So, recently there was a bit of a stir in the world of geopolitics. Now don't click away yet, I know that that first sentence could have come across as SUPER boring. But, hear me out. This is kind of a big deal and could have affected the world in ways we don't know.
On January 13th, there was a bit of a stir in Hawaii, some of you may have heard of this on the news. There was an accident involving the use of Hawaii's Emergency Management Agency. When going between shifts Saturday at 8 a.m., someone accidentally flipped the switch to Missile Alert, which sent out this message to everyone in Hawaii:
That's a little scary right? Well this whole debacle, which lasted only about 40 minutes (or in my opinion, 40 minutes TOO long), sent the people of Hawaii into a panic, and rightly so. People fled to bomb shelters, people were calling their family and friends to say goodbye and a bunch of other things that one tends to do when the END OF THE WORLD is upon you!
But this whole incident reminded me of one of my favorite films, and how eerily relevant it is today. That movie is Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.
So for those of you not well versed in the film, Dr. Strangelove is about a fictional nuclear incident in 1964. A rogue Air Force commander goes and orders all of his planes to go and attack their assigned targets in Russia, which would trigger an all-out nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The order is made as the commander believes that the fluoridation of the U.S. water supply is a conspiracy by the Soviets to sap 'our bodily fluids' (i.e. the guy can't get it up anymore).
After a series of attempts to get the planes back, the President and his war council are able to get all of the planes recalled, except one. This one rogue plane makes it to one of their targets, drops their nuclear bomb, and the world is destroyed in a nuclear firestorm.
Now, this seems bleak. I know, and oddly enough the film is a pretty well-written comedy, serving as a commentary on the ridiculousness of nuclear war. One of the things that sticks out to me though, is just how relevant the film is today.
Released in 1964, it is clearly a film of its era. Shot in black and white, and with at times outdated references, but yet in today's crazy world, I find that it still rings true (not to mention some of the more hilarious jokes are pretty timeless).
Today, we still live in a time threatened by unstable leaders, social tension and the imminent threat of nuclear war. So when I read that Hawaii had alerted its citizens of an incoming bomb, I was a bit shocked, to say the least. After reading that headline, I thought to myself, "this might be it for peace talks."
It was terrifying, to say the least, and thankfully it was a false alarm. But I have to wonder. What would have happened, if the US hadn't seen it as a false alarm, and we had acted upon that perceived threat? Would we have shot a nuclear bomb at North Korea? I truly shudder at the thought.
So hopefully there is no need for a nuclear threat alert anytime soon. Let's also hope that our leaders will not be stupid enough to try and trigger a nuclear war for the sake of fame or glory, or heaven forbid their "bodily fluids." Until a nuclear threat does come knocking on our doorstep, let's all take a moment to at least laugh about it all, and maybe learn something from Dr. Strangelove, a classic, but relevant piece of nuclear cinematic history.