Enjay
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Registered: 12-00 |
Csonicgo said:
Of course, the other, more humorous angle of the R-7 being shelved was that the US knew about it from constant U-2 surveillance. Of course the US knew about it, the Soviets knew the US knew it, so they pooh-poohed the thing and scrapped the idea. If I recall it was eating up to a tenth of their defense budget which was already wearing thin.
During the cold war the Americans knew what the Russians were doing. The Russians knew what the Americans were doing. The Americans knew that the Russians knew what they were doing. The Russians knew that the Americans knew what they were doing. The Americans knew that the Russians knew that the Americans knew what they were doing... In fact, intelligence and counter intelligence sometimes seemed to be the whole point of the cold war.
It was, indeed, "the greatest dick measuring contest ever held". It was also enough to have much of the world held in fear believing that the figurative clock counting down to nuclear Armageddon was teetering at "one minute to midnight" (as it was often described) for much of the late seventies and early eighties. We all knew terms like "M.A.D." (Mutually Assured Destruction) and about the four minute warning that we were likely to get (if that) before the nukes started raining. Even as a school kid, discussions with your mates about what would happen if "the nukes started falling" and where you would most like to be at the time would not be an especially rare thing to happen (the basic answer usually came down to getting burned to a crisp). The British government issued the "Protect and Survive" manual (which amounted to building a pretty insubstantial shelter inside your house from doors and bags of earth and also painting your windows with white paint - a tall order in 4 minutes). Works or art/popular culture (songs, films, TV shows etc) regularly featured the theme of nuclear devastation and "end of the world" scenarios and no student flat was complete without this poster on the wall. Every other day there seemed to be news articles about anti-nuclear demonstrations or some diplomatic incident that was making the world an even more unsafe place.
Nuclear war was, as we saw it at the time, a very real, clear and present danger that we were genuinely worried about.
And people wonder why people my age are happy to dismiss the rare threat of an individual extremist with an IED in his shoe. We faced-off the meltdown of the entire planet dammit. :P
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02-09-12 12:04 
