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The Overwhelming Sense Of Despair Would Prevail After the Bombs

posted 10 years ago by freedomfightertjm
8 replies | jump to latest

And the living would definitely envy the dead. Who among you would want to survive a nuclear holocaust? It's been documented that people would boil alive in bomb shelters. But is that such a bad thing? Depression, feelings of hopelessness and the terrible trauma of being left in a pile of what was once a vibrant, beautiful world is many times more likely to hurry the demise of anyone who might, albeit unlikely, to make it though the devastation.

I was a member of Ploughshares when this movie aired in 1983. It was an active, vocal and uncompromising cause back then, while the Cold War was keeping us all under emotional siege. I engaged in civil disobedience by protesting the manufacturing of guidance systems for Cruise Missiles at the General Motors factory in Toronto. At that point in time, we believed that it wasn't a matter of *if* a nuclear war happened, but *when.* The political unrest and national crisis that spawned movies like The Day After, Threads, Testament and The War Game, among many others was so terrifying it was palpable.

Now that the USSR has been beaten down--not an event most of us at that time would ever dream possible, we don't have the Soviets telling US Presidents that "We Will Bury You" but that doesn't mean an all-out, full scale nuclear war is in the distant past. The players on the playing field are a bit different, but enough alike and noisy enough to put us on the fast track to oblivion.

I didn't intend to write a novel here. But all-in-all, I would much, much prefer to die when the blast hits than be a ragged, suffering and angry mob whose overwhelming hopelessness just keeps going on and on.

[–] DrDanielChallis 10 years ago

well, it would be my natural instinct to want and try to survive, salvage and repair any normalcy that I could - sure it would be hard as hell and my hope would be tested - but you only got two choices in this scenario

the choice is kind of taken out of your hands in this scenario because who among us really knows when and where any of the bullseyes hit (generally speaking) - could have really good or really bad timing on our parts and be at right or wrong place at right or wrong time - I have children, and the way I see it, I HAVE to try and survive so they get a chance at some sort of life. What if the life I leave them ends up being better than I could have ever hoped for? There is always that chance, that hope that makes staying and fighting through it, worth it.

NEVER GIVE UP.

A man remembers his debts . . .

[–] marty1968 10 years ago

The Year After...

..would have been interesting to see how our country & the world would have recovered after an event like this.
Would it lead to a more united earth or a more divided one ?

[–] raf-33 10 years ago

Divided I imagine, countries like Brazil, India and China who had grown up with NATO and the Warsaw pact bickering would now be free to claim their own mark in history, offering the US, Russia and Europe whatever aid they saw fit and asking in return for anything.

After any war a newly created gap doesn't stay empty for very long, look at the Rise of the USA and Russia in 1945. Europe was barely cold and they were vying to be the next British Empire.

You don't know *beep* Jon Snow!

[–] space_station 10 years ago

AppreciateALilHustle, Being falsely optimistic is way worse than being realistic when it comes to world radiation poisoning of the entire planet for centuries.

You said "There is always that chance, I leave them ends up being better than I could have ever hoped for?", the Answer is that chance is Completely destroyed after a modern nuclear attack. Nuclear annihilation is absolutely certain. No one will survive after 6 months to a year. The entire planet will be uninhabitable because of global radiation.

Fusion weapons are also known as thermonuclear weapons since high temperatures are required to fuse deuterium and tritium; such weapons are usually many hundreds of times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Nagasaki & Hiroshima & there would be thousands of them landing on U.S. soil. Only cockroaches & certain bacteria will survive if that.

There will be no use in fighting because all basic sustenance will be contaminated for many generations that won't be able to be born after the initial blast, it's over dude, including you, LilHustle. Try being realistic for a change.

Comedy is not pretty

*~* *~*

[–] DrDanielChallis 9 years ago

LOL - space - you either don't have kids or are just looking for a reason to pour your negative drivel onto someone else

It's a full moon . . .

[–] gary_overman 9 years ago

AppreciateALilHustle, Being falsely optimistic is way worse than being realistic when it comes to world radiation poisoning of the entire planet for centuries.

You said "There is always that chance, I leave them ends up being better than I could have ever hoped for?", the Answer is that chance is Completely destroyed after a modern nuclear attack. Nuclear annihilation is absolutely certain. No one will survive after 6 months to a year. The entire planet will be uninhabitable because of global radiation.

Fusion weapons are also known as thermonuclear weapons since high temperatures are required to fuse deuterium and tritium; such weapons are usually many hundreds of times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Nagasaki & Hiroshima & there would be thousands of them landing on U.S. soil. Only cockroaches & certain bacteria will survive if that.

There will be no use in fighting because all basic sustenance will be contaminated for many generations that won't be able to be born after the initial blast, it's over dude, including you, LilHustle. Try being realistic for a change.

The On The Beach scenario is not scientifically sound. The earth has a surface area of about 510 million square kilometers (196 million square miles), and the amount of cobalt used in even a full-scale exchange between the US and the Soviet Union would be too small to cover the earth. Even assuming that it was enough to cover the entire surface, the amount per unit area would be too small to have any measurable effect. Besides fallout doesn't make the air radioactive. All fallout is, is solid particles scooped up out of the crater of a surface burst, and spread over an area by winds. Each fallout particle emits radiation like a tiny X-ray machine and this radiation diminishes over time as the radioactive elements decay. And while it does spread over a wide area, the amount of fallout remains constant, thus the wider the area of dispersal, the less each unit area gets.

In any event, unless the materials used in the bomb have a longer half-life, the radioactivity in fallout decays quite rapidly, the result being that within a matter of weeks, the level would be low enough to work outside for ever-longer periods, and would be at slightly elevated levels for longer periods.

So then On the Beach would certainly not happen in real life. It was an excellent movie and book, but the idea that an ever-expanding lethal radioactive 'cloud' or whatever will destroy all animal life is just not feasible.

[–] euro4569 9 years ago

the idea that an ever-expanding lethal radioactive 'cloud' or whatever will destroy all animal life is just not feasible.

Good points Gary although I do agree with what the filmmakers said in regards to an actual nuclear war being worse than what we saw as well. There will be survivors and this was portrayed in our version called Threads, which went ten-13 years after the nuclear war. However, I do agree with what other had said and really would not want to be around after all was said in done and the world would NEVER be the same again, at least not for a long time due to the amount of deaths, destruction, etc. You would still have people dying and getting sick from radiation for a long while as well. Life on this earth would be bleak more-so than what was experienced in medieval times.

[–] znapper 9 years ago

Well, true, concerning the cobalt or salted bombs.

However, what many people miss (and films too), is that in a massive nuclear exchange, many targets for the bombs will be nuclear power plants.

Just look at what a single such plant will do to the environment (Chernobyl and later Fukushima).

Now imagine hundreds of them being blown up, undergoing partial chain-reactions and short and long lived isotopes, all being lifted into the existing nuclear mushroom-clouds.

The scenario in "On the beach" would be hard pressed to duplicate, but most of the northern hemisphere would indeed be a radiant mess for decades in such an event.