Watchmen, Graham Allison and Dick Cheney

I recently finished reading “Nuclear Terrorism” by Graham Allison. He points out to some very plausible dangers in his book (although I think some of his arguments are seriously biased). In his book I read a quote from Dick Cheney in the beginning of one of the chapters which was the following:

“If the Soviets do an excellent job at retaining control over their stockpile of nuclear weapons— let’s assume they’ve got 25,000 to 30,000; that’s a ballpark figure—and they are 99 percent successful, that would mean you could still have as many as 250 that they were not able to control.” (link)

I recently watched the movie Watchmen which is yet another Hollywood production with violence, sex and fear (a combination that really sells in today’s media) and there I noticed one of the superhero carachters saying almost the same thing about Dr. Manhattan being able to stop 99% of russian nukes and warning about the consequences of the 1% that remains.

Is it just me or they awfully sound the same?

Side Note:

Politicians and Media sell the same product to normal people: Fear!

Fear unites people and creates group cohesion but most importantly it makes people to accept authority easier and trust the decisions made by politicians without questioning them.

I am not saying there is no thread. No. In fact the threat is very real in today’s world. Weapons have become too strong and too precise that a lunatic can kill thousands in a split second. There is definitely a market for weapons and they do get into the hands of those unwise men.

Our answer lies in trust and mutual understanding. In elimination of our fear. Unfortunately our primitive mode of governance (deviding a planet into governements) is not capable of doing that. We need change.