Hacker Cinema
Red Dawn
1984 · Film · 114 min
Directed by John Milius
It is the dawn of World War III. In mid-western America, a group of teenagers band together to defend their town—and their country—from invading Soviet forces.
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28 comments on Hacker News
We were told, non-stop and repeatedly, that we would probably all die in a nuclear holocaust before we reached adulthood. And yeah, lots of my generation decided that they'd rather spend their few remaining months touring South America rainforests or hiking Nepal than doing the "productive" things that the people likely to blow up the world wanted us to.
And then they didn't blow up the world. Well, crud. What do we do with ourselves now?
I'm not even slightly exaggerating, by the way. About half the popular media was depictions of how the US would blow up Russia, Russia would blow up the US, or what live would be like after the US and Russia blew each other up. Red Dawn. Most movies with Sylvester Stallone. The Day After. Threads. I assure you those weren't kitschy, ironic things we winked at. We generationally kinda reconciled ourselves to the idea we'd never grow old enough to drink. And then, we were labeled "slackers" for not having followed the same traditional routes as previous generations.
I'm hugely sympathetic to Gen Alpha. I get it, kiddos. I see you there, and I understand.
I lived through the 1980ies, and I still have trouble processing the idea that the anti-Soviet, rah-rah patriot types that loved movies like Red Dawn are now in bed with the Russians. It's just bizarre.
The strategy was to first secure the rural high school, and then the cows would be defenseless.
But "Red Dawn" (1984) did have some redeeming qualities as a film, and apparently it was influential in at least one way...
Circa '96, I was talking with grad student from the former USSR (attending a US Ivy university), and I got the impression that the film had been taken more seriously there than it was here.
Like they thought it was some influential propaganda that people in the US fervently believed: the Communists will invade the heartland of America, and you should prepare to engage in guerilla warfare with your guns.
On second thought, I suppose it's possible some people did get that message, especially some demographic of gun-enthusiasts. IIRC, the movie has the invaders getting the list of registered gun owners, which sounds like a sensitive policy question. But I'd wildly guess only 50/50 chance that any US student at the Ivy in '96 had seen the '84 movie, though they would've had about the right age overlap.
I had recurring nightmares about a malfunctioning nuclear warhead that slowed abnormally and spiraled in a flat spin leaving a smoke/vapor trail as it neared its ultimate detonation height.
The movie Red Dawn was the ultimate manifestation of 80's red hysteria and triumphal American exceptionalism.
~625 scanlines (PAL)? We only had ~480 scan lines with NTSC.
My parents had a roof-mounted VHF/UHF antenna that could be electrically rotated with a dial. Looking something like this
Antenna:
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.ylm7vXEjqyiUuOG4Oh17yQHaFE%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=a0b9cb4860702eddad33898769124e7a290a6cca6468fdc7ade7a62a4aac8d33&ipo=images
Channel Master:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/WXgAAOSwGJJfoJlz/s-l640.jpg
My grandparents had an analog HBO pirate cheat box with a fixed, directional antenna. I remember watching George Carlin standup specials.
"Prepping" in North America is tied up with Book of Revelations apocalypse fantasy, settler-colonial "rugged individualist" entitlement, like you say, victimhood identity. Ted Kaczynski stuff, or "Red Dawn" or religious fundamentalist. Often with a nice tinge of "might makes right" and "I need to prep before the guvmint' takes over"
But compare and contrast with the Swedish "preppers" in this DW documentary:
https://www.dw.com/en/swedish-preppers-a-nation-rehearsing-disaster/av-62514099
The personalities and motivations of most of the people are night and day different from what you find among US "preppers." Neighbourhood preparedness groups. Using words like "solidarity." Talking about how important it is for communities to "stick together" in case of war or other problems. Government assistance in planning for emergency -- state produced pamphlets and rationing kits. Inviting Syrian refugees in to talk about their experiences in the civil war and strife, and what they can learn from them. Stuff that would make US preppers squirm in their seats.
(FWIW I grew up rural Alberta, Canada and my parents were big into the outdoors. Backcountry camping, archery, guns, wilderness canoeing, etc. were a big part of my life. But my father was German and very left wing / social democratic. His tone and emphasis on these topics was night and day from many other people we'd meet.)
> Average American in 1984 couldn't conceive....
"Couldn't conceive" is pretty strong - it was the era of the Cold War, GI Joe, a hangover from the Cuban Missile Crisis, the contras. Maybe accurate to say the average American would find it highly improbable, and our eventual victory always assured because Chuck Norris, Rambo, and the inherent virtue of our cause against totalitarianism.
Anyway, I think the paratroopers that appear in Red Dawn are from Cuba or a socialist country in Central/South America, right? Which isn't terribly far-fetched in the context of the eighties imagination - maybe more accessible idea than a Soviet D-Day-style invasion. Also not out of line in history - didn't the Germans court the Mexicans in WWII? The French during the Civil War (I use the word "court" loosely with the French 'intervention', but hell, we got a holiday out of it).
The film was marketed saying that no foreign invasion of US soil had happened, though it ignored the Japanese invasion of Alaska. The "average American" probably still doesn't think of Alaska very often except for reality TV, much less its history.
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/433-2107/letter-from/9780-alaska-wwii-battle
Tom Cruise wasn't in Red Dawn, as I recall - maybe thinking about Charlie Sheen (the discount Tom Cruise)? Yes, wheat harvest fails in Ukraine, coup in Mexico, NATO disbanded. Cuban paratroopers in the first wave if I recall correctly. Still a highly enjoyable movie - one of the best eighties adventure flicks.
Tom Cruise was not in Red Dawn
In the 1984 movie, paratroopers dropped from supposed commercial flights, which was the approach the USSR used for their 1980 invasion of Afghanistan
Nukes were used later against the Chinese, which was why there were 500 million screaming Chinese in our side. 13 year old me was a big fan of the movie.
John has a big mustache. The chair is against the wall.
> It didn't seem to help Tom Cruise and Patrick Swayze in the 1984 movie Red Dawn ;) Interesting NATO is disbanded in that movie, and the harvest in the Ukraine suffers for some reason (blight? war?).
Of course. The DEW line was mean to warn against a Soviet nuclear attack, but in that movie no such attack occurs.
> Of course, that was the Cubans that invaded.
In the backstory for the movie it wasn't just the Cubans. The Russians directly led it, and also Mexico went Communist and the invasion actually proceeded from there, so I'd assume Mexican forces participated as well. That would have been obscured because the main antagonist characters were a Russian commander and a Cuban commander.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dawn#Plot:
> In an alternate 1980s, the United States is strategically isolated after NATO is disbanded. At the same time, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies aggressively expand. In addition, the Ukrainian wheat harvest fails while a socialist coup d'état occurs in Mexico.
It didn't seem to help Tom Cruise and Patrick Swayze in the 1984 movie Red Dawn ;) Interesting NATO is disbanded in that movie, and the harvest in the Ukraine suffers for some reason (blight? war?).
Red Dawn and Top Gun.
I guess some people don't realize that stuff like the Transformers movies were all done with help from the US Military as well.
Probably the same people who don't make the connection with the military displays associated with sporting events (and the national anthem and its military theme before domestic sporting events). Stuff like the Blue Angles. It is all very Roman Empire the way we display our weapons of war, but lots of people can't even see it.
> My point still stands, the mainstream media's report on Xinjiang is lazy, they have no first-hand deep reporting.
That is demonstrably false. I think the problem is that you expect them to report on this like it was an easy story to report, but it's an extremely difficult story to report because of the interference.
> For example, when reporters are followed by government employees, that's the usual lazy bureaucratic reactions to western media. Those are not evidences of "vanishing Uyghurs".
It's the exact opposite thing to do if you're trying to dispel allegations of such a thing. The interference, on its own, proves nothing, but lends credence to the things that have been learned about through other channels.
> Instead, if they just pretend to be normal travellers, and hop on trains, on bus, on the street, and gather the information through small talks and gossips with real locals, they'll have much more freedom to reach deeper.
I don't think what you describe is actually legal in China. First of all, journalists need to declare themselves by getting a special visa, and its unlikely they could fly under the radar if they worked for a major outlet. Secondly, if they do try that approach the government is going to swarm them with minders and plainclothes police to prevent what you're suggesting.
e.g.:
https://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/going-to-comic-lengths-to-stifle-foreign-coverage-in-xinjiang/
> Hoping to hear both sides, Mr. McDonell spent several days traveling across Xinjiang, planning to interview local residents and Chinese officials. Instead, he filmed a segment that communicates the lengths to which the government was willing to go to prevent him from finding out what is really happening in the region.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/insider/china-xinjiang-reporting-surveillance-uighur.html (posted earlier)
There was also one account I read where a journalist had to go through ridiculous lengths to avoid the minders, but that only bought him less than a day (maybe only an hour or two) before they caught up (he traveled at that last minute with no warning and made sudden changes).
> There has never been any successful deployment of voting democracy outside of US for decently sized countries, let alone the largest country on earth.
Huh? I'm sure there are at least a few other countries that would like a word.
> Considering the historical importance of Cold war and its victory by the western world, don't you think China deserves some mentioning. No, never... not even a hint.
It does get mentioned, or at least it did when it was relevant. I mean, this alliance was even mentioned in an action movie from the 80s I watched as a teenager (Red Dawn, about a Soviet Invasion of the US. Some teenage insurgents ask a down piloted who was helping the US fight the Soviets, the answer was only China, not even Europe).
> That's the problem, right? One should start realize that their preferred media might not have the 1st-hand information on other regions of the world. And start looking for that.
But the MSM does have first hand information. For instance, like that gathered from foreign correspondents and foreign bureaus.
> And for that, because of the vast size of China, YT videos, even rando ones are more useful than media reports, because they are showing nuances.
Or are fabricated: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/22/technology/xinjiang-uyghurs-china-propaganda.html
> These and thousands of other videos are meant to look like unfiltered glimpses of life in Xinjiang, the western Chinese region where the Communist Party has carried out repressive policies against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities. Most of the clips carry no logos or other signs that they are official propaganda....
> A monthslong analysis of more than 3,000 of the videos by The New York Times and ProPublica found evidence of an influence campaign orchestrated by the Chinese government.
> The operation has produced and spread thousands of videos in which Chinese citizens deny abuses against their own communities and scold foreign officials and multinational corporations who dare question the Chinese government’s human rights record in Xinjiang.
> ... Establishing that government officials had a hand in making these testimonials is sometimes just a matter of asking.
> When reached by phone, the man said local propaganda authorities had produced the clip. When asked for details, he gave the number of an official he called Mr. He, saying, “Why don’t you ask the head of the propaganda department?”
> And I need to see it through my own eyes to be confident about my judgement.
And what of things you're not allowed to see?
Your description sounds like the plot of the movie Red Dawn... which is probably not a coincidence.
> Comment was removed (why?), this loads it eventually:
> https://snew.notabug.io/r/worldnews/comments/h7ghoc/zoom_say...
This is what was posted: (some hyperlinks missing)
Fuck reddit and it's censoring.
Business Hall of Bootlickers:
Reddit: took $150M from Tencent. Removed threads like this
Activision Blizzard: banned player for supporting Hong Kong democracy protest. Confiscated all his winnings. Fired his interviewers
Apple: censors Taiwan flag emoji in iOS in Hong Kong
Apple (partial entry): censored Hong Kong protest map from App Store. Relented after backlash, now letting app into App Store.
Vans: censors pro-HK democracy design in its shoe design competition
NBA (partial entry): rebuked Rockets manager for his pro-HK tweet, saying NBA was "extremely disappointed with Morey's inappropriate comment." Backpedalled after backlash, now saying they support Morey's freedom of speech.
Disney / ESPN: forbids mention of Chinese politics when discussing Rockets manager's pro-HK tweet. ESPN hosts castigated Morey & speculated about his sincerity, but they will not talk about what caused the tweet: China's encroachment on HK
Viacom / Paramount: censors Taiwan flag from the jacket worn by Tom Cruise in the new "Top Gun" movie
Disney / Marvel: censored Tibetan monk from "Doctor Strange" and turned him into a white woman. Movie screenwriter: "if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that he’s Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people who think that that’s bullshit".
ASICS, Calvin Klein, Coach, Fresh, Givenchy, Pocari Sweat, Valentino, Versace, Swarovski: details here
Marriott: apologized to China & changed "Taiwan" to "Taiwan, China" after China threw a hissy fit
Nike: removed all Houston Rockets products from their China webstore
Activision Blizzard: cut livestream when American University team held up pro-HK sign.
Apple: handed over iCloud data & encryption keys to China
Riot Games: censors the words "Hong Kong", forcing casters to refer to team "Hong Kong Attitude" as "HKA".
Cathay Pacific: fired employees for FB posts supporting HK protests.
Apple: minimized the seriousness of iOS exploits that enabled China to track Uyghurs, when 1M+ of them are rounded up by China in concentration camps
Google: censored pro-HK game "The Revolution of Our Times" from Google Play because it was about a "sensitive event".
Gap: apologized to China for selling T-shirts IN CANADA that didn't include Taiwan as part of China
Tiffany: removed tweet showing model covering 1 eye after China accused it of supporting HK
Marriott: fired employee who liked tweet from Tibetan group
Mercedes: apologized for quoting Dalai Lama on Instagram
American, Delta, United: deleted mention of Taiwan as a country from websites
Audi: apologized for using "incorrect map" of China that left off Taiwan
Muji: destroyed store catalogs that contain "incorrect" map of China
Zara: apologized for listing Taiwan as country
Medtronic: apologized for publishing "illegal content" that listed "Republic of China (Taiwan)" as country
Ray-Ban: changed "Taiwan" & "Hongkong" to "China Taiwan" & "China Hongkong"
Qantas, Air France, Air Canada, British Airways, Malaysia Airlines, Japan Airlines, ANA: changed "Taiwan" to "Taiwan China" on websites
TikTok: censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, Falun Gong
Sheraton: banned Taiwan National Day event. China called event "illegal & a crime against international law"
Disney: shrank/removed non-white characters from Chinese poster of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”
Philadelphia Sixers: ejected fans for supporting HK
Princeton: doesn't talk about the 3 Ts: Tibet, Tiananmen, Taiwan
Leica: released ad on Tiananmen protest. Apologized & distanced itself from ad
Rockhampton, Queensland: censored Taiwan flag in student art project
Cisco: helped build the Great Firewall including module to persecute Falun Gong
MGM: changed Red Dawn's villain from China to N Korea to placate China
Global Blue: fired staff for calling Taiwan a country
L'Oréal / Lancôme: canceled concert of HK artist Denise Ho for her pro-democracy activism
After decades of opening up Western market to China while turning a blind eye to rampant Chinese IP thefts, forced tech transfers, & protectionism, we are looking at widespread control of Western firms by China. Firms that are not under outright Chinese control still kowtow to China out of fear of China's retaliation.
REVERSE ENTRIES:
Matt Stone & Trey Parker: South Park "Band in China"
Red Bull: released video supporting protests for freedom & liberty
Ubisoft: listened to fans, said no to China after initially saying they would tone down game content to be China-compliant.
Prague: cancel partnership with Beijing over 1-China principle
Immutable: offer to repay banned gamer's winnings that was confiscated by Blizzard, got cyber attacked as a result
This is a tangent, but the "Red Dawn" example is kind of amusing to me because in 2009, a China-is-the-new-Cold-War-Russia film seems patently offensive to Chinese and Chinese-Americans, even without Chinese government political pressure. That the filmmakers belatedly switched the villains to North Korea is kind of offensive to me as an Asian, since it seems to reveal a thought process of "let's just make any Asians the villains".
In 1984, Russia as the villains makes sense since we were several decades into the Cold War at that point. Putting aside the fact that they are hugely valuable trade allies, we have never been at war with China, or (at least in 2009) been involved in any kind of proxy conflict along the scale of Afghanistan and Vietnam. Making China the new Russia is as off-putting as making Mexico the villains of a "Red Dawn" remake.
If the rationale is: "Well, only China makes sense because they're the only rival superpower left". That still leaves unanswered the obvious question of: why do we need this kind of military occupation fantasy at all? Or, if realism truly is a concern, and the filmmaker's artistic passion for the military occupation genre, then why not remake it with the U.S. as the invading superpower, and the hero resistance being, well, just about any other country (doesn't even have to be Middle Eastern)?
The cynical answer to the latter question, of course, is that such a movie would be so denounced by American public figures (political and non-political) that the studio/fillmaker would be effectively blacklisted from mainstream U.S. business. Much like releasing a "China is the Bad Others!" film would be if you wanted mainstream Chinese patronage.
Nothing wrong with that. You might laugh at skeletons being where they choose to draw the line, but we have rules as well about what can happen in a video game. There are no kids in Grand Theft Auto for a reason.
Also, Blizzard only removed them from the game in china
What would be more disturbing is if they had to rewrite some orc-politics story so it wouldn't offend chinese sensibilities, and US consumers got the rewritten version as well.
The movie Red Dawn(2012) was a remake of a 1984 action film where a communist army invades the US. They updated the invader from the USSR to China, come to "repossess" the US after we defaulted on national debt. This offended the chinese, so the producers had to spend $1M editing every reference to china in the film and making it a North Korean invasion instead. This was the version US consumers were sold.
Random factoid: IIRC, part of the backstory of the 80s movie Red Dawn was a failure of Soviet agriculture, which then motivated the invasion of the US.
My (admittedly uninformed and probably based on too many movies/novels) expectations would be less about traditional occupation and more about neutralization.
I can't imagine the "Red Dawn" scenario of Russian troops invading and occupying US territory. If anything, the goal would be to knock out critical communication/shipping infrastructure to effectively disrupt all normal activity--can't buy or sell, can't get food, can't depend on modern mass communication to organize and maintain order.
Alongside that, the use of modern weapons to do serious damage to centers of power would speed up collapse. That's the goal if your intention is to hit us at our weakest point: catastrophic societal collapse.
If it's our military against some other military, we've got odds as good as anyone else (and almost always better). But if you've knocked out electronic commerce, disrupted civilian use of things like cell networks and internet access, and made it hard enough to get food on supermarket shelves, all those armed people aren't gonna just keep calm and carry on while they're hungry and several cities are burning.
Sure, it's probably a bit too "straight-to-Netflix" but it's much easier for me to imagine someone applying force at the points we're weakest and letting things fall apart than facing off plane vs. plane, ship vs. ship, and tank vs. tank on the battlefield.
"You cannot invade the mainland United States; there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." --unprovably attributed to Admiral Yamamoto
"Wolverines!" -- Hollywood movie Red Dawn
There are enough guns in the US for every man, woman, and child to carry one, and enough mulish stubbornness to carry on guerilla warfare for a long time. Americans shoot at each other constantly, and have been intensively studying next-generation warfare overseas for decades. We would certainly not hesitate to convert school shootings into checkpoint shootings, and random/racist bombings into vichy collaborator bombings.
Any nation with experience occupying Afghanistan should consider it before attempting to occupy the US. Those without it should consult with any allies that have it.
It doesn't contribute to the security of the state, but it does increase the security of the country. Except insofar as potential invaders decide that a standard invasion is infeasible and instead nuke every city and military base, I guess.
> I cannot yell "fire" in the movie theater...
Mr. Ken "Popehat" White would like to have a word: https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/
True, they requested that Red Dawn be re-edited, so that China was not the bad guy. I have not seen the movie, nor do I care to.
However, let's think about this situation for a moment, as rational adults. And if you can, then try to think about this from the other side.
There is a lot of bad blood coming out of American media about China. It's in the news, the movies, the TV shows, the literature, it's everywhere. Unless you are dense, then I think this can be established as a fact. China is continually being painted as the big bad scary commie, that's out to eat your children (or something like that), or at least, they're taking your iPhone assembling slavery jobs.
A movie like this, would add more fuel to the fire. You, as an intelligent individual may be able to distinguish that Red Dawn is a fictional movie, with good and bad guys. And this sells tickets. And Americans love this! They want a big bad evil enemy, that their country can destroy. And right now, China is it!
However, can you guarantee that another American, of lesser educational intelligence than yourself, can distinguish such a thing? That this is pure fiction, and not a proxy of reality.
Nobody wants to be painted as the bad guy. Americans movies will certainly never paint America as the bad guy, despite the fact that millions have died at the receiving end of American weapons. In fact, I can't recall any media where America is painted as the bad guy.
The Chinese people certainly don't want to see themselves as the bad guys. Especially not when it's a historical fact, that they have been severely dominated by Western nations. And hundreds of millions of their people have suffered and died. And to this day, there are certain white people, that are proud of what their race did to China in the 1800s. And if you find this shocking, please let me know. You can find this perception all over the internet, and you can poll your close friends, and ask them what they truly think.
Anyways, movies are political statements. When you make it too real, then it hits too close to home. And there are certain dangers with that kind of propaganda. And it will certainly upset the people on the receiving end of it.
Stick to making movies about aliens and their probing devices, zombies, and superheros in tights. Or killing the evil German Nazis. Nobody will question these kinds of movies.
That third link is fascinating - not just for he insights into how Chinese censors indirectly guide producers, but also for the lack of ironic detachment and self-awareness shown by the American analysts, eg
Red Dawn, a remake of a 1980s action movie about a Soviet invasion of the United States, was originally shot featuring China as the antagonist invading the United States. According to Mr. Shiao, however, the Chinese are “not interested in their country being perceived as a violent military threat to the lives of average Americans.”
and
A 'Captain Phillips' executive identified the tone of the film as a source of discomfort for censors, particularly “the big Military machine of the U.S. saving one U.S. citizen. China would never do the same and in no way would want to promote this idea.”
While I think censorship an unwise and ultimately self-defeating policy, and also agree with the basic premise that a good many of the rules are just dressed up protectionism, I can't really blame China for declining to import overt propaganda. China makes lots of propagandistic films, but the propaganda is mainly about what China should be like. It'll be some time before they produce an overtly anti-American film like Brother 2 or Valley of the Wolves (as opposed to striaght-up propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_8lSjcoSW8) and I doubt whether it would be well-received here if they did.
Or North Korea - the idea that it could really threaten the US (like in the reboot of Red Dawn, a terrible film, stick to the original) is ludicrous.
Tiajuana, Mexico? Siberia? Sounds like the makings for a 'Red Dawn 2: Putin and El Chapo" where Trump is holed up with the NRA as patriotic rebels protecting Hillary, the POTUS ;)
The 2012 film remake of Red Dawn made China the bad guys compared with 1984 original Red Dawn where Russia and Cuba were the bad guys.
But seriously, could this be used to launder money, or the scam wouldn't allow for it based upon the setup of the short squeeze? Could money be put in the system this way and cleaned and turn a profit at the same time?
Uh, there was a lot of rah-rah and jingoism. You must be exhausted of someone else saying it had a happy ending.
"I was there, serving at the time as senior vice president for production in the administration of Frank Yablans, then-CEO of the company, when Yablans declared in no uncertain terms that he wanted to make the ultimate jingoistic movie and that Al Haig would take him there. “It will be a sure-fire international blockbuster,” Yablans enthused. ... Even Milius, a stoic, good-natured individual who is more about bluster than action, became alarmed. Wandering into my office one day, he confided his concern that he was being railroaded into what he described as “a flag-waving, jingoistic movie.” Milius said his intent was to make a movie about the “futility of war,” adding, “I have a nervous feeling that Yablans and Haig are jabbering away on their hot line about a different movie.”"
http://variety.com/1997/voices/columns/red-dawn-shooting-it-the-mcveigh-way-1117859589/
Red Dawn was a serious drama. It was also pretty ridiculous. Stuff isn't always black-and-white.
Seriously, there's plenty of reasons not to like Red Dawn, but I get tired of people talking like it's just a bunch of rah-rah America-wins jingoism. You may have forgotten that the movie ends with most of the protagonists dead and no end to the war in sight.
Anybody who remembers Iron Eagle I-III and Red Dawn knows Hollywood is full of propaganda. Goebbels found that it was difficult to change the movie viewers’ beliefs, but easy to reinforce their prejudices. He preferred entertainment that propped up these preconceptions instead of blatant political messages. Assange has been advocating for nobody to watch this flim after he read the Iranian prejudice in the script and dismissed this as Goebbellian manipulation.
I asked a coworker who was from Russia about what their experience was during the Cold War, and whether or not people were afraid of nuclear war. He said that everyone in Russia just laughed it off, and they knew that nothing would ever happen.
This is in stark contrast to everyone in the US that I knew. We were bombarded with propaganda about how nuclear war could occur at any second. Movies like "The Day After" (which I was too scared to watch), "Red Dawn", etc, just made things worse. It's funny when you look back how suckered in Americans were vs Russians. It was basically like the 1950s Red-Scare all over again, or as some would say, today's war against terrorism.