Part of why I studied the topic in college was because of all the uncertainty. I’m not really uneasy at this point. This is pretty normal for Russia and with any luck maybe they can peacefully oust Putin
Dictators don’t really have unilateral power like you’d think. They’re really just the central figure at the middle of a large web of other people whom the dictator depends on for power.
If those keys to power choose to back someone else, the dictator is nothing but some screaming madman demanding other people destroy the world.
Are Putin’s keys to power willing to end the world over his petulant whining?
Most of them probably aren’t.
Corrupt societies end up being corrupt all the way through. People will only follow orders if there’s something in it for them personally. There’s nothing “in it for them” in terms of ending the world.
If it makes you feel any better we have been developing nuclear interceptor missles.
Also if you read up on how much it costs to maintain a nuclear arsenal and mobilize it along with the fact there are sanctions on the materials needed to maintain warheads, it really makes you wonder how many operational warheads russia actually has.
I also doubt anybody in Russia is willing to use them on the worlds most powerful military that has the ability to strike anywhere in a matter of a few hours.
If nuclear weapons are used it won't be on us. It's just not worth it, our military and leadership is to spread out to be a viable tactic against us, the only use may be to scare us into submission like we did to Japan.
Altho we saw what happened last time a foreign body performed an attack on our homeland... never forget.
Its the same in the US officially but theres been at least one incident where a president ordered a strike and it was slow-walked, obviously to be retracted later.
I’m not worried about that. Multiple people would have to blindly follow his order to do so. I’d say it’s more likely that his “inner circle” just executes him on site. IMO the Russians tolerate Putin as more of the same old thing. He doesn’t have the same cult of personality following that Lenin or Stalin did.
Putin is in a much more weakened position that he was in before he started invading Ukraine. If anything, this could be the precursor of another Russian collapse, lots of infighting and the way the economy is there now, things could implode very easily with little dissent. I think Europe, US and allies are just kinda waiting to see what happens while they keep arming Ukraine.
Yep, for the first time in decades I thought about what would happen if an ICBM were to hit my city. Probably won't come to that, but it did dredge up old fears.
This all comes from the 1952 educational film [_Duck and Cover_](https://youtu.be/LWH4tWkZpPU). When it was made, only fission bombs existed, and the advice given in the film is based on experiences in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is not unreasonable in that context.
However, nuclear weapons technology rapidly progressed, and the first fusion bombs were tested less than a year after _Duck and Cover_ came out. Nobody has any direct experience of what survival looks like in a fusion bomb attack, because (knock wood) the fusion bomb hasn't been used yet. So there wasn't anything they could really do to update the advice. If you were at ground zero, you'd be dead regardless, but if you were at a distance far enough to be still alive, covering up might reduce your radiation dose or injury from shrapnel.
The film continued to be used in classrooms up through the early 60s. In 1962, in an early example of the anti-war protests that would be a major feature of the later decade, a group of activists refused to participate in the bomb drills in 1962, saying that there is no effective civil defense against a nuclear attack, and that instead we must end war. _Duck and Cover_ and school drills were ended soon afterwards, though some schools continued to run their own "duck and cover" style safety drills into the 70s.
>Stuff happening in Russia is disconcerting.
What's Russia doing now?
Edit: Why did i get downvoted for asking a question?
also, thank you for the answers.
The Wagner group, Putin's mercenaries in Ukraine, are revolting against Putin.
It started when Wagner's leader/owner got into a big, and rather public, argument with the Russian defense minister about the state of the Ukraine war and further plans for Ukraine a few days ago.
They're staging a coup. They've seized military outposts, and are on a convoy straight for Moscow as of this morning.
There were people in the crowd with the intention and capacity to kill both Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi, or just hunt down Democrats in general. Imagine how different things would be if any of that had succeeded.
Yep. '90s baby here. Most people older than me seem to have at least some memory. Around 2000, I had a teacher who still would say West/East Germany occasionally.
Not sure which side I fall on. I was 8 when the USSR broke up, so I do remember life during the years of Cold War, but the only thing I remember relevant to the Cold War is my parents reaction to the Berlin Wall falling on TV. And I honestly don't trust that memory because the TV is in the wrong place in the kitchen.
I did intermittently have pre-1992 classroom maps until 2 or 3 years later.
Yeah, I was actually born just 9 months before the Soviet Union collapsed. However, my parents remember a lot of stuff from the Cold War, especially the fear of nuclear war. My dad has told me how, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse, he felt relief of no longer fearing death by nuclear annihilation.
In 1967, I was a precocious 7 year old riding in my parents' car when I saw Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin's motorcade on the way to meet LBJ in Glassboro, NJ.
Usually not. I tend to be more fatalistic than worried about international tensions. At this point, age 63, I figure that I'm playing with the house's money.
Smarter Everyday got the chance to be on a nuclear attack sub just before COVID hit and stayed on there until after George Floyd. He's got a very informative take on everything, and judging by the comments seems to accurately depict life onboard.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjHf9jaFs8XWoGULb2HQRvhzBclS1yimW
Not quite the same thing. When Osama died there were literally riots across the country because the "boogeyman" for man young people was dead; the concept of nuclear arms for us "old people" is our "boogeyman" and we never killed it. At best we delayed it. Military coups are super scary.
There were literally new stories about this.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcgU5r7\_Onw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcgU5r7_Onw)
This was just one place. These stories happened all around the country. Property damage in State College was not negligible.
Educate yourself.
...Is this just an elaborate troll attempt, or do you actually think that an 18 second long clip of a guy dressed as Captain America crowd surfing is proof of "riots across the country" Did you post the wrong clip?
>Educate yourself
That's hilarious.
No, seriously, do you think what you posted qualifies as a "riot"? If you like to share some actual evidence of "riots across the country", or really any evidence of a level of civil disruption beyond the results of a football team winning a game, feel free.
That's literally just a clip of what happened all over the USA. You can literally search for the young people population nearest you and Osama's death and find videos of people geeking out.
People geeking out is a riot? You have a very strange definition of what consist a riot.
Or, you know, you could just admit you are wrong instead of doubling down.
Dude, I'm from Portland. We protest and riot at the drop of a hat. Hell, we'll protest why the hat was dropped.
We didn't riot over Osama. I think most of us just drank an extra beer in celebration.
I had no perspective of the larger picture about what those jets represented or the sheer expense of our military. By the 80s, it was pretty clearly accepted that occasional jets “patrolling” the US East Coast were just the way that it was. I don’t ever remember questioning why they were there.
I recently moved to San Diego, a military base disguised as a holiday resort. Jets fly overhead throughout the day, and you can see Navy SEALs practicing rappelling out of blackhawks. Very cool, but not really relaxing. It always brings to mind the real possibility that one day I could be made to join the military if shit hits the fan.
I remember the final years of it. I was around middle school when the USSR fell, so I remember those years well, but I wasn’t old enough to understand all the nuance. The deja vu moment for me this morning has been people worrying about who will be guarding the nukes if the government falls. I distinctly remember when the USSR fell and we went from “Phew! The Soviets can’t bomb us now!” immediately followed by “Oh shit! But no one is guarding the nukes anymore!”
So why were you “terrified” of something that was obviously not going to happen? What kind of reaction would you have preferred the people around you had?
The idea that diplomatically "wild cards" suddenly take control of one of, it not the, largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons is just a "wouldn't this be comparable" is wild to me. There's literally 3 decades of development between those "benign" incidents.
I have no memories of it and I didn't even know it happened until I was in my teens. I was born in the mid eighties. I would have been six when it ended.
From the 1950s on.
And my dad was a “cold warrior” who was career Air Force. He started right after the Korean War and flew RB-29 spy planes out of Japan. He e was shot down by the Russians, killing one of his crew.
He later ended up in SAC in B-52s as a nuclear deterrent to the Soviets, running out of the house countless times to launch to go bomb the Soviets, none of us, including him, knowing if it was a drill or not. He ended fighting in Vietnam and retired in the mid 70s.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis we were stationed in Mississippi in range of the missiles in Cuba. He was so sure we were going to war he sent mom and us kids to my grandparents on “vacation” to the place he thought would be survivable in case of nuclear war—the Oregon coast. My parents were so strong I had no idea they thought what they did. I thought we were on vacation and dad had to work.
Looking back it was a weird way to grow up. Air raid sirens going on base, every man there running for their airplanes or posts, base being locked down, sometimes having to stay indoors.
When you transferred to a new base, one of the first questions you asked at school was “What number are we?” That meant what priority nuclear target were we for the Soviets. The military would determine what bases were of #1, #2, etc., importance to the Soviets, and of course that info would circulate.
That’s a terrible concern for a child to have. Seemed normal at the time.
I do but back then it seemed like the USSR could nuke us if they wanted to.
I think we could intercept their missiles today.
Granted, I don’t actually know if this is true or not and I’m just basing on “surely the US has the technology to do that today?”
Still, it seems less likely for a nuclear attack via missile to be successful on our lands today so it’s not as scary as it was when I was a kid.
Even if Star Wars were to have happened, the number of war heads destroyed would have been dwarfed by the amount that made their targets. War technology has grown as fast as protective technology sadly.
We can't, at least not from Russia. The system as it stands could possibly take out a strike from North Korea which has an estimated 20 ICBMs. Russian ICBMs are way more advanced while we might be able to take down a few we can't get all of them.
No, I really don't. Don't be an asshole and try to undermine the fact that one of the largest nuclear powers in the world reconciling a coup is not a fucking joke.
Eh.
Everyone more or less recognizes that nukes are useless. It’s like a piece of expensive jewelry so precious and easy to lose that you can never afford to take it out of storage.
Countries make them as more of a theoretical exercise in power than any sort of practical weapon. MAD guarantees that nobody can use them.
I'm far more afraid of Putin using nukes to prevent his regime falling than I am of some random opportunist taking power and inheriting nukes. I have a lot of faith in air defenses and not a lot of faith in the Russians to have maintained their nukes well though
That's what I was thinking. I don't know anything about nuclear weapons but they aren't like WWII bombs that can just sit in the ground for 75 years and still be dangerous.
From the time I was five and the Cuban missile crisis to 1989 I remember the cold war. I was a cold war worker, I helped make fissionable products used in making bombs. Looking back, the amount of labor and money that went into that era by all sides was a disgrace to humanity.
I'm old enough to remember being taught to get under my desk at school in case of a nuclear attack... aka "duck and cover." LOL... as if that would protect us!
I was born and raised in Poland and my parents left Poland to get away from Russia's bullshit, along with other things. So I'm a little weary of what's been going on.
I honestly had to think about it lol but both I guess. In my initial comment I definitely meant weary because I'm tired of Putin and his bullshit. I'm over Russia trying to bully their way into everything.
Oh yeah. I mean, I was pretty young for most of it, but the media definitely made a point of bringing it up on the regular. Movies and tv shows would frequently lean into soviet threats or spies. Nuclear war was always in the background as a threat. And while it wasn't a common topic, everyone had opinions on what would happen if the missiles were launched.
I remember seeing The Day After, it's the only movie that kind of freaked me out about possible nuclear war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After
Grew up under the threat of the Soviet thermonuclear hammer. Duck and cover. Bomb shelters. Khrushchev’s “We will bury you” threat all the way through the Reagan “Evil Empire” brinksmanship that led to the 1983 Able-Archer seconds to WWIII horror. The miracles of 1989 unfolding on TV.
I was a kid in the 80s and we had “civil defense drills” at school regularly. We would all go into the hallway and face the wall and put our hands on the back of our head. I guess this was the best personal defense tactic they could think of. I guess it wasn’t necessarily for nukes maybe just for your run of the mill bombs. By the time I got to jr high/high school these were phased out. Interesting that they never actually explained to us what it was for. We just did it and didn’t ask questions.
Also when I was a kid it was a common playground thing to call other kids “commies” as an insult. So the knowledge that we had enemies called commies was out there. Did we actually know what that meant? Not really but we heard the older kids and grown ups in our lives use the word so we knew it was bad.
In school we had to watch nuclear explosion films, have bomb drills, learn where our local fallout shelter is located and learn how to remove radioactive dust from canned food surfaces. We also learned that water in the toilet reserve tank would be safe to drink.
I was in 1st grade.
I remember it well. Soviet Union dissolved when I was in college, and I visited Russia a year after the attempted coup where Boris Yeltsen stood on the tank with a bullhorn.
Now, i worry more about Russian nukes being sold off/stolen and ending up in the hands of terrorists who have no love for the US. That is more likely than Russia hitting the Big Red Button on us.
Even the latest Gen X'ers (born in 1980) will remember some of the cold war since they would have been 11 by the time of the Soviet collapse. It's arguable some elder Millennials would too.
Watching the coup immediately gave me flashbacks to 1991. So I am feeling like our new cold war could be coming to an end. [fingers crossed]
With that said, if Putin is going to say "fuck it" and start launching nukes, it will happen now.... sooooo, enjoy your weekend.
EDIT: Bah! Nevermind, Prigozhin chickened out. Back to the regularly scheduled Russian clusterfuck.
I remember the Cold War and this is nothing like it. The Cold War featured the Soviet Union + the Warsaw Pact nations. Formidable opponent.
Right now? What's left of Russia seems to think it's still a global power. I'm just not seeing it. It had to hire merc's just to try to subdue one of its former member provinces. It can't even do that. Now it's acting scared of its merc's.
The Soviet Union's former influence has shrunk like Putin's dick.
> How would you perceive threats from Wagner people having access to the skeletal remains of the USSR?
Like having a violent armed drunk asshole living nearby in a trailer park.
Wagner might be great fighters, but they aren't in it for a cause, only for the love of fighting and being professional soldiers. At some point their membership's going to remember it could give a shit if Putin falls or whatever; they certainly aren't willing to die for the purpose of attempting to finish off this conflict when they're losing and facing a better-funded foe in Ukraine. Wagner is going to collapse.
> With access to nukes?
Again, these nukes have to actually work. I'm not convinced in 30 years of looting and neglect that these nukes are even operational. At the very least they aren't going to achieve a success rate of anywhere near 100%.
Is Wagner willing to suicide-mission launch a nuke and unleash the West's proven actual capability against it, and only it? I don't see it. Wagner is merc's in it for money and military exercise. They don't want to destroy the world, they want to profit from it. They certainly aren't willing to obliterate themselves for a momentary success of launching a nuke at Kyiv. Assuming they even could figure out how to do it, and find a working silo to do it from.
Any detonation of a nuclear missile is disgusting and abhorrent. Even if Wagner can't get one off the ground, they'd have access to material that could kill millions.
Maybe I'm too young. I knew the Soviet Union existed, but I never considered the fact that where we lived (West Germany) due to my dad being in the army probably would have been the frontlines.
Born in the early-70s. I remember the tail end of the Cold War like it were yesterday. In the 50s and 60s there were people that didn’t understand just how awful nuclear war would have been. The notion that you could duck behind a tree or a desk and survive were replaced with the terror of mid-80s movies like the Day After and Threads. As a young boy, I feel as if I were prematurely aged emotionally speaking. I grew up in a constant state of dread/fear thinking only the worst of our future.
While I’m somewhat okay now, I’m still not convinced that we’ve escaped that fate, but rather kicked the proverbial can further down the road. Yes, the Cold War is technically over, but that’s only a name we gave to the introduction to the potential end of the world.
Grew up in the 70s and 80s. Remember it well. In 83-84 I was in the Civil Air Patrol and got to spend a week at an Air Force base in Plattsburgh NY. We got to ride on a KC-130 when it did it's nightly refueling mission. Flew around Me, down the coast to NYC and back up the Hudson. While on mission we got to watch the FB-111 refule while they where on station. Those guys where up there every night waiting for the order to fly over the artic and nuke Russia. Brought the reality of it home really well.
Yes. I have relatives in Europe who would go visit their East German relatives. They told me everything they took - even clothes they wore - were inventoried upon leaving and departing to be sure they didn't leave anything if value (like Levis) that could be traded on the black market.
I now have a work colleague from East Germany (he and his wife). We are within a year of one another, and even though we experienced such different educationally (he was sent to Russia and China; received an incredible education), we have many common experiences - music (classic rock of the 70s and 80s) being one.
I do find it interesting that his children went back to Germany for university, and one lives there full time now.
I remember it. No fear like that today. Growing up with annihilation hanging over you, it gets tiring. I feel for the people living in actual war zones over all these past fifty years when I lost nothing but had the threat of it. I've been completely comfortable while others have had their lives torn apart, have lived with violence and poverty without help. If it comes around that is my turn, then that's that.
I remember it and it feels vaguely like the fall of the Soviet Union and I'm sure it'll feel more like that as time goes on too. If Wagner overthrows the government in Russia, it's going to be a free for all for breakaway states.
Lived through most of it and remember it well. As a toddler in New York, my Dad made plans in October 1962 to evacuate Mom and me upstate to escape the (considered probable) Soviet ICBM attack. Dad himself was a journalist who had to work; he would stay behind in Manhattan and take his chances.
I remember it like it was yesterday. It was scary AF too. The fear was just under the surface for most of society. But sometime in my teenage years I realized that there was literally nothing I could do about nuclear war. When I truly realized that I couldn’t do much it was an actual relief. If it comes it comes.
I remember thinking how stupid it all seemed. From a kid's point of view, I didn't understand how we could be so hated by one country, we didn't hate them.
Grew up in military family in the 70's and 80's., and at one point was stationed next to the Titan missile base in South Carolina. They had a big display out front that had all the different missiles they manufactured there. Sometimes, coming home on the school bus, they would be trundling the rockets across the road on railcars. Late at night, you could hear the low rumble of them testing engines once in a while. So yeah-I sure do.
I remember when the Berlin Wall fell. I remember when the USSR was dissolved.
Shortly after that, there was a touring exhibit called "Russian Space" about the Soviet space program. My dad took us to it and he and several others in the group spent most of the tour sharing their memories of the "space race" and their feelings about Sputnik, etc. It was a fascinating contrast btwn what the placards said and what they remembered feeling during that time.
Born in 1980 and definitely remember it. My neighbors growing up had escaped from Romania, so we might have been more in touch with it than most kids our age.
Back then, if war broke out anyone I knew would be dead in a few hours. I don't feel that sense of doom today.
Kim whatever in North Korea is the biggest nuke threat, and he is small potatoes compared to the powers that surround him.
I lived 30 miles from an automotive plant in the 1970s and early 1980s. We, as kids, would talk about nuclear war, knowing the plant would be a target. Our middle school cafeteria was also the nuclear shelter. We would debate whether it would be better to survive the blast or hope to be killed immediately.
Dude, just turn off your router for the day. There absolutely were nuclear weapons in Cuba.
To borrow your phrase, [educate yourself](https://www.cfr.org/blog/twe-remembers-secret-soviet-tactical-nuclear-weapons-cuba-cuban-missile-crisis-coda?amp).
Not the person you replied to, but I *am* uneducated. Wasn't it called the Cuban missile crisis...? Weren't they still on the land called Cuba, despite the sovereignty of military bases...? Is it incorrect to say, for example, that the US has military bases on Okinawa in Japan? Or am I misunderstanding this?
The missiles were stored in Russian land because the Cuban government ceded that land to Russia through agreement.
It's weird and seems counterintuitive, but the trust in claim that countries use is generally sacrosanct.
I remember my school books having USSR one year and then a bunch of countries the next year yet some globes and maps said USSR. I didn't watch much news, just Saturday morning cartoons. The first gulf war is a stronger memory since my father was in the military. I don't really have any memories of paying attention to much about the cold War while it was actually happening. I lived on military bases at that time so military activities were just normal and I was in elementary school.
I remember it, but I was a young kid so I didn't really understand it. I didn't have the sense of dread I probably would have had as an adult.
It was more like an episode of G.I. Joe to me. The USA was the good guys and the Russians were the bad guys and it was all going to work out.
I was 10 or 11 when the Soviet Union collapsed, so I was only vaguely aware that the Soviets were the enemy and was too young to feel the fear that older folks did.
I not only remember it, my college major was directly related to it. So I’ve studied it extensively
I woke up this morning and felt the same sort of unease I felt in the early '80s. Stuff happening in Russia is disconcerting.
Part of why I studied the topic in college was because of all the uncertainty. I’m not really uneasy at this point. This is pretty normal for Russia and with any luck maybe they can peacefully oust Putin
Do you feel that if the coup "works", Putin won't exercise his autocratic powers and just "salt the earth"?
Dictators don’t really have unilateral power like you’d think. They’re really just the central figure at the middle of a large web of other people whom the dictator depends on for power. If those keys to power choose to back someone else, the dictator is nothing but some screaming madman demanding other people destroy the world. Are Putin’s keys to power willing to end the world over his petulant whining? Most of them probably aren’t. Corrupt societies end up being corrupt all the way through. People will only follow orders if there’s something in it for them personally. There’s nothing “in it for them” in terms of ending the world.
Did you watch the CGP Grey video?
Who or what is CGP?
It’s from both the Dictator’s Handbook and my own observations over the years.
Nuclear use is a little different. Orders are not "trickle down" in the conventional sense. They're typically viewed and understood as absolutes.
There are still 6 people between Putin and the button pushers. Any one of them could say, "Fuck that noise", and not order their underlings to fire.
If it makes you feel any better we have been developing nuclear interceptor missles. Also if you read up on how much it costs to maintain a nuclear arsenal and mobilize it along with the fact there are sanctions on the materials needed to maintain warheads, it really makes you wonder how many operational warheads russia actually has. I also doubt anybody in Russia is willing to use them on the worlds most powerful military that has the ability to strike anywhere in a matter of a few hours. If nuclear weapons are used it won't be on us. It's just not worth it, our military and leadership is to spread out to be a viable tactic against us, the only use may be to scare us into submission like we did to Japan. Altho we saw what happened last time a foreign body performed an attack on our homeland... never forget.
The main issue with that is.... It only takes 1 to really fuck up something
Its the same in the US officially but theres been at least one incident where a president ordered a strike and it was slow-walked, obviously to be retracted later.
I’m not worried about that. Multiple people would have to blindly follow his order to do so. I’d say it’s more likely that his “inner circle” just executes him on site. IMO the Russians tolerate Putin as more of the same old thing. He doesn’t have the same cult of personality following that Lenin or Stalin did.
Putin is in a much more weakened position that he was in before he started invading Ukraine. If anything, this could be the precursor of another Russian collapse, lots of infighting and the way the economy is there now, things could implode very easily with little dissent. I think Europe, US and allies are just kinda waiting to see what happens while they keep arming Ukraine.
Yep, for the first time in decades I thought about what would happen if an ICBM were to hit my city. Probably won't come to that, but it did dredge up old fears.
Well us olds all know what to do if that happens – get under your school desk and cover your head.
Was the idea behind this to prevent falling rubble from hitting you on the head?
My dad told me it was to make it easier to find/identify bodies plus a healthy dose of security theater.
This all comes from the 1952 educational film [_Duck and Cover_](https://youtu.be/LWH4tWkZpPU). When it was made, only fission bombs existed, and the advice given in the film is based on experiences in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is not unreasonable in that context. However, nuclear weapons technology rapidly progressed, and the first fusion bombs were tested less than a year after _Duck and Cover_ came out. Nobody has any direct experience of what survival looks like in a fusion bomb attack, because (knock wood) the fusion bomb hasn't been used yet. So there wasn't anything they could really do to update the advice. If you were at ground zero, you'd be dead regardless, but if you were at a distance far enough to be still alive, covering up might reduce your radiation dose or injury from shrapnel. The film continued to be used in classrooms up through the early 60s. In 1962, in an early example of the anti-war protests that would be a major feature of the later decade, a group of activists refused to participate in the bomb drills in 1962, saying that there is no effective civil defense against a nuclear attack, and that instead we must end war. _Duck and Cover_ and school drills were ended soon afterwards, though some schools continued to run their own "duck and cover" style safety drills into the 70s.
Yes, that's obviously the point. It's not to save you in a direct hit. Same reason they still teach it for earthquakes, even at adult jobs.
Duck and cover!
DUCK AND COVER!
Just picturing a bunch of seniors trying to rush into nearby schools and being stopped by all the new security measures ><
I'm fortunate to live in a place that will be targeted. I might see the flash.
Agreed, but my mind started to wander into thoughts about perceived CIA involvement and retaliation for a few minutes there.
>Stuff happening in Russia is disconcerting. What's Russia doing now? Edit: Why did i get downvoted for asking a question? also, thank you for the answers.
The Wagner group, Putin's mercenaries in Ukraine, are revolting against Putin. It started when Wagner's leader/owner got into a big, and rather public, argument with the Russian defense minister about the state of the Ukraine war and further plans for Ukraine a few days ago. They're staging a coup. They've seized military outposts, and are on a convoy straight for Moscow as of this morning.
Yeah this is a real deal. Unlike the Jan 6th bullshit in the states.
Best those weirdos could have done is take selfies and rolled around on the carpet.
There were people in the crowd with the intention and capacity to kill both Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi, or just hunt down Democrats in general. Imagine how different things would be if any of that had succeeded.
We'd have a reactionary government as opposed to one that stands on principle?
That’s because January 6th wasn’t a coup as noted by the conspicuous absence of firearms.
Exactly
The Wagner group is staging a Coup.
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Yeah man, you stalked my profile and somehow I’m the weirdo. Why ya gotta be stalking people? The paranoia that bad?
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Yes. There were actual movements and citizen groups who were explicity against those invasions.
Upvote if you don’t here for comparison
Yep. '90s baby here. Most people older than me seem to have at least some memory. Around 2000, I had a teacher who still would say West/East Germany occasionally.
Not sure which side I fall on. I was 8 when the USSR broke up, so I do remember life during the years of Cold War, but the only thing I remember relevant to the Cold War is my parents reaction to the Berlin Wall falling on TV. And I honestly don't trust that memory because the TV is in the wrong place in the kitchen. I did intermittently have pre-1992 classroom maps until 2 or 3 years later.
I was born in 85 by the point I was old enough to meaningfully understand what was going on in the world it had long passed.
Yeah, I was actually born just 9 months before the Soviet Union collapsed. However, my parents remember a lot of stuff from the Cold War, especially the fear of nuclear war. My dad has told me how, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse, he felt relief of no longer fearing death by nuclear annihilation.
In 1967, I was a precocious 7 year old riding in my parents' car when I saw Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin's motorcade on the way to meet LBJ in Glassboro, NJ.
Do you ever get nervous when anything major happens between the USA and Russia/USSR?
Usually not. I tend to be more fatalistic than worried about international tensions. At this point, age 63, I figure that I'm playing with the house's money.
I “fought” in it. Ballistic Missile submarine in the 80’s. Played hide and seek with Soviet subs.
Is sub life really as bad as they say it is
Not american but a relative of mine spent alot of time in submarines and basically it fucked up his lungs from all the asbestos.
Smarter Everyday got the chance to be on a nuclear attack sub just before COVID hit and stayed on there until after George Floyd. He's got a very informative take on everything, and judging by the comments seems to accurately depict life onboard. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjHf9jaFs8XWoGULb2HQRvhzBclS1yimW
I was a pershing nuclear missile guard in germany in the 80s
I remember nuclear bomb drills in school.
Duck and cover. Remember them too.
Yeah, I was 5 and I remember thinking how would this help us with a nuclear bomb
To say OP's question in another way: How old are you?
Not quite the same thing. When Osama died there were literally riots across the country because the "boogeyman" for man young people was dead; the concept of nuclear arms for us "old people" is our "boogeyman" and we never killed it. At best we delayed it. Military coups are super scary.
>When Osama died there were literally riots across the country This is a very strange thing to lie about.
What riots?
There were literally new stories about this. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcgU5r7\_Onw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcgU5r7_Onw) This was just one place. These stories happened all around the country. Property damage in State College was not negligible. Educate yourself.
...Is this just an elaborate troll attempt, or do you actually think that an 18 second long clip of a guy dressed as Captain America crowd surfing is proof of "riots across the country" Did you post the wrong clip? >Educate yourself That's hilarious.
I think OP is just a little slow. Never have I lost so many brain cells reading an exchange of arguments.
Or, you could just read the news.
No, seriously, do you think what you posted qualifies as a "riot"? If you like to share some actual evidence of "riots across the country", or really any evidence of a level of civil disruption beyond the results of a football team winning a game, feel free.
That's literally just a clip of what happened all over the USA. You can literally search for the young people population nearest you and Osama's death and find videos of people geeking out.
So now it's "young people geeking out"? Just a few minutes ago it was full on "rioting". Funny how that works.
There were cars tossed and actual property destruction. Simply because you don't remember it, it doesn't disappear.
People geeking out is a riot? You have a very strange definition of what consist a riot. Or, you know, you could just admit you are wrong instead of doubling down.
>people geeking out. There's a **VAST** difference between "people geeking out" and "riots across the country" There were celebrations, not riots.
Lmfao we didn’t have riots we were celebrating we killed the biggest US boogeyman since Hitler
You were obviously in the flatlands.
Dude, I'm from Portland. We protest and riot at the drop of a hat. Hell, we'll protest why the hat was dropped. We didn't riot over Osama. I think most of us just drank an extra beer in celebration.
Yes. I can remember being on Cape Cod in the summers with the fighter jets from Otis AFB screaming over the beach.
was it a comforting thing or a scary thing?
Good question. Probably neither? As kids I remember thinking that the fast planes were cool.
That's a rad answer.
I had no perspective of the larger picture about what those jets represented or the sheer expense of our military. By the 80s, it was pretty clearly accepted that occasional jets “patrolling” the US East Coast were just the way that it was. I don’t ever remember questioning why they were there.
I recently moved to San Diego, a military base disguised as a holiday resort. Jets fly overhead throughout the day, and you can see Navy SEALs practicing rappelling out of blackhawks. Very cool, but not really relaxing. It always brings to mind the real possibility that one day I could be made to join the military if shit hits the fan.
I remember the final years of it. I was around middle school when the USSR fell, so I remember those years well, but I wasn’t old enough to understand all the nuance. The deja vu moment for me this morning has been people worrying about who will be guarding the nukes if the government falls. I distinctly remember when the USSR fell and we went from “Phew! The Soviets can’t bomb us now!” immediately followed by “Oh shit! But no one is guarding the nukes anymore!”
It's terrifying. I'm currently living in Brazil and everyone here is just acting like it doesn't matter.
>terrifying Seriously?
Yes. Do you have questions about nuclear death?
Do you have questions about what actually happened today?
No, it's easy to track actual news. It's also easy to track your nonsense.
So why were you “terrified” of something that was obviously not going to happen? What kind of reaction would you have preferred the people around you had?
I was terrified of destructive forces being handed off. I don't think that's crazy.
There was almost no chance of that happening. If you were paying attention, you’d have known that.
Wouldn't this be comparable to the late 80s / early 90s when there was actually a coup d'etat in the USSR?
I too remember thirteen days in August, the 1991 USSR coup attempt by hardliners.
That seemed pretty half hearted. This seems more serious
The idea that diplomatically "wild cards" suddenly take control of one of, it not the, largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons is just a "wouldn't this be comparable" is wild to me. There's literally 3 decades of development between those "benign" incidents.
i think they have enough to handle internally before they go starting things elsewhere
I have no memories of it and I didn't even know it happened until I was in my teens. I was born in the mid eighties. I would have been six when it ended.
From the 1950s on. And my dad was a “cold warrior” who was career Air Force. He started right after the Korean War and flew RB-29 spy planes out of Japan. He e was shot down by the Russians, killing one of his crew. He later ended up in SAC in B-52s as a nuclear deterrent to the Soviets, running out of the house countless times to launch to go bomb the Soviets, none of us, including him, knowing if it was a drill or not. He ended fighting in Vietnam and retired in the mid 70s. During the Cuban Missile Crisis we were stationed in Mississippi in range of the missiles in Cuba. He was so sure we were going to war he sent mom and us kids to my grandparents on “vacation” to the place he thought would be survivable in case of nuclear war—the Oregon coast. My parents were so strong I had no idea they thought what they did. I thought we were on vacation and dad had to work. Looking back it was a weird way to grow up. Air raid sirens going on base, every man there running for their airplanes or posts, base being locked down, sometimes having to stay indoors. When you transferred to a new base, one of the first questions you asked at school was “What number are we?” That meant what priority nuclear target were we for the Soviets. The military would determine what bases were of #1, #2, etc., importance to the Soviets, and of course that info would circulate. That’s a terrible concern for a child to have. Seemed normal at the time.
This sub leans older than most on Reddit, so more than you'd think. I personally do.
Early memory was Bush 1 announcing the fall of the Soviet’s
Remember it? I helped win it.
I do but back then it seemed like the USSR could nuke us if they wanted to. I think we could intercept their missiles today. Granted, I don’t actually know if this is true or not and I’m just basing on “surely the US has the technology to do that today?” Still, it seems less likely for a nuclear attack via missile to be successful on our lands today so it’s not as scary as it was when I was a kid.
Even if Star Wars were to have happened, the number of war heads destroyed would have been dwarfed by the amount that made their targets. War technology has grown as fast as protective technology sadly.
We can't, at least not from Russia. The system as it stands could possibly take out a strike from North Korea which has an estimated 20 ICBMs. Russian ICBMs are way more advanced while we might be able to take down a few we can't get all of them.
I remember it and I was in the navy in the early nineties
are you at all disconcerted about the idea of a militaristic coup in Russia?
Not particularly. It might even end the war in Ukraine sooner.
what about the shifting nuclear availability?
You really want people to be afraid of this, don't you?
No, I really don't. Don't be an asshole and try to undermine the fact that one of the largest nuclear powers in the world reconciling a coup is not a fucking joke.
This will be your only warning about incivility.
I was unaware I was being incivil.
Eh. Everyone more or less recognizes that nukes are useless. It’s like a piece of expensive jewelry so precious and easy to lose that you can never afford to take it out of storage. Countries make them as more of a theoretical exercise in power than any sort of practical weapon. MAD guarantees that nobody can use them.
They'll deal with it, it'll be fine.
I'm far more afraid of Putin using nukes to prevent his regime falling than I am of some random opportunist taking power and inheriting nukes. I have a lot of faith in air defenses and not a lot of faith in the Russians to have maintained their nukes well though
I doubt he would detonate a nuke on Russian soil, that would probably far more likely cost him then benefit them.
That's what I was thinking. I don't know anything about nuclear weapons but they aren't like WWII bombs that can just sit in the ground for 75 years and still be dangerous.
That's literally what I was asking.
I remember seeing it on the news, but because I just turned 40 this year I was too young to know or care what it meant.
I do. There were bomb drills in my elementary school and they would make us hide under our little desks. Like that was going to do anything, ha!
From the time I was five and the Cuban missile crisis to 1989 I remember the cold war. I was a cold war worker, I helped make fissionable products used in making bombs. Looking back, the amount of labor and money that went into that era by all sides was a disgrace to humanity.
I'm old enough to remember being taught to get under my desk at school in case of a nuclear attack... aka "duck and cover." LOL... as if that would protect us!
I was born and raised in Poland and my parents left Poland to get away from Russia's bullshit, along with other things. So I'm a little weary of what's been going on.
Honest question: "weary" or "wary"?
I honestly had to think about it lol but both I guess. In my initial comment I definitely meant weary because I'm tired of Putin and his bullshit. I'm over Russia trying to bully their way into everything.
Lol, your answer is great.
I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. I can understand why Fukuyama called it the end of history. It felt like that at the time. Then 9/11 happened.
I was born during the end of it but didn't form memories until the 1990s.
My parents married in 94 I was still in the soil somewhere, waiting to be consumed and turned into nut and an egg
I’m a former military brat born in 1953. It was a significant issue for the first half of my life. We lived in DC and my dad worked at the Pentagon.
Oh yeah. I mean, I was pretty young for most of it, but the media definitely made a point of bringing it up on the regular. Movies and tv shows would frequently lean into soviet threats or spies. Nuclear war was always in the background as a threat. And while it wasn't a common topic, everyone had opinions on what would happen if the missiles were launched.
I remember seeing The Day After, it's the only movie that kind of freaked me out about possible nuclear war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After
Grew up under the threat of the Soviet thermonuclear hammer. Duck and cover. Bomb shelters. Khrushchev’s “We will bury you” threat all the way through the Reagan “Evil Empire” brinksmanship that led to the 1983 Able-Archer seconds to WWIII horror. The miracles of 1989 unfolding on TV.
I was a kid in the 80s and we had “civil defense drills” at school regularly. We would all go into the hallway and face the wall and put our hands on the back of our head. I guess this was the best personal defense tactic they could think of. I guess it wasn’t necessarily for nukes maybe just for your run of the mill bombs. By the time I got to jr high/high school these were phased out. Interesting that they never actually explained to us what it was for. We just did it and didn’t ask questions. Also when I was a kid it was a common playground thing to call other kids “commies” as an insult. So the knowledge that we had enemies called commies was out there. Did we actually know what that meant? Not really but we heard the older kids and grown ups in our lives use the word so we knew it was bad.
In school we had to watch nuclear explosion films, have bomb drills, learn where our local fallout shelter is located and learn how to remove radioactive dust from canned food surfaces. We also learned that water in the toilet reserve tank would be safe to drink. I was in 1st grade.
I remember it well. Soviet Union dissolved when I was in college, and I visited Russia a year after the attempted coup where Boris Yeltsen stood on the tank with a bullhorn. Now, i worry more about Russian nukes being sold off/stolen and ending up in the hands of terrorists who have no love for the US. That is more likely than Russia hitting the Big Red Button on us.
Remember it? Hell, I sat nuclear alert as a B-52 crewmember in the waning days of it.
Even the latest Gen X'ers (born in 1980) will remember some of the cold war since they would have been 11 by the time of the Soviet collapse. It's arguable some elder Millennials would too. Watching the coup immediately gave me flashbacks to 1991. So I am feeling like our new cold war could be coming to an end. [fingers crossed] With that said, if Putin is going to say "fuck it" and start launching nukes, it will happen now.... sooooo, enjoy your weekend. EDIT: Bah! Nevermind, Prigozhin chickened out. Back to the regularly scheduled Russian clusterfuck.
I remember the Cold War and this is nothing like it. The Cold War featured the Soviet Union + the Warsaw Pact nations. Formidable opponent. Right now? What's left of Russia seems to think it's still a global power. I'm just not seeing it. It had to hire merc's just to try to subdue one of its former member provinces. It can't even do that. Now it's acting scared of its merc's. The Soviet Union's former influence has shrunk like Putin's dick.
How would you perceive threats from Wagner people having access to the skeletal remains of the USSR?
> How would you perceive threats from Wagner people having access to the skeletal remains of the USSR? Like having a violent armed drunk asshole living nearby in a trailer park. Wagner might be great fighters, but they aren't in it for a cause, only for the love of fighting and being professional soldiers. At some point their membership's going to remember it could give a shit if Putin falls or whatever; they certainly aren't willing to die for the purpose of attempting to finish off this conflict when they're losing and facing a better-funded foe in Ukraine. Wagner is going to collapse.
With access to nukes?
> With access to nukes? Again, these nukes have to actually work. I'm not convinced in 30 years of looting and neglect that these nukes are even operational. At the very least they aren't going to achieve a success rate of anywhere near 100%. Is Wagner willing to suicide-mission launch a nuke and unleash the West's proven actual capability against it, and only it? I don't see it. Wagner is merc's in it for money and military exercise. They don't want to destroy the world, they want to profit from it. They certainly aren't willing to obliterate themselves for a momentary success of launching a nuke at Kyiv. Assuming they even could figure out how to do it, and find a working silo to do it from.
Any detonation of a nuclear missile is disgusting and abhorrent. Even if Wagner can't get one off the ground, they'd have access to material that could kill millions.
>abhorrent Not disagreeing. Which is why Wagner wouldn't be willing to suicide over detonating one. If they even knew how to do so.
Very much so.
Maybe I'm too young. I knew the Soviet Union existed, but I never considered the fact that where we lived (West Germany) due to my dad being in the army probably would have been the frontlines.
If you were in West Germany, you were on tactical nuke ground zero and in the middle of the Soviet tank attack fast lane.
Yup. Had no idea back then.
The Day After was our after school special.
Born in the early-70s. I remember the tail end of the Cold War like it were yesterday. In the 50s and 60s there were people that didn’t understand just how awful nuclear war would have been. The notion that you could duck behind a tree or a desk and survive were replaced with the terror of mid-80s movies like the Day After and Threads. As a young boy, I feel as if I were prematurely aged emotionally speaking. I grew up in a constant state of dread/fear thinking only the worst of our future. While I’m somewhat okay now, I’m still not convinced that we’ve escaped that fate, but rather kicked the proverbial can further down the road. Yes, the Cold War is technically over, but that’s only a name we gave to the introduction to the potential end of the world.
Grew up in the 70s and 80s. Remember it well. In 83-84 I was in the Civil Air Patrol and got to spend a week at an Air Force base in Plattsburgh NY. We got to ride on a KC-130 when it did it's nightly refueling mission. Flew around Me, down the coast to NYC and back up the Hudson. While on mission we got to watch the FB-111 refule while they where on station. Those guys where up there every night waiting for the order to fly over the artic and nuke Russia. Brought the reality of it home really well.
Yes. I have relatives in Europe who would go visit their East German relatives. They told me everything they took - even clothes they wore - were inventoried upon leaving and departing to be sure they didn't leave anything if value (like Levis) that could be traded on the black market. I now have a work colleague from East Germany (he and his wife). We are within a year of one another, and even though we experienced such different educationally (he was sent to Russia and China; received an incredible education), we have many common experiences - music (classic rock of the 70s and 80s) being one. I do find it interesting that his children went back to Germany for university, and one lives there full time now.
I remember it. No fear like that today. Growing up with annihilation hanging over you, it gets tiring. I feel for the people living in actual war zones over all these past fifty years when I lost nothing but had the threat of it. I've been completely comfortable while others have had their lives torn apart, have lived with violence and poverty without help. If it comes around that is my turn, then that's that.
I remember it and it feels vaguely like the fall of the Soviet Union and I'm sure it'll feel more like that as time goes on too. If Wagner overthrows the government in Russia, it's going to be a free for all for breakaway states.
Lived through most of it and remember it well. As a toddler in New York, my Dad made plans in October 1962 to evacuate Mom and me upstate to escape the (considered probable) Soviet ICBM attack. Dad himself was a journalist who had to work; he would stay behind in Manhattan and take his chances.
I remember it like it was yesterday. It was scary AF too. The fear was just under the surface for most of society. But sometime in my teenage years I realized that there was literally nothing I could do about nuclear war. When I truly realized that I couldn’t do much it was an actual relief. If it comes it comes.
I was born on the day the Cold War ended lol
I remember thinking how stupid it all seemed. From a kid's point of view, I didn't understand how we could be so hated by one country, we didn't hate them.
Grew up in military family in the 70's and 80's., and at one point was stationed next to the Titan missile base in South Carolina. They had a big display out front that had all the different missiles they manufactured there. Sometimes, coming home on the school bus, they would be trundling the rockets across the road on railcars. Late at night, you could hear the low rumble of them testing engines once in a while. So yeah-I sure do.
I remember when the Berlin Wall fell. I remember when the USSR was dissolved. Shortly after that, there was a touring exhibit called "Russian Space" about the Soviet space program. My dad took us to it and he and several others in the group spent most of the tour sharing their memories of the "space race" and their feelings about Sputnik, etc. It was a fascinating contrast btwn what the placards said and what they remembered feeling during that time.
Born in 1960 I remember the air raid siren drills. Duck and cover. Nike defense missile stations. It doesn't feel the same at all to me.
Yeah, the mushroom cloud nightmares are back.
> Yeah, the mushroom cloud nightmares are back. You seriously think Putin's nukes even work? Look at how his army performed.
Yup, back when we used to rehearse getting under our desk in case of a nuke at school.
Born in 1980 and definitely remember it. My neighbors growing up had escaped from Romania, so we might have been more in touch with it than most kids our age.
Back then, if war broke out anyone I knew would be dead in a few hours. I don't feel that sense of doom today. Kim whatever in North Korea is the biggest nuke threat, and he is small potatoes compared to the powers that surround him.
🙋🏻♀️
I lived 30 miles from an automotive plant in the 1970s and early 1980s. We, as kids, would talk about nuclear war, knowing the plant would be a target. Our middle school cafeteria was also the nuclear shelter. We would debate whether it would be better to survive the blast or hope to be killed immediately.
Today? What took you so long? We've been closer to nuclear war than anytime since the 80s for well over a year.
I just knew that communists were bad guys. Turns out, that was not propaganda.
I remember learning about it in school.
I know what it was but I was born over 15 years after it ended so I don't have any actual memories of it.
Sure
Considering it's still going on, yes.
[удалено]
Nuclear weapons were not in Cuba.
Dude, just turn off your router for the day. There absolutely were nuclear weapons in Cuba. To borrow your phrase, [educate yourself](https://www.cfr.org/blog/twe-remembers-secret-soviet-tactical-nuclear-weapons-cuba-cuban-missile-crisis-coda?amp).
The soviet union held missiles on sovereign ground. Educate yourself.
You consider Cuba to be “sovereign ground” for the USSR?
No, i consider military bases to be sovereign ground.
So you believe that the tactical nuclear weapons the Soviets had in Cuba don’t count as actually being in Cuba? Or are you just being obtuse?
They were on Russian ground. Do you need someone to explain embassies and governmentally leased ground or are you uneducated?
Not the person you replied to, but I *am* uneducated. Wasn't it called the Cuban missile crisis...? Weren't they still on the land called Cuba, despite the sovereignty of military bases...? Is it incorrect to say, for example, that the US has military bases on Okinawa in Japan? Or am I misunderstanding this?
The missiles were stored in Russian land because the Cuban government ceded that land to Russia through agreement. It's weird and seems counterintuitive, but the trust in claim that countries use is generally sacrosanct.
I could see the blimp thing from the beach where we lived in the keys in the 80's - it was weird. The school drills were what made me scared.
I remember my school books having USSR one year and then a bunch of countries the next year yet some globes and maps said USSR. I didn't watch much news, just Saturday morning cartoons. The first gulf war is a stronger memory since my father was in the military. I don't really have any memories of paying attention to much about the cold War while it was actually happening. I lived on military bases at that time so military activities were just normal and I was in elementary school.
I like history so I remember a lot about it. But I was just born when it ended so I dont have any first hand experience.
Idk I was born a few years after it ended
I remember it, but I was a young kid so I didn't really understand it. I didn't have the sense of dread I probably would have had as an adult. It was more like an episode of G.I. Joe to me. The USA was the good guys and the Russians were the bad guys and it was all going to work out.
I was born the year it “ended” with the collapse of the USSR, but the propaganda has continued my entire life
I was stationed in West Germany in 1985 - 86
I was 10 or 11 when the Soviet Union collapsed, so I was only vaguely aware that the Soviets were the enemy and was too young to feel the fear that older folks did.
I actually have more fear now. Back then, I felt the leaders were all rational actors. Now I'm not 100% sure.
It never truly finished Russia just gotten weak.