Nuclear War • Power of Decision (1958) 

Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit amphetamines

-You can´t fight in here, this is the War Room!

As far as anyone has been able to determine, Power Of Decision is the only movie which dramatised how the United States planned to fight a nuclear war: the procedures, organisation, command and control, and the strike missions themselves. All these strategic procedures would soon be obsoleted by the appearance of the ICBM (the first of which were already being developed and deployed even as this movie was being made) and SLBM and their eventual rise as the primary nuclear strike weapons, relegating the manned bomber to the follow-up strike role. This was nuclear war fought through a timeframe of hours/days, which allowed more time for full evaluation of the coming threat, deployment of forces, and a more discriminatory selection of targets as well as the opportunity at any point in the war to abort strike missions and recall forces back to home bases in the event of a sudden breakthrough in negotiations to end the war or prevent it from proceeding through. After the ICBM appeared on the scene, nuclear war became an all-or-nothing proposition regardless of whatever plans there may be for "limited" war, irrevocable, and one to be launched immediately and fought in the timeframe of two hours at most.

38:44 Awesome footage of a B-47 employing the toss bombing delivery method. My great-uncle flew the B-47 Stratojet in the mid- to late-1950s. He just passed away this last week--the passing of a generation. I like how the video shows the bombers landing at home/friendly bases after delivering a nuclear strike "over the breadth of the enemy's territory."

While I don't want to die in a nuclear war, I now know that this is preferable to dying in a meeting about a nuclear war.

The pool cue used as the pointer, gotta love it, "if the button is ever pressed, we're all set to go."

Remember Gents, when the war starts, make sure when you're fighting the Reds, you have a Winston Cigarette. Because Winston tastes good, like a Cigarette should.

I used to be a B-52 mechanic at depot level and that's a hell of an airplane - analog all the way so it can survive nuclear war.

Love the bit, “ we call this - the big board” erm well done chaps

I've often listened to this old film in the background, either just to relax or to fall asleep to. Glad to see it on another channel too.

Kid: What did you do during World War III, grandpa? Grandpa: I was the uhhh camera operator in the SAC command post

Glad they had an ‘exit plan’ the year I was born. Loved the way the brass was smoking as much as possible before oblivion. Guess dying of lung cancer was not going to be much of a concern compared to one flash and they’re ash. ‘Excuse me? Do you smoke?’ ‘Only after the first megaton.’ Then pass the ash tray please.

"How I learned to start worrying and hate the bomb!"

Gotta love this guy's narration. He puts on a good voice for it!

I can't believe they showed "the big board"

"WE CALL THIS THE BIG BOARD!"

Well, that was just a ray of sunshine.

"Mr. President, we cannot allow a *Mineshaft Gap!"*

I don't often fight WWIII But when I do You'll get a report. Stay radioactive my friends...

Just found this gem. Born in '58. Have lived my life in a Targeted City. Weird timing for youtube to recommend this to me. Sucks they nuke me in pretty much every movie or scenario. Duck and Cover, and kiss my @$$ goodbye. Which is better than surviving this scenario.

At my house there was only four answers Dad would accept: "yes sir, no sir, can do sir and no excuse sir". As a child I didn't fully understand but after spending 22 years in the Army myself I got the message loud and clear. The colonel narrating this film is a prime example of the mindset concerning "offensive deterrent" (odd combination) battle plans. We didn't want to start the fight but if the enemy "got stupid" well, we thought we could fix stupid. Looking back now all I see is pride and arrogance on both sides. Thank God we didn't kill each other just to prove who's king of the schoolyard.

Man those 58s are just the most beautiful to ever fly….

What a great video, thank you.

Keep them coming.The videos I mean,not the bombs.

“Now why don't you just take it easy, Group Captain, and please make me a drink of grain alcohol and rainwater, and help yourself to whatever you'd like.” STERLING HAYDEN - Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper

This is great content. Thank you!

Thank You - shared

When the sac base was closed in New York, about ten years after that there was a property that the government sold, and a local real estate company had me go out and look at it because I had some experience with what I was about to see and they wanted my opinion. We drove about 2 hours the into Farm country and about an hour from the base. Along this country road there was a very large parcel that could fit a super Walmart and it had grass that was well manicured and there was a road that we turned onto and drove about a quarter of a mile and I could see what looks like a small garage as we approached It was a concrete poured structure a little smaller than a garage with a large metal Door and cameras had been removed from the outside. I noted where the brackets had been as I noted the posts that clearly had a fence around the property that had been cut off at the basis which were in concrete I had a very good idea of what type of facility we were about to see but I had no idea what its purpose had been We went in and down 4 flights of stairs about 60 feet below ground. There was no power inside and we had bright flashlights, but it was still pretty dark and we went through a series of blasts doors and the decontamination area I saw that they had stripped out almost everything, including the electrical panels which was odd Usually they were left in these places. But they had removed the generators and the wiring and the only thing that was still there was the bathroom but they had taken apart the wall for some reason I still don't understand and you could see the piping and the flexible hoses attached to the urinals and toilets In doing research I learned that this was the backup radar control station Which meant that there was an even larger primary radar control station probably in the main bunker. I don't know where the main bunker was It never came on the market which means most likely it's still being used by the government for some purpose But normally they have the bunkers at least an hour away from the bases knowing that the base will be a primary target And the pavement up-top had a parking area that seemed small for the size of the facility and I would have estimated maybe 8 to 10 people at a time were Manning this facility but probably less than that. It's amazing that this was built in the 40s or 50s in secret and as with other facilities like this I'm sure they went to the local farmers and talk with them about not talking about anything going on with the construction or about the facility once it was completed But driving past this each day and seeing a huge barbed-wire fence with cameras mounted and a security gate, you would have known that it was a military facility. But the SAC base was a big part of the economy and it was common to see military and government vehicles driving around on the back roads and in the towns. I don't remember what they sold that site for but it was pretty wrecked in comparison to other sites that had not been left to decay This one was deliberately stripped and left and the ground water had filled most of it. Why they decided to sell it I do not know. I would have thought the government would have filled in the entrance and bulldozed the entry buildings. But for whatever reason they didn't and they sold it as it was to the real estate company I don't ever remember seeing any of these sites have the lawn mowed but they always had immaculately mowed lawns. And I never saw a lawn mower or tractor or any other type of vehicle so they had to have brought the equipment to mow and taken it back to wherever it came from every week. Very interesting It almost makes me wonder if they mowed it at night in the dark

10:00 I like how "Gen. Larson" has to turn on his TV set....and then wait like 5 minutes for the tubes to heat up before he'll see anything. (Remember TV in the 1950s anyone?)

Great mix of aircraft.

I was waiting to see Slim Pickens in his cowboy hat riding a bomb.

Why do I have this unsettling feeling that this is still the way things work

Stanley Kubrick had to have seen this before he filmed Dr strangelove which was scheduled to release in 1963 but was postponed due to the Kennedy assassination until it's release date in 1964. there are too many parallels between characters in his film and some of the characters in this film. George c Scott's character complains the Communists will see the big board this film references the big board within the first 10 minutes. that cannot be a coincidence.

top !!! ... thank´s from brasil !!!

You can't simultaneously prepare for war and avoid it at the same time... Deterrence will not work forever...

Tuesday's at 10 o'clock would be the best time for the enemy to attack. That's when everyone ignores the sirens filling the air. lol

"Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman, and child, lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment, by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished, before they abolish us." -President John F. Kennedy

The Colonel sounds just like Gene Okurland.

I was 14. In 1964 i was in USAF Communications Command. Yhen in 1966 in SAC getting bomber crews ready to bomb on the target and avoid missles. Retired as an officer in Army in 2004. Much changed but b52 still flying!

I’d see this as rather potent timing 😬 ( I’m joking ) great find as always!

Muy bueno

Who would have thought in 2022, we all wished SAC was back and as bad assed as ever! Edit: this government film brought to you by marlbrough!

It's amazing how video tape is turned into 16 millimeter before it is seen.

"That is all" is pretty much the truth...

The world was a much safer place when SAC was around. I myself slept much better knowing that LOOKING GLASS was always overhead.

MAD was reality at this early date !

That is a serious, serious man.

We owe the purity of our essence to these people.

The beginning looks like the beginning of “Get Smart “

Calling Curtis LeMay. Please come back Curtis LeMay!

What's the "target M" map show at 46:38? I can't read the name of the city. Looks like seven letters with the first one being L?

Isn't it scary how ICBMs changed everything

10:40 Video calls during the late 50's ... wow

And they all lived happily ever after.

woah

NO fighting in the war room

Those tall-tail B-52Ds had a certain something....

2013 . Times have changed.

Who's the actor playing the Colonel? He also played that lieutenant colonel in an army film.

I love America. 🇺🇸

I was disoriented by the lack of a light classical soundtrack.

"Gentlemen, we have won. We have destroyed all Soviet military assets. Unfortunately, there is enough radioactive fallout in the atmosphere, in the oceans that the human race will be extinguished. Extinct. But we won..."

He also very calmly announced that the United States had lost 1/3 of its population. We were just shy of 180000,000 in 1960.

So there really _was_ a Big Board! "Dr. Strangelove" was right!

This film is incredibly optimistic. Gary Powers was shot down 2 years after this was made. There’s a decent chance many of those B-52s would be lost

No just MAD just plan MAD look Mom it's a bomb it's a plane it's thermal nuclear fallout and we're all screwed

Sobering.

THIS IS UNBELIVABLE 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

I hope these facilities have been kept up to date. Might need it soon. Everything in this video is outdated, including the procedures, I'm sure.

One thing America should have never scrapped was civil defense programs

The intelligence officer was the police chief in "the blob"

1:03 If you tear the paper violently from the printer, it’ll keep jamming up for the next person using it.

Anyone wating for the WOPR to come across the loudspeaker and state, "shall we play a game?"

A military solution, I guess when you need a military solution… you’re already into a corner…🌹

Interesting how the ICBM made a lot of this obsolete.

Is there any effective measures against hypersonic missiles for this very year of 2023?

Fire at will? Who is Will??

Ladies and Gentlemen do not forget that United states never start nuclear attack...... General McArthur McDonald

7:00- interesting

28:14 looks like I picked the wrong day to quit smoking… 34:30 - um…General…why are we bombing South Carolina? 47:43 the last known use of the word ‘spasmodic’ on film? Nope…not two minutes later at 49:07… 51:07 nice buffering, General…’positive…um what’s the word…positive…ah yes, positive recall. Sorry, Bill, I’d just used it in a sentence about 20 seconds ago…you understand the tremendous stress I’m under trying to maintain this facial expression. That’s right. Good…um…let’s see good….ah yes! Goodbye! That’s it” 54:33 voiceover: “hmmm…accept his surrender eh? I’ll bet that’s JUST what he WANTS me to do. Well…I’m not some sucker, Ivan….” (Out loud) “Jerry? Call the bases, give them the green light for Operation Slaughterhouse”

Thank God we've got cigarettes to keep us healthy and strong!

This dudes tie is to tight to work well with a respitory system

Jim is such a Chad 23:46

It's a sobering thought-the world burning down outside their bunkers as these guys brief each other about how they won the final war. Hooray, I guess.

Poor Will. They launched all their missiles at him.

Basically, this period from 1957-1960 was the only one where the US had total dominance over the Soviets vis-a-vis nuclear weapons. The Soviets had virtually no ICBMs, no ship-launched nuclear cruise missiles, no IRBMs, and only a handful of long-range bombers like the Bear capable of dropping a nuke.

Very interesting. The only way to defeat these men of steel would be to transport them to the modern era. They would surely die of apoplexy upon seeing the current state of their nation.

"More reports be coming in all the time.". What exactly was that General smoking? 😂

This film could also be titled, "Why the U.S. still doesn't have national health insurance."

Hegelian Dialectic

People in the 50s had especially heavy sounding accents and voices.

i am surprised how good production value american army films had in the fifties. did they recruit people from hollywood or how it was done?

Did we win?

60 million casualties in an off the cuff estimate. That was roughly a 30 percent casualty rate for the civilian population, 1958. During the bomber war period. With rose colored glasses on. Yep, nuclear war is a bad idea. I was surprised at the realistic casualty figures. A very sobering show for any politicians of that time period.

They had hours. We will have minutes.

All those returning bombers would have had nowhere to land, all AF bases, incl their alternates, would have likely been destroyed by the enemy. But the whole scenario, planes, missiles, whatever, is absolute insanity!

Interesting to see a time of such devastating nuclear power, but all communications and electronics operating on an analogue system, and the transistor had only been invented ten years before. Old looking vehicles, rotary phones, etc., and yet we had already entered into the deadly nuclear age, whose weapons were toys compared to what we have today. What's so striking is the delusional thinking, at least based on future advancements, that superiority over the Soviet's was possible, and a nuclear war could be won, with the illusion promoted by clips of nuclear destruction of supposed Soviet infrastructure, (old test films) and nothing of the US or Allied Powers, except told to the viewer audience that "deterrence failed." There were those, however, even at the birth of nuclear weapons, who questioned this, like Oppenheimer, Einstein, etc. At the end of the film, superiority of the air, is claimed by one of the generals. Why isn't this reassuring ?

Note clear, simple orders. Clarification quickly obtained. LeMay's SAC.

At 21:20 this is how baby planes are made.

Yay!! We won...