I only saw The Day After last October 2018. I am 1996 kid so I'll never knew how it felt to live in the Cold War. Grew up in a post-9/11 and Cold War II era. Yesterday, December 19, 2018, I just saw HBO's By Dawn's Early Light. Both films still hit me hard how lucky we are cooler heads prevailed during the Cold War. Had it happened, I would not exist today.
Protect & Survive Miami: End of Watch
- Thread starter wolverinethad
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I only saw The Day After last October 2018. I am 1996 kid so I'll never knew how it felt to live in the Cold War. Grew up in a post-9/11 and Cold War II era. Yesterday, December 19, 2018, I just saw HBO's By Dawn's Early Light. Both films still hit me hard how lucky we are cooler heads prevailed during the Cold War. Had it happened, I would not exist today.
The weekend after "The Day After", a fireworks factory blew up in my town. My parents and older sister were 2-3 miles north of the explosion and feared the worst because they had watched it the weekend before. Despite the mushroom shaped cloud, they soon realized no one would blow up that area as any targets were north (Brookhaven National Lab and various coastal Connecticut targets), east (Grumman) or west (NYC), and south didn't make any sense besides the factory. A few people on the factory site died and damage near the epicenter was pretty nasty but was just a lots of shaking and some shattered windows here. Still rattled nerves. (I wouldn't be born for another two years). When they rebuilt the factory, they built it in an industrial area two miles to my east near the huge town landfill and then eventually moved production to Virginia (with the headquarters and business side still remaining on the new factory site here) in the early 2000s.
The one thing I did appreciate was how the family got their first sign that something had gone horribly wrong when the PBS feed of Sesame Street or whatever show was on was abruptly halted, eventually giving way to a newcaster breaking the news of nuclear explosions on the East Coast, quickly followed by the EBS and then a flash from a San Francisco detonation. A little quibble with how the station lost its programming (if it went to snow, presumably it would have been because a nuke had knocked it off the air, and the family would have seen the flash from that at the same time), but it did acknowledge the possibility that some places wouldn't even get to see the EBS activation because they were already blown to the next world.
I'm torn on it. On one hand, I think it botched how a war would start, and on the other, it's pretty damn grimdark in some ways.
Had he survived, he would have probably perished in the aftermath such as looters, armed hooligans, fall out, or riots.
Yeah, he probably would have...
One person I am hoping is dead ITTL is Larry Nassar (most of you should know who he is); at this time IOTL, he was studying at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and his family lived in Farmington Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, which probably got hit multiple times...
IMO, he likely died in the chaos of the aftermath (given that Detroit was likely hit several times, this is likely), assuming the strikes didn't get him first...
The reason I hope he's dead is because the post-Exchange world already has Jimmy Savile (according to @Will Ritson); we don't need another one...
One person I am hoping is dead ITTL is Larry Nassar (most of you should know who he is); at this time IOTL, he was studying at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and his family lived in Farmington Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, which probably got hit multiple times...
IMO, he likely died in the chaos of the aftermath (given that Detroit was likely hit several times, this is likely), assuming the strikes didn't get him first...
The reason I hope he's dead is because the post-Exchange world already has Jimmy Savile (according to @Will Ritson); we don't need another one...
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Shreveport native here, and Barksdale AFB would have definitely been a primary target. Before he moved to Florida, Rolling killed a family here after stalking the 24 year old daughter. Shreveport Police actually had an arrest warrant for him on it, but never got it signed by a judge as the lead detective didn't want to delay his inevitable execution. I saw the crime scene photos when I was in the academy at the beginning of my law enforcement career, and those showed that Rolling was indeed a sick bastard. A bit of trivia: Rolling's father was a retired Shreveport Police lieutenant, who Rolling had stabbed in the leg at one time.
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On a side note, since we're approaching the 35th anniversary of the Exchange ITTL, I have some clips and audio from the last New Year's Eve shows that would air ITTL (Note: these are all OTL, it should go without saying):
First up is Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin Eve 83:
Here is a performance by Laura Branigan (RIP) singing "Solitare" (note the hairstyles and fashions):
Here she is singing "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You" (this is after midnight; note the confetti in her hair):
And here's the ball dropping in Times Square on December 31, 1983 IOTL and ITTL, as shown on (of all things) WJKW TV-8 in Cleveland; little do most of these people know that, ITTL, it'd be the last New Year's they'd ever celebrate:
Here's a full set from Billy Idol:
And here's MTV's New Year's Eve Rock N Roll Ball featuring the Stray Cats:
On that note, Happy New Year's to you all!!!
First up is Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin Eve 83:
Here is a performance by Laura Branigan (RIP) singing "Solitare" (note the hairstyles and fashions):
Here she is singing "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You" (this is after midnight; note the confetti in her hair):
And here's the ball dropping in Times Square on December 31, 1983 IOTL and ITTL, as shown on (of all things) WJKW TV-8 in Cleveland; little do most of these people know that, ITTL, it'd be the last New Year's they'd ever celebrate:
Here's a full set from Billy Idol:
And here's MTV's New Year's Eve Rock N Roll Ball featuring the Stray Cats:
On that note, Happy New Year's to you all!!!
I felt I needed to, especially given when this TL is set; it provides an interesting time capsule...
And here's another YouTube video: it's Ronald Reagan's New Year's Eve 1983 address to the nation (it was recorded on December 28, 1983, the day before the Key West incident ITTL, so it likely remains mostly unchanged ITTL, except for a mention of the Berlin incident, of course):
These videos are a wonderful way to ring in th new year, even if they are all thirty-five years old now.
I was under the impression that Cleveland, Ohio was canonically not hit during the Exchange. That being said, it's not like any of them would want to celebrate the coming of 1985 with the, needless to say, radically different state of the world.
It will most likely be unchanged in this TL with a mention of the Berlin crisis and probably the Key West air skirmish