Dean Poling

Ahhhh, nuclear armageddon is in the air. I feel like a kid again.

I haven’t felt this young since Rocky Balboa out-boxed Ivan Vasilyevich Drago in the Soviet Union and Rocky said those stirring words: “During this fight, I’ve seen a lot of changing, the way yous feel about me, and in the way I felt about you. In here, there were two guys killing each other but I guess that’s better than 20 million. I guess what I’m trying to say, is that if I can change, and you can change, everybody can change.”

And sometimes, things change back to the way they were before all that changing.

In the past few weeks, Vladmir Putin has threatened to use nuclear warheads in response to his botched invasion of Ukraine. President Joe Biden responded by essentially saying my nuke’s bigger than yours.

Brrrr, sure feels chilly, who let the Cold War back in?

For younger generations, this is new stuff.

For the past couple of decades, nuclear politics have revolved around keeping Iran, North Korea and some other nations from developing a nuclear program.

But for older generations, the rhetoric is all too familiar.

America vs. Russia. Nuclear brinksmanship … just like being a teen on a Saturday night.

This was everyday stuff for everyone from the 1950s until around 1990.

In case of a nuclear incident, school kids ran through drills of getting under their desks with the hope that those old contortionist pieces of furniture and all that dried-up gum and snot under the desktop would withstand a radioactive blast.

The nuclear standoff permeated our entertainment. “The Day After” was a 1983 movie about what America would look like after a nuclear exchange. We thrilled to James Bond repeatedly stopping Soviet threats. We laughed at comedies, such as “Spies Like Us” and “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” thwarted the Soviets. And Sylvester Stallone punched Russia out in the previously mentioned “Rocky IV.”

In song, Sting hoped “the Russians love their children too,” Elton John sang about loving “Nikita” behind the Iron Curtain, The Beatles were “Back in the U.S.S.R.”

Pro wrestling had Russian and Soviet bad guys, who were usually guys with bad accents from either America or other non-Soviet countries.

The news was filled with proxy wars. American-backed and Soviet-backed troops battling around the globe. There were standoffs and missile crises. Mutual assured destruction, or MAD, was the concept that if either the U.S.S.R. or the U.S. attacked first, the other one would retaliate, assuring that both nations would be destroyed in a nuclear war.

The stuff of our childhoods. Sweet memories. How invigorating.

The nuclear armageddon comedy “Dr. Strangelove” has a secondary title: “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”

The movie came out in 1964; the same year I was born. It is a dark comedy as nuclear armageddon comedies tend to be. The movie may be best known for actor Slim Pickens riding a falling nuclear warhead like a bronco-busting rodeo rider.

But that subtitle is partly right about growing up during the Cold War. “Love” isn’t the correct word; “live with” might be a better phrase: How I learned to stop worrying and live with the bomb.

Hopefully, we won’t have to “love” or “live with” such a long-term threat again.

I don’t know if my nerves can take feeling this young for much longer.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.