Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic: The People Who Would Survive Nuclear War
How an appendix to an obscure government report helped launch a blockbuster and push back the possibility of atomic war
Somehow, some way, nuclear war is once again a live possibility. The most startling incident came earlier this month when a state employee accidentally clicked the wrong choice in a piece of emergency-alert software, sending a notice of imminent destruction to everyone with a phone in Hawaii. But what’s striking is that people believed the message. For much of the past 30 years, it would have been implausible enough to be received as a likely mistake. But 2018 has already seen President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un trade barbs about their nuclear buttons. People are buying potassium iodide pills again. The December 2017 issue of Harper’s magazine featured seven writers “taking stock of our nuclear present.” Atomic weapons—and their horrifying effects—are back in the national consciousness.
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WNU Editor: A government report and a movie on nuclear war did not push back the possibility of nuclear war. To begin .... no one in the former Soviet Union saw this movie, and I doubt that anyone in the Kremlin even bothered to look at it. What changed the dynamics on nuclear disarmament and nuclear weapons was when the leadership of the Soviet Union realized that they did not have the resources to continue a nuclear arms race .... and that it was in their interests to pursue another direction.
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