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Back in 1983, before there was even the slightest hint that the Soviet Union was bankrupting itself by trying to annex Afghanistan, we in the Free World lived under the vague threat of instant annihilation by megaton Soviet missiles being launched toward us.<\/p>\n
The irony is that by 1989, the USSR under Gorbachev had become flat broke and that melange of annexed satellite countries was beginning to disintegrate.\u00a0 Even so, there were mildly entertaining horror stories about nuclear war, one of them being a 1968 film titled “Panic In the City”, in which an FBI agent tracks down a rogue Soviet scientist who is literally building an atom bomb in his basement in Los Angeles.\u00a0 It was a short film, didn’t make much of a dent at the box office, and most people went on about their business. The tension in the movie was good, especially with good acting by Howard Duff as the government agent. The IMBD link is here.\u00a0 if you want some quick thrills and a nosy female reporter played by Linda Cristal, it’s available at Amazon:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Panic-City-Howard-Duff\/dp\/B07GSJG73Y<\/a><\/p>\n And remember, that was in the heart of the Cold War.\u00a0 I think we were really more worried about inflation and Vietnam than about being bombed, although there were people who said that my hometown was a target city because of the railyards, the few factories that made heavy equipment, electronics, and tires, and the grain elevators that dotted the farming landscape. There was a university not too far away where major work in physics and computer languages was going on, and near that was a military base.\u00a0 You could find the same things in my Dad’s home town in Nebraska. But we were something like 10 miles from “Ground Zero” because of all that industry. When you live in Flatland amid the corn, wheat, soybeans, and alfalfa, you’re usually more interested in going to the drive-inn on Friday night than you are in whether or not a nuke is going to pop 10 miles away. Even so, my folks kept water in glass gallon jars and plenty of canned stuff on shelves in the basement. There was a cistern with a hand pump out in the back yard, and we always had a garden.<\/p>\n A lot has changed since then.<\/p>\n This movie at the link below is “The Day After”, a 1983 TV movie that was broadcast about 7 years ahead of the collapse and dissolution of the USSR.\u00a0 A little over 2 hours long, produced in Lawrence, Kansas. Have dinner or lunch first, pop some popcorn and get some cold beverages. It’s almost like a trip in a time machine.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Iyy9n8r16hs<\/a><\/p>\n The collapse and demise of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics began 6 years later in 1989, officially completed in 1991. Gorbachev was succeeded by Breshnev, and now we have Vlad Putin, who had a lovely home built on a hillside overlooking the Black Sea. The front entrance looks distinctly like a bunker entrance.<\/p>\n The dissolution of the\u00a0Soviet Union<\/strong><\/em> was caused partly by internal disintegration within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR<\/strong><\/em>), which began in the late 1980s with growing unrest in the various constituent republics, and ended on December 26, 1991, when the Supreme Soviet voted the\u00a0USSR<\/strong><\/em> itself out of existence. Yes, there was warfare in Ukraine, involving the Russian Army, but it was brief and it ended. There were quarrels between the Azers and Baijanis over what was what in Azerbaijan. But that all ended.<\/p>\n Do we still need to worry about what the Russians are up to? Probably. After all, a satellite recently moving way up high over the northern oceans got a shot of a Russian missile being launched at sea. In reality, we do have to worry about everyone who despises freedom and free thinking, as we learned the hard way in September 2001 and before that. Maybe the current crop of SJWs and spoiled brats who can barely parse a full sentence correctly could benefit from having the bejesus scared out of them by a universal threat of violence beyond their wildest imagination.<\/p>\n But here you are: a satellite caught a Russian missile being launched at sea, in a very rare moment of timing. There is also, in the article at the link, a video of Russian missile target practice in the Arctic Ocean.<\/p>\n