IT HAS BEEN MORE THAN TWENTY-FIVE YEARS SINCE THE COLD War ended in 1991. Yet for many, the feeling of uncertainty that infected countless lives during that forty-four-year face-off between the United States and the Soviet Union remains. At the time of the Cold War, it was something we faced together—you couldn’t avoid it. If you were an American, there was a good chance you were fearful of nuclear war and the potential fallout that could occur if one side decided to make the first move. It was terrifying.
Though very little ever bubbled up to the surface, and often it didn’t feel like a tangible war compared to other recent engagements like the Vietnam and Korean Wars, the Cold War was just as much of a concern for Americans living through it at the time. It felt like the slow burn of growing dread. Nothing had really happened, but you feared that stuff was going on behind the scenes that would eventually kick it into high gear. The silence and inaction almost made things worse, with many Americans fearing that there was action happening in the shadows, prompting them to develop a sense of paranoia and distrust that crippled the nation. We were fearful of nuclear war and knew that something had to be done, but we didn’t know what, so there was a feeling that you could affect change on a local level—you could do something. Were your neighbors Soviet spies? Likely not, but that didn’t stop people from jumping to those conclusions. It was an era of misdirection, and there was the fear that we simply weren’t getting the whole story—there had to be more to it. Why would we allow ourselves to be threatened with something as devastating as nuclear war without cause for concern?
We weren’t, but we also weren’t willing to make the first move. As the Soviet Union continued to stockpile weapons (somehow unbeknownst to us at the time), the United States continued to do the same. It became an arms race to see who could collect the largest arsenal of weapons without the other knowing—“just in case.” Yet as sure as we felt something might one day happen, there was also a chance that nothing ever would, that it was all posturing on the part of nations to make the whole world afraid of them. That’s not something you can take a bet on, though. We had to be prepared.
In the second decade of the twenty-first century, this feeling returned, but with a new and more powerful enemy: North Korea, formally called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
This has its beginnings in the Korean War of the 1950s. Years before, during World War II, the United States had made it clear that it possessed nuclear weapons and was willing to use them when it dropped two atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. US support of South Korea and President Harry Truman’s statement in a news conference that there was “active consideration” to use a nuclear weapon on North Korea made that nation fearful of an attack from the United States. As a result, North Korea went to work on developing its own nuclear weapons in case it fell under attack.
Just as with the USSR, these were less defensive and more offensive, to ensure mutual destruction, a threat that is used as a fear tactic more than anything but is terrifying all the same. The Korean War ended in 1953, but that didn’t stop North Korea from continuing its work on a weapons program. If it sounds familiar, a bit like the USSR’s approach, that’s because the two nations were working together, even as the Cold War came to an end. By this time, the USSR was beginning to ramp down its threats and de-escalate conflict with the US, while simultaneously helping North Korea develop weapons systems in secret. As North Korea spun up nuclear reactors and threatened to use them to build nuclear weapons, the United States became more wary.
Eventually, the administration of President Bill Clinton struck a deal that required North Korea to dismantle its current nuclear operations in exchange for oil and help in building non-weaponizable nuclear energy. This timing worked out perfectly for North Korea, as it had just lost its ally, the Soviet Union, following the latter’s collapse in 1991. Yet with the shift of the US presidency to George W. Bush, conflict bubbled to a head again as the president accused North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il of secretly violating the rules of their agreement and continuing to develop nuclear weapons. The US halted its side of the agreement, cutting off supplies to North Korea, which saw this as a sign of aggression and resumed work on its nuclear program.
Despite many attempts to rekindle this relationship (including two that were somewhat successful until Kim grew tired of waiting and broke the agreement, beginning to test missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload to the United States), no real progress has been made on returning to disarmament for North Korea. There have been several times when things have looked to be on their way to being resolved, only to have one party completely flip things around when all looked to be in the clear. This has gone both ways, and in the decade following these failed attempts, things have only gotten worse, with North Korea declaring outright contempt for the United States and continuing to test nuclear weapons of escalating potency, regardless of global demands otherwise.
Just as John Milius’s film Red Dawn had predicted the USSR to be the largest threat in 1984, and thus the main antagonist of the film, so was North Korea in the 2012 remake. In the film, North Korean soldiers invade the West Coast of the United States and a group of local kids must band together to defeat them. Though it was seen as a poor remake of a film, the second Red Dawn helped to cement the potential threat brewing in one of America’s largest potential enemies.
In October 2014 North Korea threatened terrorist action against the United States if film distributor Columbia Pictures released The Interview, a comedy in which James Franco and Seth Rogen play journalists recruited by the CIA to assassinate Kim Jong-un inside North Korea. As a result, Columbia Pictures reportedly edited the film to appease North Korea, but it was still not to that nation’s satisfaction.
In November of that year, Sony Pictures, Columbia Pictures’ parent company, was hacked by a group that US intelligence officials believed had strong ties to North Korea, a group that calls itself the Guardians of Peace. In this hack the group penetrated Sony Pictures’ confidential network, leaking emails, employee information, and even unreleased films before finally attempting to delete everything from Sony’s internal network. This was a devastating cybersecurity threat that took the world by storm. The Guardians of Peace claimed they would stop with the attack if Sony Pictures indefinitely canceled the release of The Interview.
Sony refused, but was forced to cancel the premiere following a direct terrorist threat from the Guardians of Peace that claimed, We will clearly show it to you at the very time and places “The Interview” be shown, including the premiere, how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to.
Soon all the world will see what an awful movie Sony Pictures Entertainment has made.
The world will be full of fear.
Remember the 11th of September 2001.
We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time.
(If your house is nearby, you’d better leave.)
Whatever comes in the coming days is called by the greed of Sony Pictures Entertainment.
All the world will denounce the SONY.
Following this threat, all major theater chains opted not to show the film, and Sony decided to release it online via its video-on-demand services. It grossed over $40 million in digital rentals, thus being considered a massive success. This only angered North Korea further, though the nation denied all involvement in the Sony Pictures hack.
In 2011, Seth Rogen made an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, where, in speaking about his wedding, he shared his love of arcade machines. As a wedding present, DeGeneres gave him an original 1980 Missile Command cabinet, which Rogen later referred to as the best celebrity wedding gift he had received. His love for the movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day, in which the game makes a brief appearance, earned the game “a special place in [his] heart.” The cabinet now resides in his home in Los Angeles.
In 2017, US president Donald Trump antagonized North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-un by calling him Rocket Man and saying he was “on a suicide mission.” This angered Kim, who said that Trump “would pay dearly” for these accusations, that he was “mentally deranged,” and that his actions only solidified Kim’s belief that America was an enemy.
This ongoing war of words between Trump and Kim echoes what Americans were experiencing during the Cold War—threat for threat, fear for fear. Only now, the escapism is gone. In 1980 you could get away from the news for a while—it wasn’t all-consuming, as you only had limited sources for how you could hear about new developments. The internet as we know it didn’t exist, the twenty-four-hour news cycle was only in its infancy, and you certainly didn’t have a president tweeting about other world leaders at 2:00 a.m.
We found ourselves in another standoff, experiencing the same fearful, haunting uncertainty that comes with nuclear war. One day you could be sitting at your child’s baseball game, the next there’s nothing left of what once was downtown Los Angeles. The times that we once thought were over, never to return again, are back, and more powerful than ever. Held in a state of collective captivity, we are once again in a place where we’re affected by the ever-looming threat of mutually assured destruction that comes from flirting with nuclear war.
This was the world that Theurer predicted would come about. He knew that if we changed nothing, the Cold War would go on forever, whether with the Soviet Union or another new enemy. He didn’t see a world in which we would be able to continue to live knowing this was always a potential option. His message was a prediction of the future if we didn’t enact change and recognize the position we were getting ourselves into. As we continue to experience similar events, we’re finding out just how true his message really was.
The notion that, more than thirty years later, we haven’t learned our lesson and continue to fall into the same traps that we did then terrifies Theurer. “The nightmares have left,” he says, speaking of the horrific visions he experienced while working on the game. “However, I’m still haunted when I think about atomic bombs being controlled by North Korea and Iran, and by rogue terrorists.” In his eyes, something must be done, as we cannot live through another extended period of this turmoil.
Though we may be more than thirty years removed from the game, we need Missile Command more than ever. We need the game’s heart. We need the game’s message. We need someone like Dave Theurer.