Hexes And Soldiers: Episode 14.0 companion guide

What could have been, thankfully never was...

I remember a time in which the cold war had gone frozen. The impending threat of war between Nato and the Soviets had weighed so heavily for so long on our hearts and minds that the thing had somehow become transformed into an inevitability, something that was as sure to happen as the setting sun and in fact, in a kind of way, had happened. It was easier perhaps to pretend, to put the horrible behind us and focus on the next thing, the day after, the post-apocalyptic. Granted this was no duck and cover Cuban Missile Crisis, but this was no less of a nightmare, albeit a much longer one. Popular culture had dealt with it in its own special kind of way, with movies like Red Dawn or The Day After. Two very different films, one seizing the opportunity for glorification and the other limply holding on to existence. I remember playing war in the woods behind my house, shouting Wolverines! I also remember laying awake in bed night after night having finally seen The Day After. I would hear a plane fly overhead and hold my breath, waiting for something i would ultimately never feel. And this is more or less how i remember it. Holding my breath, day after day, month after month, and year after year. Oh the end was coming, but when? Turn on the radio during those days and catch a song by Asia, or Rush, etc. and be calmly reminded of what you already know, the impending doom, or turn the station and catch some bubble head babbling about nothing, which unashamedly attempted to serve as a useful distraction from it. (oh their were plenty of distractions in those days) Or, wholly embrace it: as did Tom Clancy, Harold Coyle, and Ralph Peters to name a few. We could choose to draw through them a kind of strength through a natural inclination to understand. Or, take a hands on approach, go through the motions, test theories, dissect the thing as a surgeon might, in other words, game it. If one reflects on the irony of gaming an historical event that did happen, how ever more ironical then to game that which was yet to happen? To play out our own end game.

Now, the fear has mostly evaporated. But for those of us that grew up during this time, that lived that fear every day, regardless of what flag you hid behind, it seems only like last nights nightmare, not so very long ago.