Dr. Strangelove And Nuclear War

 

Recent extremely worrying events reminded me of a wonderful, but grim, politically satirical Peter Sellers-movie from 1964, "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb". The movie is loosely based upon Peter George's thriller "Red Alert" (1958), and the director was the renown Stanley Kubrick, who succeeded in making a masterpiece, which received four Oscars, and which absolutely is worth watching even today.  

The movie stars the British actor Peter Sellers in three different roles, and he is brilliant in all of them: 1) Dr. Strangelove, who is the wheelchair-bound, German-born "Merkwurdigliebe" with an unruly hand which loves making Nazi-gestures. Also he is an expert in nuclear war and weapons, 2) Merkin Muffley, the president of the USA, and 3) Lionel Mandrake, a RAF exchange officer from England 

 

The problem of keeping world peace in The Cold War is that one can't account for totally insane - or selfish - people doing something absolutely crazy. In this movie the insane individual is a brigadier general of The United States Air Force, Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), who orders a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It appears that he has succumbed to the delusion that Soviet Union has been fluoridizing American water supplies thus polluting the "precious bodily fluids of Americans", which presumably means males and their semen. It's very obvious that looking masculine and fit doesn't tell the truth  about who and what brigadier general Jack D. Ripper is ....

What he doesn't know is that the Soviet Union created a doomsday machine, made of many cobalt bombs, which will detonate automatically should the country be attacked. And, as one may expect, the nuclear fallout would render the Earth uninhabitable for 93 years - or more. This demonic device cannot be deactivated, as any attempt to do so will make it explode. 

President Muffley is desperate to stop the air planes with the bombs as is his crew, but in vain. After some very hectic, but not quite succesful activity to put a stop to the diaster brigadier general Jack D. Ripper commits suicide. His CRM-code is deduced from doodles on his desk blotter as Strategic Air Command all the planes carrying bombs are recalled, except one which is under the command of major T. J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickens) who rides the bomb down to the "Big Bang", which also will kill him.  

The future of those who survive the nuclear war will be living in underground caves, fighting for whatever there is to eat - which can't be much - and that's a pretty strong warning even today.

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/26/opinions/dr-strangelove-60th-anniversary-kubrick-trump-berlatsky 

 

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