|
"We may have been on the brink of Nuclear war and not even known it." - Robert Gates, deputy director of intelligence at the CIA in 1983.
I remember first seeing this in early 2008, wondering to myself why I hadn't even heard of this global near-catastrophy. This was the closest the world ever came to nuclear annihilation, yet nothing about this momentously important time had been mentioned in school, nor was there a huge presence of information in the public domain. Yet the lessons learned from this time are invaluable for the 21st Century. In 1983, the world was dominated by two super-powers: the United States of America, and the Soviet Union. Their leaders, Ronald Regan and Yuri Andropov, presided over the last great threat of nuclear war in the 20th Century. Before the great thaw in relations between east and west, the bravado of Regan and the paranoia of Andropov nearly wiped life as we know it from this wonderful planet. It was in March of that year that Regan announced the Star Wars project; in August when the Soviets shot down passanger flight KAL-007, mistaking it for a US spy plane, killing over 200 people; and the early days of November, when operation Able Arthur, a nuclear training exercise began. The documentary '1983: The Brink of Apocalypse' explains just how, in this paronoid time, the superpowers edged towards DEFCON 2, and how disaster was averted by the most unlikely of sources: in one case by two spies, a double agent called Oleg Gordievsky based in London, and Rainer Rupp, codenamed Topaz, an East German spy who had infiltrated the very highest levels of NATO; the second, by a man named Stanislav Petrov, who kept his nerve and refused to react during what proved to be a false alarm that the United States had launched a small number of nuclear missiles at the Soviet Union. No matter what your political or national affiliation, this documentary is an excellent source of information, containing interviews with key political and military figures of the time, and with 'Topaz' and Petrov.
0 Comments
|
Categories
All
Archives |
RSS Feed
MOST VIEWED POSTS
The "Maggot from Italy's Tomb?" The "Black Widow" of St Bartholomew? Or one of the finest examples of power politics and survival ever seen? Well, I would have to say yes to all of the above, and more! Catherine was one of the most complex characters in a time of massive internal strife in France, with enemies both within (Guise, D'Albret) and abroad (Philip II of Spain).
|
Born in Kent Town, Adelaide, Australia, Mark Oliphant was a Physicist, who received the prestigious Hughes Medal (other recipients include Alexander Graham Bell, Enrico Fermi, Stephen Hawking, and Andre Geim). He was also a life-long vegetarian after seeing a pig slaughtered at a farm as a child.
|
The third movement of Haydn's Cello Concerto in C Major is one of my favourite pieces of music. It is a truly joyous piece, and one which I find uplifting. The first performance I heard was by 13-year-old Han-na Chang, who took my breath away with her skill, musicianship and dynamism.
|
New research from Dutch scientists has revitalised the search for the elusive Majorana Fermion. The Majorana Fermion was first predicted about 75 years ago by Italian scientist Ettore Majorana, one of the Via Paspernera Boys - a group of scientists named after the street where their lab was located.
|
Water. Without it, we would not exist. Covering nearly 71% of the world’s surface, it is one of the key building blocks of life on Earth. We think we know all about it, how it works, and what it does. But Gerald Pollack, Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington, Seattle, is sure we don’t!
|
Franco Fagioli is an Argentinian Countertenor "who seems to redefine the capabilities of the countertenor voice." He has won great acclaim for his performance in the role of Arbace in the recent all-male production of Vinci's Artaserse, and will soon be releasing an album celebrating the star castrato Caffarelli.
|
© James Edward Hughes 2013
