Protect & Survive Miami: End of Watch
- Thread starter wolverinethad
- Start date
I read Downing's book when I was laid up in the hospital in June, it was quite good. Robert Service's The End of the Cold War 1985-1991 (which, shocker, covers a lot more ground than that) is pretty good, and does a great job of exposing a lot about the Soviets that hadn't made it out yet, although he makes a multitude of errors in terms of American names and titles that I think came from him being British and thinking in that manner (which a good editor should have fixed--for example, Cap Weinberger was the HHS Secretary under Nixon; Service calls him the Secretary of State for Health, the British cabinet title). I just read a fantastic book, For The Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War by Melvyn Leffler that covered flashpoints of the Cold War, and made tremendously good observations, to where I highlighted whole sections of it. Leffler doesn't do the usual American chest-thumping, which in a sense Service falls prey to as well, but gives a very evenhanded accounting of events, and demonstrated that a lot of what happened came from our inability to understand the underpinnings of Soviet actions: that they were a mix of Communist doctrine and Russian paranoia about invasions from adversaries. George Kennan properly noted this pre-Long Telegram, but his observations about Russian paranoia because of their history were lost to a focus on his observations about Communist doctrine.
I would read Leffler and Ambinder first, then Service. I have some more on the list: I've heard Odd Arne Westad's history of the Cold War is universally acclaimed by academia, whether that makes it readable or not is a subject for debate. Also, David Hoffman's The Dead Hand was the first to tell Colonel Petrov's story, along with some other scary incidents, like how the Soviets successfully hid a nasty, nasty biowarfare program from the world, despite some awful mistakes, like accidentally killing most of a village via anthrax outbreak.
OMG, how could I forget?
Garrett Graff's Raven Rock, The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die. That book helped tremendously when it came time to write about the evac plans and such.
I remember some of the first half, though I was young and couldn't fully appreciate or understand all of it at the time. There was a time, probably 1984, when every time Reagan gave a televised address I was afraid he was going to announce that the nukes were being launched... And I didn't even know about this in 1984; I only learned of it maybe 10-15 years ago.
I didn't know this before just now, but guess who died on December 28, 1983 IOTL? Dennis Wilson, the drummer of the Beach Boys, the famous 1960s band (since they were in southern California, they're likely dead, unless they got out of LA before the Exchange).
Assuming he still dies ITTL, the coverage of his death, sadly, will be overshadowed by the news of the clash near Key West, which occurred on December 29th, 1983 (hell, ITTL, he's one of the lucky ones, given that he dies before war breaks out)...
Assuming he still dies ITTL, the coverage of his death, sadly, will be overshadowed by the news of the clash near Key West, which occurred on December 29th, 1983 (hell, ITTL, he's one of the lucky ones, given that he dies before war breaks out)...
@wolverinethad Thanks! This is really a massive eyeopener especially to those of my friends having a bad day at work. We are 90s kids (1996-97) mostly and none of us have lived through the Cold War as what you have lived. We grew up in a 9/11, Arab Spring, and social media world.
So if you have a bad day, remember our world almost ended in 1983 and we may not even be alive or existent today.
I would think that most famous people (or at least people with the means to evacuate long-term) would do so no later than the start of conventional warfare. I'm sure there will be people who don't believe it's a clear danger until it's too late, or those who stay defiant to the bitter end, but it's hard to imagine most celebrities wouldn't have some sort of bugout plan, with the help of their agent/manager/label/studio. Especially given the relatively long buildup to war.
Hadn't thought about that, @Cyniclone. One who likely would leave LA is Don Henley (of the Eagles); he was from Gilmer, Texas originally (Gilmer, as far as is known, is unaffected by the Exchange), and it wouldn't surprise me if he or his family still had a house in the area at the time of the outbreak of war...
It was an awful long time ago, so it would not be easy for you to find out really. One thing you might do is look at his last week or two worth of posts in his profile; someone might suggest a more efficient strategy. If you can find the right archived HoI for that time frame and search it you might hit on it.
I honestly do not remember, though I had the same curiosity and went looking many years ago; I believe I found it though it would have been less buried deep then.
Anyway, if we discuss it, it is almost guaranteed to be controversial and quite definitely not on topic, not to mention there is IIRC a plain rule written in the Rules post against debating or I suppose even discussing actions anywhere but HoI. You could PM CalBear or Ian if you think they will react well to that (I imagine the Bear is very very busy since BKW and Dom seem to be hibernating), or bring it up in HoI but I imagine people won't be pleased to drag out an old old action like that; you never know, it certainly is the only place you can talk about it at all really.
Or someone who knows can PM you.
Wishing you luck!
Is it permissible for me to link to the ban message, or should I just PM it? I've kept my nose clean by posting extremely sparingly and sporadically while saying nothing remotely interesting on like five threads ever, and I'd like to keep that record intact if I can help it.
Damned if I can figure out what is and is not permissible these days! I have been a member for 8 years or so now and racked up one warning, about a post I already knew was a bridge too far and had backed out of the thread on my own already. But I do tend to annoy the mods, and they tend to baffle me with their weird new rules out of left field.
I think you should PM to rush4you, just the link to the post; any conversation you all enter into is at your own risk I suppose. I'd just as soon forget the originator of P&S; if you read my carping about it in this thread alone you'd know why.
To reiterate a positive point--what wolverinethad and others like General Finlay have done with spinoffs is far superior to the original product in my opinion.
As someone whose potentially promising adult life would have been cut short just when I first got out of the house and on my own by the canon war here, with about zero prospect of surviving if I did what I wanted to do and did, the basic premise gives me the heebie jeebies. This particular spinoff here gives me the idea that maybe if I had chosen to go to UF instead of CalTech, I could have survived and perhaps done something important with my life. But absolutely everyone I knew (before meeting any new people in Gainesville but knowing me it would normally be years before I could call any of them "friends") and loved, was related to that I knew of, would be horribly dead fast...in Los Angeles, or in Hampton, Virginia; my Dad might survive the longest being actively shot at repeatedly by Warsaw Pact AA and fighters and dodging mushroom clouds in Germany. Or might be transiting and survive. But I would be the last bit of family he would have left.
Anyway in my foolishness I never gave a lot of serious thought of going to UF. Regardless of WWIII if I could advise myself what to do different at that age I would fervently urge my young self to go there and forget Caltech. But I had so much invested in being worthy of going there you see. It was like Hogwarts to me.
And of course if I went to UF I probably would regret not going to Caltech...grass, greener, fence! The endless theme of AH.
So anyway this is the most hopeful P&S spinoff I have dared to read and maybe I will be encouraged to look at some of the older ones now.
But despite anything sucky about our modern world, I remain so glad we avoided that war.
I think you should PM to rush4you, just the link to the post; any conversation you all enter into is at your own risk I suppose. I'd just as soon forget the originator of P&S; if you read my carping about it in this thread alone you'd know why.
To reiterate a positive point--what wolverinethad and others like General Finlay have done with spinoffs is far superior to the original product in my opinion.
As someone whose potentially promising adult life would have been cut short just when I first got out of the house and on my own by the canon war here, with about zero prospect of surviving if I did what I wanted to do and did, the basic premise gives me the heebie jeebies. This particular spinoff here gives me the idea that maybe if I had chosen to go to UF instead of CalTech, I could have survived and perhaps done something important with my life. But absolutely everyone I knew (before meeting any new people in Gainesville but knowing me it would normally be years before I could call any of them "friends") and loved, was related to that I knew of, would be horribly dead fast...in Los Angeles, or in Hampton, Virginia; my Dad might survive the longest being actively shot at repeatedly by Warsaw Pact AA and fighters and dodging mushroom clouds in Germany. Or might be transiting and survive. But I would be the last bit of family he would have left.
Anyway in my foolishness I never gave a lot of serious thought of going to UF. Regardless of WWIII if I could advise myself what to do different at that age I would fervently urge my young self to go there and forget Caltech. But I had so much invested in being worthy of going there you see. It was like Hogwarts to me.
And of course if I went to UF I probably would regret not going to Caltech...grass, greener, fence! The endless theme of AH.
So anyway this is the most hopeful P&S spinoff I have dared to read and maybe I will be encouraged to look at some of the older ones now.
But despite anything sucky about our modern world, I remain so glad we avoided that war.
As I recall, it was a debate over a topic where tempers flared, he said something rather intemperate and, since it was a second offense, got banned.
His closest contact on here has not been able to reach him in a while, and I even tried to sniff him out elsewhere, to no avail. It's a terrible shame, but it's something that we all have to learn. I was part of Daily Kos in its early years where flame wars happened all the time. It was a good learning experience for handling such things elsewhere. Not everyone gets that lesson early and so pay a price for it later.
It was related to MLP. He was active on another website I frequent, however I have not seen him for a long time.
I was eleven years older than @Ingsoc75 and I blew off watching it. I regret now I ducked out of sharing such an iconic historic bit of culture as it was happening, nor have had much chance if any at all to see it since.
I honestly can't remember how much of my not choosing to see it had to do with genuine obliviousness (I was after all struggling with very tough classes in a very tough school, but my classmates took the time), how much my general counter-popular culture haughtiness, how much left over allegiance to the Right wing I was raised in that held that mainstream media moguls were "liberal," biased against the military, unfair to the logic of more conservative positions, purveyors of cheap thrills as opposed to serious thought, etc (yep, I'm here to tell you the right wing stance against the "liberal media" goes back way before Reagan was elected; I was raised with this bias) and finally--how much to my growing embrace of liberal reality-based thought, which at the time, seemed to spell out near certain doom by nuclear annihilation sooner or later--did I really want to subject myself to a prior death in my spirt watching a grimdark, hopeless portrayal of realism about WWIII, when the real thing seemed liable to present itself inevitably any month now?
It's all very well to look back on it and declare in retrospect "no one really wanted WWIII if they could possibly avoid it." But the proof of that was in the pudding.
Say what nasty and hostile things as I will about Ronald Reagan, and I have plenty to say along those lines and will not apologize for that, one fragmentary but crucial bit of sanity and decency I will grant him--he was in fact one of those people who did not want WWIII for real.
At least, once this very same speculative TV drama framed for him exactly what a plausible mid-80s WWIII would mean for the United States, he did not!
It can be hard to judge whether prior to seeing this movie, he already was committed to avoiding WWIII if push came to shove but just had confidence he could play chicken with the Kremlin and win, and tDA merely caused him to reevaluate the stakes he was gambling with, or if in fact he really was so captive of his ideology he actually believed a war would not be so terrible if it meant the USA would finally win. The latter was the line a great many of his political fans apparently did believe, and the question was, how much did the high ranking people in his administration believe it too?
But either way, he saw the movie, and it shook him, and when his generals and other advisors could not honestly claim it was all liberal hysteria and had to admit there was a certain realism to it (if anything, I gather it softballed the full nature of the threat--by all accounts the British film Threads made tDA look like a Walt Disney production) he started seriously changing tack and it was just a few short years to coming within a hair of agreeing with Gorbachev to scrap the entire nuclear arsenal!
When I dislike Ronald Reagan, it is with the belief that he merely and mainly was the premier American spokesman for a powerful current of American and world history that was going to assert itself somehow or other; Reagan was mainly just the best actor to cast for the part of its face. But here might be a variable where I should thank God it was Reagan and not someone else playing the role! Someone else might have been less bad from my point of view...but then would not be playing the part well, and would probably be cast aside. I don't know who to point to to take Reagan's place in an ATL where something removed him from his OTL role, and I have to hope most alternative leaders in his place would be as reasonable (in his own Movie America mentality driven way) as he was on this point, but it could have been worse I suppose.
Even with some curmudgeon or smooth sociopath in his place, I still in retrospect estimate our chances of getting through the '80s with no big thermonuclear war as better than even.
But one of the scariest things about the nuclear balance of terror is, that the psychologically subjective is part of its basic machinery. If we have a period of time when the zeitgeist is relaxed, there probably is objectively less danger, as key decision makers on both sides are skeptical the others want to fight either and so move with caution and not too much worry they are being Pearl Harbored. But vice versa, the more crazy the other guys seem to be, the more credible it seems they really will try to pull a fast one, and the fear is that being slow to react to it means they just might get away with it--which makes their trying all the more plausible. Precautionary preparations, which also inherently erode the buffer on the basic hair-trigger of retaliation objectively, also scare former skeptics and the complacent on the other side and makes doomsayers who assert the enemy attacking is only a matter of time, and time is never on our side (for time just allows the enemy's arsenal to grow still more monstrous--never mind it does the same for ours--the point being if deterrence fails the foe has decided they don't care if more destruction falls on them) seem more horribly correct.
It is pretty hard to factor how much to weigh these psychological factors. All I know is, I was pretty well convinced at the time that war could happen any damn moment.
Not everyone I knew was, and it could be my background made me peculiarly susceptible to alarmism.
So perhaps it is fitting if the crest of the wave of this hysteria in the USA was objectively involved in changing the dynamics feeding it and breaking the wave of despondency.
I honestly can't remember how much of my not choosing to see it had to do with genuine obliviousness (I was after all struggling with very tough classes in a very tough school, but my classmates took the time), how much my general counter-popular culture haughtiness, how much left over allegiance to the Right wing I was raised in that held that mainstream media moguls were "liberal," biased against the military, unfair to the logic of more conservative positions, purveyors of cheap thrills as opposed to serious thought, etc (yep, I'm here to tell you the right wing stance against the "liberal media" goes back way before Reagan was elected; I was raised with this bias) and finally--how much to my growing embrace of liberal reality-based thought, which at the time, seemed to spell out near certain doom by nuclear annihilation sooner or later--did I really want to subject myself to a prior death in my spirt watching a grimdark, hopeless portrayal of realism about WWIII, when the real thing seemed liable to present itself inevitably any month now?
It's all very well to look back on it and declare in retrospect "no one really wanted WWIII if they could possibly avoid it." But the proof of that was in the pudding.
Say what nasty and hostile things as I will about Ronald Reagan, and I have plenty to say along those lines and will not apologize for that, one fragmentary but crucial bit of sanity and decency I will grant him--he was in fact one of those people who did not want WWIII for real.
At least, once this very same speculative TV drama framed for him exactly what a plausible mid-80s WWIII would mean for the United States, he did not!
It can be hard to judge whether prior to seeing this movie, he already was committed to avoiding WWIII if push came to shove but just had confidence he could play chicken with the Kremlin and win, and tDA merely caused him to reevaluate the stakes he was gambling with, or if in fact he really was so captive of his ideology he actually believed a war would not be so terrible if it meant the USA would finally win. The latter was the line a great many of his political fans apparently did believe, and the question was, how much did the high ranking people in his administration believe it too?
But either way, he saw the movie, and it shook him, and when his generals and other advisors could not honestly claim it was all liberal hysteria and had to admit there was a certain realism to it (if anything, I gather it softballed the full nature of the threat--by all accounts the British film Threads made tDA look like a Walt Disney production) he started seriously changing tack and it was just a few short years to coming within a hair of agreeing with Gorbachev to scrap the entire nuclear arsenal!
When I dislike Ronald Reagan, it is with the belief that he merely and mainly was the premier American spokesman for a powerful current of American and world history that was going to assert itself somehow or other; Reagan was mainly just the best actor to cast for the part of its face. But here might be a variable where I should thank God it was Reagan and not someone else playing the role! Someone else might have been less bad from my point of view...but then would not be playing the part well, and would probably be cast aside. I don't know who to point to to take Reagan's place in an ATL where something removed him from his OTL role, and I have to hope most alternative leaders in his place would be as reasonable (in his own Movie America mentality driven way) as he was on this point, but it could have been worse I suppose.
Even with some curmudgeon or smooth sociopath in his place, I still in retrospect estimate our chances of getting through the '80s with no big thermonuclear war as better than even.
But one of the scariest things about the nuclear balance of terror is, that the psychologically subjective is part of its basic machinery. If we have a period of time when the zeitgeist is relaxed, there probably is objectively less danger, as key decision makers on both sides are skeptical the others want to fight either and so move with caution and not too much worry they are being Pearl Harbored. But vice versa, the more crazy the other guys seem to be, the more credible it seems they really will try to pull a fast one, and the fear is that being slow to react to it means they just might get away with it--which makes their trying all the more plausible. Precautionary preparations, which also inherently erode the buffer on the basic hair-trigger of retaliation objectively, also scare former skeptics and the complacent on the other side and makes doomsayers who assert the enemy attacking is only a matter of time, and time is never on our side (for time just allows the enemy's arsenal to grow still more monstrous--never mind it does the same for ours--the point being if deterrence fails the foe has decided they don't care if more destruction falls on them) seem more horribly correct.
It is pretty hard to factor how much to weigh these psychological factors. All I know is, I was pretty well convinced at the time that war could happen any damn moment.
Not everyone I knew was, and it could be my background made me peculiarly susceptible to alarmism.
So perhaps it is fitting if the crest of the wave of this hysteria in the USA was objectively involved in changing the dynamics feeding it and breaking the wave of despondency.
