Perhaps the best scene of one of the best movies involves the discovery by the Americans that the Soviets have built a Cobalt Thorium G Doomsday Machine that automatically turns the earth into the moon if the USSR is attacked. It turns out that the Russians haven’t told anyone yet that this most effective implement of singularly assured destruction exists, as the US’s Plan R goes into effect on the direction of chain-of-command busting Gen. Ripper. Plan R was meant to give lower-level commanders the ability to order a nuclear strike to retaliate without consent from the President, should the chain of command be broken by a surprise first-strike, and the General has decided to get proactive in the face of the infiltration of American fluids by Communist plotters. So a tragic inevitability is in the making: an unalterable order and a guaranteed end of the world, narrated by a room full of diplomats, military brass, and politicos. When the top people are on it, what could go wrong?
If you haven’t seen Dr. Strangelove, buy a good bottle of Port, don’t drink the tap water, and buckle up. You’ll get a reminder of the imminent nuclear calamity that the world still faces down every day (though we don’t get under our desks for the drills as often). You’ll also get to see how the human body is not within your control. There are Doomsday Machines, Plan R schemes, as well as Generals Ripper and Buck Turgidson inside of you. While the act of love will not cause your essence to leave you for too long (watching the movie really is a pre-requisite to this essay), there are pre-loaded narrative and physical conditions that will create destruction-outcomes in most people. These pre-loaded conditions are different for everyone. Maybe there’s a certain type of mustache on a boss that will remind you of your father, and when you’re just tired and frustrated enough in a meeting, a shouting match will ensue (for example). Maybe bringing your phone into bed in the morning nearly always results in two and a half hours of doomscrolling and the feeling that you’ve totally wasted a Sunday. Everyone has a few recipes that crash one or more internal systems with a cascade failure following. Everyone has a different response to the existence and occurrence of these ends of the world. Some prefer to have a plan for heading to the bottom of a many-thousand foot deep mine with a nucleus of pre-selected survivors for a hundred years; there’s always a way out!
How did I stop worrying and learn to love these doomsday machines? The addiction to the possibility of control is what lead to the development of nuclear weapons of greater and greater power. Control of security. Control of the way one’s planet might be destroyed. Terror at the possibility of a mine shaft gap, lest the enemy be able to breed more prodigiously. Total control is not possible under any conditions, geopolitically or personally. A complete lack of control also doesn’t seem like the reality, based on my limited life experiences. Therefore, meander the between. Laugh with the Russians at the buffet, but invest in cyber security at the same time. Walk to the top of Huangshan and learn to speak a little Chinese while modeling and defending a freer society. And accept that your inner General Ripper cannot be prevented from taking over the base from time to time; the best you can hope for is that your inner Lionel Mandrake will become more convincing as you learn to love the machine.
Roman Ryan 