The end of WarGames

They did have the reservations for Paris.

What gets me in watching older movies is how BIG the tech stuff is. These days, WOPR would probably fit into a Whopper carton.

Cell phones are another fun one. Technology is almost as reliable as hairstyles in pinpointing movies' ages.

 

In "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," when Matthew Broderick said, "I asked for a car; I got a computer," I said, "Oh shit."

Then I wondered if he could make a career out of movies in which he changed someone's grade from a home computer.

 

I would imagine that they use psychological screening to determine who would show grace under nuclear fire. Obviously within the movie's world it's not foolproof, or WOPR would never have seen the light of day. In the real world, if we ever got to this point, I think the people at the Button would block it out by sticking to the script, using protocol to push down the panic and fear. Which is exactly what you need in that spot, because if the Soviets had executed a surprise attack1, they'd have at most 20 minutes to formulate and execute a retaliation strike.

Something else about the people manning Cheyenne Mountain at the time -- they know going in that once the balloon goes up and the nukes fly, they're dead and there's not a damn thing they can do about it. You know the verse in the Bible about how if you have the faith of a mustard seed, you can tell a mountain to move from here to there and it will? Well, the Soviet interpretation in the 80s was to replace "faith of a mustard seed" with "24 nuclear warheads at 20MT yield". They're burrowed into that mountain pretty well and they've got a lot of design cues that protects them from direct groundbursts, but that mountain isn't sustaining a gigaton of TNT and the resulting radiation, and neither are the poor bastards inside. You definitely don't want people at NORAD, at Offutt AFB outside Omaha (home of the Strategic Air Command) or aboard Looking Glass to be running about with their heads cut off.

It's easy to underestimate the Cold War because now we have the benefit of hindsight and the Soviet Union was not sustainable as it was constructed. They could not continue an arms race at the rate it was going in the 80s because the US economy was way better than theirs. Eventually the years of funding the military at the expense of everything else was going to lead to a collapse. Better that Gorbachev be in office and start dialing things down rather than have civil war, because then those missles are in play.

And actually, the Able Archer 83 NATO wargames, the very ones that put us on the precipice of nuclear armageddon, might have been the trigger that started moving everyone from the brink once and for all. After the games ended and the Warsaw Pact took their nuclear forces off high alert, Reagan realized how very paranoid and downright scared the Politboro was of a NATO first strike2. At that point, he cut back on the saber-rattling and allegedly tried to get the message across to them that the U.S. was not interested in a first strike, an American Barbarossa or anything of that sort.

But we didn't have that benefit back then. The Soviets sure as hell were not going to broadcast those feelings to the Americans or their allies. All we had to go off of was they were this huge country with more nuclear warheads than us, and they didn't especially care for us. Then KAL 007 happened. Then Grenada. Then Able Archer. It's hard to imagine anyone giving release authority for strategic targets, since that would have resulted in catastrophic destruction on both sides inside of an hour, but in the midst of a quickly-heating Cold War, who knows? Those movies, with flash-fried wedding participants and a burning kitten3 and billions of tons of rubble and profoundly retarded kids born after the exchange, did nothing to calm us.

Strange as it seems now, MAD did its job. Everyone who had nukes also had plenty of reasons not to use them. Pulling off a decapitation strike was and is pretty much impossible because both the U.S. and Russia have enough second-strike capabilities to ensure that even if every square pica of their country is glass, they have plenty enough firepower to rain hell upon the other guys. Any other attack was a John Hancock on the deaths of hundreds of millions of their own citizens. But that wasn't doing us any good within the moment.

I'm forever wary of nuclear war, but I've accepted the peculiar and complex dynamics of the peace that its threat has produced. But I'm not really nostalgic for the early and mid 80s as much, that's for true. NEW WAVE DEEZ NUTS.

1 -- In nuclear warfare terminology, a surprise attack is called a Bolt Out Of the Blue Attack, or a BOOB Attack. Not exactly death by snu snu.

2 -- Yuri Andropov created Operation RYAN (a Russian acronym that means Nuclear Missile Attack) in 1981 when he led the KGB. The goal was to collect as much information as possible about what Andropov and the Soviet government assumed was the U.S. plan to initiate a first strike. They were definitely convinced we were going to lash out at them at any given time. RYAN died with Andropov, as his successors did not share his concerns at that deep level

3 -- It's a scene from Threads. The kitten was not actually burned, of course. He just looked like he was rolling around in a firestorm, but he was perfectly safe.

 

The thing about Cheyenne Mountain was that is wasn't a great as the set of WarGames. I also thought of WarGames when I first heard of the Crystal Palace soccer club.

Loved how Leo from The West Wing and Michael Madsen played the schmuck launch controllers at the beginning. I wonder if they're near Minot. BTW, there were problems a few years ago in the bunkers in North Dakota with crews falling asleep on duty and the Air Force Base loading a jet with a six live nuclear cruise missiles bound for Louisiana in 2007.

 

The end of Back to the Future is odd too. Marty's parents aren't freaked out that their son looks and sounds exactly like a guy they knew back in high school?

And his parents have a completely different set of memories of Marty because he only experienced the "old" parents ie before he went back in time.

 

BUT JOSHUA CALLED HIM!!!!

 

I'm pretty sure Grenada's official title was Grenada Thrust. Or maybe Grenada Capitulation.

 

Remember, in 1985, the word "sucks" was still borderline shocking/horrifying/obscene.

It took 7-8 more years and Beavis and Butt-head to take it fully mainstream.

 

Beat me to it. I love this line, and every time I have a computer issue, it comes to mind.

And yes, Ally Sheedy. Hubba hubba.

 

You know, I never once worried about a nuclear war back in the day. My philosophy was it was something that was completely out of my control, so there was no use getting uptight about it. And if it did happen, we'd probably all get fried in a nanosecond anyway, so we wouldn't feel a thing, and if we somehow survived, we'd deal with it then.

As for WarGames, I thought it was played very tongue-in-cheek. I mean, Dabney Coleman as a national-defense computer expert? Um, yeah. And, yes, Ally Sheedy was very easy on the eyes.

 

If they're shutting down the mountain and I'm on the outside, I'm getting in before the door closes not standing around directing traffic for a jeep.

 

"To your journey! To my journey!"