World War III in popular culture
Encyclopedia
World War III is a common theme
in popular culture
. Since the 1940s, countless books, films, and television programmes have used the theme of nuclear weapon
s and a third global war
. The presence of the Soviet Union
as an international rival armed with nuclear weapons created a persistent fear in the United States
. There was a pervasive dread of a nuclear
World War III, and popular culture reveals the fears of the public at the time. This theme in the arts was also a way of exploring a range of issues far beyond nuclear war. The historian Spencer R. Weart
called nuclear weapons a "symbol for the worst of modernity."
During the Cold War, concepts such as mutual assured destruction
(MAD) led lawmakers and government officials in both the United States and the Soviet Union to avoid entering a nuclear World War III that could have had catastrophic consequences on the entire world. Various scientists and authors, such as Carl Sagan
, predicted massive, possibly life ending destruction of the earth as the result of such a conflict. Strategic analysts
assert that nuclear weapons prevented the United States and the Soviet Union from fighting World War III with conventional weapon
s. Nevertheless, the possibility of such a war became the basis for speculative fiction
, and its simulation in books, films and video games became a way to explore the issues of a war that has thus far not occurred in reality. The only places a global nuclear war have ever been fought are in expert scenarios, theoretical models, war games, and the art, film, and literature of the nuclear age
. The concept of mutually assured destruction was also the focus of numerous movies and films.
Prescient stories about nuclear war were written before the invention of the atomic bomb. The most notable of these is The World Set Free
, written by H. G. Wells
in 1914. During World War II
, several nuclear war stories were published in science fiction
magazines such as Astounding
. In Robert A. Heinlein's
story "Solution Unsatisfactory
" the US develops radioactive dust as the ultimate weapon of war and uses it to destroy Berlin
in 1945 and end the war with Germany. The Soviet Union then develops the same weapon independently, and war between it and the US follows. The bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in 1945 made stories of a future global nuclear war look less like fiction and more like prophecy. When William Faulkner
received the Nobel Prize in Literature
in 1949, he spoke about Cold War themes in art. He worried that younger writers were too preoccupied with the question of "When will I be blown up?"
On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, code named "Joe 1
". Its design imitates the American plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945.
American fears of an impending apocalyptic World War III with the communist bloc
were strengthened by the quick succession of the Soviet Union’s nuclear bomb test, the Chinese Communist Revolution
in 1949, and the beginning of the Korean War
in 1950. Pundits named the era "the age of anxiety", after W. H. Auden
. In 1951 an entire issue of Collier's magazine was devoted to a fictional account of World War III. The issue was entitled "Preview of the War We Do Not Want
". In the magazine, war begins when the Red Army
invades Yugoslavia
and the United States responds by conducting a three month long bombing campaign of Soviet Union military and industrial targets. The Soviet Union retaliates by bombing New York City
, Washington, D.C.
, Philadelphia, and Detroit.
Against this background of dread there was an outpouring of cinema with frightening themes, particularly in the science fiction genre. Science fiction had previously not been popular with either critics or movie audiences, but it became a viable Hollywood genre during the Cold War
. In the 1950s science fiction had two main themes: the invasion of the Earth (symbolising the US) by superior, aggressive, and frequently technologically advanced aliens; and the dread of atomic weapons, which was typically portrayed as a revolt of nature, with irradiated monsters attacking and ravaging entire cities.
In The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), a flying saucer lands on the Mall in Washington DC
, where it is surrounded by troops and tanks. The alien Klaatu delivers an ultimatum that the Earth must learn to live in peace or it will be destroyed. The War of the Worlds
(1953) has a montage sequence where the countries of Earth join together to fight the Martian invaders. The montage conspicuously omits the Soviet Union, implying that the aliens are a metaphor for communists. The most elaborate science fiction films in the 1950s were This Island Earth (1955) and Forbidden Planet
(1956). In the climax of both films the characters witness the explosion of alien planets, implying Earth's possible fate. The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959) is also in the science fiction genre. In it, a man, a woman, and a bigot (the devil) roam New York City
after a nuclear war. Only those three characters appear in the film. Also released in 1959 was On the Beach
, directed by Stanley Kramer
and starring Ava Gardner
, Gregory Peck
and Fred Astaire
. Based on the successful novel by Nevil Shute
, the film deals with the citizens of Australia
as they await radioactive fallout, a result of a catastrophic nuclear war
in the Northern Hemisphere
. The French
author Stefan Wul
's 1957 novel Niourk
provided a portrait of New York after World War III. The 1959 novel Alas, Babylon
depicted the effects of nuclear war on a small town in Florida; an television adaptation was broadcast in 1960.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
, George Orwell
's bleak 1949 novel about life after a third world war, rose to cultural prominence in the 1950s. In it the world has endured a massive atomic war and is politically divided into three totalitarian superstates, which are intentionally locked into a perpetual military stalemate; this never-ending warfare is used to subjugate their populations.
, these films struck people’s "imagination of disaster...in the fantasy of living through one’s own death and more the death of cities, the destruction of humanity itself." A leading member of the 1960s anti-war movement, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan
evoked the topic of WWIII thrice in his seminal The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
, in "Masters of War
", "Talkin' World War III Blues", and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall
". The 1968 Philip K. Dick
novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
, adapted to film in 1982 as Blade Runner
, features as its setting an Earth having been damaged greatly by the radioactive fallout of a nuclear war termed "World War Terminus."
In 1964
three films about the threat of accidental nuclear war were released, Dr. Strangelove, Fail-Safe
, and Seven Days in May
. Their negative portrayal of nuclear defence
prompted the United States Air Force
to sponsor films such as A Gathering of Eagles
to publicly address the potential dangers of nuclear defense.
Dr. Strangelove is a black comedy
by Stanley Kubrick
about the nuclear arms race
between the US and the Soviet Union and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. Following a bizarre mental breakdown the C.O.
of a SAC
base orders the B-52 wing operating from his base to attack the Soviet Union
. The title character, Dr. Strangelove, is a parody of a composite of Cold War figures, including Wernher von Braun
, Henry Kissinger
, and Herman Kahn
. The secret code Operation DROPKICK, mentioned by George C. Scott
's character, may be an oblique reference to Operation Dropshot
.
The 1964 film Fail-Safe
was adapted from a best-selling novel
of the same name by Eugene Burdick
and Harvey Wheeler
. In it, nuclear disaster is caused by a technological breakdown that mistakenly launches American bombers to attack the Soviet Union. In order to prove the mistake and placate the Soviets, thereby saving the world from nuclear war, the US President orders the destruction of New York after a US bomber succeeds in destroying Moscow. The film was made in a semi-documentary style, ending just as the explosion over New York City begins.
The War Game
(1965
), produced by Peter Watkins
, deals with a fictional nuclear attack on Britain. This film won the Oscar
for Best Documentary, but was withheld from broadcast by the BBC
for two decades.
, the Watergate scandal
, the Iran hostage crisis
, the energy crisis
, and stagflation
. None of these issues easily lent themselves to apocalyptic scenarios. In the 1977 Robert Aldrich
film Twilight's Last Gleaming
, a nuclear missile silo is seized by renegade US Air Force officers, who threaten to start World War III if the American government does not reveal secret documents that show that the military needlessly prolonged the Vietnam War.
On television, the British science fiction series Doctor Who
based a 1972 storyline, Day of the Daleks
on the premise of time travellers from the future attempting to trigger a present-day nuclear war between the superpowers.
, then the capital of West Germany
. On June 12, 1982, more than 750,000 protesters marched from the U.N. headquarters building
to Central Park
in New York to call for a Nuclear Freeze. The public accepted the technological certainty of nuclear war, but did not have faith in nuclear defence. Tensions came to a head with the NATO exercise Able Archer 83
, which, combined with other events such as President Reagan's "Evil Empire
" speech and the deployment of the Pershing II missile in Western Europe, as well as the erroneous Soviet shoot-down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, had the Soviets frantically convinced that the West was about to launch an all-out war against the USSR.
These fears were manifested in the popular culture of the time, with images of nuclear war in books, film, music, and television. In the mid 1980s artists and musicians drew parallels with their time and the 1950s as two key moments in the Cold War.
There was a steady stream of popular music with apocalyptic themes. The 1983 hit "99 Luftballons
" by Nena
tells the story of a young woman who accidentally triggers a nuclear holocaust by releasing balloons. The music video for "Sleeping with the Enemy" had images of the Red Army
parading in Red Square
, American high school marching bands, and a mushroom cloud
. The 1984 hit "Two Tribes
" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood
had actors resembling Konstantin Chernenko
and Ronald Reagan
fighting each other amidst a group of cheering people. At the end of their fight, the Earth explodes. Sting's 1986 song "Russians" highlighted links between Nikita Khrushchev's
threats to bury the US and Reagan's promise to protect US citizens. Many punk
, hardcore
and crossover thrash
bands of the era, such as The Varukers
and Discharge
, had lyrics concerning nuclear war, the end of mankind and the destruction of the Earth in much of their early material. Several hit songs seemed to describe attempts to survive nuclear exchange or decry the arms race, such as Donald Fagen
's New Frontier
and Don Henley
's The End of the Innocence
, respectively. Others portrayed an 'oh, well' attitude toward an imminent WWIII(Modern English
's "Melt With You"), while others conveyed an outright panic over the possibility(Genesis
's Land of Confusion
). Still others described the possible aspects and after effects of nuclear war(Talking Heads
's Burning Down the House
, but this is only one interpretation of the lyrics), and some seemed to describe life in the Communist Bloc(possibly Crowded House
's Don't Dream It's Over
), justifying the West taking a stand, though not military action.
Films and television programmes made in the 1980s had different visions of what World War III would be like. Red Dawn
(1984) portrayed a World War III that begins unexpectedly, with a surprise Soviet and Cuban invasion of the United States. A small band of teenagers fight the Soviet and Cuban occupation using guerrilla tactics. In the 1983 James Bond
film Octopussy
, James Bond tries to stop World War III from being started by a renegade Soviet general. WarGames
(1983) had a teenage gamer accidentally hacking the U.S. nuclear defense network(thinking he'd hacked a computer game company), which reveals a potentially catastrophic flaw in the newly automated system.
In the early 1980s there were a number of films made for television that had World War III as a theme. ABC's
The Day After
(1983), PBS's
Testament
(1983), and the BBC's
Threads
(1984) depicted nuclear World War III. The three movies show a nuclear war against the Soviet Union, which sends its troops marching across Western Europe. These films inspired many to join the anti-nuclear movement
. Threads is notable for its graphically disturbing and realistic depictions of post-nuclear survival.
The Day After was shown on ABC on November 20, 1983, at a time when Soviet-US relations were at rock bottom, just weeks after the NATO-led Able Archer 83
exercises, and less than three months after Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by Soviet jet interceptors
. ABC warned its audience about the graphic nature of the film. The Day After became a political event in itself and was shown in over forty countries. The shocking and disturbing content discouraged advertisers, but had the largest audience for a made-for-TV movie up to that time (a record which still stands as of 2008) and influenced the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
negotiations in 1986.
The 1982
NBC miniseries World War III, directed by David Greene
, received little critical attention. In the programme, a Soviet Spetznaz (Special Forces) invasion of Alaska
in order to destroy the Alaska oil pipeline
escalates to a full scale war. The miniseries abruptly ends with the President releasing US nuclear forces against the Soviets. This narrative is almost unique because the film ends moments before the world is annihilated with nuclear weapons. Similar stories about the destruction of the world showed the possibility of the world's rebirth following global destruction.
During the 1980s, the techno-thriller
became a literary phenomenon in the United States. These novels about high-tech non-nuclear warfare reasserted the value of conventional weapons by showing how they would be vital in the world's next large scale conflict. Tom Clancy's
novels proposed the idea of a technical challenge to the Soviet Union, where World War III could be won using only conventional weapons, without resorting to nuclear weapons. Clancy’s detailed explanation of how and why World War III could begin involves oil shortages in the Soviet Union caused by Islamic terrorism within it. The Hunt for Red October
(1984) hypothesized that the Soviet Union’s technology would soon be better than the Americans'. Red Storm Rising
was a detailed account of the coming world war. Soon after the Cold War ended techno-thriller novels changed from stories about fighting the Soviet Union to narratives about fighting terrorists.
Comics also began to address the issue of World War III with the implications of super-powered beings as metaphors for nuclear weapons. Marvel Comics gathered many of their Russian super-hero and villain characters into a new group, called "The Soviet Super-Soldiers" which answered directly to the Soviet Government. They also addressed the issue of Russian born mutants, in X-Factor Annual #1, with a story that revealed that all Soviet born mutants were forcibly drafted upon discovery, to serve as covert assassins for the Soviet government.
The most notable Marvel story addressing the issue of World War III was in Uncanny X-Men #150. In it, the villain Magneto once again threatens the world, with the threat of using his newly increased magnetic powers to cause unspeakable destruction across the globe unless all of the governments of the world cede control over the planet to him. Magneto, when confronted by the X-Men, defends his murderous actions (which includes destroying an entire Russian city and sinking a Soviet nuclear submarine) by stating that if he not take over the world then and there, that mutantkind would be destroyed along with mankind in the event of a nuclear war.
Meanwhile DC began to explore, in the pages of its various black-ops themed comics, similar ideas as they introduced various Soviet backed super-powered beings. These appeared in the pages of Suicide Squad, Firestorm the Nuclear Man, Captain Atom, and Checkmate.
The most notable characters introduced were the armored suit wearing soldiers "The Rocket Reds", a special platoon of armor wearing Russian soldiers who were introduced in the pages of "The Green Lantern Corps" in Green Lantern #206.
World War III was also a major theme of the 1987 Justice League
, as it went from an apolitical organization to being backed by the United Nations.
While mainstream DC Comics offered an optimistic look at World War III, other comics were more cynical. "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
" portrayed World War III erupting over the issue of a small Latin American country, with the Soviet Union effectively "winning" the war overnight by using a specially designed weapon called a "Coldbringer"; the Coldbringer produces a massive electromagnetic pulse designed to shut down all technology and cover the sky with soot and dust, effectively condemning all of America to nuclear winter
but without the mass murdering side-effects of radiation. The mini-series also featured Superman being portrayed as a government agent, working as a one-man army for the US Government. Unlike Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan however, Superman is shown to be conflicted with his job as a government agent and still refuses to take human lives (something Dr. Manhattan had no problems with).
The best selling and acclaimed mini-series turned graphic novel Watchmen takes place in an alternate 1985 where superheros exist and where Nixon is still President. In the story, Dr. Manhattan, an omnipotent super-hero created in a lab accident in the 1960s, has become America's chief "weapon" and defender in their war against the Soviet Union and his disappearance (manipulated by his fellow super-hero Adrian Veidt) has caused relations between the Soviet Union and America, already on tense terms, to explode as the Soviets begin exploiting Manhattan's disappearance, causing the United States to stand ready to begin nuclear war with the Soviets. The series itself also takes a nhillistic view of super-heroes "solving" the issue of how to prevent World War III: in the end, the brilliant genius Veidt decides that the only way to save the world is to create a new threat that would be powerful enough to scare humanity into uniting for its own self-preservation. To this end, Veidt has spent over a decade building a genetically engineered monster which he teleports into New York City, killing millions yet succeeding in uniting America and the Soviets together. Though his scheme is discovered by his fellow heroes, they ultimately opt to keep silent, lest the world resume the path to destruction.
When the Wind Blows, a graphic novel
by Raymond Briggs
, was published in 1982. The novel is a bitter satire
on the advice given by the British government about how to survive a nuclear war, where a working-class couple that do not believe that nuclear war is possible die of radiation sickness
after a nuclear explosion. It reflects Briggs’ participation in the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
. Briggs is best known as a writer and illustrator of children’s literature, but this novel was written for an older audience and is his bleakest work. The novel’s message greatly affected young adult readers. Briggs rewrote the novel for radio, stage, and an animated film that was released in 1986.
incident of 1983 seemed to imply that the risk of accidental nuclear war due to technical malfunction had been greater than previously anticipated. The theme of nuclear armageddon launched by military artificial intelligence
computer systems without human decision was explored in the 1991 blockbuster movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day
. During the early 90s and the Gulf Crisis, tabloid papers and other press discussed whether World War III would be linked to prophecies of Nostradamus
concerning a third great war.
Movies about nuclear weapons that saved humanity were popular. Films such as such as Armageddon and Deep Impact
(1998). Blast from the Past (1999
) is a comedy about a 1960s family caught in the grip of Cold War paranoia. Falsely convinced that World War III has started, they hide in their fallout shelter, only to emerge 35 years later in the post–Cold War world. Jonathan Schell
complained to the New York Times that "the post–Cold War generation knows less about nuclear danger than any generation."
Yellow Peril
(1991) by Wang Lixiong
, is about a civil war in the People's Republic of China
that becomes a nuclear exchange and soon engulfs the world. It was banned by the Chinese Communist Party but remained popular.
World War III is referenced in the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact
. William T. Riker states that 600 million people were killed and very few world governments are left.
Paramount Pictures
released a film adaptation of Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears
in 2002. The production of the film began before 9/11, and was originally intended as an escapist thriller where CIA analyst Jack Ryan
fights Neo-Nazis who conspire to detonate a nuclear weapon at a football game to start a nuclear war between Russia and the United States. However, the film’s release just seven months after 9/11 made it very topical. Phil Alden Robinson
, the film's director, commented that "a year ago, you'd have said, 'great popcorn film,'...Today you say, 'that's about the world I live in.'" There was an aggressive promotional campaign, with movie trailers and television commercials showing the nuclear destruction of a city and a special premiere for politicians in Washington, D.C.
Recently, World War III has also become the topic of several popular video games, reflecting the trend towards increased public consciousness of the possibility of a future global war. Games such as Tom Clancy's EndWar
, Battlefield 3
and Frontlines: Fuel of War
, paint scenarios about a Third World War driven by the need for resources on the part of the various combatants. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
are also recent examples; at the end of the latter's launch advertisement, the "W" in "WW3" flips itself to read "MW3." These games feature a global war between the United States and Russia after the United States is framed for a massacre at a Moscow airport and soon after the Russians expand their war into France, Germany and England. Other games such as World In Conflict
, and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty take place in alternate histories where global war is a reality, the former being a war between the United States
and the Soviet Union
, and the latter being a war between the United States
and a much stronger Nazi Germany
that won World War II
, both games depicting an invasion of America. The Fallout series portrays the effects of a nuclear holocaust in the future after a war between China and the United States in the late 21st century. Ace Combat
Assault Horizon
portrays the United States and Russia going to war due to a massive superweapon being built. The 2007 bestselling game DEFCON places players in charge of preparing to and then fighting a nuclear war with other human or computer-generated players attacking from and defending different sectors of planet Earth; its simple 1980s-style vector graphics are inspired by those seen in the 1983 hit movie WarGames
.
In 2000 a made-for-television remake of Fail-Safe was produced; it continued to be set, however, in the same time period as the original film.
The video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
, released on November 2009, depicts the start of World War III after Russia
blames the United States
for a massacre at Zakhaev International Airport in Moscow
.
. However, certain sources claim that Osama is still alive after Operation Neptune
Spear
which started on May 1st, 2011.
Many countries across the world, excluding Pakistan and Iran, celebrated over the death of Osama. The Abbottabad
, Pakistan
residents claim that Osama's death was a U.S. conspiracy against Pakistan. Iranians believed that Osama may had been working with the U.S. during the entire war of terror. Ismail Kosari, an Iranian MP, said that Osama bin Laden was just a puppet controlled by the Zionist regime in order to present a violent image of Islam after the September 11 attacks.
Several hoax about Osama's death were found in Twitter and Facebook.
World War III and its predicted aftermath continues to be portrayed in popular media around the world such as in recent video games Metro 2033, Fallout New Vegas, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
, Wargame: European Escalation, ARMA 3
, APOX
and RAGE
.
Alien invasions
have become a popular topic as a World War III like conflict with the alien invaders portrayed in a similar way to a military invasion, such as seen in the films Battle: Los Angeles
, Skyline and the TV series Falling skies
War in popular culture
The following is a list of pop culture references to war.-Persian Gulf Wars:*The Hurt Locker*Jarhead*Three Kings-Vietnam War:*Apocalypse Now*Full Metal Jacket*Operation Dumbo Drop*Platoon*The Deer Hunter...
in popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
. Since the 1940s, countless books, films, and television programmes have used the theme of nuclear weapon
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
s and a third global war
World War III
World War III denotes a successor to World War II that would be on a global scale, with common speculation that it would be likely nuclear and devastating in nature....
. The presence of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
as an international rival armed with nuclear weapons created a persistent fear in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. There was a pervasive dread of a nuclear
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is detonated on an opponent. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can be vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...
World War III, and popular culture reveals the fears of the public at the time. This theme in the arts was also a way of exploring a range of issues far beyond nuclear war. The historian Spencer R. Weart
Spencer R. Weart
Spencer R. Weart was the director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics from 1971 until his retirement in 2009. Originally trained as a physicist, he is now a historian....
called nuclear weapons a "symbol for the worst of modernity."
During the Cold War, concepts such as mutual assured destruction
Mutual assured destruction
Mutual Assured Destruction, or mutually assured destruction , is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of high-yield weapons of mass destruction by two opposing sides would effectively result in the complete, utter and irrevocable annihilation of...
(MAD) led lawmakers and government officials in both the United States and the Soviet Union to avoid entering a nuclear World War III that could have had catastrophic consequences on the entire world. Various scientists and authors, such as Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...
, predicted massive, possibly life ending destruction of the earth as the result of such a conflict. Strategic analysts
Military strategy
Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Derived from the Greek strategos, strategy when it appeared in use during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", 'the art of arrangement' of troops...
assert that nuclear weapons prevented the United States and the Soviet Union from fighting World War III with conventional weapon
Conventional weapon
The terms conventional weapons or conventional arms generally refer to weapons that are in relatively wide use that are not weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Conventional weapons include small arms and light weapons, sea and land mines, as well as ...
s. Nevertheless, the possibility of such a war became the basis for speculative fiction
Speculative fiction
Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as...
, and its simulation in books, films and video games became a way to explore the issues of a war that has thus far not occurred in reality. The only places a global nuclear war have ever been fought are in expert scenarios, theoretical models, war games, and the art, film, and literature of the nuclear age
History of nuclear weapons
The history of nuclear weapons chronicles the development of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons possess enormous destructive potential derived from nuclear fission or nuclear fusion reactions...
. The concept of mutually assured destruction was also the focus of numerous movies and films.
Prescient stories about nuclear war were written before the invention of the atomic bomb. The most notable of these is The World Set Free
The World Set Free
The World Set Free is a novel published in 1914 by H. G. Wells. The book is considered to foretell nuclear weapons. It had appeared first in serialized form with a different ending as A Prophetic Trilogy, consisting of three books: A Trap to Catch the Sun, The Last War in the World and The World...
, written by H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
in 1914. During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, several nuclear war stories were published in science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
magazines such as Astounding
Analog Science Fiction and Fact
Analog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine. As of 2011, it is the longest running continuously published magazine of that genre...
. In Robert A. Heinlein's
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
story "Solution Unsatisfactory
Solution Unsatisfactory
"Solution Unsatisfactory" is a 1940 science fiction short story by Robert A. Heinlein. It describes the US effort to build a nuclear weapon in order to end the ongoing World War II, and its dystopian consequences to the nation and the world....
" the US develops radioactive dust as the ultimate weapon of war and uses it to destroy Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
in 1945 and end the war with Germany. The Soviet Union then develops the same weapon independently, and war between it and the US follows. The bombing of Hiroshima
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...
and Nagasaki in 1945 made stories of a future global nuclear war look less like fiction and more like prophecy. When William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
received the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
in 1949, he spoke about Cold War themes in art. He worried that younger writers were too preoccupied with the question of "When will I be blown up?"
1940s: Dawn of the atomic age
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ushered in the "atomic age", and the bleak pictures of the bombed-out cities released shortly after the end of World War II became symbols of the power of the new weapons.On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, code named "Joe 1
Joe 1
The RDS-1 , also known as First Lightning , was the Soviet Union's first nuclear weapon test. In the west, it was code-named Joe-1, in reference to Joseph Stalin. It was test-exploded on 29 August 1949, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR, after a top-secret R&D project...
". Its design imitates the American plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945.
1950s: Fears of the new and unknown
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
were strengthened by the quick succession of the Soviet Union’s nuclear bomb test, the Chinese Communist Revolution
Chinese Civil War
The Chinese Civil War was a civil war fought between the Kuomintang , the governing party of the Republic of China, and the Communist Party of China , for the control of China which eventually led to China's division into two Chinas, Republic of China and People's Republic of...
in 1949, and the beginning of the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
in 1950. Pundits named the era "the age of anxiety", after W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
. In 1951 an entire issue of Collier's magazine was devoted to a fictional account of World War III. The issue was entitled "Preview of the War We Do Not Want
Preview of the War We Do Not Want
Collier's Magazine devoted its entire 130 page October 27, 1951 issue to narrate the events in a hypothetical Third World War, in a feature article entitled Preview of the War We Do Not Want - an Imaginary Account of Russia's defeat and Occupation, 1952-60. Twenty writers, including Edward R...
". In the magazine, war begins when the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
invades Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
and the United States responds by conducting a three month long bombing campaign of Soviet Union military and industrial targets. The Soviet Union retaliates by bombing New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, Philadelphia, and Detroit.
Against this background of dread there was an outpouring of cinema with frightening themes, particularly in the science fiction genre. Science fiction had previously not been popular with either critics or movie audiences, but it became a viable Hollywood genre during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. In the 1950s science fiction had two main themes: the invasion of the Earth (symbolising the US) by superior, aggressive, and frequently technologically advanced aliens; and the dread of atomic weapons, which was typically portrayed as a revolt of nature, with irradiated monsters attacking and ravaging entire cities.
In The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), a flying saucer lands on the Mall in Washington DC
National Mall
The National Mall is an open-area national park in downtown Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. The National Mall is a unit of the National Park Service , and is administered by the National Mall and Memorial Parks unit...
, where it is surrounded by troops and tanks. The alien Klaatu delivers an ultimatum that the Earth must learn to live in peace or it will be destroyed. The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds (1953 film)
The War of the Worlds is a 1953 science fiction film starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. It was the first on-screen loose adaptation of the H. G. Wells classic novel of the same name...
(1953) has a montage sequence where the countries of Earth join together to fight the Martian invaders. The montage conspicuously omits the Soviet Union, implying that the aliens are a metaphor for communists. The most elaborate science fiction films in the 1950s were This Island Earth (1955) and Forbidden Planet
Forbidden Planet
Forbidden Planet is a 1956 science fiction film directed by Fred M. Wilcox, with a screenplay by Cyril Hume. It stars Leslie Nielsen, Walter Pidgeon, and Anne Francis. The characters and its setting have been compared to those in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, and its plot contains certain...
(1956). In the climax of both films the characters witness the explosion of alien planets, implying Earth's possible fate. The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959) is also in the science fiction genre. In it, a man, a woman, and a bigot (the devil) roam New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
after a nuclear war. Only those three characters appear in the film. Also released in 1959 was On the Beach
On the Beach (1959 film)
On the Beach is a post-apocalyptic drama film based on Nevil Shute's 1957 novel of the same name. The film features Gregory Peck , Ava Gardner , Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins...
, directed by Stanley Kramer
Stanley Kramer
Stanley Earl Kramer was an American film director and producer. Kramer was responsible for some of Hollywood's most famous "message" movies...
and starring Ava Gardner
Ava Gardner
Ava Lavinia Gardner was an American actress.She was signed to a contract by MGM Studios in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers . She became one of Hollywood's leading actresses, considered one of the most beautiful women of her day...
, Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor.One of 20th Century Fox's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an...
and Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
. Based on the successful novel by Nevil Shute
Nevil Shute
Nevil Shute Norway was a popular British-Australian novelist and a successful aeronautical engineer. He used his full name in his engineering career, and 'Nevil Shute' as his pen name, in order to protect his engineering career from any potential negative publicity in connection with his novels.-...
, the film deals with the citizens of Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
as they await radioactive fallout, a result of a catastrophic nuclear war
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is detonated on an opponent. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can be vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...
in the Northern Hemisphere
Northern Hemisphere
The Northern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is north of its equator—the word hemisphere literally means “half sphere”. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator...
. The French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
author Stefan Wul
Stefan Wul
Stefan Wul was the nom de plume of French science fiction writer Pierre Pairault . He was a dental surgeon, but science fiction was his real passion. Most of his books reflect that, showing a deep knowledge of scientific data...
's 1957 novel Niourk
Niourk
Niourk is a science fiction novel by the French writer Stefan Wul. It first appeared as one of the Fleuve Noir "Anticipation" novels, a series published in France from 1951 to 1960 which reflected the authors' attitudes towards the supposed post war rise of a "technocracy" in the country.-Plot:It...
provided a portrait of New York after World War III. The 1959 novel Alas, Babylon
Alas, Babylon
Alas, Babylon is a 1959 novel by American writer Pat Frank . It was one of the first apocalyptic novels of the nuclear age and remains popular fifty years after it was first published...
depicted the effects of nuclear war on a small town in Florida; an television adaptation was broadcast in 1960.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
, George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's bleak 1949 novel about life after a third world war, rose to cultural prominence in the 1950s. In it the world has endured a massive atomic war and is politically divided into three totalitarian superstates, which are intentionally locked into a perpetual military stalemate; this never-ending warfare is used to subjugate their populations.
1960s: Expanding popularity
In the 1960s, media about the threat of nuclear world war gained wide popularity. According to Susan SontagSusan Sontag
Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...
, these films struck people’s "imagination of disaster...in the fantasy of living through one’s own death and more the death of cities, the destruction of humanity itself." A leading member of the 1960s anti-war movement, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
evoked the topic of WWIII thrice in his seminal The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released in May 1963 by Columbia Records. Whereas his debut album Bob Dylan had contained only two original songs, Freewheelin initiated the process of writing contemporary words to traditional melodies....
, in "Masters of War
Masters of War
"Masters of War" is a song by Bob Dylan, written over the winter of 1962-63 and released on the album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in the spring of 1963. The song's melody was adapted from the traditional "Nottamun Town"...
", "Talkin' World War III Blues", and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall
A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall
"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" is a song written by Bob Dylan in the summer of 1962. It was first recorded in Columbia Records' Studio A on 6 December 1962 for his second album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The lyric structure is based on the question and answer form of the traditional ballad "Lord...
". The 1968 Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick first published in 1968. The main plot follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter of androids, while the secondary plot follows John Isidore, a man of sub-normal intelligence who befriends some of the...
, adapted to film in 1982 as Blade Runner
Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...
, features as its setting an Earth having been damaged greatly by the radioactive fallout of a nuclear war termed "World War Terminus."
In 1964
1964 in film
The year 1964 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* January 29 - The film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is released....
three films about the threat of accidental nuclear war were released, Dr. Strangelove, Fail-Safe
Fail-Safe (1964 film)
Fail-Safe is a 1964 film directed by Sidney Lumet, based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. It tells the story of a fictional Cold War nuclear crisis...
, and Seven Days in May
Seven Days in May
Seven Days in May is an American political thriller novel written by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II and published in 1962. It was made into a motion picture and released in February 1964, with a screenplay by Rod Serling, directed by John Frankenheimer, and starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk...
. Their negative portrayal of nuclear defence
National Missile Defense
National missile defense is a generic term for a type of missile defense intended to shield an entire country against incoming missiles, such as intercontinental ballistic missile or other ballistic missiles. Interception might be by anti-ballistic missiles or directed-energy weapons such as lasers...
prompted the United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
to sponsor films such as A Gathering of Eagles
A Gathering of Eagles
A Gathering of Eagles is a 1963 film about the U.S. Air Force during the Cold War and the pressures of command. The plot is patterned after the World War II film Twelve O'Clock High, which producer-screenwriter Sy Bartlett also wrote, with elements also mirroring Above and Beyond and Toward the...
to publicly address the potential dangers of nuclear defense.
Dr. Strangelove is a black comedy
Black comedy
A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...
by Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
about the nuclear arms race
Nuclear arms race
The nuclear arms race was a competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War...
between the US and the Soviet Union and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. Following a bizarre mental breakdown the C.O.
Commanding officer
The commanding officer is the officer in command of a military unit. Typically, the commanding officer has ultimate authority over the unit, and is usually given wide latitude to run the unit as he sees fit, within the bounds of military law...
of a SAC
Strategic Air Command
The Strategic Air Command was both a Major Command of the United States Air Force and a "specified command" of the United States Department of Defense. SAC was the operational establishment in charge of America's land-based strategic bomber aircraft and land-based intercontinental ballistic...
base orders the B-52 wing operating from his base to attack the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. The title character, Dr. Strangelove, is a parody of a composite of Cold War figures, including Wernher von Braun
Wernher von Braun
Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun was a German rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and in the United States after that.A former member of the Nazi party,...
, Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
, and Herman Kahn
Herman Kahn
Herman Kahn was one of the preeminent futurists of the latter third of the twentieth century. In the early 1970s he predicted the rise of Japan as a major world power. He was a founder of the Hudson Institute think tank and originally came to prominence as a military strategist and systems...
. The secret code Operation DROPKICK, mentioned by George C. Scott
George C. Scott
George Campbell Scott was an American stage and film actor, director and producer. He was best known for his stage work, as well as his portrayal of General George S. Patton in the film Patton, and as General Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick's Dr...
's character, may be an oblique reference to Operation Dropshot
Operation Dropshot
Operation Dropshot was the United States Department of Defense code-name for a contingency plan for a possible nuclear and conventional war with the Soviet Union and its allies in order to counter the anticipated Soviet takeover of Western Europe, the Near East and parts of Eastern Asia expected to...
.
The 1964 film Fail-Safe
Fail-Safe (1964 film)
Fail-Safe is a 1964 film directed by Sidney Lumet, based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. It tells the story of a fictional Cold War nuclear crisis...
was adapted from a best-selling novel
Fail-Safe (novel)
Fail-Safe is a novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, published in 1962.The popular and critically acclaimed novel was first adapted into a 1964 film of the same name directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Henry Fonda, Dan O'Herlihy, and Walter Matthau. In 2000, the novel was adapted again for...
of the same name by Eugene Burdick
Eugene Burdick
Eugene L. Burdick , was an American political scientist, novelist, and non-fiction writer, co-author of The Ugly American and Fail-Safe and author of The 480 ....
and Harvey Wheeler
Harvey Wheeler
John Harvey Wheeler was an American author, political scientist, and scholar. He was best known as co-author with Eugene Burdick of Fail-Safe, 1962, an early cold war novel that depicted what could easily go wrong in an age on the verge of nuclear war. The novel was made into a movie, directed...
. In it, nuclear disaster is caused by a technological breakdown that mistakenly launches American bombers to attack the Soviet Union. In order to prove the mistake and placate the Soviets, thereby saving the world from nuclear war, the US President orders the destruction of New York after a US bomber succeeds in destroying Moscow. The film was made in a semi-documentary style, ending just as the explosion over New York City begins.
The War Game
The War Game
The War Game is a 1965 television documentary-style drama depicting the effects of nuclear war on Britain. Written, directed, and produced by Peter Watkins for the BBC's The Wednesday Play anthology series, it caused dismay within the BBC and in government and was withdrawn from television...
(1965
1965 in film
The year 1965 in film involved some significant events, with The Sound of Music topping the U.S. box office.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:...
), produced by Peter Watkins
Peter Watkins
Peter Watkins is an English film and television director. He was born in Norbiton, Surrey, lived in Sweden, Canada and Lithuania for many years, and now lives in France. He is one of the pioneers of docudrama. His movies, pacifist and radical, strongly review the limit of classic documentary and...
, deals with a fictional nuclear attack on Britain. This film won the Oscar
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for Best Documentary, but was withheld from broadcast by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
for two decades.
1970s: Fears continue
The American public's concerns about nuclear weapons and related technology continued to be present in the 1970s. The most talked about events in the 1970s were the Vietnam WarVietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, the Watergate scandal
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
, the Iran hostage crisis
Iran hostage crisis
The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States where 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, after a group of Islamist students and militants took over the American Embassy in Tehran in support of the Iranian...
, the energy crisis
Energy crisis
An energy crisis is any great bottleneck in the supply of energy resources to an economy. In popular literature though, it often refers to one of the energy sources used at a certain time and place, particularly those that supply national electricity grids or serve as fuel for vehicles...
, and stagflation
Stagflation
In economics, stagflation is a situation in which the inflation rate is high and the economic growth rate slows down and unemployment remains steadily high...
. None of these issues easily lent themselves to apocalyptic scenarios. In the 1977 Robert Aldrich
Robert Aldrich
Robert Aldrich was an American film director, writer and producer, notable for such films as Kiss Me Deadly , The Big Knife , What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? , Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte , The Flight of the Phoenix , The Dirty Dozen , and The Longest Yard .-Biography:Robert...
film Twilight's Last Gleaming
Twilight's Last Gleaming
Twilight's Last Gleaming is a 1977 film directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Burt Lancaster and Richard Widmark.Loosely based on a 1971 novel, Viper Three by Walter Wager, it tells the story of Lawrence Dell, a renegade USAF general, who escapes from a military prison and takes over an ICBM silo...
, a nuclear missile silo is seized by renegade US Air Force officers, who threaten to start World War III if the American government does not reveal secret documents that show that the military needlessly prolonged the Vietnam War.
On television, the British science fiction series Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
based a 1972 storyline, Day of the Daleks
Day of the Daleks
Day of the Daleks is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 1 January to 22 January 1972.-Synopsis:...
on the premise of time travellers from the future attempting to trigger a present-day nuclear war between the superpowers.
1980s: Belief in an imminent threat
In the early 1980s there was a feeling of alarm in Europe and North America that a nuclear World War III was imminent. In 1982, 250,000 people protested against nuclear weapons in BonnBonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
, then the capital of West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
. On June 12, 1982, more than 750,000 protesters marched from the U.N. headquarters building
United Nations headquarters
The headquarters of the United Nations is a complex in New York City. The complex has served as the official headquarters of the United Nations since its completion in 1952. It is located in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, on spacious grounds overlooking the East River...
to Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
in New York to call for a Nuclear Freeze. The public accepted the technological certainty of nuclear war, but did not have faith in nuclear defence. Tensions came to a head with the NATO exercise Able Archer 83
Able Archer 83
Able Archer 83 was a ten-day NATO command post exercise starting on November 2, 1983 that spanned Western Europe, centred on the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe Headquarters situated at Casteau, north of the Belgian city of Mons. Able Archer exercises simulated a period of conflict...
, which, combined with other events such as President Reagan's "Evil Empire
Evil empire
The phrase evil empire was applied to the Soviet Union especially by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who took an aggressive, hard-line stance that favored matching and exceeding the Soviet Union's strategic and global military capabilities, in calling for a rollback strategy that would, in his words,...
" speech and the deployment of the Pershing II missile in Western Europe, as well as the erroneous Soviet shoot-down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, had the Soviets frantically convinced that the West was about to launch an all-out war against the USSR.
These fears were manifested in the popular culture of the time, with images of nuclear war in books, film, music, and television. In the mid 1980s artists and musicians drew parallels with their time and the 1950s as two key moments in the Cold War.
There was a steady stream of popular music with apocalyptic themes. The 1983 hit "99 Luftballons
99 Luftballons
"99 Luftballons" is a protest song by the German pop-rock band Nena from their 1983 self-titled album. Originally sung in German, it was later re-recorded in English as "99 Red Balloons" for their album 99 Luftballons in 1984...
" by Nena
Nena
Gabriele Susanne Kerner , better known by her stage name Nena, is a German singer and actress. She rose to international fame in 1983 with the New German Wave song "99 Luftballons". In 1984, she re-recorded this song in English as "99 Red Balloons". Nena was also the name of the band with whom she...
tells the story of a young woman who accidentally triggers a nuclear holocaust by releasing balloons. The music video for "Sleeping with the Enemy" had images of the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
parading in Red Square
Red Square
Red Square is a city square in Moscow, Russia. The square separates the Kremlin, the former royal citadel and currently the official residence of the President of Russia, from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod...
, American high school marching bands, and a mushroom cloud
Mushroom cloud
A mushroom cloud is a distinctive pyrocumulus mushroom-shaped cloud of condensed water vapor or debris resulting from a very large explosion. They are most commonly associated with nuclear explosions, but any sufficiently large blast will produce the same sort of effect. They can be caused by...
. The 1984 hit "Two Tribes
Two Tribes
"Two Tribes" is the second single by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, released in the UK by ZTT Records in May 1984 . The song was later included on the album Welcome to the Pleasuredome....
" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Frankie Goes to Hollywood were a British dance-pop band popular in the mid-1980s. The group was fronted by Holly Johnson , with Paul Rutherford , Peter Gill , Mark O'Toole , and Brian Nash .The group's debut single "Relax" was banned by the BBC in 1984 while at number six in the charts and...
had actors resembling Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko was a Soviet politician and the fifth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He led the Soviet Union from 13 February 1984 until his death thirteen months later, on 10 March 1985...
and Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
fighting each other amidst a group of cheering people. At the end of their fight, the Earth explodes. Sting's 1986 song "Russians" highlighted links between Nikita Khrushchev's
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
threats to bury the US and Reagan's promise to protect US citizens. Many punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
, hardcore
Hardcore punk
Hardcore punk is an underground music genre that originated in the late 1970s, following the mainstream success of punk rock. Hardcore is generally faster, thicker, and heavier than earlier punk rock. The origin of the term "hardcore punk" is uncertain. The Vancouver-based band D.O.A...
and crossover thrash
Crossover thrash
__FORCETOC__Crossover thrash, often abbreviated to crossover, is a form of thrash metal that contains more hardcore punk elements than standard thrash. The genre lies on a continuum between heavy metal and punk rock...
bands of the era, such as The Varukers
The Varukers
The Varukers are a UK D-beat band formed in 1979 by vocalist Anthony "Rat" Martin, which produced its most influential recordings in the early 1980s. The band are one of the first to play in the musical style of the hardcore punk band Discharge, known as D-beat...
and Discharge
Discharge (band)
Discharge is a British hardcore punk band formed in 1977 by Terry "Tezz" Roberts and Roy "Rainy" Wainwright. They are often considered among one of the very first bands to play hardcore punk, and to mix punk with metal...
, had lyrics concerning nuclear war, the end of mankind and the destruction of the Earth in much of their early material. Several hit songs seemed to describe attempts to survive nuclear exchange or decry the arms race, such as Donald Fagen
Donald Fagen
Donald Jay Fagen is an American musician and songwriter, best known as the co-founder, lead singer, and the principal songwriter of the rock band Steely Dan ....
's New Frontier
New Frontier
The term New Frontier was used by Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in his acceptance speech in the 1960 United States presidential election to the Democratic National Convention at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as the Democratic slogan to inspire America to support him...
and Don Henley
Don Henley
Donald Hugh "Don" Henley is an American singer, songwriter and drummer, best known as a founding member of the Eagles before launching a successful solo career. Henley was the drummer and lead vocalist for the Eagles from 1971–1980, when the band broke up...
's The End of the Innocence
The End of the Innocence (song)
"The End of the Innocence" is the lead single and title track from Don Henley's third solo studio album, The End of the Innocence, in 1989. The song was written by Bruce Hornsby, with lyrics added by Henley, and both perform the song live in their respective concerts...
, respectively. Others portrayed an 'oh, well' attitude toward an imminent WWIII(Modern English
Modern English
Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, completed in roughly 1550.Despite some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern...
's "Melt With You"), while others conveyed an outright panic over the possibility(Genesis
Genesis (band)
Genesis are an English rock band that formed in 1967. The band currently comprises the longest-tenured members Tony Banks , Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins . Past members Peter Gabriel , Steve Hackett and Anthony Phillips , also played major roles in the band in its early years...
's Land of Confusion
Land of Confusion
"Land of Confusion" is a rock song written by the band Genesis for their 1986 album Invisible Touch. The song was the third track on the album and was the fourth track from the album to become a single, which reached #4 in the US and #14 in the UK in early 1987. It made #8 in the Netherlands...
). Still others described the possible aspects and after effects of nuclear war(Talking Heads
Talking Heads
Talking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...
's Burning Down the House
Burning Down the House
"Burning Down the House" is a song by New Wave band Talking Heads, released as the first single from their fifth studio album Speaking in Tongues.-Background:...
, but this is only one interpretation of the lyrics), and some seemed to describe life in the Communist Bloc(possibly Crowded House
Crowded House
Crowded House are a rock band, formed in Melbourne, Australia and led by New Zealand singer-songwriter Neil Finn. Finn is the primary songwriter and creative director of the band, having led it through several incarnations, drawing members from New Zealand , Australia and the United States...
's Don't Dream It's Over
Don't Dream It's Over
-12": Capitol / 12CL 438 United Kingdom :* also available on CD and MC-Personnel:*Neil Finn: Vocals and guitar*Nick Seymour: Bass guitar*Paul Hester: Drums and backing vocals*Mitchell Froom: Keyboards-Release history:- Charts :...
), justifying the West taking a stand, though not military action.
Films and television programmes made in the 1980s had different visions of what World War III would be like. Red Dawn
Red Dawn
Red Dawn is a 1984 American war film directed by John Milius and co-written by Milius and Kevin Reynolds. It stars Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Charlie Sheen and Jennifer Grey....
(1984) portrayed a World War III that begins unexpectedly, with a surprise Soviet and Cuban invasion of the United States. A small band of teenagers fight the Soviet and Cuban occupation using guerrilla tactics. In the 1983 James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
film Octopussy
Octopussy
Octopussy is the thirteenth entry in the James Bond series, and the sixth to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The film's title is taken from a short story in Ian Fleming's 1966 short story collection Octopussy and The Living Daylights...
, James Bond tries to stop World War III from being started by a renegade Soviet general. WarGames
WarGames
WarGames is a 1983 American Cold War suspense/science-fiction film written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes and directed by John Badham. The film stars Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy....
(1983) had a teenage gamer accidentally hacking the U.S. nuclear defense network(thinking he'd hacked a computer game company), which reveals a potentially catastrophic flaw in the newly automated system.
In the early 1980s there were a number of films made for television that had World War III as a theme. ABC's
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
The Day After
The Day After
The Day After is a 1983 American television movie which aired on November 20, 1983, on the ABC television network. It was seen by more than 100 million people during its initial broadcast....
(1983), PBS's
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
Testament
Testament (film)
Testament is a drama film directed by Lynne Littman and starring Jane Alexander.The film tells the story of how one small suburban town near the San Francisco Bay Area slowly falls apart after a nuclear war destroys outside civilization....
(1983), and the BBC's
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Threads
Threads
Threads is a British television drama produced by the BBC in 1984. Written by Barry Hines and directed by Mick Jackson, it is a documentary-style account of a nuclear war and its effects on the city of Sheffield in northern England....
(1984) depicted nuclear World War III. The three movies show a nuclear war against the Soviet Union, which sends its troops marching across Western Europe. These films inspired many to join the anti-nuclear movement
Anti-nuclear
The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes the use of nuclear technologies. Many direct action groups, environmental groups, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, national, and international level...
. Threads is notable for its graphically disturbing and realistic depictions of post-nuclear survival.
The Day After was shown on ABC on November 20, 1983, at a time when Soviet-US relations were at rock bottom, just weeks after the NATO-led Able Archer 83
Able Archer 83
Able Archer 83 was a ten-day NATO command post exercise starting on November 2, 1983 that spanned Western Europe, centred on the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe Headquarters situated at Casteau, north of the Belgian city of Mons. Able Archer exercises simulated a period of conflict...
exercises, and less than three months after Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by Soviet jet interceptors
Interceptor aircraft
An interceptor aircraft is a type of fighter aircraft designed specifically to prevent missions of enemy aircraft, particularly bombers and reconnaissance aircraft. Interceptors generally rely on high speed and powerful armament in order to complete their mission as quickly as possible and set up...
. ABC warned its audience about the graphic nature of the film. The Day After became a political event in itself and was shown in over forty countries. The shocking and disturbing content discouraged advertisers, but had the largest audience for a made-for-TV movie up to that time (a record which still stands as of 2008) and influenced the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is a 1987 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. Signed in Washington, D.C. by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on December 8, 1987, it was ratified by the United States Senate on May 27, 1988 and...
negotiations in 1986.
The 1982
1982 in television
The year 1982 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1982.For the American TV schedule, see: 1982-83 American network television schedule.-Events:...
NBC miniseries World War III, directed by David Greene
David Greene (director)
L. David Syms-Greene , born Lucius David Syms Brian Lederman, was a British television director from Manchester, England, who emigrated to Toronto, Canada in 1953, where he trained in television production with the CBC, and then moved on to Hollywood, California.Greene's career began as a stage...
, received little critical attention. In the programme, a Soviet Spetznaz (Special Forces) invasion of Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
in order to destroy the Alaska oil pipeline
Trans-Alaska Pipeline System
The Trans Alaska Pipeline System , includes the Trans Alaska Pipeline, 11 pump stations, several hundred miles of feeder pipelines, and the Valdez Marine Terminal. TAPS is one of the world's largest pipeline systems...
escalates to a full scale war. The miniseries abruptly ends with the President releasing US nuclear forces against the Soviets. This narrative is almost unique because the film ends moments before the world is annihilated with nuclear weapons. Similar stories about the destruction of the world showed the possibility of the world's rebirth following global destruction.
During the 1980s, the techno-thriller
Techno-thriller
Techno-thrillers are a hybrid genre, drawing subject matter generally from spy/action thrillers, fantasy/war novels, and science fiction...
became a literary phenomenon in the United States. These novels about high-tech non-nuclear warfare reasserted the value of conventional weapons by showing how they would be vital in the world's next large scale conflict. Tom Clancy's
Tom Clancy
Thomas Leo "Tom" Clancy, Jr. is an American author, best known for his technically detailed espionage, military science, and techno thriller storylines set during and in the aftermath of the Cold War, along with video games on which he did not work, but which bear his name for licensing and...
novels proposed the idea of a technical challenge to the Soviet Union, where World War III could be won using only conventional weapons, without resorting to nuclear weapons. Clancy’s detailed explanation of how and why World War III could begin involves oil shortages in the Soviet Union caused by Islamic terrorism within it. The Hunt for Red October
The Hunt for Red October
The Hunt for Red October is a 1984 novel by Tom Clancy. The story follows the intertwined adventures of Soviet submarine captain Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius and CIA analyst Jack Ryan.The novel was originally published by the U.S...
(1984) hypothesized that the Soviet Union’s technology would soon be better than the Americans'. Red Storm Rising
Red Storm Rising
Red Storm Rising is a 1986 techno-thriller novel by Tom Clancy and Larry Bond about a Third World War in Europe between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces, set around the mid-1980s...
was a detailed account of the coming world war. Soon after the Cold War ended techno-thriller novels changed from stories about fighting the Soviet Union to narratives about fighting terrorists.
Comics also began to address the issue of World War III with the implications of super-powered beings as metaphors for nuclear weapons. Marvel Comics gathered many of their Russian super-hero and villain characters into a new group, called "The Soviet Super-Soldiers" which answered directly to the Soviet Government. They also addressed the issue of Russian born mutants, in X-Factor Annual #1, with a story that revealed that all Soviet born mutants were forcibly drafted upon discovery, to serve as covert assassins for the Soviet government.
The most notable Marvel story addressing the issue of World War III was in Uncanny X-Men #150. In it, the villain Magneto once again threatens the world, with the threat of using his newly increased magnetic powers to cause unspeakable destruction across the globe unless all of the governments of the world cede control over the planet to him. Magneto, when confronted by the X-Men, defends his murderous actions (which includes destroying an entire Russian city and sinking a Soviet nuclear submarine) by stating that if he not take over the world then and there, that mutantkind would be destroyed along with mankind in the event of a nuclear war.
Meanwhile DC began to explore, in the pages of its various black-ops themed comics, similar ideas as they introduced various Soviet backed super-powered beings. These appeared in the pages of Suicide Squad, Firestorm the Nuclear Man, Captain Atom, and Checkmate.
The most notable characters introduced were the armored suit wearing soldiers "The Rocket Reds", a special platoon of armor wearing Russian soldiers who were introduced in the pages of "The Green Lantern Corps" in Green Lantern #206.
World War III was also a major theme of the 1987 Justice League
Justice League
The Justice League, also called the Justice League of America or JLA, is a fictional superhero team that appears in comic books published by DC Comics....
, as it went from an apolitical organization to being backed by the United Nations.
While mainstream DC Comics offered an optimistic look at World War III, other comics were more cynical. "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns is a four-issue comic book limited series written and drawn by Frank Miller, originally published by DC Comics under the title Batman: The Dark Knight in 1986. When the issues were released in a collected edition later that year, the story title for the first issue...
" portrayed World War III erupting over the issue of a small Latin American country, with the Soviet Union effectively "winning" the war overnight by using a specially designed weapon called a "Coldbringer"; the Coldbringer produces a massive electromagnetic pulse designed to shut down all technology and cover the sky with soot and dust, effectively condemning all of America to nuclear winter
Nuclear winter
Nuclear winter is a predicted climatic effect of nuclear war. It has been theorized that severely cold weather and reduced sunlight for a period of months or even years could be caused by detonating large numbers of nuclear weapons, especially over flammable targets such as cities, where large...
but without the mass murdering side-effects of radiation. The mini-series also featured Superman being portrayed as a government agent, working as a one-man army for the US Government. Unlike Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan however, Superman is shown to be conflicted with his job as a government agent and still refuses to take human lives (something Dr. Manhattan had no problems with).
The best selling and acclaimed mini-series turned graphic novel Watchmen takes place in an alternate 1985 where superheros exist and where Nixon is still President. In the story, Dr. Manhattan, an omnipotent super-hero created in a lab accident in the 1960s, has become America's chief "weapon" and defender in their war against the Soviet Union and his disappearance (manipulated by his fellow super-hero Adrian Veidt) has caused relations between the Soviet Union and America, already on tense terms, to explode as the Soviets begin exploiting Manhattan's disappearance, causing the United States to stand ready to begin nuclear war with the Soviets. The series itself also takes a nhillistic view of super-heroes "solving" the issue of how to prevent World War III: in the end, the brilliant genius Veidt decides that the only way to save the world is to create a new threat that would be powerful enough to scare humanity into uniting for its own self-preservation. To this end, Veidt has spent over a decade building a genetically engineered monster which he teleports into New York City, killing millions yet succeeding in uniting America and the Soviets together. Though his scheme is discovered by his fellow heroes, they ultimately opt to keep silent, lest the world resume the path to destruction.
When the Wind Blows, a graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
by Raymond Briggs
Raymond Briggs
Raymond Redvers Briggs is an English illustrator, cartoonist, graphic novelist, and author who has achieved critical and popular success among adults and children...
, was published in 1982. The novel is a bitter satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
on the advice given by the British government about how to survive a nuclear war, where a working-class couple that do not believe that nuclear war is possible die of radiation sickness
Radiation Sickness
Radiation Sickness is a VHS by the thrash metal band Nuclear Assault. The video is a recording of a concert at the Hammersmith Odeon, London in 1988. It was released in 1991...
after a nuclear explosion. It reflects Briggs’ participation in the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
. Briggs is best known as a writer and illustrator of children’s literature, but this novel was written for an older audience and is his bleakest work. The novel’s message greatly affected young adult readers. Briggs rewrote the novel for radio, stage, and an animated film that was released in 1986.
1990s: Fears subside
The Cold War ended without the destructive final global war that had often been envisioned in popular culture, and the public's fears of World War III were allayed. On the other hand, the previously classified Stanislav PetrovStanislav Petrov
On September 26, 1983 the Nuclear Early Warning System of the Soviet Union twice reported the launch of American Minuteman ICBMs from bases in the United States. These missile attack warnings were correctly identified as a false alarm by Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, an officer of the Soviet Air...
incident of 1983 seemed to imply that the risk of accidental nuclear war due to technical malfunction had been greater than previously anticipated. The theme of nuclear armageddon launched by military artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
computer systems without human decision was explored in the 1991 blockbuster movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a 1991 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron and written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr.. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, and Edward Furlong...
. During the early 90s and the Gulf Crisis, tabloid papers and other press discussed whether World War III would be linked to prophecies of Nostradamus
Nostradamus
Michel de Nostredame , usually Latinised to Nostradamus, was a French apothecary and reputed seer who published collections of prophecies that have since become famous worldwide. He is best known for his book Les Propheties , the first edition of which appeared in 1555...
concerning a third great war.
Movies about nuclear weapons that saved humanity were popular. Films such as such as Armageddon and Deep Impact
Deep Impact (film)
Deep Impact is a 1998 science-fiction disaster-drama film released by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks in the United States on May 8, 1998. The film was directed by Mimi Leder and stars Robert Duvall, Elijah Wood, Téa Leoni, and Morgan Freeman...
(1998). Blast from the Past (1999
1999 in film
The year 1999 in film involved several noteworthy events and has been called "The Year That Changed Movies". Several significant feature films, including Stanley Kubrick's final film Eyes Wide Shut, Pedro Almodóvar's first Oscar-winning film All About My Mother, science fiction The Matrix, Deep...
) is a comedy about a 1960s family caught in the grip of Cold War paranoia. Falsely convinced that World War III has started, they hide in their fallout shelter, only to emerge 35 years later in the post–Cold War world. Jonathan Schell
Jonathan Schell
Jonathan Edward Schell is an author and visiting fellow at Yale University, whose work primarily deals with nuclear weapons.-Career:His work has appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, and TomDispatch...
complained to the New York Times that "the post–Cold War generation knows less about nuclear danger than any generation."
Yellow Peril
Yellow Peril (novel)
Yellow Peril is a 1991 novel by Wang Lixiong, written in Chinese under the pseudonym Bao Mi , about a civil war in the People's Republic of China that becomes a nuclear exchange and soon engulfs the world, causing World War III...
(1991) by Wang Lixiong
Wang Lixiong
Wang Lixiong is a Chinese writer and scholar, best known for his political prophecy fiction, Yellow Peril , which was ranked 41st in The 100 Most Influential Chinese Novels in 20th Centuryby Asia Weekly and has gained widespread popularity in China as well as worldwide media attention despite...
, is about a civil war in the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
that becomes a nuclear exchange and soon engulfs the world. It was banned by the Chinese Communist Party but remained popular.
World War III is referenced in the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: First Contact is the eighth feature film in the Star Trek science fiction franchise, released in November 1996, by Paramount Pictures. First Contact is the first film in the franchise to feature no cast members from the original Star Trek television series of the 1960s...
. William T. Riker states that 600 million people were killed and very few world governments are left.
2000s: Concern over terrorism
After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a scenario of World War III beginning as a result of a nuclear or other catastrophic terrorist attack became prominent. Terrorism in the form of nuclear, chemical, or biological attacks now occupy the place in popular culture once held by the vision of a nuclear World War III between world powers.Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
released a film adaptation of Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears
The Sum of All Fears (film)
The Sum of All Fears is a 2002 American action film/political thriller directed by Phil Alden Robinson and based on the novel The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy...
in 2002. The production of the film began before 9/11, and was originally intended as an escapist thriller where CIA analyst Jack Ryan
Jack Ryan (Tom Clancy)
John Patrick "Jack" Ryan, Sr. is a fictional character created by Tom Clancy who appears in many of his novels.-Backstory:Born in 1950, Ryan's background is established in Patriot Games and Red Rabbit. His father was Emmet William Ryan , a police homicide lieutenant in Baltimore, and World War II...
fights Neo-Nazis who conspire to detonate a nuclear weapon at a football game to start a nuclear war between Russia and the United States. However, the film’s release just seven months after 9/11 made it very topical. Phil Alden Robinson
Phil Alden Robinson
Phil Alden Robinson is an American film director and screenwriter whose films include Field of Dreams, Sneakers and The Sum of All Fears.-Life and career:...
, the film's director, commented that "a year ago, you'd have said, 'great popcorn film,'...Today you say, 'that's about the world I live in.'" There was an aggressive promotional campaign, with movie trailers and television commercials showing the nuclear destruction of a city and a special premiere for politicians in Washington, D.C.
Recently, World War III has also become the topic of several popular video games, reflecting the trend towards increased public consciousness of the possibility of a future global war. Games such as Tom Clancy's EndWar
Tom Clancy's EndWar
Tom Clancy's EndWar is a real-time tactics game designed by Ubisoft Shanghai for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows platforms. The Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable versions feature turn-based tactics instead of the real-time tactics of their console counterparts...
, Battlefield 3
Battlefield 3
Battlefield 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released in North America on October 25, 2011 and in Europe on October 28, 2011 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and EA Mobile confirmed a port for...
and Frontlines: Fuel of War
Frontlines: Fuel of War
Frontlines: Fuel of War is a first-person shooter game for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360. It was released February 25, 2008 in North America. It was produced by Kaos Studios...
, paint scenarios about a Third World War driven by the need for resources on the part of the various combatants. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 video game consoles and the Microsoft Windows operating system. Officially announced on February 11, 2009, the game was released worldwide on...
and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a first-person shooter video game, developed by Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games, with Raven Software having assisted in development...
are also recent examples; at the end of the latter's launch advertisement, the "W" in "WW3" flips itself to read "MW3." These games feature a global war between the United States and Russia after the United States is framed for a massacre at a Moscow airport and soon after the Russians expand their war into France, Germany and England. Other games such as World In Conflict
World in Conflict
World in Conflict, or WiC, is a real-time tactical video game developed by the Swedish video game company Massive Entertainment and published by Ubisoft for Microsoft Windows. The game was released in September 2007...
, and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty take place in alternate histories where global war is a reality, the former being a war between the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, and the latter being a war between the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and a much stronger Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
that won World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, both games depicting an invasion of America. The Fallout series portrays the effects of a nuclear holocaust in the future after a war between China and the United States in the late 21st century. Ace Combat
Ace Combat
Ace Combat is a hybrid arcade-simulation flight action video game series featuring 12 games, published by the Japanese company Namco Bandai Games...
Assault Horizon
Ace Combat: Assault Horizon
Ace Combat: Assault Horizon is an installment of the Ace Combat arcade combat flight video game series developed by Project Aces and published by Namco Bandai for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. -Plot:...
portrays the United States and Russia going to war due to a massive superweapon being built. The 2007 bestselling game DEFCON places players in charge of preparing to and then fighting a nuclear war with other human or computer-generated players attacking from and defending different sectors of planet Earth; its simple 1980s-style vector graphics are inspired by those seen in the 1983 hit movie WarGames
WarGames
WarGames is a 1983 American Cold War suspense/science-fiction film written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes and directed by John Badham. The film stars Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy....
.
In 2000 a made-for-television remake of Fail-Safe was produced; it continued to be set, however, in the same time period as the original film.
The video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 video game consoles and the Microsoft Windows operating system. Officially announced on February 11, 2009, the game was released worldwide on...
, released on November 2009, depicts the start of World War III after Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
blames the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
for a massacre at Zakhaev International Airport in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
.
2010s: Fall of Terrorism, Rise of Conspiracy
The pronounced death of Osama bin Laden by the American President Barack Obama at 11:35 p.m., May 1st, 2011, has drastically reduce the danger of terrorismTerrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
. However, certain sources claim that Osama is still alive after Operation Neptune
Neptune
Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in the Solar System. Named for the Roman god of the sea, it is the fourth-largest planet by diameter and the third largest by mass. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus, which is 15 times...
Spear
Spear
A spear is a pole weapon consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head.The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with bamboo spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fastened to the shaft, such as flint, obsidian, iron, steel or...
which started on May 1st, 2011.
Many countries across the world, excluding Pakistan and Iran, celebrated over the death of Osama. The Abbottabad
Abbottabad
Abbottabad is a city located in the Hazara region of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, in Pakistan. The city is situated in the Orash Valley, northeast of the capital Islamabad and east of Peshawar at an altitude of and is the capital of the Abbottabad District...
, Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
residents claim that Osama's death was a U.S. conspiracy against Pakistan. Iranians believed that Osama may had been working with the U.S. during the entire war of terror. Ismail Kosari, an Iranian MP, said that Osama bin Laden was just a puppet controlled by the Zionist regime in order to present a violent image of Islam after the September 11 attacks.
Several hoax about Osama's death were found in Twitter and Facebook.
World War III and its predicted aftermath continues to be portrayed in popular media around the world such as in recent video games Metro 2033, Fallout New Vegas, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a first-person shooter video game, developed by Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games, with Raven Software having assisted in development...
, Wargame: European Escalation, ARMA 3
Arma 3
ARMA 3 is an open world tactical shooter video game developed by Bohemia Interactive and expected to be released in summer 2012. The game takes place in near future during Operation Magnitude, an operation launched by NATO forces fighting "Eastern armies" in Europe.-Campaign:The game is set in the...
, APOX
APOX
APOX is a real-time strategy game developed and published by for Microsoft Windows, released through Steam on January 20, 2011, takes place in a near-future, post-apocalyptic, Mad Max-esque setting.-Gameplay:...
and RAGE
RAGE
RAGE, the Receptor for Advanced Glycation Endproducts is a 35kD transmembrane receptor of the immunoglobulin super family which was first characterized in 1992 by Neeper et al. It is also called "AGER"...
.
Alien invasions
Alien invasion
The alien invasion is a common theme in science fiction stories and film, in which extraterrestrial life invades Earth either to exterminate and supplant human life, enslave it under a colonial system, harvest humans for food, steal the planet's resources, or destroy the planet altogether.The...
have become a popular topic as a World War III like conflict with the alien invaders portrayed in a similar way to a military invasion, such as seen in the films Battle: Los Angeles
Battle: Los Angeles
Battle: Los Angeles is a 2011 American military science fiction war film directed by Jonathan Liebesman, and starring Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Ramon Rodriguez, Bridget Moynahan, Ne-Yo and Michael Peña...
, Skyline and the TV series Falling skies
Falling Skies
Falling Skies is an American science fiction dramatic television series created by Robert Rodat and produced by Steven Spielberg. The series picks up six months into a world devastated by an alien invasion...
See also
- Nuclear weapons in popular cultureNuclear weapons in popular cultureSince their public debut in August 1945, nuclear weapons and their potential effects have been a recurring motif in popular culture, to the extent that the decades of the Cold War are often referred to as the "atomic age."-Images of nuclear weapons:...
- Survivalism in fictionSurvivalism in fictionPortrayals of survivalism, and survivalist themes and elements such as survival retreats have been fictionalised in print, film, and electronic media. This genre was especially influenced by the advent of nuclear weapons, and the potential for societal collapse in light of a Cold War nuclear...
- Death of Osama bin LadenDeath of Osama bin LadenOsama bin Laden, then head of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, shortly after 1 a.m. local time by a United States special forces military unit....