How the nuclear football works
I posted previously about a Radiolab podcast that talks about this nuclear strike process -- a virtually unstoppable procedure that the President has complete control over. Scary, huh.
There are virtually no checks in place to stop the President from launching a nuclear ICBM
This episode of Radiolab is frightening.
The last portion of this episode touches upon the checks in place should the President make a call to launch nuclear missiles. As you can imagine, the order is expected to be followed without question despite the devastating effects for everybody involved.
This has been a topic of discussion lately, especially with the often unpredictable behavior of Donald Trump. The scariest part: The President has about 6 minutes to make a decision and give the order to launch an ICBM in response to another country launching one at us. SIX MINUTES. Can you imagine making that kind of decision with all of your wits with you? Now imagine somebody like Donald Trump making that decision. The kicker: The President can currently launch nuclear missiles at any country even if the US is not at war with that country. That's crazy. And even crazier is that virtually nobody can stop this order from being halted (again, all of this insanity must take place in 6 minutes if an ICBM is detected to be on its way to US soil).
If you want to see how messed up this whole thing is, you need to listen to this podcast.
IT IS TWO AND A HALF MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT
OMG. Every day is just worse than the next: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists just revised the Doomsday clock to 2 and a half minutes to midnight. The Doomsday Dashboard is worth looking at.
For the last two years, the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock stayed set at three minutes before the hour, the closest it had been to midnight since the early 1980s. In its two most recent annual announcements on the Clock, the Science and Security Board warned: “The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon.” In 2017, we find the danger to be even greater, the need for action more urgent. It is two and a half minutes to midnight, the Clock is ticking, global danger looms. Wise public officials should act immediately, guiding humanity away from the brink. If they do not, wise citizens must step forward and lead the way.
How Godzilla became the "King of the Monsters"
For some, Godzilla is a by-product of nuclear fallout in Japan that was a sort of reminder of the destructive effects of such a nuclear weapon. For others, especially Americans, Godzilla is simply a giant monster, often battling other monsters while simultaneously making a mess of the city it inhabits. The differences in interpretation here are the result of this Japanese character being marketed to US audiences. Apparently, we're just too dense to read the underlying messages here so Hollywood just turned him into a destructive monster without all that messy subcontext about war and weapons of mass destruction.
Now though, it seems like the true Godzilla meanings are making their way to American audiences at least in the latest incarnation of the film franchise.