How Nuclear Weapons Changed How We Think

Nuclear Weapons changed us. One author said we have a ‘nuclear consciousness’ If so, how specifically did it develop? What shapes did it take? I’ll look at some surprising consequences of the discovery of Nuclear power, how it changed our ideas about fear and irrationalism, about world government and philosophy, how it changed literature and cinema and comics, religion, science, and our idea of progress.
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Sources:
Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light
Samira Ahmed, How The Bomb Changed Everything, www.bbc.com/culture/article/2...
Keith Booker, Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War
Edward Demenchonok, Philosophy After Hiroshima
John Dorsey, Atomic Bomb Literature in Japan and the West
Susanna Lindberg, Technologies of the End of the World, Contemporary Philosophy and Art

[@ThenNow]

Please excuse my post-covid hoarse throat in this one.

[@whatsup3519]

Why is woke culture Controversial if it promote progressive think? I didn't understand your video on woke. Could you please answer my question

[@bethmoore7722]

You look good to have had Covid, but I’ll bet this video was exhausting to make. I hope you continue to feel better, and thank you. This is a timely topic, unfortunately.

[@BrutalSnuggles]

Only if you forgive me for my horse throat

[@radioactivedetective6876]

Sorry to know u had Covid. Hope you are doing well now. Take care.

[@radioactivedetective6876]

@@whatsup3519 The word "woke" means different things to different people. However, of late it has developed a negative connotation. To right-ists/conservatives/traditionalists "woke" is "bad" bcoz they do not support "woke" positions. For certain left-ists "woke" is "bad" because they feel that "woke" people do "woke" gestures only as a superficial show, bcoz it is easy, but they are really not interested in commiting to any real action or movements - so "woke" gestures become like trends that "woke" people follow. Now, if you ask people to give you examples of "woke" you will get very different answer from right-ists & left-ists. Someone like Tucker Carlson or Ben Shapiro (or any of their fans) will say that some holywood studio is "woke" because they have made some film with female superhero or cast coloured people in traditionally white roles - and they r opposed to such things coz they r conservative/traditionalists. A left-ist would say that political leaders taking a knee for the death of George Floyd is "woke" because those leaders are just doing it for publicity, but do not actually want to take any concrete steps towards systematic change. Or they might say posting black squares on social media is a "woke" gesture bcoz people often do things on social media to follow trends or get likes. These r just a couple of examples. It is really a very broad and vague term. Currently it happens to be commonly used by both right-ists & left-ists as derogatory, but for very different reasons.

[@Accountdeactivated_1986]

My Mom grew up in Las Vegas in the 1940s and 1950s and her elementary school would take her classes out to see the atomic bombs going off and watch the mushroom clouds in the sky. At the same time, they practiced stop, drop, & roll drills in their classes for the inevitable bombs they assumed would drop on them from whatever enemy we were fighting at any time. Those drills continued through the era when I was in elementary school in the late 70s and early 80s. Only in the mid-80s did I stop constantly assuming I’d never make it to see my 30th birthday because of war, and instead assume I’d never see my 30th birthday because of AIDS taking over the news and our collective conscience. Now my Mom (and Dad, who just passed) have moved, ironically, to retire in Los Alamos, New Mexico, home of the Manhattan Project. After all of those years of her hating the desert and talking about how horrible it was to be near nuclear bombs being tested. Well it turns out she never got that far away from nuclear bombs, because a secret nuclear weapon facility was found to have been kept less than a mile from our suburb in California the whole time. And now she’s been diagnosed with cancer in multiple places that’s metastasized. It’s possibly linked to being exposed to nuclear bombs all of those years, who knows. Cancer is also what my Dad passed from. But then again, it’s very difficult to prove. The “atomic” bomb hung over our whole family our entire lives, and looks like we will never be able to get away from it. Thanks for listening

[@GuinessOriginal]

Both parents got cancer, both grew up watching nukes being tested and there’s no link? Come on

[@MaticTheProto]

Sounds indeed American

[@RunehearthCL]

One more time you got betrayed by your own country, all of this for the ambition of power

[@merbst]

I remember I was so horrified at the air raid sirens that would disrupt Friday afternoons, when the Civil Air Defense would issue a monthly test of public readiness in the middle of the day, by the simultaneous alarm of 6 Diesel V8 Engines each applying the 600 horsepower to sounding its own 160 DB horn to a few square miles of city blocks. In September 1988, at the end of the 1st week of my 2nd Grade school year, Miss Johnson was caught by surprise but I imagine she said something like "its an alarm, we need to follow the same procedure as a fire alarm. Oh shoot! I've never taught in this building before, and the laminated Evacuation Routes aren't hung up yet. Ok Children, stay seated while I run over to Miss White's classroom to ask her which empty field I'm supposed to lead this single room schoolhouse." Well I assume that is what she was shouting, but I couldn't hear a damn thing over all of the other crying kids, plus the impact of my sinus cavity overpressure was making my skull bounce off my eyes, which made them crossed, so I moved my desk into the supply closet & shut the door, so I could duck & cover like the good old days of 1st grade. The point being that I am starting to think that the Cold War, with its power to make a million people stop whatever they were doing at 11am on a Friday, to go stand around in clumps looking afraid & in ear pain for 2 hours, and its ability to expose the absurdly obvious bigotry, fallibility, hypocrisy, ignorance, & anti-meritocracy that the adults who were no longer so concerned about "if you cant say something nice, don't say nothing at all" with obviously nonsensical conflations , exaggerations, & fabrications in every "fact" they were performing as a moral tale for me, full of dehumanizing bigoted talk generalizing 200 million strangers.

[@totonow6955]

I love you dear and we are all here together.

[@cattmartyr8156]

this quote hit hard “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine utopia”

[@GuinessOriginal]

We had our Utopia, it was the late 90s to 2008.

[@AndosaGosabu]

The quote I was familiar with is: “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism” Both are vague, but utopia is not something that was ever meant to be imagined. Societies without capitalism on the other hand have existed, and have existed for most human history. This writer comes to mind. I hope to have time to read him soon en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber

[@rawrsince718]

@@GuinessOriginal utopia for who? We were being spied on by our own government. Open your eyes.

[@GuinessOriginal]

@@rawrsince718 that was before smartphones, so not so much.

[@pauleohl]

@@GuinessOriginal "We had our Utopia, it was the late 90s to 2008." Never noticed that I was living through Utopia at the time....and still don't see any reason to call that period Utopia.

[@NoMoreCrumbs]

It's interesting to me that post apocalyptic fiction existed before the bomb, but that it also very clearly predicted its existence. HG Wells' The World Set Free was published in 1913, but the devices used to render the world unlivable were radium bombs that continuously exploded over the course of many days. That was a damn good guess about what the practical effects of these weapons would be. Post apocalyptic fiction expanded quite a bit after the bomb, but it also seemed mostly frozen by it, like a fly in amber

[@fangsabre]

Because once humanity had an answer for what COULD actually end the world in a flash..... it kindof became an inevitability in a lot of minds that that's what WOULD do it in the end

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

I don't think it was a "guess"...scientists wrote sci-fi from the late 1600s onward & many artists/writers either had eminent scientists in their circle/as friends or were grounded in arts + science + classics education & did it all. The paintings of scientific experiments in the 18th - early 19th C are fascinatingly detailed (see: An Experiment On A Bird In The Air Pump, 1768; Content Warning: birds don't thrive in vacuum states). Anyways, chemistry in the late 1800s pointed to radioactive elements, the gap in the periodic table was known, several elements predicted to exist, & once you drop a square in the periodic table, you can infer a bunch of properties. So the hunt was on to find them, usually with interdisciplinary teams, usually chemists working with physicists. Early radioactive investigations are particularly well described in a bio of Austrian-born Jewish physicist, Lise Meitner (aunt of Otto Hahn) who fled Hitler's tightening grip, finding refuge in Sweden. (It's speculated she should've been included in the Nobel earned by her team in Germany but she was excluded). The early history of radioactive experiments involved a lot of predictive models, & a lot of the effects + various uses for these "new" elements (medicine, astronomy/astrophysics, industrial manufacturing/energy producing, & weapons) were inferred alongside & communicated in white papers, science papers/presentations, grant/funding documents, popular mass market radio reports/interviews, etc etc, plus it manifested in fiction & early film & even music. (I'd love it if Tantacrul did a vid on "the history of atomic music" someday, tho most people start + end with the campy 50s stuff). New discoveries proved certain models + hypotheses wrong, & tragedies like the Radium Girls revealed many blind spots, but the science community got a lot right in that era before acquiring proof. This means those early apocalypses were almost a mode of thought experiment done via fiction, informed by a lot of solid cutting-edge scientific knowledge behind them. It's really enlightening to read what the Manhattan Experiment thought would happen & what was actually observed in Fermi's first atomic pile, Trinity test, & ofc Fat Man/Little Boy. Apologies for going on; this is hitting about 5 of my lifelong enthusiasms...I'm actually fighting to restrain myself lol. TL;DR: Basically, these were not guesses, which is why they seemed accurate. (Sidenote: Evolution/mutation/DNA discovery plus computer science were running parallel but intersected with atomic physics + them from Victorian age onward. Can't recall the title but I read a book --- as a poor kid who was a voracious reader but usually only had access to old used books --- I think was written before WWII by a Brit scientist under a pen name....it was set in Africa, hideously racist, & involved some contamination from space "de-evolving" humanity, so ugh...on a better note, you're correct it's all become very trope-y but Wyndham wrote multiple apocalyptic scenarios that aren't all atomic-rooted, & he's post-Atomic Age.)

[@sondralee8539]

Fear Based Freak ma son Hoaxes.

[@Stoneworks]

After I read the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna shows Arjuna his true form that was "brilliant like can ten thousand suns risen simultaneously in sky", I came to think that since we can nuke ourselves into oblivion, we've become something of gods ourselves. Only problem is we're really shit at being gods. Great video, always look forward to you posting some real enlightening content.

[@bethmoore7722]

“Only problem is we’re shit at being gods.” So you noticed this, too. We can’t seem to create, without destroying.

[@halphantom2274]

That's why humbleness is such an important character trait. Never vote for authoritarian or bragging or arrogant idiots. If someon promises greatness, be extremely sceptical. It will lead to destruction.

[@MrZZ-py4pq]

cringe channel profile picture

[@zna9297]

We were the gods all along, no BS. They existed because we wanted them to - ideal reflections of our own humanity, like a fractal. We're waking up now I think. A lot of cultures never forgot.

[@bacicinvatteneaca]

@@MrZZ-py4pq I mean you're kinda right but saying it is even more cringe

[@lsobrien]

Great vid, as usual. We must admit that nukes have left us in a deadlock: no single nation can live with them and certainly not without them. "The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves," as Martin Amis said during one of his wiser moments. Günther Anders claimed the Keepers made us Titans, but the psychological toll was immense. This is what it means to be post-human. “The infinite longing some of us still experience is a nostalgia for finitude, the good old finitude of the past; in other words, some of us long to be rid of our Titanism, and to be men again, men like those of the golden age of yesterday. Needless to say, this longing is as romantic and utopian as was that of the Luddites; and like all longings of this kind, it weakens those who indulge in it, while it strengthens the self-assurance of those who are sufficiently unimaginative and unscrupulous to put to actual use the omnipotence they possess.” The prospects for those who oppose the tools of omnicide are hopeless. If - when - our worst fears materialise, we won't even get the luxury of, "told you so."

[@mukkaar]

Thing is, this is going to be the case always. As technology and civilization progresses, our weapons will just become more destructive. I mean you could literally divert an asteroid even far outside the solar system to utterly destroy all life on earth.

[@joeburkeson8946]

Here is my personal recollection of growing up in the 'Atomic Age'. Born in the mid 50's and from Kindergarten to 2nd grade was made to participate in air raid drills which required crawling under your school desk, it was during this time I decided to never have children a decision I have yet to regret.

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

The ol' Duck & Cover drills were so useless & harmful, but the turtle mascot is pretty kitschy-cute.

[@classwarhooligan923]

Don’t we all cover up our insecurities with an overzealous nuclear arsenal? 🤔😂

[@LucasFernandez-fk8se]

We have a nuclear threat rn and that shouldn’t stop me from having kids hopefully. Elementary school we had active shooter drills, tornado drills and fire drills but I’m not going to assume my children will be set on fire then shot into an active tornado 💀

[@marcsoren7]

My favourite moment of nuclear thought in cinema/tv is more recently in Twin Peaks: The Return Part 8. It shows the Trinity nuclear test in White Sands, New Mexico. Such a beautiful scene and shows the true terror of what this act did to the world.

[@alfreds8766]

Japan agrees, yeah the world knows what is that terror!!! 🙄🙄🙄

[@438019]

The saddest part about mankind entering into the atomic age is that now we cannot trust ourselves to not destroy ourselves. And so we have this considerable existential angst and unvocalised, (and vocalised) anxiety hanging over our collective consciousness. And so each generation that is born gets born into this underlying anxiety. That's got to cause a lot of mental distress, which plays out in all sorts of unhealthy ways for mankind, sadly.

[@leodler]

One of my favorite books on the topic is Calum Matheson's "Desiring the Bomb: Communication, Psychoanalysis, and the Atomic Age." It's mostly about psychoanalysis and rhetoric, from the racially coded language used to describe urban areas (the targets of a potential nuclear strike) as places of 'decay' or 'wastelands', to the repetition of war games and proliferation of the survivalism movement in an attempt to convince ourselves that we have any chance of rebuilding after the destruction of the symbolic order.

[@williamoldaker5348]

I hate that my parent's jingoism blinds them to the war crimes of The United States of America. They maintain an all-too-common sports team narrative. Two things can be true at once, Pearl Harbor and the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are both war crimes. The United States of America is the largest institution to routinely commit and contribute to war crimes.

[@soulman4292]

The United States regularly violated international laws as far as the Japanese mainland was concerned. This country literally firebombed multiple large cities, and burned them TO THE GROUND, years before the Atomic Bomb was even completed, or tested. We were trying to break the Japanese publics fighting spirit, not their military abilities. However, as far as places like China, and The Korean Peninsula are concerned, there is no equivocation between the United States and Imperial Japan.

[@PossibleTango]

@@soulman4292 international law didn't apply to the war against Japan because Japan didn't follow the international laws either. Both sides have to follow them to apply.

[@zachariahpoltergeist4516]

And what would you have done once the war started?

[@endo4137]

The bombs were necessary to prevent huge losses on both sides

[@f1r3hunt3rz5]

@@endo4137 Comments like these show how much the justification propaganda of the US worked on the public. Not like I disagree with your comment though. But that is still a war crime no matter how people spin it. The US isn't a country that has done no wrong.

[@kaminsrocks]

Beautiful job. I need to watch it again before I share any thoughts, but you keep getting better and better. Cheers.

[@cultistsash]

Next level first comment. 14 hours before public.

[@beyond-journeys-end]

Did you have time to see it again?

[@bethmoore7722]

I grew up in the 50s and 60s. Ours was the first generation to live with the knowledge that only a handful of men could destroy us all. I was 9 years old during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and still remember the anxiety even children felt at the threat of a nuclear war. I’ve been talking with my boomer friends, people I’ve known for more than 50 years, and we’re all very nervous about what Putin might do if he has no face left to save. We grew up feeling we were standing at the edge of the end of everything. We don’t feel any better about it, now that Vlad has mentioned his nukes a few times. This certainly isn’t all, or most boomers, but we have been paying attention. A couple of years ago, the Doomsday Clock was moved forward to 100 seconds to midnight. This is not only from nuclear threats, but also threats like climate change and pandemics, any one of which could take us all out, or cause a population bottleneck. This is the closest we’ve ever been to the end.

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

I can't imagine Cuban Missile Crisis as a 9yo!!! I'm too young to have "Ducked & Covered" unironically (was kitschy to my generation) but I was an intensely serious political/altruistic kid & I recall the terror I had of going to sleep & being annihilated in my sleep that persisted from my earliest memories to adulthood. I dreamt of it a lot as a child. I'm a Canadian military kid & my Dad was posted to Cheyenne Mtn for a couple years & had served the DEWline bases up north, so maybe it was just more "present" for me than many, but I had so much terror of sudden annihilation. I agree Vlad's threats are bringing back the primal terror, plus I agree he seems dangerous enough to use them if he gets frustrated enough, even. Kashmir was probably the last time prior to Mad Bad Vlad the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists were really nervous about the possibility of real nuke use, since India & Pakistan were both rattling their nuclear sabres at each other. You can find photos from the time with Pakistan's Forces literally parading their missile in the streets. I find the Ukraine invasion extra poignant bc I'm old enough to remember The West + Ukraine deaccessioning all former Soviet nuke infrastructure on their territory (besides peaceful use) & I don't know what made it into the final agreement, but as a teen peace activist, I vividly remember "The West" had to essentially pledge to guard the security of Ukraine to make that deal a reality. It was seen as a great success at the time & I was puzzled by all the people pretending that never happened when Vlad first moved on Ukraine this year. I wonder if there's twisty language in the agreement or if it was general historical amnesia combined with opportunistic politics in the US. I still need to look into why/how South Africa --- so flawed in other respects --- was the only (other) country that was a nuclear power to voluntarily end their nuclear arms program & deaccession everything. Before apartheid ended. I need to look into that bc I don't know anything about it other than it happened. I also remember "Rock the Botha" & the movement to tear the apartheid system down, & I think I avoided revisiting S. Africa's history bc apartheid was so heartbreaking to research, but I do still want to find out exactly how a place with such an evil retrograde system of oppression could be the same place that acquired + made atomic weapons, then Noped Out of being "a nuclear power", when that's still a club countries thirst to join.

[@raydavison4288]

Another "boomer" here. I am very nervous about the current situation. If Putin is cornered, left with no alternative, he may well do the unthinkable.

[@MaticTheProto]

The cuba crisis showed America‘s disgusting hypocrisy

[@jonnyjames862]

And now a few days ago they moved it to 90 seconds…

[@nathanseper8738]

This channel deserves far more subscribers because your content is incredible. But I'd say that before the nuclear bomb, we saw war as a normal part of the human condition. After it, we saw war as something we desperately tried to avoid.

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

I get what you're saying but don't know if I fully agree...there's anti-war art/stories going back to the mists of time; plus we've had a lot of wars since 1945, except they tended to be colonial/anti-colonial +/or proxy wars until both Iraq-America wars (the first of which could be arguably proxy). & the spycraft of the Cold War was intense. But anyone who remembers the Falklands, Iran-Contra, & esp the post 9/11 Afghanistan + Iraq invasions based on false pretexts remembers that despite massive public protest, the media + political atmosphere that dominated was downright bloodthirsty. I see no signs of wars being either embraced as part of human condition (other than the handful of cultures that made war a central cultural competency, & a lot of that literature is tainted by anthropological bad practices + bias, so maybe not trustworthy) or wars in general being avoided. I don't have living memory of Korea or Vietnam but those were brutal conflicts that threatened to escalate to WWIII more than once, & some people in power at the time were chillingly indifferent as to whether it went nuclear or not. As some remain.

[@markb8468]

@@picahudsoniaunflocked5426 I just listened to "The Bomb" although I cannot recall the author's name. It's about the "logic" of nuclear planning and strategy. The logical threads one follows are chillingly cold calculations. The topic is certainly fascinating for some morbidly sadistic part of my mind. Hopefully those with fingers on these buttons can see the reality that EVERYBODY, even those not among the participants, loses in a nuclear war.

[@markb8468]

Excellent job! Thank you

[@megmcguigan3857]

I was a teen in the 80's. I was in junior high when The Day After first aired and it affected my friends and I so much that we went to the school principal and asked if we had a fallout shelter. We didn't. During those years I really got into post-apocalyptic films like Mad Max II (Road Warrior) and Terminator. To this day it is my favourite genre of films. Right now I am doing a lot of DIY work to my clothes to make them look more dystopian and post-apocalyptic in nature. There is a growing market for the fashion over on Etsy for cosplay and for regular wear.

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

It it weird if I check out your Easy store? I really want to see what you're making --- sounds awesome! BTW re: The Day After --- my Mom said I was too young to watch it & it'd scare me so I did it behind her back & regretted how right she was, esp bc I couldn't talk about what I saw bc I'd get punished for going behind her back. Sooooo traumaaaaaa. I had nightmares for years bc of that + Threads.

[@estebanlacrosse7847]

Whoa this was so well Done the edit and your commentary and the story is really strongly impactful it’s incredible how much you delve into about nukes and how it changed society all around the world specifically America thanks for making this video

[@davochinomalo]

One of my favorite films is the 1984 British documentary, Threads. I think it does a great job at treating the ramifications of an international nuclear war by not detailing how life would be in the post-apocalyptic world. Rather than setting the blast at the climax, the Mick Jackson places it as the inticing incident of the film. I feel like this movie instills in its viewers a productive nuclear conscience. All generations, especially its politicians, should be reminded of this film.

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

Threads isn't a documentary but both it & the US-made The Day After miniseries were both trying to portray nuclear blasts + after-effects as realistically as possible so I get why you said "documentary". I'm not trying to be a jerk pedant! I watched both those waaaay too young; the worst part is my Mom said no bc she knew I couldn't handle them, but I got The Mischief in me & sought them out illicitly & I probably have never been scared by any media more than these 2 miniseries.

[@ivan55599]

24:55 "...what human psychology would be like in post apocalyptic world..." - Vault-tec.

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

VAULT DOOR OPENS leave vault YOU SEE BONES HUMAN BONES Oh shit

[@dankennedy3347]

Tour awesome my dude these are all top quality

[@Theoboris_Mosby]

Love it man. Great work

[@catalinluncanu1170]

I've seen horror movies throught the years, and love them, but never one left the most scariest impression on me as how the sequence from 18:55 minutes. You have a true gift, you have gotten a point across exeptionally.

[@user-tr4os8mc4v]

The 50s music and news clips were a nice Adam Curtis-esque touch

[@stoodmuffinpersonal3144]

I wonder if Climate Change is doing that for us now, too

[@LucasFernandez-fk8se]

CIimate change is fake. Every decade some new fake apocalypse comes and every decade it’s wrong. 1950s it was the atom bomb, 1960s it was peak oil, 1970s it was a new ice age, 1980s it was the ozone layer, 1990s it was acid rain, 2000s it was gIobal warming, 2010s it was cIimate change, 2020s it’s stagnated so far. I’m sure it will either be another evolution of cIimate change or something new and fake. Every decade we whine about a thing that doesn’t happen because new technologies either fix the problem or because scientists were wrong to begin with. Then we whine at the next crisis. We need to stop whining and making up crises

[@josephinegrey4517]

As a 60's baby whose childhood (in part in the US) was haunted by the ubiquitous terror of the atom bomb I came to believe that the MAD generation, those who were constantly reminded that all life could end at any moment by the doomsday clock, lost the will and ability to think clearly about sustaining life for future generations. And so many became selfish and greedy in a race to grab what could be grabbed before it was too late...thus our current predicament of world consuming corporate rule.... helps explain too the loss of ethics and respect for life inherent in constant addicted consumerism and planned obsolescence and the widespread surrender to constant distraction rather than human interaction for the purpose of co-creating a sustainable and thriving future....and now we are on a path to collective suicide. Truly tragic

[@curtlezumi]

Thanks for such a thoughtful reflection on an issue that is so enjoyable to ignore. Well, ignorable until it becomes un-ignorable. It resurfaces in some modest conflict made existential by these weapons. I appreciate the historic glimpse and the call to use the current troubled times as an opportunity to plan a better future. I hope we grow to see through the illusion of power.

[@seanparson9232]

This is an increadible well done video. I am teaching a course on nuclear politics and philosophy and I am using this for the class. ITs great!

[@kristianrehfeld-thoden8566]

Great video!

[@EAMAMUSIC]

Beautifully made. Very nuanced.

[@orah12185]

Before the end of 7th grade, I had attended 3 workshops on surviving nuclear disaster. Many people had shelters under their lawns. Everyone else knew the nuclear ☢️ shelter symbol. I don’t think we expected to live a normal lifespan. So why not abandon hope, dropout, and live for today. But, oops, now I’m 70 and the beat goes on...

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

That's wild! We had the omni-terror but I think my generation also had a pessimism, like a "well if THAT happens, no place is "safe" & it'd be a mercy to die in the first blast" mentality, so the only fallout shelter I've ever seen is the inside of Cheyenne Mtn (my Dad was posted to the attached base just prior to Glasnost). 90s Hollywood had a weird obsession with household fallout shelters...There's a late 50s/early 60s period film by Joe Dante made in the 90s where 2 young teens think they just got locked into a fallout shelter that automatically seals for something like 50 or 100 years. The look the pair exchange in the moment is so layered; they basically go from total horror to realizing they are Adam & Eve in a matter of minutes, awkward glances, & stuttered lines. Thankfully before they get further the shelter opens & it was a prank. But underrated Joe Dante! It also has a fake "creature feature" within the film with atomically mutated ants, promoted by John Goodman playing a character based on cheap-thrills/exploitation/cheese-horror veteran director-producer Bill Castle. Blast From The Past with Peak Young Brendan Fraser also had a plot that turned on a false alarm + fallout shelter. Actually a clump of 90s movies looked back on the era, everything from the documentary Atomic Café to a coming of age film (I think? I could've just been too young for the adult storyline with I think Jessica Lange?) set in Vegas when tourists would watch the Nuke tests in the desert from the poolside with cocktails. I want to see if anyone wrote about this particular era of atomic presentation in film academia now lol. Remembering it, the tone was so strange & antithetical to the sincere deep horror of nuclear annihilation I'd grown up with. I'd wager they were some sort of collective trauma processing, considering how they were often weird blends of comedy & melodramatic earnestness,

[@TennesseeJed]

This is the most important thing on the internet!

[@informationmedia3371]

Thank you so much for coming at this and your other topics from angles I've never seen before. Great brain candy and food for thought. You deserve much more than what the YT algorithms give you. Don't forget to like, subscribe and comment your thoughts to push this channel way up!

[@josifekkunardi1086]

Wow, very interesting and very well made educative video. Thank you

[@marcussassan]

Thanks for this

[@ryanbenson4610]

Awesome video.

[@ethanflinner1596]

I just want you to know that you discuss the most interesting topics of any KZbin channel. Subscribing to your channel is a long term investment in any one's self.

[@brianel-khoury885]

You deserve a medal.

[@Varianne_Grey]

what is the music from?

[@LogicGated]

It's always listening to older folks speak about their experience who grew up during that era of MAD.

[@zizougifu]

It baffles me how few views your 10/10 quality videos get

[@me-nah3343]

I suppose I’m a critical theorists in the sense that I’m pursuing a PhD in it and have published articles using its frameworks. I often think of the bomb as evidence of the necessity of postmodernity. The dissolution of the solidity of matter. So many people are repelled by some misunderstood Petersonesque notion of anti-rational “NeoMarxist/postmodernists,” but what you describe here, to my mind points at the relevance and continued need for these ideas.

[@Ba-pb8ul]

Wat?

[@deadman746]

Yes, of course. WWII and the Bomb were the end of Modernism. Few could afterward maintain that science and technology driven by Cartesian Enlightenment were automatically going to save the world.

[@Ba-pb8ul]

Neo=Marxism isn't postmodern. The bomb isnt anti-enlightenment, but - as often outlined - the dark nature of modernity (modernism is an art movement). It informs Nietzsche's idea of rationality as power.ive no idea what you mean by the dissolution of the solidity of matter. Maybe it's such a profound idea that its gone totally over my head.

[@morganimation_inc]

That’s so kafka-esque or you, almost Orwellian in fact

[@bacicinvatteneaca]

Except that nothing this far in history has been incompatible with classical Marxism (apart from his limited understanding of the diversity of peasant classes, which resulted in the mistreatment of peasants in the USSR and their radicalisation to the right in many contexts), the prediction has always been that capitalism is unsustainable and that one of the possible outcomes is the destruction of society. The atomic bomb isn't debunking any of that.

[@JohnTaylor-fh4et]

You would think that by now, War would be something to view in a museum. Can't take the caveman out of the man.

[@blurryplaytheworld]

incomplete but well researched

[@obiwanceleri]

Famous last words : "Yeah but you started it, I was only defending myself"

[@edward9862]

Wow! Welcome to 1958!

[@jamesbarlow6423]

Read "Hiroshima" in 1967 at 16. Life-changing.

[@fox_e_crow3276]

So I hate to be the one to do this, but The X-Men did not start out with any radioactive transformations. They’re mutants. They were born that way. I, myself, am not a mutant. But I would be highly offended if I was, sir. Thank you.

[@rawalshadab3812]

Actually, they were literally called the Children of the Atom in the original series. Even in the 90's cartoon, in the first episode, Beast talks about how radiation is one plausible theory for why mutants are appearing so rapidly.

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

I love the early X-Men comics but I was too busy shipping Kitty + Kurt to know who to side with here lol so I just liked both your comments, hoping our X-Men Solidarity can keep the peace

[@fox_e_crow3276]

@@rawalshadab3812 Cool - glad it’s “one plausible theory.”

[@Alexlinnk]

Man, this video was scary

[@voidbruhrowski3156]

It matters little who wins,it's who loses less

[@SanityIsland]

Now they say things like, "Do what we say, you got this." What nonsense.

[@jeviosoorishas181]

Dan Carlin has a great podcast on how the nuclear bomb systematically changed every aspect of our lives.

[@unreliablenarrator6649]

You should visit Hiroshima Peace City, there are still a few old survivors working as docents. Remarkable people.

[@kutkuknight]

Damn...

[@aaron2709]

Unfortunately, humans have one drive bigger than survival.... meaning. Meaning is the only salve for the pointlessness of existing and there are many who would die on the altar of meaning. Putin's dream of Soviet Russia, expanding his nationalistic ideology to save the world, gives his life meaning. I have no doubt he would push the button in support of this meaning. I only hope there are some Russians who would stop him.

[@i8dacookies890]

There should be an international nucellar remembrance day.

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

I thought the anniversaries of Hiroshima/Nagasaki were basically that? Before the anti-nuke/global peace movement fell apart, there were big rallies & activists would chalk people-shadows all over the cities to evoke the ash shadow a person vaporized by the blast leaves.

[@TroutBoneless]

lmao love that the response to world government becoming a popular idea was "well without asking them, i assume the russians would insist that the capitol be in russia, and us americans insist that its in america"

[@dk1685]

Symbols and language fail us at the point of encountering apocalyptic horrors that are so vast that not even our darkest tribal mythologies can provide semantic countenance.

[@jerodwolf5582]

All life on earth can be irradicated by a single person, and the constant threat will be with us. 29:20 thank u to my patreon, like and subscribe! Lol

[@popopop984]

Is MAD a good thing? Fear of annihilation from our enemies?

[@radioactivedetective6876]

definition: mutually assured destruction or the "principle of deterrence founded on the notion that a nuclear attack by one superpower would be met with an overwhelming nuclear counterattack such that both the attacker and the defender would be annihilated." (Encyclopedia Britannica) This concept has been used by all nuclear powered countries to justify increasing govt budget spendings on military-nuclear-arms research and manufacture, and to counter calls for disarmament.

[@dalstein3708]

Wikipedia has a list of "nuclear close calls": moments in the past 70 years when the world could have been thrown into nuclear all-out war, purely by accident. We have some cool-headed people to thank for saving humanity. And sometimes we were just lucky.

[@perfesser944]

You can say that again. Were it not for nuclear weapons, Putin's Russia would be a non-entity.

[@PrimericanIdol]

The nuclear weapon is the great equalizer for countries the same way a firearm is an equalizer for individuals. They enable the otherwise weaker or less capable, to have a means to effectively defend themselves against the stronger opponents, or at least make them think twice before they attack. Hence the concept of nuclear deterrence.

[@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan]

Only a few countries have them though

[@PrimericanIdol]

@@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan more should

[@sisyphus_strives5463]

@@PrimericanIdol If Ukraine had nuclear weapons, I'm not so certain that Russia would be so eager to integrate it.

[@MaticTheProto]

Except America has proven that firearms don’t help at all. Terrible analogy

[@MaticTheProto]

@@PrimericanIdol ehhhhhhhhhhh

[@JDtheBlackPhoenix]

I worry that we are too stubbornly ignorant by choice, and a third world war is approaching inevitable. Glad you remain optimistic.

[@jasonkinzie8835]

I don't think that everyone prior to Hiroshima had this simplistic strawman theory of progress that the narrator is talking about. But the bomb obviously would have seemed like evidence against progress.

[@josemvacar]

If only this video came when Trump abandoned the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty... Too little, too late.

[@missshroom5512]

❤️u

[@africankid5037]

i don't support insulting nation, nato is fully responsible for the current war and russia too. both should be help accountable

[@garcia83viz]

I hate to be a pessimist... But in a world where you can sue for being burnt from a cup of coffee... There are Warning labels to open the box before you eat the pizza ... No we will not survive the next 100 years.

[@sentryogmixmaster]

science won't save you, science will be the end of humanity. Jesus saves.

[@teddyfurstman1997]

#IStandWithUkraine

[@whatsup3519]

I have a question. What is woke culture? I saw your video, but didn't understand why it's controversial? If it promote progressive think that what is the problem? Could you answer to me.

[@mtlewis973]

well some people aren’t progressive, they’re reactionary. and they’re the people who don’t like it.

[@mtlewis973]

@@Ba-pb8ul i don’t know if you’re talking about me, but if you are you can fuck right off. i’m not a liberal, and i don’t need a thousand words and the names of five philosophers to communicate an idea. i mean really who talks like that? you didn’t even answer the fucking question.

[@whatsup3519]

@@Ba-pb8ul could you please explain in simple language it ,becomes more confusing.

[@Ba-pb8ul]

@@whatsup3519 it's not my wish to dominate this commentary. Why not read a good primer into continental philosophy?

[@mtlewis973]

@@whatsup3519 he literally can’t. he’s pretending to be smart, but he literally can’t explain what he’s saying.

[@egi__lyricsadder5545]

Why are you talking so dramatically?

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

Cuz he's talking about grownup stuff while doing professional quality voice performance. Did you get lost on your way to a FingerFriends video?