What Game of Thrones Teaches Us About Nuclear War

Angry Planet

Matthew Gault

War, Politics, Conflict, Government, History, News

4.3 • 882 Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2017

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From The Day After to Threads, fiction has long reflected our nuclear fears. Today, Daenerys Targaryen’s flying dragons stand in for B-52 bombers armed with thermonuclear bombs and the ashen corpses of Lannister guards remind us of Hiroshima.

This week on War College, nuclear weapons expert Timothy Westmyer talks us through the nuclear metaphors in Game of Thrones. Westmyer is a nuclear security expert with CRDF Global and the host of the Super Critical Podcast—a show that explores pop culture’s obsession with atomic power.

It’s a geek fest this week, as Westmyer runs down the history of weapons of mass destruction in Westeros. We argue about whether Dany’s children really are weapons of mass destruction or just an effective air power, what Game of Thrones can tell us about our fear of an atomic confrontation between the U.S. and North Korea, and the TV movie from the ‘80s that’s still effective today.

If that wasn’t enough, we dive into the Fallout video games series, which take place in an alternative American future where the bombs fell and the atom never went out of style. The popular games take players through a world that looks like the 1950s never ended, and nuclear armageddon froze it in place.

Please let us know what you think of this show. It’s definitely a change for us. By making our break from Reuters, we have a chance to do a little experimentation, but we know it’s the serious stuff that got us here.

You can reach us on our new Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.

Next week, we’re back to a more traditional topic, an Islamist group you may not think much about that’s reshaping the Middle East with the help of Iran.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Love this podcast support this show through the a cast supporter feature
0:05.1	It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now
0:17.0	War college is now an independent production not associated with Reuters news. So now there's loose nukes about he has one and I think that people might draw from that
0:27.4	what happens now that the United States or Janaris no longer has a monopoly on this type of firepower.
0:35.0	You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front
0:48.7	lines.
0:49.7	Here are your hosts, Matthew Galt. I'm
1:07.5	Matthew Galt. I'm Jason Fields. After the Cold War, the pop culture
1:12.2	took a break from the nuclear miss.
1:14.7	Dr. Strange love had taught us how to love the bomb.
1:17.2	Superman had saved us from ourselves and the day after chilled us to our core.
1:21.5	But through most of the 90s and even the 2000s pop culture largely
1:24.8	avoided nuclear metaphors. That might be changing. North Korean advances have brought
1:29.6	back fears of global thermonuclear war. Joining us on the show today is Timothy Westmire.
1:35.0	Timothy is the Associate Program Manager of Nuclear Security at CRDF Global.
1:40.0	He's also the host of the Super Critical Podcast which overthink this stuff every week. We're glad to have him here.
1:46.0	Thank you for joining us. Well, great to be here. I'm glad we're able to set this up and
1:51.4	I'm glad to have any excuse to talk about the latest season of Game of Thrones, especially when you can get
1:57.5	into this type of detail.
1:59.2	I don't have a lot of these conversations with my usual set of friends, my non-Nuke friends.
2:03.8	This is great.
2:04.8	Well, let's jump into it.
	...

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