In "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964), Stanley Kubrick stages a nuclear strike process which, to be deterrent, must continue beyond the destruction of one’s own camp. The folly of a US general then causes an Apocalypse which no one can prevent. At the time, the Pentagon assured that this type of situation could not happen but historians have since shown that there was actually no way to stop it once the order was confirmed.

For the safety of people and animals, year-end fireworks displays have been banned in several cases, especially the powerful firecracker. The news is reported prominently by the media. Even though it hides other news that, if disseminated, would burst the bubble of the virtual reality in which we are imprisoned.

One example is that, on December 22, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the archives of the US government, released a record 800 pages, hitherto secret, with a list of thousands of targets in the USSR, Eastern Europe and China that the US was preparing to destroy with nuclear weapons during the Cold War. In 1959, the year to which refers the "target list" written in 1956, the US had more than 12,000 nuclear warheads with an output of 20,000 megatons, equivalent to one and a half million Hiroshima bombs, this at a time when the USSR had about a thousand and that China had no nuclear weapons. Being in a position of superiority, including vectors (bombers and missiles), the Pentagon considered a nuclear attack feasible. The plan called for the "systematic destruction" of 1100 airfields and 1200 cities. Moscow would have been destroyed by 180 thermonuclear bombs; Leningrad, 145; Beijing, by 23. Many "inhabited areas" were to be destroyed by "nuclear explosions at ground level to increase the fallout." Among them, East Berlin, the nuclear bombing of which would have involved "disastrous implications for West Berlin."

The plan was not implemented because the USSR, which had conducted its first nuclear experiment in 1949, when the US had already accumulated about 230 bombs since 1945, quickly gained the ability to hit the US.

Why did NARA, at this time, decide to publish "the most extensive and detailed list of nuclear targets ever declassified"? The choice is no coincidence, since the chief archivist of NARA is appointed by the President of the United States. The publication of the "target list" is a clear signal to Russia and China, who are warned transversely of the USA’s nuclear power. The USA has launched a plan, at a cost of 1 000 billion dollars, to potentiate nuclear forces with 12 additional attack submarines, each armed with 200 nuclear warheads, and 100 new strategic bombers, each armed with more than 20 nuclear warheads. And while they are on the verge of storing new B61-12 first nuclear strike bombs in Italy and other NATO countries, the US is developing the "missile shield" which should "defend" Europe. On December 12, at the Deveselu base in Romania, the first US land missile battery of NATO’s "defense" was activated, followed by another, similar in Poland consisting of 24 Aegis missiles, already installed aboard four US warships deployed in the Mediterranean and Black Sea.
On December 25th, Moscow warned that these batteries, being also able to launch Tomahawk medium range nuclear missiles, are a clear violation of the INF Treaty, which prohibits the deployment of nuclear medium-range missiles with land bases in Europe.

Russia has announced counter-measures, including new mobile intercontinental missiles on vehicles and trains constantly moving to avoid a nuclear first strike. And, to hit Daesh targets in Syria, it uses strategic bombers which thus train also for nuclear attack.

It is unclear what is now the US Nuclear "target list". However, it is certain that the Russian list also includes the bases of the US and NATO in Italy. The media are silent on this, while they raise the alarm about year-end fireworks.

Manlio Dinucci
Translation
Roger Lagassé
Source
Il Manifesto (Italy)