h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's a measure of the desperation and/or sheer bloody pig ignorant delusional behaviour of Brexiteers that "surviving" is now where they're at in spinning it positively.

"How was your meal sir?"
"I survived it."

That's not a positive review.

An aside: the UK lost about 450,000 people to WWII.

*IF* we could ensure that only Leave voters were affected, I think I'd be reasonably happy to lose double that number as a direct result of a no-deal Brexit.

If nothing else, the average intelligence level of the remaining population would soar.

The USSR lost (last estimate I (mis)heard) about 30 MILLION people to WWII.

So that must be a measure of how much better we are huh?

There are several generations who have *no* memory of the World War*, having been born after it. Generation X and the Millennials will roll their eyes whenever anyone goes on about the 1940s.





*Some historians now think that the two world wars were actually one with a hiatus in the middle.

Does that really matter? It's not far off true - certainly the second was a very direct consequence of the former.

I find it hard to argue with historians anyway. Their logic goers even further: people in Eastern Europe were still living *as if* they were still at war as late as the late 1980s. Will the period be known as the 70-year war in the future? Whether I like it or not, I won't be around tom contradict them, nor will they listen to me anyway.

Some argue that the last act of WWII was the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990.

But then the current Middle East crisis could be called an ongoing consequence of WW1 - so perhaps they never end if you count all the consequences as them still existing too. I don't think you should personally, otherwise we could still be arguing that this is all a result of the pesky French Revolution (Which it all kind of is actually )

1989? I should know this, it was my first term at university, so quite memorable in many ways for me.

"people in Eastern Europe were still living *as if* they were still at war as late as the late 1980s"

Fifteen or so years ago I spent an afternoon at Hack Green "Secret" nuclear bunker, a brilliant museum that I highly recommend.

As a solidly Generation X person who had grown up with grandparents who talked about "what it was like during the war", I came away from that museum with two main strong impressions:

1. Trident nuclear warheads are SMALL. I dread to think what they weigh, but physically I could fit one in the boot of my car.

2. I lived through a war.

I'm serious about the second one. I married a woman sixteen years younger than me (which makes her a Millenial) and she simply does not get what it was like being a teenager around the time she was born. She grew up in the nineties, an optimistic period topped off with things like Things Can Only Get Better and the Good Friday agreement. Pop charts were Oasis and Blur and the Spice Girls, and sf looked like Fifth Element - bright, colourful and romantic.

I did homework by candlelight during powercuts due to the three day week. Pop charts were Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Frankie Goes to Hollywood and 99 Red Balloons and sf was Blade Runner and Mad Max, and the BBC broadcast Threads. Literally everything about popular culture was subtly reinforcing the idea in my young mind that nuclear war was an inevitability, and that nobody I was at school with was going to live to see 40. I took it for granted at the time, and it was only with the benefit of 20 years of hindsight that I was able to see how screwed up it was.

And if you want to see eyes rolled so hard they go right round and come back, watch my wife when I mention "what it was like during the Cold War".

Thank you for that.

I remember the air-raid drills in school in the 1950s and 1960s. We would file, in an orderly fashion, down into the school auditorium, which was then lowest floor of the school. I think we were timed. Maybe the government required that we set some kind of required rate of speed?

In 1970 I went on a tour of Europe with a singing group. When we were in Berlin, we got a guided tour of East Berlin. I were prepared for the grimness and claustrophobia on east Berlin, but there was an unexpectedly beautiful place to see: a cemetery and memorial for the Russian soldiers who died taking Berlin
http://www.stripes.com/news/east-berlin-s-garden-of-remembrance-1.69107

There was a beautiful tune being played. I later figured out that it was the "Traumerei" from Schumann's "Scenes from childhood" ("kinderszenen"). I still get goosebumps whenever I hear it.

I apologize for the typos in the previous post.

"Literally everything about popular culture was subtly reinforcing the idea in my young mind that nuclear war was an inevitability, and that nobody I was at school with was going to live to see 40. I took it for granted at the time, and it was only with the benefit of 20 years of hindsight that I was able to see how screwed up it was."

Yep. I wasn't born until a year or two after the three day week, but I grew up convinced that I was going to die in a nuclear war. Partly this was living in London, partly my upbringing, and partly Radio 4 in the background over breakfast. I remember when the US bombed Libya (in 1986, I had to look that up) I was still in primary school and I thought it was probably the beginning of the end. Wasn't quite sure how or why, but this was going to escalate and snowball.

Oddly I don't remember being scared. It was completely out of my control, it would probably be over very quickly (sirens, few minutes, boom, instant vaporisation), and it meant not having to worry about growing up. Which was probably even scarier.

Interesting, the different scares in our respective pasts. I was largely unaware of the cold war, but pub bombings & the Irish conflict featured heavily in my late teens & university years.

The existential threats of my half century.

WWIII (Global Thermonuclear War)
Terrorism
Catastrophic Climate Change (anthropogenic)

I grew up in the 1970s and 80s, I don't ever remember thinking nuclear war was likely. I just never believed anyone would be that stupid.

It's *much* more likely now in my opinion as we have far more states with nukes and there is a greater possibility of them getting into the hands of someone *really* unhinged. Still I guess in the last scenario it wouldn't (likely) be an all out nuke-fest.
Also we are in a period of weak and stupid leadership - a la Trump and May...Gove and the 'we're not interested in what experts have to say' type stuff, and rising nationalism. Weak and stupid leadership is what the world had in July 1914...

I've got to admit, the 1990 Gulf war did have me a little concerned though, at least before the US won it hands down in a day or two (once the land forces went in). There were some old-guys in my college who commented that I wouldn't need that bike I was wheeling around where I was going at the time.

I never expected to live into the 21st century mainly because my parents died very young at 46 and 58..So I was amazed to have seen the Berlin wall fall and the reunification of Germany and a fair few other countries become independent of Russia.

Now of course I look at the rise of the far right all across Europe and I despair because it seems so similar to what happened at the beginning of the last century.

In the 70s and 80s, GTnW was like a low level buzz in the background. It never seemed imminent, but it was always there. What we didn't know was how close we came to annihilation on 26 September, 1983.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

Living in the States, a lot of our pop culture featured the threat of atomic extinction.

I just recently saw the old music video for "The Future's So Bright (I gotta wear shades)". Today everyone thinks of this as just an upbeat song. But we remember seeing that mushroom cloud reflected in those shades.

I agree that it was always there - I never believed it though. Just me, if that's not how your mind-set worked, that's cool.

Yes I've seen that Petrov incident before, certainly a close call, but then it also gives me my confirmation bias that there was always likely to be someone sensible in the way of stopping it.

The Cuban Missile crisis was surely *the* closest call of all. My perspective might have been different if I had lived through that. Certainly my mother's recounting of the incident is rather hairy to say the least.

I still say that we are in gravely dangerous times currently. Having patently obvious, wilfully ignorant idiots in charge of major countries is not a good thing at all.

erm... 'in the way of it actually happening methinks'

> still say that we are in gravely dangerous times currently. Having patently obvious, wilfully ignorant idiots in charge of major countries is not a good thing at all.<

One further point, going back to those days, say what you like about Thatcher, Reagan and others (and I would normally have a lot say, ideology-wise I despise them). They were not weak, reckless and stupid when it came to international politique at least. Trump I fear *is* on all three counts.