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New CBS TV Series Making Nuclear War Thinkable And Great Fun For Everyone
wrote: http://letterfromhere.blogspot.com/2...thinkable.html Tuesday, September 19, 2006 Making nuclear war thinkable The story outlined is not realistic. It's set in a small town in Kansas. Nowadays, kids living in small towns are in such a hurry to leave the parents have to nail their shoes to the porch. In the event of war, all the able bodied people would be leaving in droves. A few years later, ghost town. (snip) Holy ****! (Update): Here's executive producer Jon Turteltaub on Sci Fi Wi Jon Turteltaub, the executive producer of CBS' upcoming post-apocalyptic drama series Jericho, told SCI FI Wire that he did research about what might happen after a nuclear attack and was surprised by the answers he found. "This is going to sound odd, but a nuclear bomb is not as bad as everybody thinks," Turteltaub in an interview. "Without question on the scale of things in the world, it's on the bad scale of things that can happen. Puppies are on the really good side of things [laughs]. But sometimes we have this image that one nuclear bomb would take out all of New York City and Brooklyn and Queens and parts of New Jersey." Fallout. Long Island. Uninhabitable. That wouldn't be the case with the initial blast, Turteltaub (National Treasure) added. "Part of the question is how much of the area is uninhabitable versus how much in our perception and our fears is uninhabitable," he said. "Coping with our own panic may be a greater enemy than the reality of these things." Even a convential attack on a city can trigger a stock market crash. The financial losses caused by a single nuke would be the biggest ever seen, assuming the market ever opened again. The loss of infrastructure is also fatal. |
#23
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New CBS TV Series Making Nuclear War Thinkable And Great Fun For Everyone
Jon Schild wrote: wrote: I wonder how this thing ever got off the ground. Maybe it went something like this: You guys have been in the doghouse for a couple years now, ever since the Janet Jackson costume malfunction and the Dan Rather mess. Getting Katie for the news was a start, but you need to do more. Here's a thought. How about a "high-concept" TV soap featuring a plucky red state small town with a biblical name surviving nuclear catastrophe while those sinners in the big cities apparently burn in hellfire and disappear? How cool is that? This is just ludicrous. No mention was made of "sinners" or "hellfire" anywhere in the episode. The determination of Denver is mostly a guess, based on the direction of the blast and the location of large cities in that direction. Knowledge of another blast in Atlanta is accidental. They have no clue whether other large cities were hit, or if so which ones. And there is no mention of the people in the small town all being non-sinners, or more righteous, or being chosen by God ro survive, or any similar crap. I don't even recall a shot of a church anywhere in the first episode. As for your "biblical name" slam, the Jericho in the bible was full of bad people and was destroyed. Hardly the sort of fuzzy warm image you seem to claim for the name. IIRC, the city of Jericho never fell to barbarian invasion, it was just abandoned and refounded a few times. Somewhere else, the men got what they deserved for the "crime" of being uncircumcised. CBS seemed to buy it. They signed for at least 13 episodes, and the new series "Jericho" will air weekly, starting this Wednesday. A drama about what happens when a nuclear mushroom cloud suddenly appears on the horizon, plunging the residents of a small, peaceful Kansas town into chaos, leaving them completely isolated and wondering if they're the only Americans left alive. Fear of the unknown propels Jericho into social, psychological and physical mayhem when all communication and power is shut down. The town starts to come apart at the seams as terror, anger and confusion bring out the very worst in some residents. But in this time of crisis, as sensible people become paranoid, personal agendas take over and well-kept secrets threaten to be revealed, some people will find an inner strength they never knew they had and the most unlikely heroes will emerge. Again, what's wrong with this picture? I guess it depends on how long you have been reading news and watching what happens. Your description, worded to sound as silly as possible, is essentially what has happened after many major disasters. Major disasters don't usually take out the TV station. More than 20 years ago, in the early years of the Reagan administration, loose talk about "survivable nuclear war" created a huge outcry, here and abroad. ABC produced a TV movie called "The Day After." While operating within the constraints of network TV, the show tried to communicate some of the true horror of a nuclear war. The Reaganites learned their lesson and shut up. Yes, that's the American way. Stamp out any opinion that doesn't match yours. I believe that nearly all of Japan survived their nuclear attack quite nicely. The uproar came mostly because Reagan was a republican, and most of the uproar totally ignored everything he said. He was also vilified, called stupid, accused of being in his dotage etc for saying that the Soviet Union should tear down the Berlin Wall. But it still happened. The tonnage of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki doesn't compare to modern nukes. Who says there were only two nukes? Now, little more than two decades later, CBS is about to show nuclear war as something that happens elsewhere, off-camera except for a mushroom cloud or two on the horizon, nothing that can't be survived by good people learning to work together in a small town far from Ground Zero. Yeah, right. Well, how much show do you get if you put a camera in downtown Denver, watch the bomb fall, and then go to black? They deliberately chose an area far enough away from any blast to not be immediately impacted, and small enough to not become a target itself. That should be obvious even to someone looking for every possible flaw. Call me a cynic, You are definitely a cynic. but I don't think it's any accident that this show is airing at the very time that the Bush administration is trying, through a disingenuous combination of leaks, diplomatic initiatives and gradually escalating threats, to build support for a preemptive strike -- possibly with nuclear "bunker busters" -- against Iran. And while they insist they haven't made up their minds to go to war yet, chances are -- based on past performance -- they've already made their decision. It's not a matter of "if," but "when" -- and how to sell it. You know, I am thoroughly sick of the idea that everyone thinks alike, and all people are really nice liberals who understand every issue the same way, and therefore if any idea outside that nice liberal mainstream surfaces, it is orchestrated by the tiny minority of evil hateful nasty ignorant stupid people who actually dare to disagree. You don't even present any backup or evidence for your wild charges. Those charged are guilty because you say so, I guess. What makes you infer the poster was presenting charges? Guilty conscience? The closest we have come to nuclear war is when JFK had the guts to stand up to soviet emplacement of nukes in Cuba. But it had to be done, and he won. The CIA tried to assasinate Castro and failed and failed and failed. The attempt to assasinate JFK was more successful. The neocon strategists know they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of selling another preemptive war to the public through rational argument. What they can do, without ever discussing the real issues, is make emotional appeals to their base, get them worked up, and then use them to bludgeon political opponents of preemptive war. |
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New CBS TV Series Making Nuclear War Thinkable And Great Fun For Everyone
norrin wrote:
wrote: Fallout. Long Island. Uninhabitable. I haven't watched the show yet, though I may catch the Saturday replay. As a native Lawn Islander, what always freaked me out was the idea that the Commies would hit NYC proper with a ton of MIRVs*, which, besides melting the skyscrapers and flattening the 5 boroughs from the shockwaves, would produce a particular kind of conflagration known as a Firestorm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestorm I had visions of gale force winds sweeping toward Manhattan to feed the monster oxygen, knocking everything flat in its path, as the ash cloud hits the upper atmosphere, is caught up in the normal West to East airflow, and settles radioactive debris all over fair Pomonauk. At the time, I should have been worrying about the targeting of Republic Aircraft, Grumman and the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Before the ABM treaty there was even a NIKE anti-missile site at Calverton. With almost all the potato farms turned into Levittowns, we would soon have nothing to eat, anyway. Given the premise of two cities reported knocked out, it is possible that those were the only two. That could be the result of terrorists, or an attempt to destroy electronic communications by an enemy state. That was the underlying premise of ("Dark Angel.") Perhaps those bolts were all that actor had in its quiver. There is also the problem, in post-Cold War scenarios, that it might take the U.S. military some time to figure out who took a shot at us. A group with a couple of loose nukes could sea-launch them from a modified freighter or tanker, and the Russians have even sold other countries subs. If there's no immediate massive U.S. retaliation, there isn't going to be any Atomic Fimbulwinter, though there might be something on the order of what Mount Pinatubo's eruption caused. What this show most sounds like is the science fiction sub-genre wherein a town is cut off from civilization. Examples of this are the creepy "It's A Good Life" by Jerome Bixby, "Island In The Sea Of Time" and its sequels by S. M. Stirling, or "1632" and sequels by Eric Flint (and friends.) The Bixby story was made into a memorable Twilight Zone episode. Kevin * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRV |
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*SPOILER* New CBS TV Series Making Nuclear War Thinkable AndGreat Fun For Everyone
wrote:
http://letterfromhere.blogspot.com/2...thinkable.html Tuesday, September 19, 2006 Making nuclear war thinkable [rest of drivel deleted] From the premiere episode of "Jericho," we don't yet know the extent of the nuclear attack that has apparently taken place. There was one mushroom cloud in the general direction of Denver, and apparently another explosion may have destroyed Atlanta. Two nuclear explosions wouldn't wipe out America completely, just like the two nuclear explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not wipe out Japan completely. So unless you have spoilers to reveal, you can't know whether the scenario is survivable (nobody has even talked about "winning" since we don't even know it's a war yet either). We'll see just how much of a mess the world has gotten itself into, in future episodes. Secondly, the mushroom cloud *can* be beautiful when watched from a safe distance. A hurricane's spiral shape, or a tornado's funnel cloud, can be beautiful too--even though we know how deadly a hurricane or tornado can be. Beauty and deadliness *can* go together. Thirdly, despite your claims, even the premiere episode of "Jericho" has *NOT* made nuclear explosions look like "great fun for everyone." In the town of Jericho after the blasts, there has already been panic, there has been violence, there has been murder, there has been severe injury, and there has been death. Not to mention the breakdown of infrastructure services like radio, TV, telephone and electricity. And that's just the first episode. The promo for the next episode hints that radioactive fallout is about to endanger everyone there. And the townspeople didn't seem to be laughing about it. "Jericho" doesn't come with a laugh track. -- Steven D. Litvintchouk Email: Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me. |
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New CBS TV Series Making Nuclear War Thinkable And Great Fun For Everyone
wrote:
quoted, in part: : :apparently from : http://letterfromhere.blogspot.com/2...thinkable.html : : Also, the whole detached observer quality of the photo : subliminally says nuclear catastrophe is no big deal, something that : can safely be survived at a distance. : :Actually, I don't see how a show like this would convince Americans in :general that they don't have to worry about World War III. After all, :it certainly won't convince people who *live in big cities* that they :have nothing much to worry about from a nuclear attack. : :And aren't the people living in the small towns already voting for :Bush? : :No, if there _was_ an evil plot to keep the Republicans in power, it :would consist of gerrymandering. I'll simply point out that Elbridge Gerry was a 'Democratic-Republican'. In other words, he was one of the ancestors of the modern Democratic Party (which is responsible for such things as the Political Action Committee). -- "False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil." -- Socrates |
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*SPOILER* New CBS TV Series Making Nuclear War Thinkable And Great Fun For Everyone
On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 05:49:30 GMT, "Steven L."
wrote: wrote: http://letterfromhere.blogspot.com/2...thinkable.html Tuesday, September 19, 2006 Making nuclear war thinkable [rest of drivel deleted] From the premiere episode of "Jericho," we don't yet know the extent of the nuclear attack that has apparently taken place. There was one mushroom cloud in the general direction of Denver, and apparently another explosion may have destroyed Atlanta. Two nuclear explosions wouldn't wipe out America completely, just like the two nuclear explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not wipe out Japan completely. So unless you have spoilers to reveal, you can't know whether the scenario is survivable (nobody has even talked about "winning" since we don't even know it's a war yet either). We'll see just how much of a mess the world has gotten itself into, in future episodes. Secondly, the mushroom cloud *can* be beautiful when watched from a safe distance. A hurricane's spiral shape, or a tornado's funnel cloud, can be beautiful too--even though we know how deadly a hurricane or tornado can be. Beauty and deadliness *can* go together. Thirdly, despite your claims, even the premiere episode of "Jericho" has *NOT* made nuclear explosions look like "great fun for everyone." In the town of Jericho after the blasts, there has already been panic, there has been violence, there has been murder, there has been severe injury, and there has been death. Not to mention the breakdown of infrastructure services like radio, TV, telephone and electricity. And that's just the first episode. The promo for the next episode hints that radioactive fallout is about to endanger everyone there. And the townspeople didn't seem to be laughing about it. "Jericho" doesn't come with a laugh track. Steven D. Litvintchouk Email: Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me. I've got a slightly different angle than some others. My guess is that they are attempting to do a rip-off of LOST. Oh, I don't expect the "weirdness" angle to be nearly as strong as on LOST. It's REALLY over the top there. But they seem to already have some weirdness on Jerico. (1) Whether 2 cities or 200, you wouldn't find the airways dead. Ham radio people with their own batteries/generators ought to be all over the bands. Foreign broadcast stations as well, and Satellite TV and Radio. Yet the bands were reported as clear. (2) The animals that were strange (deer running into the bus, a huge flock of crows killed or knocked out on the ground) are not explained. The blast of a nuclear bomb 150 miles away or more (roughly the distance from Denver to the nearest Kansas border) would not be expected to do either of these things. So I suspect they are playing fast and loose with real science and are going to have a group of people marooned in unexplained fashion, subjected to various inernal and external stresses - just like on LOST. When something is successful there are immitators very quickly, and I suspect this will be seen as one of them. |
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*SPOILER* New CBS TV Series Making Nuclear War Thinkable And Great Fun For Everyone
"Harold Groot" schreef in bericht ... On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 05:49:30 GMT, "Steven L." wrote: wrote: http://letterfromhere.blogspot.com/2...thinkable.html Tuesday, September 19, 2006 Making nuclear war thinkable [rest of drivel deleted] From the premiere episode of "Jericho," we don't yet know the extent of the nuclear attack that has apparently taken place. There was one mushroom cloud in the general direction of Denver, and apparently another explosion may have destroyed Atlanta. Two nuclear explosions wouldn't wipe out America completely, just like the two nuclear explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not wipe out Japan completely. So unless you have spoilers to reveal, you can't know whether the scenario is survivable (nobody has even talked about "winning" since we don't even know it's a war yet either). We'll see just how much of a mess the world has gotten itself into, in future episodes. Secondly, the mushroom cloud *can* be beautiful when watched from a safe distance. A hurricane's spiral shape, or a tornado's funnel cloud, can be beautiful too--even though we know how deadly a hurricane or tornado can be. Beauty and deadliness *can* go together. Thirdly, despite your claims, even the premiere episode of "Jericho" has *NOT* made nuclear explosions look like "great fun for everyone." In the town of Jericho after the blasts, there has already been panic, there has been violence, there has been murder, there has been severe injury, and there has been death. Not to mention the breakdown of infrastructure services like radio, TV, telephone and electricity. And that's just the first episode. The promo for the next episode hints that radioactive fallout is about to endanger everyone there. And the townspeople didn't seem to be laughing about it. "Jericho" doesn't come with a laugh track. Steven D. Litvintchouk Email: Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me. I've got a slightly different angle than some others. My guess is that they are attempting to do a rip-off of LOST. Oh, I don't expect the "weirdness" angle to be nearly as strong as on LOST. It's REALLY over the top there. But they seem to already have some weirdness on Jerico. (1) Whether 2 cities or 200, you wouldn't find the airways dead. Ham radio people with their own batteries/generators ought to be all over the bands. Foreign broadcast stations as well, and Satellite TV and Radio. Yet the bands were reported as clear. (2) The animals that were strange (deer running into the bus, a huge flock of crows killed or knocked out on the ground) are not explained. The blast of a nuclear bomb 150 miles away or more (roughly the distance from Denver to the nearest Kansas border) would not be expected to do either of these things. So I suspect they are playing fast and loose with real science and are going to have a group of people marooned in unexplained fashion, subjected to various inernal and external stresses - just like on LOST. When something is successful there are immitators very quickly, and I suspect this will be seen as one of them. I agree, there seem to be a lot of LOST copycats around lately: Invasion, Jericho and there will be more. -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com |
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New CBS TV Series Making Nuclear War Thinkable And Great Fun For Everyone
On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 09:36:52 -0700, Jon Schild wrote:
snip a bunch of excellent stuff by Jon Or, it just could be that the scientific fact is that a nuclear attack is NOT necessarily as horrible as a lot of people think. During all the brouhaha over "nuclear winter" some facts got itnored by the general public, like for instance that the number and size of blasts makes a huge difference in the result. The way most peace activists of the time talked, one nuke dropped anywhere on North America would make the entire planet uninhabitable. It is true that enough nukes would make the planet totally uninhabitable. But another fact is that two nukes dropped in Japan created a local disaster only. The attack in this show is obviously somewhere in between, or there would be no story to tell. By the way, what Turtletaub says is true. One nuke wouldn't take out that much territory. It would possibly make that much territory unlivable for while, not just due to radioactive fallout. The target coordinates in US ICBMs were not cities, but specific points. A government center, a major rail yard, a major airport, that sort of thing. Isn't there a classic SF story along the line of the TV show? A small town has to adjust to less outside support. The library becomes the center of learning to be more self-sufficient. I seem to recall it being done on TV (in the 1960s???) but they changed the ending to apathetic despair instead of "Well, we'll get on as best we can." -- SciFi at Project Gutenberg: http://thethunderchild.com/Books/OutofCopyright.html Baen Free Online SciFi: http://www.baen.com/library/ Baen Free SciFi CDs http://files.plebian.net/baencd/ SciFi.com classic & original: http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/archive.html All the best, Joe Bednorz |
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New CBS TV Series Making Nuclear War Thinkable And Great Fun For Everyone
On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 03:13:52 GMT, Scott Golden wrote:
wrote: http://letterfromhere.blogspot.com/2...thinkable.html Tuesday, September 19, 2006 Making nuclear war thinkable What's wrong with this picture? To begin with, if it weren't a Hollywood special effects shot, the guy would probably be blind from looking right at the exploding nuke -- he clearly didn't duck and cover. Let's assume that the blast occured in Denver, as speculated. The Kansas border is 140 miles away, and no one said that Jericho is right on the border (I think we can safely assume that it is in western Kansas but that's all). Someone watching the detonation from that far away will "probably be blind" as a result? Don't think so. Not too mention any large energy release will result in a mushroom cloud. Didn't Heinlein cover this in TMiaHM? The Loonies were accused of using nukes because of the mushroom clouds resulting from their strikes on Earth. Manny finally points out that all they made were "big sparks," which naturally result in mushroom clouds (if they occur on the surface, in an atmosphere, etc.) -- SciFi at Project Gutenberg: http://thethunderchild.com/Books/OutofCopyright.html Baen Free Online SciFi: http://www.baen.com/library/ Baen Free SciFi CDs http://files.plebian.net/baencd/ SciFi.com classic & original: http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/archive.html All the best, Joe Bednorz |
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