Far too many historical inaccuracies

Several things:

1. The armed forces were not disorganized; the civilian command structure was disorganized. You missed the central point of the movie.

2. Something either exists or it does not. Nothing can "more than exist."

3. What the hell does the bomber gap of the 1950s have to do with this movie.

4. This sort of angry fan boy post is better suited over on the Star Wars board. So get your geek on over there.

Nothing left except Clorox bottles and plastic fly swatters with red dots on them!

1. Chrome Dome was long term operation, numbers of bombers changed during it's duration. Amount probably was smaller during 80's than it was during 60's.

2. SDI wasn't operational... ever. Cut back modern version of it, NMD would still have none what so ever change against all out Russian ICBM/SLBM attack, even with current lot smaller numbers.

3. Movie was about B52 crew's point of view. B1B was surely operational. B2 wasn't really operational before mid 90's, if those would have been operational earlier those would definitely been employed against Iraq in Desert Storm.

4. Numbers of bombers in 50's has no relevance in late 80's scenarios. In 60's Soviets stepped up production of all nuclear weapon delivery systems in huge numbers, they never build up bombers as rapidly as USA did but by 80's older variants of B52 had been out of service for while and Tu-95 production continued on slower tempo until mid 80's. Still Soviets counted more on ballistic missiles than bombers.

5. US military didn't have that clear advantage in against Soviets. On ground in European theater NATO would have gotten very rough handling. If you think that west had clear technical advantage, we had that on many fields, Soviets had same on others. West was probably ahead on half of stuff, Soviets had same on about third of stuff and rest of technical fields were quite equal. Conflicts between west and Arabs don't tell everything about actual quality of Soviet hardware, it tells more about lack of quality of Arab troops and their leaders who weren't very competent in their task. Soviet troops had bit better versions of weapons, they sold monkey models to client countries. Soviet troops had far better training than Syrians for example. Western air defense placed far bigger role on fighters, Soviets had bigger emphasis on ground based air defense. Patriot SAM for example didn't have any actual short range ballistic missile interception capability before mid 90's, Russians sold single S-300V system to USA in mid 90's to finance further development of system. Deal also included missile guidance stuff, Patriot Advanced Capability-2 and PAC-3 updates were heavily based on Russian guidance algorithms.

15-20 million deaths is very optimistic figure, US military and intelligence organizations expected 150 million casualties even in case of victory in early and mid 80's. That estimate probably only includes direct and short term casualties, so long term fallout effects could kill even more folks. Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine is called that for quite good reason. Soviets would have made nuclear strikes against every single nuclear reactor and short term nuclear waste storage in NATO countries and USA, that would leave huge long term fallout, it would have been Chernobyl around every single one of those, with no whatsoever infrastructure or personnel needed for decontamination operations like one that happened after Chernobyl accident.

By Dawn's Early Light also is naive and optimistic about escalation of nuclear exchange. Nuclear war goes out of control in 30 mins of it's start. Even with current, much smaller, nuclear stockpiles mankind won't have much survival change in case of nuclear war. USA and Russia can kill us all just four times instead of twenty times as it was in good old days.

Read the book "Trinity's Child" and it will make much more sense. The writers had to make changes due to the Soviet Union falling apart before they made the book into the movie. I wish the movie would have been just like the book was written.







"We're paratroopers lieutenant. We're supposed to be surrounded"
Captain Winters

You have to remember that although this movie was released in 1990 the story, casting, etc. was probably developed over a year or two earlier and the facts were limited to knowledge available at the time.

1. I agree that they should have been able to get more than 3 B-52s off the ground. It would have made no difference to the story but would have been more realistic.

2. SDI was still being developed in the late 80's. The Phase I architecture was only approved in June 1987. In fact, it wasn't until the 90's that any of the systems in SDI actually did become reality.

3. The first B-1 did not enter service until late 1986. Even by 1990 SAC still relied heavily on the B-52. The B-2 wasn't put into service until 1997. By "steaths" I assume you mean the F-117. In 1990 all F-117s were stationed at Tonopah Test Range Airport in Nevada which makes it's participation in long range bombing in the time frame of a nuclear attack impossible.

4. By 1990 Reagan had already declared the Cold War to be over. The movie mentioning that there are only 15 bombers on 24/7 duty indicates this. Besides, I believe by the 80's the U.S. relied on missiles more than bombers as it's nuclear deterrent.

5. Although history may have proved that the United States had a definite military advantage over the Soviets it's rather difficult to incorporate into a movie that was made in 1990 before that knowledge existed. And I think that you'd be surprised how disorganized the military might have been had a nuclear attack actually happened. The whole point of the massive build up of nuclear armament was as a deterrent...they expected (or at least hoped) they would never be called on it.

This movie was made in the last years of the Cold War. This can be seen in the way the two leaders work together to resolve the situation juxtaposed with the old guard military that is stuck in a 60's mindset.

I just recently watched "On The Beach" (1959) about an American submarine that takes refuge in Australia after the northern hemisphere is destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. It takes several months before the fallout reaches the southern hemisphere. Is it factually accurate...heck no. Is it still watchable...you bet. Because the characters and the performances are still compelling.

There are plenty of movies that with hindsight seem inaccurate, naive or simplistic. As a reflection of society AT THAT TIME they can still be interesting to watch.

You complain about historical inaccuracies that the vast majority of people do not know or even care about. It's an interesting story that takes place in an alternate history. If you're going to focus more on this type of minutia that is incidental to the main story than it's going to prevent you from enjoying a lot of films.

Bomarl, I agree with the others that your fanboy or more likely, troll post is more to get a rise out of us than to legitimately make bad points about a better than average cheap movie. You suggested we "look it up", all this data is from their respective wiki pages. None the less, keeping in mind this movie was made in 1990,
1) Operation Chrome Dome: I looked it up - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chrome_Dome "1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash. The Thule accident signaled the end of the program on January 22, 1968."
2) SDI is not operational now, so using it in 1990 would have been difficult.
3a) B-1 (Bone): SAC "had B-1 Lancers in service from 1986 through 1992, when SAC was re-organized out of existence. During that time the "Bone" was on limited alert, and the backbone of SAC's alert bombers remained B-52H models. In late 1990 engine fires in two Lancers caused the grounding of the fleet.
3b) B-2: The first operational (B-2) aircraft, christened Spirit of Missouri, was delivered to Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, where the fleet is based, on 17 December 1993.
More than existed, less than available!

The rest of your argument should be addressed to the X-Men boards where the points would be just as valid and there is no real history or science that could disprove your arguments so easily.

Although I have never been in the service, nothing angers me more than some nerd who think watching Star Wars and playing Halo and Modern Warfare gives them real military strategic knowledge. Try reading a book or even a wiki!

One other point, Dude, It's a frigging movie!

You seem to know a lot of crap.

Your level of stupid is hard to come by on a regular basis.

It's impressive when fully on display like this.

Party on dumbass.