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From: leeper@ahutb.UUCP (m.r.leeper)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: Re: TESTAMENT
Message-ID: <548@ahutb.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 10-Mar-85 20:38:20 EST
Article-I.D.: ahutb.548
Posted: Sun Mar 10 20:38:20 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 12-Mar-85 21:58:13 EST
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Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ
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REFERENCES:  <524@ahutb.UUCP>, <1090@watdcsu.UUCP>

Discussing flaws in TESTAMENT:

>>On the contrary, some survivors were
>>headed up to Canada where the cold alone would have been deadly.
>
>  Canada isn't that cold, and would be only three or four degrees
>colder than San Francisco (Celsius).  Canada also would, in the more
>remote areas, be less ravaged by radiation, and could serve, through
>use of hothouses (yes, you can have hothouses in freezing
>temperatures; my father has done that for years), as a storehouse for
>the remnants of civilisation.

I would refer you to THE COLD AND THE DARK by Ehrlich, Sagan et. al.
The charts on page 98 show in one plausible model temperatures dropping
25 degrees or so in the San Francisco area and 30 to 40 degrees in
Canada within 40 days after a nuclear strike.  The point is that Canada
is the wrong direction to go to avoid the effects of nuclear winter.
The point is that Canada is the wrong direction to go.

>
>>The breakdown of the social order was shown with one kid stealing a
>>bicycle.  With the the big (and many not-so-big) cities gone, there
>>would be no distribution of food.  Nothing grown would be safe.
>
>  If you'll note, the survivors accepted the fact that the end was
>inevitable, and just chose to live out their days as best as they
>could.  While I cannot recall anyone eating fresh food (remember the
>storeroom with all the cans and jars), it wouldn't really matter to
>them whether the food was contaminated or not, they were going to die,
>anyhow.

That may have been their attitude, but food shortages would be
widespread.  There would be several thousand scavangers scouring the
countryside for food.  This town would be discovered very quickly.

>
>>Then there would be disease.  Within a large radius around targets
>>there would be millions dying with nobody to bury them.  Disease would
>>run rampant with no real facilities to stop it.  The town in TESTAMENT
>>is hardly isolated enough that the disease would not come there.  The
>>people on the fringes of the destruction and even the air currents
>>would carry it.
>>
>>Then there are the injured and maimed.  The dubious assumption of the
>>film was that this town was far enough from any of the blasts to avoid
>>direct physical injuries.  It wouldn't have avoided the walking
>>wounded, it just wasn't that isolated.
>
>  The producers assumed, as there were no prospective medical
>facilities available, that the walking wounded would not be coming
>that way apparently.

The hoards would come for food and just what was in the medicine
cabinet and grocery stores.  They wouldn't just seek out hospitals and
Johnson and Johnson factories.

>
>>In any case there is a long list of reasons why things just would not
>>have been as shown in TESTAMENT.  A post-nuclear-war is very probably
>>worse than we can imagine, and the town in TESTAMENT was not.
>
>  I'll grant you that.  TESTAMENT sought to show the fatalism that
>would arise after the big war.  I found it far more believable than
>THE DAY AFTER, 

Both were incredibly optimistic and unrealistic.  I strongly recommend
you see THREADS or if possible THE WAR GAME.  Or read "The Fate of the
Earth" by J.  Schell.  I am told WAR DAY by W.  Strieber is a science
fiction novel that has a reasonable treatment of the after effects of
nuclear war.  Films like ON THE BEACH or TESTAMENT serve to misinform
the public.  I am not trying to exaggerate out of ban-the-bombism (in
fact, I see some danger in lowering the number of nuclear weapons to
the level where one of the super-powers could think it might win a
nuclear war) but I really think that most of the public is out of touch
with how really terrible a nuclear war is.

				Mark Leeper
				...ihnp4!ahutb!leeper