End of Ze World

After watching Dr. Strangelove and doing the WMD and terrorism readings, the idea of “the end of the world” sort of stuck in my brain. Obviously, this is a pretty depressing thought, and one that is hard to make light of—but I am going to attempt to do so using a Youtube video…Ah the wonders of Youtube.

The video is fittingly entitled “End of Ze World” and I am sure many of you have seen it at some point or another. Yes, it may seem stupid and it may have a few too many curse-words, but it does fit into our discussion of Weapons of Mass Destruction and the possible end of the world. So in order to continue to read this blog post, it would be helpful to watch the movie. Here is the link:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nZMwKPmsbWE

“Hokay, So,” Moving onto how this relates to our discussions in class, the clearest message from this beautiful piece of film editing is the fact that once one country launches nukes, every other country with nukes will respond and end up obliterating the earth, leaving us in a “nuclear winter.” This idea of mutually assured destruction present in the proliferation and possible launching of WMDs (especially nuclear weapons) indicates a possible stabilizing characteristic with such proliferation. As the movie shows, the cost of nuclear war is quite high—in fact it represents the “end of ze world—” thus it should make nuclear war unacceptable.

Despite this apparent stabilization provided by the presence of WMDs in our world, I think the movie proves that they are a lot more destabilizing, in that the US (in the movie) arbitrarily decides to nuke China, for no apparent reason. This could be due to a crazy leader or simply a miscalculation on the part of the U.S. government. Furthermore, the initial launch of one nuclear weapon sets off the chain reaction where every country with nuclear capabilities launches their missiles (France does after they “have a nap”).

In short, I thought this movie presented a comical yet accurate look at the presence of WMDs in our world today. No I am not suggesting this video be played at UN nuclear non-proliferation meetings, but for our sake, it both summarizes (in a relatively entertaining way) and mitigates the possible end of the world. And, in addition to the anti-proliferation message the movie also plugs the immense detrimental effects of global warming, thus encouraging change in the way we treat our environment.