
Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was True (2014) - fortran77
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/almost-everything-in-dr-strangelove-was-true
======
lb1lf
Dr. Strangelove is the origin of what I consider the most brilliantly absurd
one-liner in cinematic history.

'Gentlemen, you can't fight in here - this is the war room!'

~~~
quantumhobbit
My work would insist on calling the incident response or monitoring room a
"war room". And I would quote this every time it was mentioned. It gets old,
but I literally can not stop myself from repeating the quote when i hear the
phrase "war room".

~~~
lb1lf
We had a major incident go down during our Christmas party, of the "We've got
$50M of payload slamming into a wellhead at 1,400m, please advise" variety.

Our service hotline was overwhelmed, and promptly proceeded to provide the
rather irate (for very valid reasons!) customer the personal cell numbers of
half the engineering departement.

Thus, as we were in a bar in advanced stages of inebriation, all of our cell
phones started ringing. Oops.

The bartender was brilliant, realizing that something very out of the ordinary
had just happened, came over, got the basics from a panicking engineer, threw
the other guests out of the pool /pinball lounge at the back, put on coffee
(lots!), found some paper and pens and left us to sort it out as best as we
could.

The disbelief at the customer end as they heard Motörhead in the background
while we were on the phone with them? Priceless.

We eventually had a couple of laptops taxied in and set up a sort of proper
war room, still with Motörhead blaring in from the bar.

Good times. We even got the system offshore going again before the wellhead
called it quits.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
I've also had a customer service desk rep give my personal cell number to a
customer. Fun times. Chalk it up to "cultural differences": the CSD rep simply
could not understand why I might be incensed that a _debt collection agency_
who believes I am singularly responsible for some hiccup in their collection
software now has a direct line to me.

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teeray
Command and Control by Eric Schlosser[0] was a fascinating (and chilling) read
about many of the incidents people have mentioned in the comments here. It
focuses closely on the 374-7 Damascus Incident, but covers many many other
“Broken Arrow”[1] incidents that have occurred.

It’s not a short read, but it’s eye-opening from the engineering perspective
that nuclear arsenals are wildly complicated beasts with on-going maintenance,
like any machine.

EDIT: It’s also available as a documentary on Netflix[2] Not as in-depth, but
it covers the Damascus incident pretty well.

[0]
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143125788](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143125788)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology#Broken_Arrow)

[2]
[https://www.netflix.com/title/80107656](https://www.netflix.com/title/80107656)

~~~
phasetransition
Eric is the author of the linked article

~~~
teeray
Heh, so he is! Totally missed that. The writing style (and subject matter)
brought him back to mind.

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gdubs
The original “Fail Safe” is a great movie btw, if you’ve never seen it. As
mentioned in the article, that and “Dr Strangelove” were based on the same
book, with “Fail Safe” being the more sober interpretation. Amazing cast, and
Lumet (“Dog Day Afternoon”, “Network”, “Twelve Angry Men”) is a legendary
director.

~~~
cwmma
Fail Safe is was based on a book called 'Fail Safe' while Dr Strangelove was
based on one called 'Red Alert'. It's an easy mistake to make as they have
incredibly similar plots which really hurt Fail Safe (which I agree is a great
movie)

~~~
gdubs
Ah, thanks for that — I’ve held that mistaken view for over a decade now. So
in essence it was more of “A Bugs Life” / “Antz” situation.

~~~
kn0where
Except Dreamworks did Antz specifically because they found out Pixar was going
to do A Bugs Life, and they were taking every opportunity they had to stick it
to Disney.

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daveslash
Previous Discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051974](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051974)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8576707](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8576707)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7109345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7109345)

------
Waterluvian
There's so many great scenes about this topic in "Yes Prime Minister". I think
this one is the most valuable:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKbDKsNsjac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKbDKsNsjac)

I've understood the futility of MAD, but this scene helped me really grok it
in such a short, practical way.

~~~
nabla9
What the video describes is massive retaliation doctrine. Mutually assured
destruction is not the same as massive retaliation doctrine. Massive
retaliation was abandoned soon after the the Cuban crisis. Kennedy saw how
impossible it was in practice and demanded more options.

At the time this episode of Yes Prime minister was written NATO had completely
different strategy called flexible response.

~~~
Waterluvian
Makes sense. I guess what I confuse or don't understand well is how there's
anything but MAD. The moment you push any button for any amount of nuclear
usage, aren't you basically triggering MAD?

The only possible responses are conventional ones, right?

~~~
nabla9
Flexible response means that the response is proportional to the threat just
like in normal war. Nuclear bomb is just a big bomb after all.

First comes conventional response. If that fails to stop Soviet advance,
tactical nukes are used. If tactical nukes fail, war escalates but no counter
value targets are hit (no cities doctrine). Only after all these steps are
exhausted and enemy escalates, nuclear war expands to total nuclear war.

Nuclear sharing is political side of this. If Soviets attack West Germany, US
president hands keys to nuclear gravity bombs to German Chancellor and German
pilots who have been trained to deliver those bomb are delivering them. If
Germany uses nukes, Soviet union would retaliate against German nuclear
attack, not the US based attack. Alternative Germany may choose to surrender
and not to use the weapons. In that case NATO withdraws from Germany.

------
Symmetry
Everyone is giving book recommendations but nobody has mentioned _The Doomsday
Machine Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner_ by Daniel Ellsberg?

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peterwwillis
> “We don’t care if things go properly,” a launch officer told RAND. “We just
> don’t want to get in trouble.”

Who would you rather have in control of the nukes: people who don't care, or
people who care a whole, whole, _WHOLE LOT_?

~~~
alpha_squared
People who care _that_ much are also more prone to emotional reaction lacking
thorough evaluation of a situation that impacted them personally. So, I'm
actually really not sure. At least the ones who don't want to get in trouble
are motivated by the fact that they are beholden to others in some fashion.

------
W-Stool
If you like "Dr Strangelove" and "Fail Safe" I highly recommend "The Bedford
Incident".

------
colordrops
As was everything in Eyes Wide Shut.

~~~
new2628
It is one of my favorite movies, so I'm curious about others' take on it. In
what sense do you find it true/accurate?

~~~
jessaustin
Lots of rich assholes get together on private estates to do demented sexual
shit. Not included in the movie: occasionally one of them oversteps some bound
that we subjects don't even know exists, and then is fake-suicided while in
federal custody. (Great idea for the sequel!)

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trasz
There’s a book, Command and Control, which tells the story of USA’s nuclear
arsenal safety and security over the years. Lots of scary stuff, including how
it was discovered that it’s been possible to break into Titan centre and
launch stuff with a credit card-shaped object and small team of unarmed man.

~~~
phasetransition
This article was written by the author of Command and Control.

------
AceJohnny2
The movie really is a great illustration of the gap between "policy" and
implementation, especially in a time of crisis, and how ultimately it still
boils down to human decisions.

There are some lessons to apply to tech's "on-call", 5-9s culture...

------
pmoriarty
Anyone interested in a quite good, serious film with similar themes to and
released around the same time as _Dr. Strangelove_ , should check out _Seven
Days in May_.

------
cjslep
And what's even more scary is what's true beyond the movie. Like dropping
nuclear bombs on Goldsboro, NC.

~~~
lightedman
Bombs were not purposefully DROPPED on Goldsboro. The B-52 transporting those
broke up in mid-air and as a result lost the cargo of the couple of megaton-
range bombs. Thank you for purposefully misaligning the actual event with your
words of intent attack on the city.

~~~
ceejayoz
No one said purposefully, and they _were_ dropped.

It's the sort of incident Dr. Strangelove predicted might accidentally cause a
nuclear war.

~~~
ourmandave
Pretty sure you have to purposely arm them before there's any chance it would
go off for just such a scenario.

Otherwise every time you transport one it could end in disaster.

~~~
ceejayoz
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash)

> Information newly declassified in 2013 showed that one of the bombs came
> very close to detonating.

> In 2013, Revelle recalled the moment the second bomb's switch was found:
> "Until my death I will never forget hearing my sergeant say, 'Lieutenant, we
> found the arm/safe switch.' And I said, 'Great.' He said, 'Not great. It's
> on arm.'"

If I'm reading the article right, the _other_ bomb also had _the other three_
arming steps happen and was stopped only by the arm/safe switch, so between
the two bombs, _each_ of the four safety steps failed.

------
jessaustin
Generals and other Pentagon reptiles lie about the dangers of their massive
death spending programs. Film at 11.

------
angst_ridden
"You're going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola Corporation"

------
mrinfinite
I consider the storyline that one of the generals has in regard to: water
supply contamination, as a main plot.

------
papito
Alternately, we have a much less credible scenario in Broken Arrow.

------
pinewurst
(2014)

------
java-man
Wasn't there an event recently when a U.S. bomber took off with six nuclear
tipped missiles which at the time were thought to be inert?

And then landed with only five?

~~~
lkbm
This sounds like the 2007 incident[0], but the Wikipedia article doesn't say
anything about one going missing. That sounds like the sort of thing that
would get added as part of the regular mutation in story transmission, and
would likely be pretty well-documented if it were true.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_n...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_nuclear_weapons_incident)

~~~
java-man
or it could be actively suppressed:

[0] [http://911blogger.com/news/2007-09-09/nuke-flight-major-
issu...](http://911blogger.com/news/2007-09-09/nuke-flight-major-issue-
closely-connected-911)

~~~
ceejayoz
By the lizard people, naturally.

