Cold War: Difference between revisions

Most famous for the sheer amount of [[Atomic Hate|nuclear weapons]] amassed by several countries, most notably the USSR and the USA.

 

 

Standard plot involves U.S. as goodies, USSR as baddies. Of course, you could also have [[General Ripper]] come in and accuse our heroes of [[Mistaken for Spies|being Commie spies]].

* 1931-1945: A period of calming between the two as the rise of Hitler led to some tentative contacts between the two, though both sides still engaged in espionage even during their wartime alliance. The fall of the Axis powers coupled with several high-profile scandals led to the conflict to re-emerge. Expect fiction to portray the Soviets at best as heroic but not entirely trustworthy allies and conniving and treasonous enemies-in-all-but-name at worst.

* 1946-1962: High tension between the two sides, culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fiction here has direct Soviet involvement in evil plots.

* 1978-1987: The "Second Cold War", arguably the first period with more nukes and computers. Direct [[Red Scare]] again and the home of ''[[Airwolf]]''

 

See also:

* [[A Nuclear Error]]

* [[Peace Through Superior Firepower]]

* [[Reporting Names]]

* [[The Moscow Criterion]]

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* ''[[Lupin the Third The Woman Called Fujiko Mine]] ''is set roughly in the Cold War era and has an episode in which Fujiko gets caught up in a Cuban, American, and Russian aerial standoff.

 

* Role reversal: ''K-19: The Widowmaker'', in which the crew of a Soviet submarine are the protagonists and American forces are the antagonists.

* ''[[X-Men]]: First Class'' is set during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the plot revolves around the Crisis being caused and then defused by mutants.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* The early works of [[Tom Clancy]].

* [[John Le Carre]].

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* ''[[Airwolf]]'' had the eponymous helicopter stolen by its inventor and taken to [[Useful Notes/Libya|Libya]], with the intent of passing it on to the USSR.

* ''[[The Professionals]]'' regularly had brushes with the KGB.

 

== [[Theater]] ==

* ''[[The Crucible]]'' by Arthur Miller (himself a communist) is a [[Devil in Plain Sight|thinly veiled criticism]] of Mc Carthyism.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* The first two ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' games used ex-Soviet stuff, while the third was set in the 60s and starred an American agent in Soviet Russia, and effectively was a deconstruction of the nature of the Cold War.

* ''[[Ace Combat]] 5'' was basically a Cold War gone hot situation. Osea (the in-game equivalent of the US) and Yuktobania (USSR), though like its [[World War II|prequel]] Zero, it started to take a bit of a twist towards the weird near the end.

* [http://www.mobygames.com/game/third-courier The Third Courier], a modern spy game set in Berlin, had the misfortune to be released in 1989, as the [[Berlin Wall]] was falling.

* ''[[World in Conflict]]'' An RTT (Real Time Tactical) game set in 1989. Instead of the Berlin Wall falling, the USSR decides to go all in an attempt to destabilize NATO as means of keeping itself afloat. The game also has an expansion called Soviet Assault which shows the Russian side of the conflict starting from day one to right before the final battle for Seattle.

* ''Wargame: European Escalation'' Another RTS game. Set between 1975 - 1985, the Cold War doesn't exactly go hot immediately in this one. In the first campaign, the conflict is entirely between East Germany vs. West Germany; it erupted due to a political incident involving a soldier crossing the Wall and the East German guards being way too overzealous in trying to catch him. Subsequent campaigns explore a Warsaw Pact rebellion with a Soviet crackdown, Able Archer '83 turning hot, and a Spetsnaz colonel's plans for revenge after the war spilling out from Able Archer turned nuclear.

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

** The continuation of the [[Cold War]] may have also led to the quicker development in space travel technology, with manned trips to Mars in the 1970s and the construction of a starship with a [[Faster-Than-Light Travel|Faster-Than-Light drive]] (albeit one that's a [[Black Box]]) by the end of the 20th century.

 

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