World War III in popular culture

See also: Nuclear holocaust in popular culture and List of nuclear holocaust fiction

World War III is a common theme in popular culture. Since the 1940s, countless books, films, and television programmes have used the theme of nuclear weapons and a third global war. The presence of the Soviet Union as an international rival armed with nuclear weapons created a persistent fear in the United States. There was a pervasive dread of a nuclear World War III, and popular culture reveals the fears of the public at the time. This theme in the arts was also a way of exploring a range of issues far beyond nuclear war. The historian Spencer R. Weart called nuclear weapons a "symbol for the worst of modernity."

During the Cold War, concepts such as mutual assured destruction (MAD) led lawmakers and government officials in both the United States and the Soviet Union to avoid entering a nuclear World War III that could have had catastrophic consequences on the entire world. Various scientists and authors, such as Carl Sagan, predicted massive, possibly life ending destruction of the earth as the result of such a conflict. Strategic analysts assert that nuclear weapons prevented the United States and the Soviet Union from fighting World War III with conventional weapons. Nevertheless, the possibility of such a war became the basis for speculative fiction, and its simulation in books, films and video games became a way to explore the issues of a war that has thus far not occurred in reality. The only places a global nuclear war have ever been fought are in expert scenarios, theoretical models, war games, and the art, film, and literature of the nuclear age. The concept of mutually assured destruction was also the focus of numerous movies and films.

Prescient stories about nuclear war were written before the invention of the atomic bomb. The most notable of these is The World Set Free, written by H. G. Wells in 1914. During World War II, several nuclear war stories were published in science fiction magazines such as Astounding. In Robert A. Heinlein's story "Solution Unsatisfactory" the US develops radioactive dust as the ultimate weapon of war and uses it to destroy Berlin in 1945 and end the war with Germany. The Soviet Union then develops the same weapon independently, and war between it and the US follows. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 made stories of a future global nuclear war look less like fiction and more like prophecy. When William Faulkner received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949, he spoke about Cold War themes in art. He worried that younger writers were too preoccupied with the question of "When will I be blown up?"

1940s: Dawn of the atomic age

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ushered in the "atomic age", and the bleak pictures of the bombed-out cities released shortly after the end of World War II became symbols of the power of the new weapons.

On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, code named "Joe 1". Its design imitates the American plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945.

1950s: Fears of the new and unknown

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1952 comic book cover, stories speculating on 1960 events

American fears of an impending apocalyptic World War III with the communist bloc were strengthened by the quick succession of the Soviet Union’s nuclear bomb test, the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, and the beginning of the Korean War in 1950. Pundits named the era "the age of anxiety", after W. H. Auden. In 1951 an entire issue of Collier's magazine was devoted to a fictional account of World War III. The issue was entitled "Preview of the War We Do Not Want". In the magazine, war begins when the Red Army invades Yugoslavia and the United States responds by conducting a three month long bombing campaign of Soviet Union military and industrial targets. The Soviet Union retaliates by bombing New York City, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Detroit.

Against this background of dread there was an outpouring of cinema with frightening themes, particularly in the science fiction genre. Science fiction had previously not been popular with either critics or movie audiences, but it became a viable Hollywood genre during the Cold War. In the 1950s science fiction had two main themes: the invasion of the Earth by superior, aggressive, and frequently technologically advanced aliens; and the dread of atomic weapons, which was typically portrayed as a revolt of nature, with irradiated monsters attacking and ravaging entire cities.

In The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), a flying saucer lands on the Mall in Washington DC, where it is surrounded by troops and tanks. The alien Klaatu delivers an ultimatum that the Earth must learn to live in peace or it will be destroyed. The War of the Worlds (1953) has a montage sequence where the countries of Earth join together to fight the Martian invaders. The montage conspicuously omits the Soviet Union, implying that the aliens are a metaphor for communists. The most elaborate science fiction films in the 1950s were This Island Earth (1955) and Forbidden Planet (1956). In the climax of both films the characters witness the explosion of alien planets, implying Earth's possible fate. The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959) is also in the science fiction genre. In it, a man, a woman, and a bigot (the devil) roam New York City after a nuclear war. Only those three characters appear in the film. Also released in 1959 was On the Beach, directed by Stanley Kramer and starring Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire. Based on the successful novel by Nevil Shute, the film deals with the citizens of Australia as they await radioactive fallout, a result of a catastrophic nuclear war in the Northern Hemisphere. The French author Stefan Wul's 1957 novel Niourk provided a portrait of New York after World War III. The 1959 novel Alas, Babylon depicted the effects of nuclear war on a small town in Florida; an television adaptation was broadcast in 1960.

Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell's bleak 1949 novel about life after a third world war, rose to cultural prominence in the 1950s. In it the world has endured a massive atomic war and is politically divided into three totalitarian superstates, which are intentionally locked into a perpetual military stalemate; this never-ending warfare is used to subjugate their populations.

1960s: Expanding popularity

In the 1960s, media about the threat of nuclear world war gained wide popularity. According to Susan Sontag, these films struck people’s "imagination of disaster...in the fantasy of living through one’s own death and more the death of cities, the destruction of humanity itself." A leading member of the 1960s anti-war movement, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan evoked the topic of WWIII thrice in his seminal The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, in "Masters of War", "Talkin' World War III Blues", and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall". The 1968 Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, adapted to film in 1982 as Blade Runner, features as its setting an Earth having been damaged greatly by the radioactive fallout of a nuclear war termed "World War Terminus."

In 1964 three films about the threat of accidental nuclear war were released, Dr. Strangelove, Fail-Safe, and Seven Days in May. Their negative portrayal of nuclear defence prompted the United States Air Force to sponsor films such as A Gathering of Eagles to publicly address the potential dangers of nuclear defense.

Dr. Strangelove is a black comedy by Stanley Kubrick about the nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. Following a bizarre mental breakdown the C.O. of a SAC base orders the B-52 wing operating from his base to attack the Soviet Union. The title character, Dr. Strangelove, is a parody of a composite of Cold War figures, including Wernher von Braun, Henry Kissinger, and Herman Kahn. The secret code Operation DROPKICK, mentioned by George C. Scott's character, may be an oblique reference to Operation Dropshot.

The 1964 film Fail-Safe was adapted from a best-selling novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. In it, nuclear disaster is caused by a technological breakdown that mistakenly launches American bombers to attack the Soviet Union. In order to prove the mistake and placate the Soviets, thereby saving the world from nuclear war, the US President orders the destruction of New York after a US bomber succeeds in destroying Moscow. The film was made in a semi-documentary style, ending just as the explosion over New York City begins.

The War Game (1965), produced by Peter Watkins, deals with a fictional nuclear attack on Britain. This film won the Oscar for Best Documentary, but was withheld from broadcast by the BBC for two decades.

1970s: Fears continue

The American public's concerns about nuclear weapons and related technology continued to be present in the 1970s. The most talked about events in the 1970s were the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, the Iran hostage crisis, the energy crisis, and stagflation.

The 1973 oil crisis heightened fears of an peak oil collapse of domestic life. The crisis rationing led to incidents of violence, after American truck drivers nationwide chose to strike for two days in December 1973 because they objected to the amount of supplies the government had rationed for their industry. In Pennsylvania and Ohio, non-striking truckers were shot at by striking truckers, and in Arkansas, trucks of non-strikers were attacked with bombs.

These peak oil fears lead to the iconic Mad Max movie series in 1979. The Road Warrior's desert imagery of a resource-drained world became an archetypical default of post-apocalypse worlds. Screenplay writer James McCausland drew heavily from his observations of the 1973 oil crisis' effects on Australian motorists:

“ Yet there were further signs of the desperate measures individuals would take to ensure mobility. A couple of oil strikes that hit many pumps revealed the ferocity with which Australians would defend their right to fill a tank. Long queues formed at the stations with petrol – and anyone who tried to sneak ahead in the queue met raw violence.

...

George and I wrote the [Mad Max] script based on the thesis that people would do almost anything to keep vehicles moving and the assumption that nations would not consider the huge costs of providing infrastructure for alternative energy until it was too late.

” — James McCausland, writing on peak oil in The Courier-Mail, 2006

On television, the British science fiction series Doctor Who based a 1972 storyline, Day of the Daleks on the premise of time travellers from the future attempting to trigger a present-day nuclear war between the superpowers.

In the 1977 Robert Aldrich film Twilight's Last Gleaming, a nuclear missile silo is seized by renegade US Air Force officers, who threaten to start World War III if the American government does not reveal secret documents that show that the military needlessly prolonged the Vietnam War.

1980s: Belief in an imminent threat

In the early 1980s there was a feeling of alarm in Europe and North America that a nuclear World War III was imminent. In 1982, 250,000 people protested against nuclear weapons in Bonn, then the capital of West Germany. On June 12, 1982, more than 750,000 protesters marched from the U.N. headquarters building to Central Park in New York to call for a Nuclear Freeze. The public accepted the technological certainty of nuclear war, but did not have faith in nuclear defence. Tensions came to a head with the NATO exercise Able Archer 83, which, combined with other events such as President Reagan's "Evil Empire" speech and the deployment of the Pershing II missile in Western Europe, as well as the erroneous Soviet shoot-down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, had the Soviets frantically convinced that the West was about to launch an all-out war against the USSR.

These fears were manifested in the popular culture of the time, with images of nuclear war in books, film, music, and television. In the mid 1980s artists and musicians drew parallels with their time and the 1950s as two key moments in the Cold War.

There was a steady stream of popular music with apocalyptic themes. The 1983 hit "99 Luftballons" by Nena tells the story of a young woman who accidentally triggers a nuclear holocaust by releasing balloons. The music video for "Sleeping with the Enemy" had images of the Red Army parading in Red Square, American high school marching bands, and a mushroom cloud. The 1984 hit "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood had actors resembling Konstantin Chernenko and Ronald Reagan fighting each other amidst a group of cheering people. At the end of their fight, the Earth explodes. Sting's 1986 song "Russians" highlighted links between Nikita Khrushchev's threats to bury the US and Reagan's promise to protect US citizens. Many punk, hardcore and crossover thrash bands of the era, such as The Varukers and Discharge, had lyrics concerning nuclear war, the end of mankind and the destruction of the Earth in much of their early material. Several hit songs seemed to describe attempts to survive nuclear exchange or decry the arms race, such as Donald Fagen's New Frontier and Don Henley's The End of the Innocence, respectively. Others portrayed an 'oh, well' attitude toward an imminent WWIII(Modern English's "Melt With You"), while others conveyed an outright panic over the possibility(Genesis's Land of Confusion). Still others described the possible aspects and after effects of nuclear war(Talking Heads's Burning Down the House, but this is only one interpretation of the lyrics), and some seemed to describe life in the Communist Bloc(possibly Crowded House's Don't Dream It's Over), justifying the West taking a stand, though not military action.

Films and television programs made in the 1980s had different visions of what World War III would be like. Red Dawn (1984) portrayed a World War III that begins unexpectedly, with a surprise Soviet and Cuban invasion of the United States. A small band of teenagers fight the Soviet and Cuban occupation using guerrilla tactics. In the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy, James Bond tries to stop World War III from being started by a renegade Soviet general. WarGames (1983) had a teenage gamer accidentally hacking the U.S. nuclear defense network(thinking he'd hacked a computer game company), which reveals a potentially catastrophic flaw in the newly automated system.

In the early 1980s there were a number of films made for television that had World War III as a theme. ABC's The Day After (1983), PBS's Testament (1983), and the BBC's Threads (1984) depicted nuclear World War III. The three movies show a nuclear war against the Soviet Union, which sends its troops marching across Western Europe. These films inspired many to join the anti-nuclear movement. Threads is notable for its graphically disturbing and realistic depictions of post-nuclear survival.

The Day After was shown on ABC on November 20, 1983, at a time when Soviet-US relations were at rock bottom, just weeks after the NATO-led Able Archer 83 exercises, and less than three months after Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by Soviet jet interceptors. ABC warned its audience about the graphic nature of the film. The Day After became a political event in itself and was shown in over forty countries. The shocking and disturbing content discouraged advertisers, but had the largest audience for a made-for-TV movie up to that time (a record which still stands as of 2008) and influenced the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty negotiations in 1986.

The 1982 NBC miniseries World War III, directed by David Greene, received little critical attention. In the program, a Soviet Spetznaz (Special Forces) invasion of Alaska in order to destroy the Alaska oil pipeline escalates to a full scale war. The miniseries abruptly ends with the President releasing US nuclear forces against the Soviets. This narrative is almost unique because the film ends moments before the world is annihilated with nuclear weapons. Similar stories about the destruction of the world showed the possibility of the world's rebirth following global destruction.

During the 1980s, the techno-thriller became a literary phenomenon in the United States. These novels about high-tech non-nuclear warfare reasserted the value of conventional weapons by showing how they would be vital in the world's next large scale conflict. Tom Clancy's novels proposed the idea of a technical challenge to the Soviet Union, where World War III could be won using only conventional weapons, without resorting to nuclear weapons. Clancy’s detailed explanation of how and why World War III could begin involves oil shortages in the Soviet Union caused by Islamic terrorism within it. The Hunt for Red October (1984) hypothesized that the Soviet Union’s technology would soon be better than the Americans'. Red Storm Rising was a detailed account of the coming world war. Soon after the Cold War ended techno-thriller novels changed from stories about fighting the Soviet Union to narratives about fighting terrorists.

When the Wind Blows, a graphic novel by Raymond Briggs, was published in 1982. The novel is a bitter satire on the advice given by the British government about how to survive a nuclear war, where a working-class couple that do not believe that nuclear war is possible die of radiation sickness after a nuclear explosion. It reflects Briggs’ participation in the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Briggs is best known as a writer and illustrator of children’s literature, but this novel was written for an older audience and is his bleakest work. The novel’s message greatly affected young adult readers. Briggs rewrote the novel for radio, stage, and an animated film that was released in 1986.

American superhero comics addressed the issue of World War III with the implications of super-powered beings as metaphors for nuclear weapons or using it as character motivation. Marvel Comics gathered many of their Russian super-hero and villain characters into a new group, called "The Soviet Super-Soldiers" which answered directly to the Soviet Government. Uncanny X-Men #150 featured the villain Magneto justifying a takeover bid by stating that if he not take over the world then and there, that mutantkind would be destroyed along with mankind in the event of a nuclear war. DC Comics' "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" ends with World War III erupting over the issue of a small Latin American country, with the Soviet Union effectively "winning" the war overnight by using a specially designed weapon to make a nuclear winter but without the mass murdering side-effects of radiation. In the same year, the acclaimed Watchmen (set in an alternate timeline) is driven by the threat of nuclear war: the nuclear-powered superhuman Dr. Manhattan has become America's main deterrent to the Soviet Union and his disappearance, which the Soviets exploit, brings the world to the brink of nuclear war. Antagonist characters Adrian Veidt and the Comedian are haunted by the thought of nuclear war, and Veidt's entire plot is to end the threat of nuclear war by faking the existence of an extraterrestrial threat.

Other comics would use a third World War as part of their plots: Britain's "V For Vendetta" and Strontium Dog's "Portrait of a Mutant" both use nuclear war as the backdrop for the establishment of totalitarian governments, with the former having Britain escape a direct hit and the latter showing the country in ruins. Judge Dredd, which already had a devastating World War III as part of its backstory (which left most of the world a desert), has an all-out Soviet/US war in "The Apocalypse War". This climaxes with Dredd obliterating the enemy with a nuclear strike - this slaughters "half a billion human beings", something presented as both necessary to win such a war and as morally appalling. Japan's Akira and Ghost in the Shell both start with World War III as part of their backstory, with Japan becoming a world power because in the latter due to having less nuclear fallout than other nations.

1990s: Fears subside

The Cold War ended without the destructive final global war that had often been envisioned in popular culture, and the public's fears of World War III were allayed. On the other hand, the previously classified Stanislav Petrov incident of 1983 seemed to imply that the risk of accidental nuclear war due to technical malfunction had been greater than previously anticipated. The theme of nuclear armageddon launched by military artificial intelligence computer systems without human decision was explored in the 1991 blockbuster movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day. During the early 1990s and the Gulf Crisis, tabloid papers and other press discussed whether World War III would be linked to prophecies of Nostradamus concerning a third great war.

Movies about nuclear weapons that saved humanity were popular, such as such as Armageddon and Deep Impact (1998). Blast from the Past (1999) is a comedy about a 1960s family caught in the grip of Cold War paranoia. Falsely convinced that World War III has started, they hide in their fallout shelter, only to emerge 35 years later in the post–Cold War world. Jonathan Schell complained to the New York Times that "the post–Cold War generation knows less about nuclear danger than any generation."

Yellow Peril (1991) by Wang Lixiong, is about a civil war in the People's Republic of China that becomes a nuclear exchange and soon engulfs the world. It was banned by the Chinese Communist Party but remained popular.

World War III is referenced in the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact. William T. Riker states that 600 million people were killed and very few world governments are left after a world war occurring sometime around 2053.

2000s: Concern over terrorism

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a scenario of World War III beginning as a result of a nuclear or other catastrophic terrorist attack became prominent. Terrorism in the form of nuclear, chemical, or biological attacks now occupy the place in popular culture once held by the vision of a nuclear World War III between world powers.

Paramount Pictures released a film adaptation of Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears in 2002. The production of the film began before 9/11, and was originally intended as an escapist thriller where CIA analyst Jack Ryan fights Neo-Nazis who conspire to detonate a nuclear weapon at a football game to start a nuclear war between Russia and the United States. However, the film’s release just seven months after 9/11 made it very topical. Phil Alden Robinson, the film's director, commented that "a year ago, you'd have said, 'great popcorn film,'...Today you say, 'that's about the world I live in.'" There was an aggressive promotional campaign, with movie trailers and television commercials showing the nuclear destruction of a city and a special premiere for politicians in Washington, D.C.

Recently, World War III has also become the topic of several popular video games, reflecting the trend towards increased public consciousness of the possibility of a future global war. Games such as Tom Clancy's EndWar, Battlefield: Bad Company and Frontlines: Fuel of War, paint scenarios about a Third World War driven by the need for resources on the part of the various combatants. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 are also recent examples; at the end of the latter's launch advertisement, the "W" in "WW3" flips itself to read "MW3." These games feature a global war between the United States and Russia after the United States is framed for a massacre at a Moscow airport and soon after, the Russians expand their war into Europe. Battlefield 3, on the other hand, follows The Sum of All Fears's example, portraying Iranian terrorists stealing portable atomic weapons from Russia for the purpose of provoking a war between them and the United States. Other games such as World In Conflict, and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty take place in alternate histories where global war is a reality, the former being a war between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the latter being a war between the United States and a much stronger Nazi Germany that won World War II, both games depicting an invasion of America. The Fallout series portrays the effects of a nuclear holocaust in the future after a war between USSR, China and the United States in the late 21st century. Ace Combat Assault Horizon starts with a Russian Rebellion taking control of Russia and starting a war with the United States and NATO. The 2007 bestselling game DEFCON places players in charge of preparing to and then fighting a nuclear war with other human or computer-generated players attacking from and defending different sectors of planet Earth; its simple 1980s-style vector graphics are inspired by those seen in the 1983 hit movie WarGames. Wargame: European Escalation is a RTS game that simulates full scale conventional warfare between NATO and Warsaw Pact between 1975 and 1985.

In 2000 a made-for-television remake of Fail-Safe was produced; it continued to be set, however, in the same time period as the original film.

2010s: Present

World War III and its predicted aftermath continues to be portrayed in popular media around the world such as in recent video games Metro 2033, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Homefront, and APOX.

Alien invasions have become a popular topic as a World War III like conflict with the alien invaders portrayed in a similar way to a military invasion, such as seen in the films Battle: Los Angeles, Skyline, and the TV series Falling Skies.

The scenario of World War III was seen in X-Men: First Class, where Sebastian Shaw, Emma Frost, and the Hellfire Club planned to support the third World War, in order to destroy the humans and evolve the mutants, so the Hellfire Club can establish their rule over the Earth.

See also

• Nuclear weapons in popular culture
• Survivalism in fiction

External links

• Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, By Paul Brians, Professor of English, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington.