NUCLEAR WARFARE ON SUNDAY

 From Worldometer:

        DAY  USA  WORLD   Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9     1093    4732        1185       246          82

July    22     1205    7128        1293      1120         572

Aug    12     1504     6556       1242       835         130

Sept     3      1094    5886        830     1083         174
            9      1208    6222        1136      1168          82

Oct      8        957    6420         730       967        160

          20       952     6169           662       714       164
          21     1225     6849            571       703         85

          27     1039      7023          530       519         45

Nov     4      1199       8192          276       511         74 

            5      1201      9067          622       704         46

            6      1248      9082          256       576         72

          10      1346      9191           204       511        106 

          11       1479    10178           564       550         60

          12      1190       9659           926       521         65

          13      1297       9951           614       539         77

          14      1260       8823           727       449         53

Summary:  I usually ignore Sunday and Monday numbers for Worldometer because they are normally abnormally low.  However, this new wave is so prominent that even weekends show high numbers.  It will get worse in a couple of days.

My Sunday sermon will this time switch to the horrors of nuclear warfare.  What does The Bible say about this?

• 
  Zechariah 14.12:  And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem--their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths.
• Revelations 8:10-11:  The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water.
• Isaiah 24:19-20:  The Earth is utterly broken, the earth is split again, the earth is violently shaken.  The earth staggers like a drunken man; it sways like a hut; its transgression lies heavy upon it, and it falls, and will not rise again.
• 2 Peter 3:10:  But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved.

A story of the Hindus Vedas comes the following translation:

“We beheld in the sky what appeared to us to be a mass of scarlet cloud resembling the fierce flames of a blazing fire. From that mass many blazing missiles flashed, and tremendous roars, like the noise of a thousand drums beaten at once. And from it fell many weapons winged with gold and thousands of thunderbolts, with loud explosions, and many hundreds of fiery wheels,”(source).

Then:

Excavations at Mohenjo Dara unearthed the skeletons of a family holding hands, appearing to have been flattened with rubble and ash covering them as if they had died in an abrupt and unforeseen event. Some accounts say that a layer of radioactive ash was found in the soil before the site was dug up, adding to the theory of a nuclear event that could have been the cause of destruction of this ancient city.

All the above so that I can lead into my Netflix/Prime review of recent sightings (numbers from Rotten Tomatoes) and my grade:        

Threads                  1984          100/92     A

On the Beach         1959           77/69      B

Dr. Strangelove      1964           98/94      A-

Fail-Safe                 1964           93/91      B+

Two months ago I reviewed the 1984 Threads as the most frightening film I have ever seen, free from Amazon Prime.  I said, remember Orwell's 1984, Louisiana hosted a world's fair (one of the few I missed since Seattle 1962) and Alex Trebek began his 36 years hosting Jeopardy.  I also said that was about when President Ronald Reagan launched his Star Wars initiative:  I still laugh about this, but this concept was fed to Reagan through Edward Teller by a small group of physicists who were friends of mine when I worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

On the Beach (this is the ending, so don't watch it if you plan to still see the film) had an interesting cast, with Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astair and Aanthony Perkins, directed by Stanley Kramer.  You'll love the film if you like Waltzing Matilda.  It was a bit tiresome and numbing.  But the reality of this unreality is telling.  Yet, an enjoyable doomsday effort.

Dr. Strangelove or:  How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, is an over the top black comedy by Stanley Kubrick, starring three Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens and James Earl Jones.  Why over the top?  Kubrick's usual reaction to a good scene by Scott was fine, good, but let's also try a bit of overacting.  Kubrick, to Scott's shock, only picked those sequences.  They were funny!  Sellers ad-libbed a lot, and Kubrick kept them.  

Sellers played  the U.S. President Merkin Muffley as Adlai Stevenson, and Dr. Stranglove, an ex-Nazi scientist, a character not found in the book Red Alert, from which came the film.  Sellers was bald as president, and a merkin is a pubic hair wig.  Strangelove was an extreme case from Operation Paperclip.  Scott played General Buck Turgidson.  Need I say more?

Here is the end of Dr. Strangelove.  This clip, with Vera Lynn, you can watch if you hope to see this movie soon.  I'm not giving too much away by saying that humanity does not disappear in this production.  However, perhaps up to 20 million died.  The Pentagon refused to cooperate.

Fail Safe was also a 1964 film, and there were court fights as to which could be shown first.  Directed by Sidney Lumet from the 1962 novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, the two books treated the same subject with similar plot lines.

Strangelove came out first and was a hit.  Fail Safe was a flop because it was boring...but in hindsight, more meaningful.  Being second hurt, but trying to compete with hilarious buffoonery was impossible.  However, the success of Strangelove kept Fail Safe relevant so today they are linked as totally different, yet.

In 1964 there were no intercontinental missiles.  Hydrogen bombs had to be delivered by plane.  That allowed more time for negotiation.  This is why both films only killed less than 20 million.  The Soviet leader made the right decision in not retaliating.  Could this happen today?

So one film destroyed humanity, a second only took it to the limit, with recovery expected.  The final two negotiated a deadly peace.  After all, what is a fatality total of 20 million when 60 million humans annually die on Planet Earth anyway?  Well, for one, this coronavirus pandemic has "only" killed 1.3 million so far.  But the world is a lot safer today compared to the perilous Cold War.

My favorite song #43 is Hail to the Chief.  Who knows that the composer is James Sanderson.  He wrote this in 1812, and was first played in 1815 to honor George Washington and the end of the war.  You never sing the lyrics, but it was recently written by Albert Gamse, a re-worked version of The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott in 1810.  

The actual use of this tune to announce the president came after requests from various first ladies in the 1800's.  However, Confederate President Jefferson Davis also so requested.  The conclusion was Dixie.  The Department of Defense in 1954 formally established this song as the official tribute to the Commander in Chief.  The Marine Band is the traditional performer.

-