Tasteless Depictions of Nuclear War

[exobook]

Settings like Mass Effect, or Warhammer 40000, will use Nukes as a unit of measurement to try and sell you on how great and awesome the power of their weaponry is. And it is meant to be shown as cool. "Whoa, that ship's gun fires shots three times more powerful than the Little Boy? Wicked!" That's what we're being told, not "Dear god, this is a weapon of mass destruction greater than the most infamous weapon in modern history, and we are making a joke out of it."

Side stepping the arguments about nukes and nuclear warfighting (yes this is a phrase actually used), part of the problem is that the Hiroshima is so often used as a measurement for a weapon or event because its the largest event of destruction in the public conscious so for narrative convience writers will often use such event to tell the player how big the threat is.

However there is also the fact that in real life, space warefare is going to be just a leathal. If you acclerate an object of sufficant mass to sufficent speed it is going to hit with the explosive yield comparatble with nuclear weapons (1KG at 75% of light speed is going to give you a 11 Mt impact). So when mass effect and Halo and other universes throw around these numbers they atleast have a reason to do so. Would such a future be terrifying? Probadly but as we've yet the experience it on any great scale we can't visualise it so we fall back to using Hiroshima to compare it.

But of course we play these games for entainment and so often these games do not so the consequence of such weapons not only people it does not fit with the pacing or plot but also because the resulting images would not sit well with the console owner looking for something to unwind. This is compounded by visual media (TV, Film, Games) often shrinking the scale of space combat and its explosions to fit everything on the screens. According to the lore the photon torpedos on Star Trek have a 1 Mt warhead yet on screen they look like normal missilse.

All of this however has the effect of making many people desensitizatied to the effect of nuclear weapons since they keep seeing them having less effect in the media, that and the end of the cold war mean many people do not understand the effect of nuclear weapons. However this can also lead to the overplaying of the effects of nuclear weapons. Not to go into it but while the effects of the nuke denonation in Terminator 2 are realistic, it still gets the detail of scale all wrong. Not way the airblast could hit Sarah from a ground zero in central LA assuming she's in somewhere like Malibu. Not unless we're getting into the 40+ Mt weapon range.



On the case of Warhammer 40K its a bit more complicated. While on the surface Extermanatris (the destruction of a planet) looks like a immature "OH Wow we can blow up Planets AWESOME!" idea. Orginally the setting was more of a black comedy in which the setting creates an environment where the worse aspects of humanity (facism, extremism and hatered) are needed to survive. While this black comedy aspect has been lost to some extent, in this light the ideas of Extermanatris is more an example of mankinds brutality but also the cruel logic used to justify it.

 

[Thaluikhain]

The effects of nuclear weapons are grossly over-exaggerated, to the extent that many people don't feel that any precautions are worth taking in the event of an attack.

Tell me about it. My dad (who is usually pretty knowledgeable about politics and such) once told me that the combined power of the world's nuclear weapons "is enough to destroy the earth several times over." It really makes me wonder what kind of bullshit the media have been spreading to make him think that. I mean, maybe if you got them all together in one place and set them off at once, you could get a pretty big crater, but that's it.

Apparently active nuclear activists are responsible. While I support persuading people that nuclear war is bad, I don't like persuading people that if it happens, they can't survive, so don't bother trying.

 

[Varrdy]

One film in particular I want to mention is the film Threads http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/ Not so much as a tasteless film but more of an education. Anybody who thinks you can win at Nuclear war should watch this bad boy, totally chilling and has effected me my whole life ever since we where made to watch it in secondary school at the height of the cold war as I guess The Day After must have done for many of my American cousins. This film got me more as it is set a bit closer to home odviously

I watched Threads last week and The Day After last night. Whilst Threads is undoubtedly more disturbing, both need to be seen equally. What disturbed me most about Threads is that it was set in Sheffield, a city just 30 minutes (tops!) drive from where I live. I have relatives there, too.

 

[salfiert]

you know there are 23000 nukes on the planet earth, enough to kill everyone 1000 times over, there are hundreds or rapists, pedophiles, mass murderers and generally sad sick human beings, thousands die every day of starvation while we throw away more than enough to feed them, there are hundreds of seriously sickening depressing things going on in the world every day, and if you consider every one of those issues seriously and deeply, it is a massive drag, we make light of things cause the world is a dark enough place already, its not right but everyone needs it to live.

 

[Axolotl]

This is a pleasant fantasy but it's not what would actually happen. You're claim that would target military installations over cities isn't backed up by the facts. If you look at the declassified military plans that were made in the 960's for a nuclear strike by the USA then cities very much were targets with estimated casualties well in excess of 200 million. Now that's not from a nuclear war or even a nuclear exchange, that's just from a first strike. If a first strike has a higher death toll than any war before then a full blown nuclear war isn't just going to take out the respective governments and militaries, it is for all intents and purposes going to destroy any nation involved.

Cities themselves aren't targets, there's no point attacking people. However, various important things happen to be located at or near cities.

Certainly, it's going to destroy nations, but the people (as a whole) will survive.

The cities are targets, whether they're targets because they contain steelworks or because they contain people doesn't make any difference in what happens. Every city in the USSR was a target as well as most of the ones in China.

And the people as a whole won't survive, the target casualties in the 60's were over 50% of the population given how much more urbanised the world is now that's going to be closer to 75% from a full nuclear war. Even among the 25% or so that survive, they're now in total anarchy, pretty much all government officials are dead, all industrial capability is gone, they're in the perfect conditions for famine and disease far worse than almost anything we've seen before. All that within the worst ecological disaster ever. So even those who survive the initial blasts are unlikely to survive. A small number will, but overall the nukes will have a worse effect on their target than the Spanish had on America.

 

[Thaluikhain]

you know there are 23000 nukes on the planet earth, enough to kill everyone 1000 times over

So, 23 nuclear devices is enough to kill everyone?

there are hundreds or rapists

Millions. 1 in 3 women worldwide will be raped during their lifetimes, that requires many million rapists.

 

[Sixcess]

On the case of Warhammer 40K its a bit more complicated.

It still surprises me that there are people who take 40K entirely seriously since, as you say, it's always been an exercise in taking things to extremes for fun, laughs or satire... then pushing it a bit further. It's a setting where having your homeworld destroyed in a nuclear holocaust is not the worst thing that can happen - maybe it'd make it into the top five. And being killed in a nuclear attack wouldn't be in the top hundred worst things that could happen to someone on a personal level. Hey, at least it'd be quick...

But that's 40K, and it's so off the scale it probably shouldn't be compared to anything else.

 

[Thaluikhain]

On the case of Warhammer 40K its a bit more complicated.

It still surprises me that there are people who take 40K entirely seriously since, as you say, it's always been an exercise in taking things to extremes for fun, laughs or satire... then pushing it a bit further. It's a setting where having your homeworld destroyed in a nuclear holocaust is not the worst thing that can happen - maybe it'd make it into the top five. And being killed in a nuclear attack wouldn't be in the top hundred worst things that could happen to someone on a personal level. Hey, at least it'd be quick...

But that's 40K, and it's so off the scale it probably shouldn't be compared to anything else.

Well, the background has sorta moved on from there, it's lots its dark parody and become much more of another juvenile action franchise in many ways. Not to say completely, but much more than it was.

 

[Gorrath]

Also it should be noted that many horrible weapons fall into this category, though people in the West might not care or have thought about it much. True, nuclear weapons are the most powerful, but if you've seen the civilian victims of US/NATO weapons (and talked to survivors) we spread this level of terror everyday. Fallujah is a grim example of absolute slaughter and mayhem whose effects are still being felt in malformed, or stillborn babies, and sick residents due to the depleted uranium-tipped rounds fired by US attack aircraft that have irradiate the water supply.

There are conventional bombs that literally suck the air out of victim's lungs upon detonation, before the air itself is ignited like a match to propane fumes with the entire area (a mile or so wide) is reduced to ashes.

I feel compelled to respond to the claims about DU. The radiological hazards of DU are actually very, very small. DU gives off alpha particles, which don't even penetrate more than a few inches of air and are blocked by clothing. The birth defects and still born issues aren't because of irradiated water, but because of the chemical toxicological hazard. The toxicological hazard of DU is most pronounced invitro. I am not arguing that what's happened in Fallujah isn't bad, but that the problem is far more likely to be linked to invitro chemical poisoning than to irradiated water.

It is also important to remember that wide-scale destruction of any kind produces elevated levels of all sorts of harmful materials. There needs to be more study of DU's effects on the environment, but the idea that DU is the cause of health issues in a broad spectrum of people in effected areas is not yet supported by scientific study. In fact, studies that have directly looked at DU's health effects have not found causal links to cancer or any other morbidity.

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/features/du/faq_depleted_uranium.shtml

 

[Sixcess]

Well, the background has sorta moved on from there, it's lots its dark parody and become much more of another juvenile action franchise in many ways. Not to say completely, but much more than it was.

True. A lot of it does play the setting rather straight these days, despite the absurd foundations it's built upon (a bit like Judge Dredd in that respect.) The novels do get some good 'serious' stories out of the setting, but I guess my view on 40K will always be colored by the fact I remember when da Orks were football hooligans with green skin.

 

[zumbledum]

I feel like Nuclear Warfare is no worse than any other warfare that has ever preceded it's existence.

If you think about it, while nuclear weapons are much more powerful than what humans have ever had before their invention, at the same time there's more humans in the world than there have ever been before. As such, a normal scale war from any previous era would have been just as devastating to the human population as a nuclear weapon is to ours.

So I'd say nuclear war is owed the same deference that any war, it isn't special in it's horribleness.

well there are a few special things about nukes you dont get with conventional weapons , like the world being plunged into a freezing cold pitch black night for a few hundred years, the inability to drink the water eat the animals or grow anything in the soil. for a few generations , the rampant cancers and genetic damage the fallout will cause etc.

The problem you're not seeing is that, while there are around 3000 -known- nuclear weapons in the arsenal of the major nuclear powers... they are not all ARMED and LOADED. Some are hopelessly lost in crates of ordinance. Some are stashed away in various warehouses. Some are sitting in weapons development laboratories, where they work to make them even more terrible and deadly.

Now. You fire ONE nuclear salvo. Your targets... what will they be? Cities full of people? Hell no. They're going to be MILITARY installations, in an attempt to disable your enemy's ability to counter-attack. Those enemies return the favor. Now, -SOME- of those military installations will be in cities, and yes... casualties will be high...

But there will NOT be 3000 nuclear warheads flying around the globe all at once, blasting us into endless oblivion. There will be, at most, a few hundred tactical nuclear warheads, aimed strategically at our enemy's best guesses as to where all of our nuclear missile silos might be housed. We'll be doing the same.

You won't see 100 cities wiped off the face of the map. You'll see low-yield nuclear bunker-busters leaving city-block sized radioactive craters in the ground where subterranean launch complexes used to be. At best, the global powers will wipe out enough of one another's governments and military structures that they all collapse in on themselves. At worst, you'll have a paranoid bunch of post-nuclear nuclear powers arming up a second round of attacks with the millions of lives lost... and millions more doomed to a slow death by radiation poisoning... fueling their vendettas.

But more likely than not, that second round of attacks would be conventional warfare... as the moment you launch a nuclear missile, everyone is going to know EXACTLY where you launched it from and target your launch facilities.

It would be catastrophic, yes... but it wouldn't look a damn thing like what popular culture wants you to think.

Well the main problem is you wont use nukes on missile silo's they wont work thats kinda why you build them in silo's. then theres a maths issue with your assumptions, there are much better conventional solutions hitting these sort of targets. nukes are bad at penetrating deep ground , infact they are usually detonated mid air to cause the most damage over an area, they are also less effective at higher altitudes.

little man and fat boy were around 15 and 20kt's respectively , a tactical nuke for use against military targets would be half to a quarter of that.
so what excatly do you think the targets of the castle bravo ( a US nuke of 15000kt , yes 1000 times more power than little man) or the mind blowingly terrifying tzar that racks in an astonishing 50.000Kt's (3333 times the power of little man) these things can serve no other purpose than the mass extinction of, well everyone! but the enemy first.
Sure they are the top either side went and as much for propaganda as anything but majority of the arsenals are still 100-500KT X12 MIRV devices like polaris peacekeeper and trident. and those are still far too large to be used for anything other than massive indiscriminate area destruction.


but of course this day is done and we simply arent going to see that type of exchange. infact looking back you have to wonder if we ever really were. <erica has shown it needs an constant enemy to justify its "defence" spending and the soviets im sure found it useful propaganda to.

the real likely situation of a nuclear war now is between India and Pakistan and a scary amount of people seem to be thinking thats going to be a when not an if, there small arsenals all let off together is possibly enough to cause a global nuclear winter so thats great and all.

 

[Lilani]

Nuclear warheads are still the most visible and well known WMDs, so it's obvious why people would choose them for their super explosion bringer setpiece spectacles. That just compounds the problem I have in the first place. Not only are we glorifying and exploiting some of the worst destructive tools in history, but we are doing so at the expense and ignorance of other atrocities.

This is true, but only from the perspective of the West. The parts of the world that have seen warfare in the last half century have never seen the effects of nuclear warheads--only the effects of the other weapons listed by Johan. Nuclear Warheads only mean something very specific to very specific people in the world--and most of those people haven't seen war up close and personal in their own lives. The people in the world who are really seeing war and really experiencing atrocities are doing so just fine without nuclear bombs. Nukes may be the most "real" kind of warfare to you, but to everyone else bullets, bombs, and poison are as real as it gets.

The post-nuclear apocalypse situation is what the makers of Fallout and such are after. The involvement of nuclear weapons is only a means to achieve that situation without involving non-humans like zombies or aliens. The games aren't about how we got there, they're about how we move on when we arrive there.

This isn't the first post you've made on this, so I'm curious as to what you'd like to see come from these posts. Violence and fear has been exploited to tell exciting and memorable stories for centuries, so I hope you're not trying to prove that somehow this is something new to the last few generations. Would you rather stories didn't explore violent topics at all? Would you rather stories skirt around the facts that violence and atrocities are within the boundaries of what humans are capable of? Yes there are good and bad stories that exploit violence, but you can't have the good stories without allowing the bad as well. So what's the deal? What do you want?

 

[Doclector]

I dunno...To me, I always saw the use of nukes in the aforementioned "look how powerful we are" way in fiction fell into two meanings:

1) It's in a setting that's completely OTT already.

2) A sign that people never learn. We could have stopped at swords, or the first decent single shot rifles, but no. We had to make the bombs bigger, the guns had to fire more bullets, we had to have explosives that can remain hidden just under the the dirt for years until they blow someone's legs off. When you think of it that way, it becomes plausable that even splitting the atom would not be enough destructive power for humanity's hunger. Especially in settings like warhammer 40K, where mankind's empire, and the war, is so vast that a nuke strike three times the power of little boy is practically a drop in the ocean.

It can be done interestingly, or it can be done just to be OTT, and neither way is wrong, however, it can be handled wrong.

 

[exobook]

(a bit like Judge Dredd in that respect.)

Yeah judge dredd is anothing complex one. While it has reduced its black comedy aspect in recent yeahs it is still present in some stories (again depending on the writer is in effect in this strip). Yet on the otherhand its also become more mature in some ways. The conflict between Dredd the facist and Dredd the hero is more obvious and some stories have attempted to look at interesting themes like power, racism and corruption.

Its defiantetly lost its orginal satric agnle yet it is still a thought provoking comic.

 

[Thaluikhain]

well there are a few special things about nukes you dont get with conventional weapons , like the world being plunged into a freezing cold pitch black night for a few hundred years, the inability to drink the water eat the animals or grow anything in the soil. for a few generations , the rampant cancers and genetic damage the fallout will cause etc.

You don't get those with nuclear weapons either, at least not to anything like the extent you mean.

Well the main problem is you wont use nukes on missile silo's they wont work thats kinda why you build them in silo's. then theres a maths issue with your assumptions, there are much better conventional solutions hitting these sort of targets. nukes are bad at penetrating deep ground , infact they are usually detonated mid air to cause the most damage over an area, they are also less effective at higher altitudes.

Not true, silos are armoured, but they can (and would) still be destroyed.

Nuclear devices aren't bad at penetrating deep ground, however, you can initiate them at ground level ("groundburst") to do that, or initiate up in the air so the fireball doesn't touch the ground ("airburst") and the effect is spread over a much greater area, but not both. When you want to spread the effect around, which you often will, you don't use a groundburst.

This is why the Cheyenne and Yumantau complexes were both under big mountains. Mind you, IIRC, the Soviets did it better, Yumantau is a complex deep underground, which has a mountain range on top of it, full of things the West thought were far away in Moscow. The Cheyenne complex is just inside a mountain, and people knew where it was.

little man and fat boy were around 15 and 20kt's respectively , a tactical nuke for use against military targets would be half to a quarter of that.
so what excatly do you think the targets of the castle bravo ( a US nuke of 15000kt , yes 1000 times more power than little man) or the mind blowingly terrifying tzar that racks in an astonishing 50.000Kt's (3333 times the power of little man) these things can serve no other purpose than the mass extinction of, well everyone! but the enemy first.
Sure they are the top either side went and as much for propaganda as anything but majority of the arsenals are still 100-500KT X12 MIRV devices like polaris peacekeeper and trident. and those are still far too large to be used for anything other than massive indiscriminate area destruction.

The largest nuclear devices were developed back when targeting was much less accurate. You couldn't expect the device to end up anywhere near where you wanted it, so it had to be very big. There are still many largeish devices that will be used to attack wide areas, yes. That is not to say they will be used indiscriminately, they are carefully targeted because nobody has missiles to spare.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

This isn't the first post you've made on this, so I'm curious as to what you'd like to see come from these posts. Violence and fear has been exploited to tell exciting and memorable stories for centuries, so I hope you're not trying to prove that somehow this is something new to the last few generations. Would you rather stories didn't explore violent topics at all? Would you rather stories skirt around the facts that violence and atrocities are within the boundaries of what humans are capable of? Yes there are good and bad stories that exploit violence, but you can't have the good stories without allowing the bad as well. So what's the deal? What do you want?

Like I said in my OP, I am not trying to change anyone's minds, nor do I want to get on a soapbox to preach. I just feel exhausted with violent media in general, and I needed to vent. It's a means for discussion that I can't seem to get with my friends off the internet. There is a time and place for such stories, but when it stops being a unique spin on something, and becomes the status quo, I get worried. I am all for FPS games, or black comedy like Warhammer 40000, but I just want to see some topics exercised with a little more tact.

It's like trying to chip away at a mountain with an ice pick, I doubt it will get anywhere, but it feels good to get the weight off my chest.

 

[PhantomEcho]

This isn't the first post you've made on this, so I'm curious as to what you'd like to see come from these posts. Violence and fear has been exploited to tell exciting and memorable stories for centuries, so I hope you're not trying to prove that somehow this is something new to the last few generations. Would you rather stories didn't explore violent topics at all? Would you rather stories skirt around the facts that violence and atrocities are within the boundaries of what humans are capable of? Yes there are good and bad stories that exploit violence, but you can't have the good stories without allowing the bad as well. So what's the deal? What do you want?

Like I said in my OP, I am not trying to change anyone's minds, nor do I want to get on a soapbox to preach. I just feel exhausted with violent media in general, and I needed to vent. It's a means for discussion that I can't seem to get with my friends off the internet. There is a time and place for such stories, but when it stops being a unique spin on something, and becomes the status quo, I get worried. I am all for FPS games, or black comedy like Warhammer 40000, but I just want to see some topics exercised with a little more tact.

It's like trying to chip away at a mountain with an ice pick, I doubt it will get anywhere, but it feels good to get the weight off my chest.

I, for one, love discussions that don't hinge on CONVINCING everyone to see things your way.

I enjoy the discussion for the sake of the discussion. Some people I agree with, others I believe to be wrong, but all in all I just enjoy the idea of discussing things with other human beings and learning how they think and what makes them tick. It's quite fascinating to see how people react to certain things. I'm seeing something of a growing trend, these days, of people who seem to be completely saturated with all the violent media they can stand. It makes me curious to know what you would have it replaced with, had you a choice.

What sort of things would you prefer? Is it the glorification of death and devastation that tires you, or its mere presence? If you had the funding to create a show or game or movie of your own... what would you choose to make based upon your tiredness with violence?

These questions, to me, are much more interesting than arguing over specific uses of nuclear war.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

It makes me curious to know what you would have it replaced with, had you a choice.

What sort of things would you prefer? Is it the glorification of death and devastation that tires you, or its mere presence? If you had the funding to create a show or game or movie of your own... what would you choose to make based upon your tiredness with violence?

These questions, to me, are much more interesting than arguing over specific uses of nuclear war.

Violence has a purpose. Violence for violence's sake does not. A little levity can go a long way. Going back to Warhammer 40000, while I love the setting, I get tired of seeing the same story repeated over and over, with no happy ending in sight. Oh look, an Imperial Guard regiment not crewed by assholes! They get eaten by Tyranids. Having an ideal to strive towards, a positive goal, or the simple hope that things will get better can help drive a plot forward and make it compelling.

Film director Don Bluth once said that children can endure absolute nightmares and terror so long as a happy ending can be given. His movies often reflect that (An American Tale has child separation, The Land before time has the apocalypse, and Titan A.E starts with a near genocide). So if you are going to run your characters through shit, put something on the end of it to make it all better.

Again, that isn't to say that a nihilistic, cynical ending where everyone dies shouldn't be allowed. It's the overabundance of nihilistic cynical endings that's the problem.

The reverse can be said about my point on Nuclear war. If you are going to include something that monumental, follow through on it. Don't just put it in for the sake of scale, but work out just what that would mean for the characters involved.

 

[Kolby Jack]

By the way, this seems relevant: