Why experts matter

History is resplendent woth examples.of why expertise matters and how disaster follows when politics is a greater priority than knowledge

"By 1961 an estimated 400,000 small reservoirs were in a state of disrepair; roughly one in three either collapsed, silted up or leaked dry.50" (from "Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 (Peoples Trilogy Book 1)" by Frank Dikötter)

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Switch off Something - National Crisis from the 1970s

During the 1970s a series of films were made by the Central of Information during the energy crisis. These films all implored people to “Switch off Something” - a campaign from government aimed at energy conservation during the three day week. It’s interesting that in the more than 45 years between these and the recent Corona virus/Covid 19 information films from UK Government these are many parallels; their presentation is pretty much as austere now as they were then. They’re very direct and imposing your get across the message of national crisis. They are an interesting series of films and give a view of how government responded to national crisis and how it intended to inform the public nearly 50 years ago.

QED — A Guide to Armageddon (BBC)

On 26th July 1982, the BBC broadcast “ A Guide to Armageddon ” [YouTube] as part of the QED documentary 1 series which ran between 1982 and 1999. The programme was written and produced by Mick Jackson and is clearly an early blueprint for Threads , although Threads was updated following several important scientifically credible ideas particularly that of nuclear winter. The programme was 30 minutes in length and was a detailed investigation into the effects of a nuclear weapon exploding over a large city, London being the chosen example. It theorised what effect a 1 megaton airburst weapon would have and demonstrating vigorous impartiality, the programme cited it sources at the very beginning: Sources for " QED A Guide to Armageddon ": Glasstone, S and Dolan J. D. (1977) J. D. The Effects of Nuclear Weapons . U.S. Department of Defense : U.S. Department of Energy. United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment. (1979) The Effects of Nuclear Weap...

Nicholas Thompson - "Nuclear War and Nuclear Fear in the 1970s and1980s"

Nuclear War and Nuclear Fear in the 1970s and 1980s Journal of Contemporary History January 2011 46: 136-149,doi:10.1177/0022009410383298 This article looks primarily at a series of interviews carried out by John Hines of the BDM Corporation between 1990 and 1994 for the Pentagon, the full text of which is available online . The article is about the set of documents created by Hines called " Soviet Intentions, 1965–1985 " and looks at Soviet intentions, policies and fears over the use of nuclear weapons over that 20 year period. In this remarkable set of interviews of senior Soviet figures gives a very different insight into the Soviet machine which is completely different to Western interpretations of Soviet nuclear intent over this period. Much of the self-serving Western propaganda of that period frequently portrayed the Soviet Union as the aggressors and numerous films described this block as having a political agenda of world domination. These interviews p...

Echoes from history

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