Lived it. Friends and family at many of those shots. One grandpa was on the construction team for Operation Plowshare; the other grandpa was the Union supervisor for all the machining at Los Alamos National Labs. Norris Bradbury was one of his best buds; [Carson Mark](rg/wiki/J._Carson_Mark) was another. My parents grew up with Carson Mark's kids; I grew up with Carson Mark's grandkids. Ben Cohen's "BBs" is a great companion piece.
That was an interesting little video. I wonder what the minimum number of nuclear weapons is that we could feasibly keep in today's geopolitical climate while still maintaining a global advantage. I further wonder how hard it would be to pass legislation disarming ourselves.
In 1986, Gorbachev proposed banning ALL BALLISTIC MISSILES. All of them. All sub-launched, all IRBMs, everything in silos, everything on trains. We'd be left with cruise missiles and bombs. Reagan refused 'cuz he had such a hard-on for SDI. …which the Soviets were oh so very much closer to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_(spacecraft) Some excessively fucking stupid shit out of the '80s.
Oh, I'm aware. What I don't know is whether popular opinion was with or against Reagan in that decision, because I wasn't alive. That Wikipedia page is filled with odd wordings and missing citations, so I think devoting a spot on my reading list to something about this is in order.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Hand "Popular opinion" during the Reagan era was just as slippery as "popular opinion" during Bush II. There were a lot of marginalized democrats who could not.fucking.*believe* that Ronald "Bedtime for Bonzo" Reagan was holding the nuclear Football. I've got a rant about Red Dawn on here somewhere; that's fuckin' Morning in America. My favorite "holy shit Reagan" book is The Clothes Have No Emperor.