Every epoch in history is acutely aware of its own madness in the past. We all come from scizophrenic decisions that once were coherent. The concept of mutual assured destruction seemed seductively sane.
The magazine MAD was started in 1952. "Calculated to make you MAD" showed generations of teens how authority was a game as well as everything else. Everyone lies. The magazine vas rebellious up to the mid 1980s. After that, well, everything sort of went harmless. Clothes in the 80's though, wow that was something powerful. You had to be colourblind to miss the 80s. In MAD I found favorites such as Spy vs Spy and the drawings by Don Martin.
Oppenheimers nuclear fission bomb was part of ending the second world war and was a very big bang indeed. Scary stuff and much published suffering. More important, a loss of innocence. Still, a small sibling of the coming fusion bomb, the Hydrogen Bomb. A bomb so powerful it defies any sense. The only place for it is in deep space.
Ivy Mike was fired in 1952. I just saw images of its explosion, and then the Soviet bomb in 1955. The interesting thing is that they are so unlike each other. The Soviet over land, the Americans obliterating an entire island. The coulours and patterns in the explosions scared the living shit out of me. It looked like reality separated for a moment.
You don't have to actually hit what you aim for in order to obliterate it. As long as you compete, you win. It creeped up on people that to duck and cover was not necessarily enough. If nothing can protect you, why not rebell a little and start to feel free? Much good came out of the cold war. It was complete madness, but still it made us better people. Or did it?
It is too late to regret now. It is better to run in the mud than drag your feet. There sure are things that seems mad now, but as I get older they will seem even more so.
