#coldwar

The secret Cold War history of Tetris https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-secret-cold-war-history-of-tetris/ #Gaming #History #ColdWar

"First, it was just one missile, but then another, and another, until the system reported that a total of five Minuteman ICBMs had been launched." Happy Stanislav Petrov Day, fediverse! (From 2018) https://www.vox.com/2018/9/26/17905796/nuclear-war-1983-stanislav-petrov-soviet-union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov #OnThisDay #otd #history #StanislavPetrov #ColdWar

Happy Stanislav Petrov Day! Many people have received the Nobel Peace Prize for doing a lot less than him. On this day 43 years ago, Stanislav Petrov was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet military, the commanding officer of a USSR nuclear early warning site. On Sept. 26th 1983, he watched in disbelief as the monitoring software showed that the US had launched 5 nuclear missiles. Why would America send 5 missiles when they had thousands? It didn’t add up. Petrov stayed calm. His job was to suggest retaliation, but he chose not to, and did nothing. He was proved 100% right – it had been a false alarm. Stanislav's choice to do nothing saved the world from destruction. #ColdWar #NuclearAttack #FalseAlarm

🫣 Peek-a-boo! Snaps from a little evening adventure, exploring an underground ROC outpost. This photo of me emerging from the hatch is priceless (I was also having some sort of fluffy hair day)! #Underground #Bunker #BehindTheScenes #Photographer #UrbanExplorer #Sunset #ROC #Outpost #ColdWar

That one time I borrowed my friend's drone! An old Cold War Soviet warplane, an old gate guardian left among allotments outside a small town in Georgia 🇬🇪 #ColdWar #Aviation #Photography #Warplane #Abandoned #Relic #Travel

'Mayday' Review: Frenemies, a Cold War Story https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/movies/mayday-review-frenemies-a-cold-war-story.html #Movies #ColdWar #FilmReview

‘If he can make money in a tyranny, that’s fine by him’: Francis Fukuyama on Trump, democracy - and changing his mind https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/sep/02/francis-fukuyama-interview-memoir-book-end-history-last-man #FrancisFukuyama #Politicsbooks #Lifeandstyle #Historybooks #Worldnews #Culture #Coldwar #Books

Oregon's forgotten Cold War backscatter radar site: a relic of the era when both sides feared a surprise attack https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/backscatter-radar-site By the 1980s the Cold War had been simmering for over three decades, and seemed likely to continue into the indefinite future. Technology had changed, however. Both sides still feared a surprise… #travel #coldwar #history

Fabled Lands: “Who ate all the spies?” https://fabledlands.blogspot.com/2030/03/my-roleplaying-group-used-to-cut-loose.html #RPG #ColdWar #Games

📡 Remembering the RAF Stenigot dishes, Lincolnshire They were constructed in 1959, during the Cold War. The site became part of the ACE High communications network. The station was decommissioned in the 1980s, and by the mid-1990s most of the base was demolished. Three dishes scrapped in 2018. The final dish was taken down in November 2020. https://www.obsidianurbexphotography.com/other/raf-stenigot-radar-dishes-england/ #Lincolnshire #ColdWar #History #England #Abandoned

#NSSavannah, the passenger-cargo liner and second civilian #nuclear vessel, launched on #ThisDayInHistory in 1959, on a US gov. #ColdWar initiative. Germany & Japan also experimented, but all three failed from the same high costs. The only active nuclear merchant ship is Russian.

Showcase-Sunday: Luftwaffe McDonnell Douglas F4N Phantom, Carrier Graf Zeppelin, November 1975 (Hasegawa, 1/72) More: https://www.scratchbaer.de/whatif-aircraft/germany/post-ww2/mcdonnell-douglas/mcdonnell-douglas-f4n-phantom/ #scalemodels #whatif #hasegawa #luftwaffe #f4 #bundesmarine #grafzeppelin #coldwar #phantom

I wrote about the USSR's plan for a laser-cannon-toting satellite. And people asked: Is there any more bonkers cold-war space tech that could be used for #worldbuilding? Oh, blimey, yes... https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/551247/hard-s-f-worldbuilding-cookbook-6-2-space-archaeology-salvage-the-istrabitel-sputnikov-hunter-killer-satellites?src=newest_recent #ColdWar #scifi #ttrpg #RPG #rpggames #history #author #writer

https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/10/cia-history-communist-albania-cold-war-kim-philby-review/ How NOT to launch a clandestine mission! Kim Philby didn't need to betray ANY of it, it was so badly organised! "Far from the buttoned-up, bureaucratized #spying of the later #ColdWar period, the early post-war #MI6 & #CIA were an almost shambolic bunch. With little oversight, especially on the #US side, these #agencies could concoct whatever schemes & plans they fancied... they were less James Bond, more Monty Python..."

Today in Labor History July 10, 1985: French intelligence committed an act of piracy and state terrorism by blowing up the Rainbow Warrior, flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, in the Port of Auckland, New Zealand. The ship was on its way to protest a French nuclear test in Moruroa. The attack killed Fernando Pereira, a photographer, who drowned as a result. France had been doing nuclear testing on Mururoa Atoll since 1966, and had intended to continue, despite the 1985 Treaty of Rarotonga, signed by Australia, the Cook Islands, Fiji, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and other South Pacific nations, declaring the region a nuclear-free zone. The Rainbow Warrior had been active in supporting anti-whaling, anti-seal hunting, anti-nuclear testing and anti-nuclear waste dumping campaigns during the late 1970s and early 1980s. New Zealand Police captured and charged two French agents with arson, conspiracy and murder. They were sentenced to ten years in New Zealand prison. However, due to pressures from the French government, they only spent two years imprisoned on the French Polynesian island of Hao before being released. In 1987, France paid $8 million to Greenpeace in damages, which helped finance another ship, but only after considerable international pressure. Most Western leaders refused to condemn the attack. Nuclear contamination in the South Pacific is extensive. It is the result of nuclear testing by the U.S. (primarily in the Marhsall Islands, including Bikini Atoll), UK (Monte Bello Island, Australia), and France (French Polynesia) from 1946 until 1996. As a result, thousands of local indigenous populations have suffered radiation poisoning; increased rates of cancer; contaminated food supplies; forced displacement; increased rates of infertility, miscarriages, and congenital malformations; and, of course, psychological trauma. In at least one case, the U.S. completely obliterated a previously inhabited island. The U.S. conducted 105 atmospheric and underwater tests in the Marshall Islands from 1946-1962 for a total yield of 210 megatons. Castle Bravo (1954) was the largest single test. It spread fallout across several islands, include some that were currently inhabited. Residents weren’t warned or evacuated ahead of time. #workingclass #LaborHistory #terrorism #stateterror #rainbowwarrior #greenpeace #nuclear #coldwar #newzealand #bikini #marshallislands #rarotonga #polynesia

Today in Labor History July 9, 1947: The Greek government ordered the arrest of 11,500 people on charges of plotting a Communist revolution. It occurred during the Greek Civil War (1943-1949), between Royalists (supported by the UK and US) and various Communist factions (supported by Yugoslavia and the USSR). It was the first US proxy war against Russia during the Cold War. Well over 200,000 people died and over 1 million were displaced. #workingclass #LaborHistory #greece #communism #nationalism #russia #coldwar #imperialism #Revolution #proxywar #freespeech #civilwar

@MissConstrue@mefi.social I could not agree more! I found more photos from that event: https://historycollection.com/26-photographs-americas-1976-bicentennial-celebration/ It was good to scroll thru them. I was about five years older than the kid at the top of this photo. You can tell that they were glad to be part of a whole. And it was a hopeful time... we were getting our act together. We were righting wrongs. For context, these are the things that were on my mind at that time... The first #Oil #Crisis 🛢️ #Watergate 🕵️ #Racism and the #CivilRights Movement ✊🏾 The #VietnamWar (I was subject to the draft.) 🪖 The #ColdWar with its attendant #Nuclear Dread 🤯 My friends and I were particularly concerned about protecting the #Environment 🌲 , tried to avoid cars, and rode our #bicycles everywhere. 🚴 So what about the #Semiquincentennial? Let's say it's a celebration deferred. We need to get our act together, we need to right some wrongs, we need to start feeling AND acting like a whole again. We've made a start, we can do it, and when we're on the right track again I'll be there with you all to celebrate! 💕 🇺🇸

🕊️ Dreaming of a world without war, where the ruins and relics fall silent and are left discarded. A collection of some of my photos of abandoned military remains all over the world. Cold War bunkers reclaimed by the forests. Fallen communications dishes. Rusted tanks frozen in place. Grounded planes. Photos from Hungary, England and Germany #ColdWar #AbandonedPlaces #History #Photography #Urbex #Abandoned #UrbanExploration

Today in Labor History April 30 1945: Eva Braun and Adolph Hitler committed suicide, in Berlin, after being married for less than 40 hours. Many Nazis were tried, convicted and executed. And literally thousands were secreted into the U.S., given false identities, and put to work as spies, intelligence officers, informants, and rocket scientists in the Cold War. Some of them had even been high-ranking Nazi Party officials, secret police chiefs, and heads of concentration camps. In fact, during the first few years after WWII ended, it was easier to get into the U.S. as a Nazi than it was as a Jewish concentration camp survivor. There were policy makers in Washington who said the Jews shouldn’t be let in because they’re “lazy” and “self-entitled.” For more on this sordid history, read “The Nazis Next Door How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men,” By Eric Lichtblau. #workingclass #LaborHistory #nazis #WorldWarTwo #holocaust #fascism #nazis #coldwar #concentrationcamps #hitler #jewish #antisemitism #books #nonfiction #author #writer @bookstadon@a.gup.pe

Exciting news - I have now published my Action-Thriller trilogy! I don't distribute my work on Amazon. The ebooks can be obtained for free (no sign up needed) by following the links to BookFunnel on my website - go to https://leejrussell.com/the-lissa-blackwood-trilogy/ Creating this series was a lot of fun and I've totally enjoyed the whole journey with my leading character - Lissa Blackwood. ... and now for something different - my next project will be another 'Cold War Cthulhu' short story collection... and then maybe a sci-fi novel... ... so many ideas... so little time in the day! #thriller #fiction #books #book #writing #author #ColdWar