Mr. Haskell
World History
24 May 2005
May 24 Journal
Please go the CNN and The Cold War website. Once you enter the site you should explore it, and write 4 separate paragraphs about how the site relates to culture, technology, espionage, and the bomb. Remember to give specific descriptive examples to support your 4 paragraph essay. When you complete this activity please email it to [email protected]. You are also responsible for pasting your essay into the journal section of your web sites. This is due before the end of the period.
The website relates the culture of the Cold War to the culture of today by giving examples of what the culture had when the Cold War was in effect such as television, movies, books, music and drama. The website gives an example of television in the way of showing a television timeline of all the shows that were showing at the time such as Father Knows Best and I had Three Lives and showing the present shows such as The Day After and the X- Files. In the relation of music the website shows albums and a quick paragraph of the impact of the album such as �99 Luftballons� by David Browne and although the website doesn�t show today�s albums and artists the reader is quick to make a comparison between the Cold War music and the present day music.
The website relates technology from the Cold War with present day technology by many ways but two of the relations are Inventions and Life without the Cold War. The website gives three scenarios of what the world would be like without the Cold War one of which being that technology wouldn�t have been as advanced as it is today one example being ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), probably wouldn�t have been started up until later than 1946. Inventions in the Cold War played an important role in the culture of the people in the Cold War�s culture and our culture today. Some inventions that are included on the website that are essential to today�s culture are the microwave oven, smoke detector and the Super Computer. Without these three inventions and many more inventions that occurred during the Cold War our daily life wouldn�t be even close to the same as it is today
The website relates espionage from the Cold War with present day espionage by talking about people such as Markus Wolf and Ted Hall that were the most famous spies during the Cold War. Wolf led East Germany�s �Stasi� operation, in which recruited spies from the west in organizations such as NATO and the West German administration of Chancellor Willy Brandt. Ted Hall joined the Manhattan Project at age 19 and sold secrets to the Soviets which cut an estimated 8 years off of the Soviet atomic weapon program. In the time of the Cold War, many Americans were paranoid about who was a communist spy. Members of the Senate even made accusations that their colleagues were Soviet spies out of fear of being named a communist first. During this time spy technology was advancing rapidly. Also in this time were movies such as James Bond about espionage and nuclear disasters, which only further expressed American fear of the Soviets.
The website relates the bomb from the Cold War with present day evolution of the bomb by talking about how the Cold War could have become a nuclear war and how JFK warned the United States citizens to prepare and protect themselves for a nuclear war. This relates to our time because so many countries have nuclear capabilities and in particular just some months ago Iraq and Saddam Hussein saying that they would use their nuclear weapons against their opposition. Possible bad times were given the code names of Broken Arrow, Empty Quiver and Empty Giant to represent an accident involving a nuclear weapon, warhead or nuclear component, to report the loss, theft, or seizure of a US atomic weapon, and a reactor malfunction or radiological accident. Some of these were used in events such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. There were no bombs launched but too many were produced and now more than 50 countries have nuclear capability which makes the United States and every other country constantly on watch.