that had a profound impact on me were "Special Bulletin" and an episode of the new Twilight Zone called "A Little Piece and Quiet"[1]
If you missed those (or had parents who wouldn't let you watch it), those only aired once or twice.
But the made-for-rental movies you could get to watch over the weekend, there must have been a dozen of those. I still remember the one where the space station astronauts that crashland after, and the cannibals "rescue" them within minutes of touchdown.
* By the way, there only ever was one Zathras, but he used the Great Machine to time travel so that he could work more than 24 hours per day. Or maybe someone used it on him, that part's unclear (I mean, why would he do that to himself?).
I realized that I am a cold war kid when I got repeated dreams of the final blast around 15 years ago. Tells you something about political environment you grow up with if you find your subconscious manufacturing final blast events...
Interesting how people who have been through acute hardship, meaning random and senseless death of their immediate community, are less apathetic. Ie your parents', my grandparents', generation. Something about the human animal does poorly with existential precarity but no actual hardship.
Though they made sure to tell us the music we listened to sucked! We weren't into all that Vietnam protest music the Boomers thought was great. No. We were the generation the anti-war Boomers sent to war after they'd seized the reins of power. Funny anecdote, I worked with a lady who's husband was all in for the Gulf War. She was like wait, you were protesting Vietnam - so you're for war when it's someone else going and against war when you're the one being sent? She divorced him! I always thought that was funny.
> I worked with a lady who's husband was all in for the Gulf War.
Gulf War I was about forcing an invader back from the independent nation he had decided to annex, and it enjoyed wide support from the international community. It also exposed a much smaller amount of American troops to potential harm than earlier American wars, and so sparked less domestic outrage. There is no reason to expect a person who protested the war in Vietnam to oppose that defense of Kuwait, unless they were part of that relatively small demographic opposed to all Western intervention in general. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a totally different story, and I have seen an increasing amount of online comments that erroneously conflate the two.
> Gulf War I was about forcing an invader back from the independent nation he had decided to annex
Yes, that was the story that was told. It's the same story being told now about the Ukraine war. But that's what it is - a story. The invasion is part of the story, but it's not the whole story and it's not the entirety of the reasons we went to war with Iraq and why we're currently aiding the Ukraine.
> And you are seriously suggesting that it is other people who are uninformed about these matters?
Not at all! Like I said, the common story has a kernel of truth, it's not an outright lie, but it's not the whole truth. Some people dig further, others have plenty enough other things going on in their lives to deal with digging deeper. The very same people dig at different rates at different times in their life. For example, I was a kid when Vietnam was going on. Didn't exactly dig deep into what we were doing there and what we were hoping to achieve. To be honest, I didn't dig too deep into the Gulf War or the Iraq War either - at least not at the time.
>Cold War Kid here. This is cute. Y'all now just figuring out the nuclear apocalypse is only ever minutes away? I grew up with this shit being shoved in my face every single day.
Yeah. This is definitely an 'everything old is new again' moment. Anyone remember the music video for Genesis' Land of Confusion and how that ended? Amazing how history rhymes! Here we are again with a dementia patient in the White House and everyone pretending that's OK somehow...
EDIT: To the people downvoting me, could you please explain the difference between Reagan having the nuclear football and Biden having the nuclear football to me rather than just mashing the downvote button? Thanks.
The two problems I spot are (1) You had to include an edit to your original comment to try and clarify what your original post was referring to (Reagan vs Biden) rather than just stating that and (2) the seemingly unnecessary "dementia patient" reference in the context of what you posted. FYI, my account is young so I am unable to downvote anything.
> could you please explain the difference between Reagan having the nuclear football and Biden having the nuclear football
Seeing as the protocol is for the President of the United States to have control over the nuclear arsenal, I don't think there is a difference. Are you suggesting that there is a difference? It is unclear your intention. Perhaps someone else will care to know what your discussion goal is here.
Then they wonder why Gen X is so apathetic. Between Nixon and The Bomb how else did they expect us to turn out? It's a natural self-defense reaction.