Why is Nuclear War Risk Being Dismissed?
At dinner with my mom on Monday, she mentioned that she’d recently watched the new Bob Dylan movie, A Complete Unknown. A bit of the film takes place during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. She confessed that she, who was born in 1946, had largely forgotten how frightened people were at the time, with many people leaving large cities (potential targets) in a state of panic.
Our conversation reminded me of a question I’ve been turning over in my head since 2022—namely, why has the risk of nuclear war apparently been completely dismissed by much of humanity, including our so-called leaders?
I grew up reading Cold War history that told of near misses, mishaps, and miscalculations in the business of maintaining the Mutually Assured Destruction nuclear doctrine. On a few occasions, the world came very close to annihilation.
Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove left an indelible impression on my mind, as did the 2000 film Thirteen Days and the 2002 film The Sum of All Fears.
In the genre of science fiction, I remember innumerable terrifying stories and films set in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic world that has been devastated by nuclear war, with the survivors trying to eke out an existence.
The Road Warrior and Blade Runner were two of my favorite films in this genre. The Dead Zone, directed by David Cronenberg and released in 1983, tells the story of a man who has a nightmarish vision that a charismatic politician aspires to start a nuclear war.
I’ve heard cognitive psychologists say that forgetfulness is the mind’s way of protecting us from the traum
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
