MAD. I hope everyone is well armed.
Tuesday nights at 7pm where I grew up.
Wait'll someone develops the missile that goes straight down through the earth to come out the side. Just aim at whoever you want to blow off the face of the earth, and fire.
Missile-shield THAT!
(Don't you wish you knew who has it? *chuckle*)
Not to mention the Cold War chess set, where the pawns dive into the bomb shelter (formerly the castle) when the warning siren (formerly the bishop) starts up. First one in starts blowing away everyone else trying to get in.
God, I love the old MAD magazine.
al-Qaeda *who*?
What those little snotnoses need is a good Cold War! That'll straighten 'em out!
Jesse, have you ever toured the Titan Missile Museum? It's sobering. Barbara Kingsolver has a good essay about it in her essay collection "High Tide in Tucson."
Every damned day until 1997, at high noon, the fire station right across the street from my work would rev up its air raid siren. Where I spent my youth up north in NJ, the fire stations would do the same thing. People used to wonder why I always used to tip my head back and look whenever that damned noise started, and I would explain that I was waiting for the end of the world.
you think Putin was trying to send a less subtle message to our Crawford Caligua?
Gay Veteran you keep useing that subtle word....i do not think it means what you think it means
Grew up in Florida during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I dunno how I made it through school, what with spending most of my time cowering under the Atomic Bomb-proof Child's Size Desk... And I clearly remember the sonic booms from the jets in and out of Homestead AFB.
Funny, I made the comment just this morning that we are now in a position to have to rely on China and Russia to save out asses from...us. The ironic twists of that have thrown my back out again.
Sure puts that ol' Long War On Terror in perspective, doesn't it?
This Cold War 2.0 has possibilities...
Yes it does.
Like I always say sometimes; HOLEY MOLEY - JEZUZ H. FUKKING CHRIST! - JEEZ LEWEEZ!
I well remember those "Atomic Bomb-proof Child's Size Desks". Where the HELL are we going to find about 27 million of em now?
First Putin tells Cheney to Cheney himself and now tells him to bend over.
Jesse, have you ever toured the Titan Missile Museum? It's sobering. Barbara Kingsolver has a good essay about it in her essay collection "High Tide in Tucson."
Norsecats -
Yes. South of Tucson. What scared me was knowing, there are still literally hundreds of thousands of megatons of nuclear explosives launch or near launch ready in strategic position in the United States, Russia, and China. Less in England and France but there. That's it for strategic forces, although the -stans, Israel, India and Pakistan, North Korean (barely), Germany (probably), Japan (almost certainly, most secretly, and in utter violation of their Constitution), and Taiwan (because they are NOT being assimilated), and possibly some others I missed. Brazil has nukes for sure.
Also, I knew someone who knew someone who was a serving officer in a Titan missile squadron when I was a teenager. He got permission to bring a few of us down for a tour.
At the end of the tour, we reached over from the gantry and TOUCHED the skin of the nosecone under which were live MIRVs, in a live silo in a squadron on watch.
I never dealt with these issues the same, and still don't. Nuclear weapons are tangible for me. I've been in the presence of them, on a platform, able to launch in pretty.damn.quick. With something like a 10 meter accuracy half a world away, 30 minutes later.
The fucking world -- the human part, more or less -- could end, 30 minutes from launch. And don't let anyone kid anyone. Even though the word is, we're not at launch readiness anymore, all the truly means is, we don't have the launch sequences in the MXs fully loaded around the clock anymore, the B-52s sitting on the runways, and Looking Glass in the air.
That isn't to say the Hole isn't peopled around the clock, the Boomers aren't ALWAYS at sea (enough that we ALWAYS have a guaranteed second and third strike capability.) Anyone who touches us and is identified, dies. Not perhaps. For certain.
Having touched a live nuclear weapon, even at fourteen... Saturday at 1 pm was different when the siren went off.
It's different for me now.
I salute the American Heroes who most likely sacrificed their careers two months ago to stop Dick Cheney and crew from moving six nuclear devices to the middle east. Thank you for remembering your oath to Constitution.
I hope that the US military's long and strong tradition of not intervening in the civilian government holds.
I hope that our officers by now hate the guts of the Chimperor and Darth Cheney so much, for what they have done to the armed forces, that any orders from either of this demonic duo involving use of nuclear weapons abroad or suppression of dissent at home will be met with a hearty "SIR! FUCK OFF, SIR!"
I wonder if Darth Cheney hasn't already explored the Full Metal Pinochet option [h/t Driftglass], and learned, or decided, he'd receive exactly that answer. 
And I really, REALLY FOR THE LUVVA THE FSM HOPE that LM is right, and I am wrong, and the GOP elders do have a "Bat-Plan" ready, and they will USE IT YESTERDAY.
I remember the Cold War well. I have lived within ten miles of DC all my life, so have always been in a target-rich environment. Back in the late 70s or early 80s, the Post ran a chilling series of articles naming all of the installations that were targeted by the Soviets. I was shocked to learn that the Naval Surface Weapons facility just a couple of miles from our home was slated for a 10 megaton strike. That on top of the fact that we lived just blocks outside the District, which meant we were going to be glass in any case.
With the memory of the constant threat of nuclear annihilation so recent, it astounds me how the press and politicians now claim terrorism is so frightening. As far as I know, no terrorist is capable of destroying civilization and turning the planet into a nuclear inferno. (Excluding Bush, that is.) The vast majority of Americans can recall the time when we faced a true existential threat, so why should we cower and quake before bin Laden and his ilk? Frankly, I fear what will happen to the world if the wingnuts managed to realize their horrific dream of Armageddon in the Middle East far more than terrorism.
I think we may be taking things at face value a little too much on this one...both putain an bush are athoritarian types. for authoritarians to rule they need the populace in fea, and well chechnyans and iraq's jsut don't cut it.
Of course we are looking at cold war 2.0, its in the republicans and the russian conservatives best interest to turn back the clock...they miss the cold war and the fear it gave their populaces.
bjacques: "This Cold War 2.0 has possibilities..."
well, the military-industrial complex always needs for America to have an enemy
moonglum: "Gay Veteran you keep useing that subtle word....i do not think it means what you think it means"
???
Gay Veteran there is nothign subtial about test firing ICBM's
moonglum - I said LESS subtle
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