New CBS TV Series Making Nuclear War Thinkable And Great Fun For Everyone

wrote:
SAM shoulder held surface to air missle a few planes at the same time
date and nearly no one would ever fly again. the economy would tank.

Yeah, sure. It's like how after September 11th, nobody has dared to ever
build high-rise office buildings again.

mawa

On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 10:18:27 -0400, Sean O'Hara wrote:

In the Year of the Dog, the Great and Powerful Joe Bednorz declared:


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."


Alas Babylon by Pat Frank. The book ended with the Army showing up
to start the rebuilding process, with a rather ironic last line in
which a soldier informs the survivors that the US kicked Ruskie ass.

There was also a cool AIP cheapie from the same period, in which Ray
Milland and his family were headed into the mountains for a vacation
when L.A. got nuked. They roll into a town that didn't see the blast
and buy up a couple hundred dollars in groceries, then head to the
hardware store. But when the hardware owner won't sell him a gun
because of a two-day waiting period, Milland takes what he wants by
force and heads up to the vacation spot to wait out the war until
law 'n' order is restored -- never acknowledging that he himself is
part of the problem.

And that sounds like yet another short story identification. I
remember it with just a few details different. Father, mother, teenage
son and daughter. The town knew about the blast.

Father decides to buy food and equipment (bow/arrows, maybe?) The gas
station owner charges extortionate prices for gasoline. The protagonist
gladly pays, figuring the money is functionally useless but the gasoline
isn't.


S
P
O
I
L
E
R

S
P
A
C
E

At the end the father decides to run off with just his daughter,
leaving the wife and son behind.


--
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

wrote:
wrote:
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.

You forgot"Alas Bab.", and "On the Beach"

Carl

He said town, not the continent of Australia. Alas Babylon is more on
topic, but it still stayed on post nuclear war U.S. None of the towns
in the stories he mentioned were still in the time and/or place they
started at.

Right. And the Frank novel was mentioned up-thread.

Kevin

Mike Schilling wrote:
"Jordan" wrote in message
oups.com...

The North Korean nuclear weapons program existed during Bill Clinton's
Presidency -- you may recall the rather active tribu ... I mean,
"diplomacy" regarding that around 1994-95?

As opposed to the blustering and empty threats being so usefully employed
today?

Making threats -- I have no idea how "empty" they are -- is better than
paying tribute. Especially to a weaker Power. In the 1990's, we were
on the road to paying _more_ tribute, including _nuclear reactors_ --
today, we are on the road to paying less. Maybe before too long we'll
cancel the humanitarian aid as well, and watch Kim Jong Il's nasty
little regime collapse.

- Jordan

Jordan wrote:
Mike Schilling wrote:
"Jordan" wrote in message
oups.com...

The North Korean nuclear weapons program existed during Bill
Clinton's Presidency -- you may recall the rather active tribu ...
I mean, "diplomacy" regarding that around 1994-95?

As opposed to the blustering and empty threats being so usefully
employed today?

Making threats -- I have no idea how "empty" they are

Yes you, do; you just won't admit it.

On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 10:15:22 -0500, in a place far, far away, zzpat
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

Frank Glover wrote:

The leaders of Iran and North Korea are my biggest concerns on this
issue...and I doubt that anything CBS airs or doesn't air will alter
their views either way.



I seriously doubt Iran or N. Korea wanted nukes before Bush's holy war
("axis of evil"). In fact they had UN inspector and signed treaties
against nukes.

Oh, well. If they signed *treaties*. Say no more.

Bush screwed it up, not Iran, Iraq, or North Korea.

What color is the sky on your planet?

On 23 Sep 2006 06:42:10 -0700, "Jordan"
wrote:


Mike Schilling wrote:
"Jordan" wrote in message
oups.com...

The North Korean nuclear weapons program existed during Bill Clinton's
Presidency -- you may recall the rather active tribu ... I mean,
"diplomacy" regarding that around 1994-95?

As opposed to the blustering and empty threats being so usefully employed
today?

Making threats -- I have no idea how "empty" they are -- is better than
paying tribute. Especially to a weaker Power. In the 1990's, we were
on the road to paying _more_ tribute, including _nuclear reactors_ --
today, we are on the road to paying less. Maybe before too long we'll
cancel the humanitarian aid as well, and watch Kim Jong Il's nasty
little regime collapse.

blink The reason these third world nuclear powers are a
threat is not because they can overwhelm us with their ICBMs (they
don't have them) - it's because they might sell a nuke to terrorists.
Just as Bush said Iraq could. We paid "tribute" because if we didn't
a starving North Korea WOULD sell nukes to put food on the table.
That crazy M-F in charge doesn't care about anything except *staying*
in charge.

HR

Mike Schilling wrote:
Jordan wrote:
Mike Schilling wrote:
"Jordan" wrote in message
oups.com...

The North Korean nuclear weapons program existed during Bill
Clinton's Presidency -- you may recall the rather active tribu ...
I mean, "diplomacy" regarding that around 1994-95?

As opposed to the blustering and empty threats being so usefully
employed today?

Making threats -- I have no idea how "empty" they are

Yes you, do; you just won't admit it.

No really, I don't. I do not know whether or not our Administration is
planning to annihilate North Korea, conquer North Korea, knock out
North Korea's military, knock out its nuclear weapons sites, do
nothing, or offer North Korea more bribes in the future. All are
possible future policy options, and I do not know what, precisely, we
intend to do.

Not knowing what we are actually willing to do, I cannot evaluate the
degree of "emptiness" and "bluster" (as opposed to "solidity" and
"seriousness") of our threats.

What do _you_ believe that we intend to do?

- Jordan

Joseph Michael Bay wrote:
"Jordan" writes:

What I find odd about this is the assumption that the most serious
means of debating the nature of life on Earth after an atomic war is
duelling TV dramas. BOTH "The Day After" and "Jericho" are FICTION!!!
Reality check!

As an SF fan, though, surely you must know that fiction is, in
part, a way of talking about reality. Without verisimilitude
of some kind, it's difficult (but not impossible) to have much
substance.

Indeed, but I'm not seeing the debate about the plausibility of
_either_ being very well grounded in reality. Furthermore, the
question: "Is nuclear war survivable?" is in general already answered,
and the answer is a resounding "YES" because we actually fought one in
1945. It seems obvious, once that has been ascertained, that the next
question has to do with the degree and requirements of survivability of
various levels of nuclear warfare.

Since, from what I understand so far, in _Jericho_ the size and
locations of the nuclear weapons usage relative to the town have not
yet been determined, the question of the survival requirements for the
people _in the town of Jericho_ is an open one. I can make up
scenarios given what's been described so far in which they're all
doomed and ones in which the only deaths are owing to the popular
panic.

So the debate is meaningless, and even more meaningless in terms of
what would happen in an _actual_ nuclear war (in the one that was
actually fought, some of the survivors celebrated in the downtowns of
every major city, and my dad rode a baby flat-top home to San Francisco
and hopped a train for the Bronx, New York, if you want to judge all
atomic warfare by that example).

Sincerely Yours,
Jordan

wrote in message
ups.com...

Mike Schilling wrote:
Jordan wrote:
Mike Schilling wrote:
"Jordan" wrote in message
oups.com...

The North Korean nuclear weapons program existed during Bill
Clinton's Presidency -- you may recall the rather active tribu ...
I mean, "diplomacy" regarding that around 1994-95?

As opposed to the blustering and empty threats being so usefully
employed today?

Making threats -- I have no idea how "empty" they are

Yes you, do; you just won't admit it.

No really, I don't.

Well, add it up:

Any sort of action against North Korea in the 5 1/2 years of the Bush
presidency: none.

Thwarting of North Korea's nuclear program during that same period: none

Likelihood that the US will attack North Korea in the remaining 2 1/2 years:
0 %

Likelihood that the US will cause regime change in Noth Korea during that
same period: 0 %