Have we stopped fearing nuclear war?

This linked piece from the I09 site is interesting as it sets up an interesting cultural question, but obviously no piece can truly answer such a question because the fear of nuclear war is ultimately a personal one that the individual must sort out for himself/herself. However, as a young lad of the 70's I find it a fascinating one and as I look back on my life I find that this specific fear had a huge effect on me.

For one, nuclear war was one of several issues of the day that raged through the 70's, 80's and 90's that made me quite cynical about doing the family thing. It also moved me to the left politically, away from my parents' Republican views, as I bought into the "itchy trigger finger" argument against Reagan in my first presidential election vote. Turns out lots of people actually favored having a fake cowboy with alleged itchy trigger finger in the White House.

Fast forward to today, and it seems like most people have enough to deal with than to spend time worrying about nuclear war. And I guess I pretty much fit that same mold. Over in the movie thread we're spending time discussing Dr Strangelove and other nihilistic Kubrick movies. It's amazing to me how many movies told a story of basic human error responsible for nuclear explosions or full on war. Such a narrative was used in serious movies like Fail Safe, satire like Strangelove, escapist fare like War Games, and many in between. And yet despite all the dire warnings, we've had no accidents. And when I say "we", I mean the entire world, from the US and USSR with their huge arsenals to smaller players like Pakistan and Israel.

We're going on nearly 70 years since a nuclear explosion took human life, at least directly. The after effects on humans living near test zones is another matter. And still, no cock ups. No nefarious blue turban wearing, nostradamus-predicted villains setting off a chain reaction of nukes across the planet. One of my favorite books of all time was Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle with one of the main characters carrying around a chip of Ice-9 in a thermos that if released would freeze the oceans solid, forever. It was obviously allegory for the stalemate that the US v USSR held the world in, each having their own doomsday arsenal of weapons that would destroy the planet, manyfold over. And yet, I'm guessing that even Vonnegut on his deathbed had to wonder how mankind hadn't destroyed the place, yet. The Ice-9 chip was, of course, deployed in his story.

I guess it's not too late to have a major fuck up that screws things up pretty bad. But after 70 years, it feels like we're playing with house money at this point. I'm pretty sanguine with the idea that I had a pretty good run and that if it all blows up tomorrow, I didn't do half bad in this life of mine. A far cry from the 17 yr old high school student who wrote multiple term papers on the topic of the horror of nuclear war. And even a long way from the 26 yr old pseudo-intellectual who watched Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice and nodded along muttering... "uh huh, uh huh, uh huh."

I think we stopped fearing it because the nuclear war didn't happen but terrorism did. For 55 years the media and government drummed fear of Russia and Communism into our heads,(more about scaring people into submission, IMHO) while sending money and weapons to the Mujahadeen that were supposedly our "friends" who turned out to be terrorists.

Capitalism and Communism seemed for a time to be two opposing ideologies intent on swallowing the world. But even from their start neither was pure. Over time it became evident the capitalism, to serve its citizens well, must become more socializd and communism must become more privatized. The fall of the USSR made it seem to some as if capitalism was going to be the inevitible winner. Terrorism is became the up and coming anxiety. But we still have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the Eath ten times over (not sure of the exactly number of Earths we can obliterate), and they're in more hands. The dynamics are different, the theat is not in the forefront of our mind, but the danger has not been removed.

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Originally Posted by trish

Capitalism and Communism seemed for a time to be two opposing ideologies intent on swallowing the world. But even from their start neither was pure. Over time it became evident the capitalism, to serve its citizens well, must become more socializd and communism must become more privatized. The fall of the USSR made it seem to some as if capitalism was going to be the inevitible winner. Terrorism is became the up and coming anxiety. But we still have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the Eath ten times over (not sure of the exactly number of Earths we can obliterate), and they're in more hands. The dynamics are different, the theat is not in the forefront of our mind, but the danger has not been removed.

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Trish is right about this: "... even from their start neither was pure." Pure capitalism or so-called communism means the state must, well, go away. Anyone up for capitalism with absolutely no government? -- ha ha! To me pure capitalism wouldn't be, well, that nice... to say the least.

Best-selling writer Eric Schlosser, author of 'Command and Control', explains why he wrote a book about accidents involving nuclear weapons.
(The brief interview starts at roughly the 30 second mark):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuGG0OBstek

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Originally Posted by Odelay

Fast forward to today, and it seems like most people have enough to deal with than to spend time worrying about nuclear war.....And yet despite all the dire warnings, we've had no accidents. And when I say "we", I mean the entire world, from the US and USSR with their huge arsenals to smaller players like Pakistan and Israel.

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This is not a criticism of your post, but you may want to revise your terms, as strategic thinkers do and widen the brief to include 'weapons of mass destruction' which adds to the nuclear capability the 'dirty bomb' concept of a chemical biological or radiological weapon, of the kind we were told by Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2003 could strike British targets in 45 minutes (the targets being British bases in Cyprus).

There is a useful discussion on the potential of terrorist use of WMD here
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/...wmd-threat.pdf

There were fears when the USSR broke up that a loss of strict control meant nuclear warheads were going missing, that nuclear scientists losing their jobs and living on bread and cheese were selling their know-how to Pakistan and North Korea. A lot of this turned out to be hysteria, but critically it seems that it is harder for a terrorist group to mount a chemical attack than a government, as must also be true of more sophisticated weapons of mass destruction.

Moreover, in the cases where nuclear capability has been sold as a package of intellectual material, it (allegedly) was done by an ally of the USA to perceived enemies of the USA, specifically the case against Abdul Qadeer Khan selling info to Iran, Libya and the USA with or without the connivance of the Pakistan government, the ISI....and you thought series 3 of Homeland was just tv?
Abdul Qadeer Khan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The point of divergence must be the concept of deterrence, which was always used to argue that possession of nuclear weapons has actually prevented their use. On this basis, Iran's possession of nuclear weapons would make it harder for Israel to use theirs...and so on until you get the claim that really nasty regimes don't believe in deterrence...it would be foolish to rule it out, but right now 'we' are probably more at risk from a lone gunman or a small cell going berserk in a city centre or a shopping mall, while 'they' are at risk from drone strikes by 'us'.

The sad part is everything we feared would happen under communism is now happening under capitalism, or what used to be capitalism.

what did you fear would happen under communism? We'd be force fed borscht and compelled to watch gymnasts perform to ballet music?