Thursday, May 7, 2015

this has stuck in the back my head for some time...

spoilers for a 50+-year-old film ahead...

in one of the finest Black Comedies ever made, Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, directed by Stanley Kubrick, paranoid general Jack Ripper issues the "GO" code (FGD-135) to the bombers flying at their fail-safe points to attack their targets in the USSR...

codes are valid until Friday, Sept 13, 1963...



now, here's where the something happens and gets stuck in the back of my head. General Ripper mentions he is the only person who knows the recall code, yet, we see that the planes have a copy of the codes and it has the stamp of "Strategic Air Command." that implies that the source of  the codes is SAC...

you're bluffing...
minutes later, SAC is even able to decode the transmission and verify it with General Ripper...

General Turgidson's Personal Assistant...
but later in the War Room, Gen. Turgidson mentions that they are plowing through every three-letter group prefixes to try and find the 'Recall' code...

it's going to take 2 1/2 days to transmit them all, and they have 18 minutes left...

so, i surmise that either, General Ripper changed the 'Recall' code in the copies he gave the bombers...

the face of leader that has lost faith in his natural bodily fluids...

or, that the Generals in SAC are a bunch of incompetent fools and everything could have been avoided had they looked to the same code book they issued...

looks fine to me...

obviously and logically, one would think the former would be true, but it was never explicitly confirmed either way in the film...




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