True perhaps... less possible, but not totally. It only takes one madman to say "to hell with all of this" and push a button.

The first post (thanks btw) made me realize that even trough violent mature rated games, you can find a reason to learn more about history. Which is, in my eyes, pretty cool.
Which reminds me, to search for some sites about Hiroshima and B-52 and such...

Oh, and I heard of the "duck and cover" stuff before... as a sample in some industrial techno song. I thought it fitted so well, I wondered where it came from and started searching.
I don't think it ever catched on here. Or maybe we experience the Cold War stuff in some other way, I do not know. (Should search about it)

It even continued into the '80's. I wasn't around during the 50's and '60s, but was in the British armed forces during the '80's, and, man, it was enough to make you paranoid that it was all really going to happen. All the endless NBC training, the lessons on the effects of nuclear blasts that they drilled into your head, the long base and field exercies that you spent most of your time living and working in an NBC suit and gas-mask. The charcoal lined suits, the little bottles of fullers earth and the constant 'blot, bang, rub' never convinced you that you'd last more than a little while if you got caught out in the open, and that was probably pretty much the case. Thank god those days are over (hopefully).

Here's an '80's British armed forces poster that sums up the mood:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/oo284/shootist66/survivetofight.jpg

Actually, the likelihood of nuclear was has not decreased at all... Sure, tension between the super powers have relaxed somewhat, but, it won't BE one of the super powers that STARTS the war. Keep in mind that there are MANY countries with Nuclear arms, and not all of them are precisely "stable".....

So a search on Israels "sampson" option. And be scared.

just think of the tension between russia and there former soviet republic's or between india and pakistan

Both of whom have tested nuclear weapons.......

But this is starting to wander into things political.... Can't go there.

I don't know about that. We havn't been anywhere near as close to total nuclear armaggedon as we were during events like the cuban missile crisis, or the large-scale NATO and Warsaw pact exercises in the 1980's that were designed to intimidate the enemy. I mean, we don't tend to see Soviet bombers penetrating UK airspace or nuclear subs and spy-boats prowling off our shores like we did on a constant basis back then. Sure, there's still a threat today, but it isn't on the same scale or at the same very real tension level.

yeah i leave it by that ...

Woops. Fair enough.

Thanks folks.

I am rather enjoying this thread.

YES!!! That's the one!

wow... compare that poster to Bert the Turtle.... completely different. The US and UK handled this completely different.

I grew up in the late 70's, early 80's timeframe, which the threat was there(played Red Storm Rising and Harpoon on PC, that sort of thing), but I didn't really get weirded out until after it was over and I was in high school and wanted to do a report on the Cold War. You see, my dad was a Lt. Col. in Air Force Intel and was stationed in Turkey in the late 50's through 68....

The little he could tell me really hit it home how close we really came....several times, not just with the Cuban Crisis.

Glad that part is over, but still kind of concerned about all the nukes still out there. Kind of unecessary, considering the precision weapons and MOAB type weapons. I'll leave it at that since I don't want to turn it political...

And then there are the times when a simple computer glitch made the powers-that-be believe there was an incoming attack. Failure of a 39 cent part caused us to launch our nuclear loaded bombers. (this is something that NEVER happens. One bomber, sure, when sending them somewhere on temporary duty, or, moving weapons around, but, NEVER all of them at once. (and certainly not in such a hurry.) I figgered we was all dead. (I was stationed at a SAC base at the time. (strategic air command))

Try doing a google search on "Accidental Nuclear War", and prepared to be scared out of your socks.

like the movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/?

Something akin to that. But, there is no AI controlling everything. Just guys watching screens, and believing what the computers are telling them, if the computers feed the erroneous information, that make bad decisions..... and potentially, millions of people could pay the price for that.

Pshaw...

There are more important things to do with a life than spend it worrying about the "could be's"

It's a lot more likely that I'll get killed in a car crash on the way home than someone will launch a nuke at me. And quite frankly, I don't care about either. I've got more friends on the other side than I do here...

try looking at some of the duck and covwer material and then this page http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-bomb.htm makes the old duck and cover rubbish look as daft as it realy was

yeah thats the duck and cover guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0K_LZDXp0I

An episode of Southpark even showed how ridiculous the Duck and Cover idea was.

They taught everyone to Duck and Cover, in case of a Volcano.
Of course people did, you see the Lava flow over them, and then just Skeletons....

ha! I must have missed that episode.

It was an old episode from season one or two, the one with Scuzzlebutt in it.

found this:
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/k/kingsway/index.html

while I was looking for this:
http://www.24dash.com/news/communities/2008-10-15-For-sale-Secret-network-of-tunnels-100ft-under-London

Saw the second posted a while back on this forum but thought I'd share it again. Interesting thing about that first bunker link is it is said to accomadate between 8,000 and 9,600 people, whereas most of the Civil Defense bunkers I read about from some of those link you guys posted were only going to hold like 300-500 people. But it kind of makes sense if you look at the situations, CD bunkers were for a percievable threat of nukes being launch, where when they built these bunkers in the UK, Germany was bombing the sh!t out of them.

Wish I had that much money to blow, be a very interesting place to live, wouldn't have to worry about noisy neighboors either (unless there some kind of superior mole-man race that lives under England)

Shoot I love this picture! This comic book is really the same one wich you can find in D.C

wow, what a huge difference.

I can't even stop watching this short movie. Fallout is a brilliant description what the world could be after atomic bomb attack. He is not a typical description of some kind of SF world. He have lots of "real" things that we can for example watching now (like You added movies, comic books or typical typical things that ppl used in that time).

My jaw dropped when I watched that video. It has the exact same music as some of the viral ads for FO3.
(compare: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7jKRDTg8m8 )

This is a really cool thread!