After viewing this movie for an assignment and reading the history, it's hard dealing with the fact that a lot of people my age, who've grown up with America as the only superpower, act as if the U.S. could have done anything they wanted in the 1946-1991 period and "Russia couldn't have done anything to stop us".
I did grow up during the Cold War, and I can tell you that while people didn't go around thinking about the possibility of nuclear war every day, it was always lurking in the background.
I was a kid during the Cuban Missile Crisis but at the time never grasped just how close we really did come to an atomic war until years later. Back then most people in America thought that the nuclear capabilities of both the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (something else you haven't grown up with) were roughly equal, which was not true, and that a full-scale nuclear war between the two nations could result in an On the Beach-type scenario. (If you don't know that book or movie, suffice to say it's a story about the gradual extinction of all life on Earth following a global nuclear holocaust.) In the 80s, when Cold War rhetoric heated up again, it seemed once more that we were close to the brink of a nuclear war, except by then the USSR had achieved rough parity with the US in terms of weaponry, which was not the case in the 50s or 60s. War aside, it was kind of depressing to think we'd have to continue this endless balancing act between East and West for decades to come. No one, even in the late 80s, foresaw the complete collapse of the Communist bloc between 1989 and 1991.
In short, you have no idea how lucky you are...at least in terms of not having to worry day in and day out about superpowers going to war. We have other deadly threats today. But back then, no, the US could not simply do anything it wanted. Yet in an odd way, the belief in a nuclear stand-off probably did more to keep the peace and prevent another major war from breaking out in those 45 years than if we had only conventional weapons. In that case the deterrent to another world war would have been much weaker. Small, localized wars like Korea or Vietnam were terrible, but better than World War III.
Remember that Dr. Strangelove came out a little over a year after the Missile Crisis and in a period of great uncertainty. It fit the jittery national mood of the time very well. You should also see the movie Fail-Safe, also released in 1964, which presents a serious version of the kind of events depicted in Strangelove. Though one's a comedy and the other a deadly serious drama, both have an amazing number of aspects, scenes and characters in common.
It's also sobering to hear someone refer to the events of my lifetime as something they've studied in history class! Don't worry, mechminx -- it'll happen to you someday, and much faster than you think!
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To offer you some wayward solace, then we're not out of the woods yet.
Given some of the current and potential world leaders and non-state actors.
I was alive but just a bit too young to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, but to someone growing up in the '50s - '80s, the Cold War just seemed like it was the natural order of things. I later served in the Strategic Air Command in the '70s and '80s (B-52s), and I think in many ways it was a safer world back then with a bi-polar nuclear alignment between NATO and the Warsaw Pact with the MAD theory maintaining the balance, as opposed to the nuclear proliferation to less stable states that we see taking place now. Time will tell, but we may end up thinking of the Cold War as "the good old days".
Btw, I just watched Dr. Strangelove with my fifth (and last) son, who's 17. I wanted him to see it and a few other movies and documentaries relating to history and the Cold War in particular since he is now studying it in school, but also because all of his life he has heard his old Cold Warrior dad talk about those days. He really enjoyed Dr. Strangelove and laughed out loud at several of the ironic lines in the movie, including "getting" the joke when General Turgidson complained about the "Doomsday Gap" and expressed worry that they were going to have a "Mineshaft Gap" in the post-apocalyptic world.
Interestingly, it seems that this era of unchallenged US domination is already coming to an end after a mere 25 years. Russia, though unfortunately no longer socialist, is now stepping up and regaining its world power status, as events in Syria have shown.
I think this is a good thing because it means that, once again, there will be a check on the US to prevent it from doing literally anything it wants in the world. Obama wanted to invade Syria in 2013 but Russia prevented it by coming up with a deal in which Syria handed all its chemical weapons over to Russia, thus removing Obama's casus belli. More recently, after Obama bombed the Syrian army in Deir Ezzor (eastern Syria) in support of a Daesh offensive, Russia boosted its air defense capabilities in Syria and declared that it would shoot down any aircraft that threaten Russians in Syria. Since Russian soldiers and advisers are embedded with the Syrian army all over Syria, this effectively rules out a full-scale US attack on Syria, thus saving Syria's independence. Also recently, Putin has declared his intention to establish a modern-day Marshall Plan to rebuild the Middle East, showing that Russia's return to superpower status isn't just military but economic as well. Again I think this is a good thing.
However, there is a downside, and that is that the return of Russia to the world means that the US, which is loathe to give up its hegemonic privileges, will be increasingly butting heads with Russia in the years to come, increasing the risk of nuclear conflict. Hillary Clinton wants to impose a no-fly zone on Syria, which would mean forcibly grounding both the Syrian and Russian air forces and bombing their air defenses, which would mean war with Russia. Whether she'll go through with this lunacy is thus far an open question, but Obama at least seems to have taken Russia's hint and backed down. Clinton, however, is even more hawkish than Obama and to be honest i'm afraid of what will happen if she becomes president in a few months.
Anyway, however that turns out, the era of unchallenged US domination over the world does seem to be ending, so people will once again know what it means to live in a world not led by a single power with no checks on its behavior. Despite the risks, I think this is a positive development, because an unchallenged US has been catastrophic for the rest of the world, particularly the Middle East. While there will be a growing risk of superpower conflict, there will also be a decreased risk of local wars, like a US invasion of Syria, now that Russia is there to help guarantee such countries' independence. China is also increasingly asserting itself and moving closer to Russia in response to US encirclement and Obama's "Asia pivot" policy. Russia and China together against the American empire again. I think it was Mark Twain who said "history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme".
Russia, though unfortunately no longer socialist, is now stepping up and regaining its world power status,
When I was a kid we lived a couple of miles from a Nike Missile base.
Before there was any news of the Soviets sending ships with nukes to Cuba or Cuba already having installed nukes - we drove by the base on the way to dinner and my Mom and Dad thought it was strange that all the missiles were above ground & visible. The Nike missiles were designed to shoot down planes and inbound missiles.
We were really close to nuclear war.