In his new research-based hypothetical book “Nuclear war: a scenario”, Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen reveals how a nuclear holocaust would unfold in real time. She uses startling facts that most citizens outside the military-industrial complex don't know and paints vivid second-by-second descriptions of the catastrophic effects ICBMs would have if they hit targets, including Washington, D.C. and Southern California. Nuclear power plant in Diablo Canyon.
Bodies and buildings instantly turn to ashes. Irradiated fuel rods are launched into the sky to poison the air for miles in all directions as toxic lava sinks into the depths of the planet. The fiery vortexes consume everything. The country falls to its knees in less than an hour before the entire world follows. Nothing and no one is saved.
In “Fall,” the hit Prime Video show that premiered in April and has already been renewed for a second season, a nuclear war leads to a fantastic scene in which a guy in nuclear-powered armor gets mauled by a mutant bear. Later, we meet a 200-year-old noseless cowboy ghoul (Walton Goggins), once known as movie star Cooper Howard, who recites jokes during his quest to reunite with his long-lost family. It's a surprisingly fun depiction of the post-apocalypse compared to reality.
Walton Goggins stars in Prime Video's “Fallout” as the devil, a 200-year-old former movie star searching for his family after the nuclear apocalypse.
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If you consumed both media at the same time, as I did, you could suffer serious whiplash from nuclear war. With Jacobsen's bleak book, there is a sense of accomplishment in absorbing the worst knowledge you can get and gaining a clear perspective. “Fallout,” on the other hand, is a wildly entertaining show that almost asks us to forget this knowledge and imagine a future where there is action, adventure and even romance and humor in the decades following nuclear annihilation.
One comes very close to ruining the other, but consuming the book and the television show together sets the parameters for how nuclear war is portrayed in today's pop culture. For one thing, nothing follows. Our society ends like the dinosaurs did and the Earth moves on without us, healing itself tens of thousands of years later. At the other extreme, in “Fallout,” humanity not only survives, but rebuilds in interesting new ways with factions and heroes, plus ultra-patriotic survivors emerging from underground vaults and then must acclimate to a ruthless new world. “Fallout”, based on a popular video game seriesit plays loosely with the reality of nuclear war and, as a fantasy, is far more reassuring than Jacobsen's dire warning that we are closer to the abyss than ever.
The entertainment industry has battled the threat of nuclear war since the Cold War. “Dr. Strangelove” and “Failsafe” mined comedy and drama from global anxiety, but it was the triple whammy of the films “The Day After,” “Threads” and “Testament” in the 1980s, as well as “ WarGames,” which gave multiple generations nightmares. They offered a more realistic depiction of nuclear devastation than had been seen before in movies or television. The alarm even reported a “Superman” sequel.The search for peace.”
And then we forget. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the treaties that were signed seemed to point toward limited nuclear disarmament, causing fears of nuclear war to subside for many. The apocalypse in pop culture changed to zombiegeddons renderings or dystopian stories like “The Hunger Games”, where the future was shadowed by fascist takeovers and economic divisions rather than atomic explosions. Young Adult Fiction has not shied away From post-apocalyptic shots, but the methods of destruction and salvation are varied: meteorites, volcanoes and futuristic war factions do not prevent humanity from seeking justice and finding heroes.
In recent years, superhero movies like “watchmen“and Marvel”Civil war” have brushed against old fears about a nuclear war with mixed effects. Who needs disarmament when you have superheroes to save us from ourselves?
It's been a while since something as dark as Cormac McCarthy”The way”—the book more than the movie—made us confront the idea that perhaps there is no real life, or life worth living, after the world is darkened by nuclear war. As Jacobsen points out, part of the reason the world is in its current precarious situation (with significant threats from countries like Russia, China, and especially North Korea, the instigator in the setting of his book) is because society has forgotten how crazy, dangerous and risky it is. our global policy of nuclear deterrence has been. The rule, basically a giant game of chicken where everyone hopes that no one will launch a missile and start a war because it would lead to mutually assured destruction, it only works, he writes, until it doesn't.
The most recent winner of the Oscar for best picture, “oppenheimer,” partly explores the consequences of opening Pandora's box after winning the race to create the first atomic weapons. But, like many Hollywood products on the subject since the 1950s, the consequences are far-reaching. We do not see what damage the bombs caused to human bodies and cities in Japan; We see what the developing atomic bombs did to one man's life, psychologically. He was far, far away when the weapons fell.
One could argue that the bleaker depictions of nuclear war (the opposite of what “Fallout” does) serve no one better than downplaying the risks and consequences of the apocalypse. Does not give in to despair after watching “The Day After” or consuming old episodes of “Twilight Zone” on the subject simply make the audience raise their hands in defeatleaving them unable to imagine that anything can be done about it?
However, reading Jacobsen's “Nuclear War” does not necessarily have to make the reader feel helpless. In fact, there is something satisfying about having information that perhaps the government wishes you didn't have. The book uses information that was recently declassified, and some of what the journalist discovers (particularly the deficiencies of intercontinental ballistic defense systems and the aggressive war preparations that North Korea has made in the last decade) is alarming. North Korea may never strike first, as it does in the book, but the country's mobile nuclear missile launchers, a satellite that could carry a destructive electromagnetic pulse weapon, and the decades it has spent building underground tunnels while preparing for Armageddon suggest that North Korea is the first to attack. more prepared for World War III than most want to imagine.
Is it too dark for anyone to contemplate and understand? Jacobsen has done that job for us. Our duty is to accept that it is better to know the truth about what can happen, what the darkest outcome could be, than to continue pretending that post-nuclear Los Angeles would look anything like “Fallout.” (Don't get me wrong: I'll still be watching season 2 when it arrives.)
Jacobsen's book has been Opted as a possible project for “Dune” director Denis Villeneuve, and it's hard to imagine a filmmaker more capable of transforming such a terrifying book into a cinematic vision to shake audiences to their core. In the event of a nuclear explosion, you should never look directly at it, but if you want to know the truth of how precarious our global situation is, you should look directly at Jacobsen's essential source material for all the truths that pop culture has been helping. let's avoid
