To bring our talks on WW2 to a close and to transition into the Cold War, I’d like you two to watch two short documentaries. “The Fallen of WW2” and “The Shadow Peace.”
Please visit http://www.fallen.io/ and watch the interactive version of “The Fallen of WW2” first and take in the weight of the numbers of the fallen.
Then, watch the interactive “The Shadow Peace” and pause the video at 3 minutes and explore the close calls within the Cold War. Then after the video is complete, come back here and share the most interesting one to you. If you are unable to watch the interactive version because of device limitations, then Google two or three of these close calls and come back here to report about them.
Important
This week will be a light one. I don’t have any test or projects for you for this week, and we don’t have any Zoom calls (to give you a break from the overload) but I am planning a larger unit test over the Cold War, so all of this information is important. I really want you to read and think about the subjects as they are being presented.
Since it is so light and to encourage conversation, I am going to make a bit of a change to the expectations for comments on daily posts. I want you to not only post a comment with some substance on each day (an opinion, something you found interesting, questions, ideas) but I also would like you to reply to at least one other comment for that day. Thank you!
watching those with headphones was crazy. i loved the interactive charts and being able to look at the information i wanted to learn more about. i think the second one was rather relieving since i get anxious over the thought of nuclear war and seeing all the things we have in place to prevent it was comforting.
Yeah, nuclear warfare pretty much would have been the end of the world. It’s good to know there were a lot of preventive countermeasures.
It was super socking to me to see how many Soviet Union soldiers died it was crazy also i learned that at some base a guard shot at what he thought was an intruder but was actually a bear causing an alarm to go off and a missile was almost fired long story shot a bear almost caused a nuclear war
That was my favorite too! It would be hilarious and terrifying to see a documentary that just shows re-enactments of some of these events.
I read that too and was like wow that’s interesting.
It was unbelievable that so many potential disasters would have been the result of ludicrous things like that.
Yeah, I thought it was funny that with so many precautions, we can still flinch at almost anything, like the bear. Although I am relieved that people are keeping the nukes under lock and key.
That fact certainly does provide me with some peace.
A radar in Greenland mistakenly detected a moonrise over Norway as Soviet missiles heading for the United States. That was an incredibly amusing example of the capabilities of radars.
Both of the videos were very engaging. I liked being able to see all the numbers of how many soldiers and civilians died and from which countries. It’s crazy that over 70 million died during all of WW2 which is more than any other war!
for real tho! I loved the videos Mr. Mauldin chose!
I’m glad you liked them! If you really liked them you can support the filmmaker. He’s working on part two of the Shadow Peace now.
When it was tallying up the deaths for the UK and US, it said neither were invaded. Were the London raids not considered an invasion? Is an invasion only if they launch a large scale attack to try and actually take over?
There was no land invasion, only air raids. No troops touched the ground in an organized fashion.
Oh that makes sense.
I liked that we have all these protective countermeasures to prevent accidental nuclear war, but somehow a bear and the moon almost cause a nuclear war. The other thing I though was interesting was that the Soviet Union actually had the most military deaths, 8.7 not including civilian or injuries.
Accidents can happen. However, they can have very large consequences.
I found it very interesting that they compared modern wars to wars of old. I found it especially interesting when they showed the death tolls from each, but then they put them in proportion and showed that though ww2 had the most deaths, it wasn’t the most detrimental. I was also very surprised of the numbers of deaths from both china and Russia.
I was also surprised. When you think of WW2 you dont really think of those countries, but it truely had an impact nearly everywhere on the globe
i cant believe how many deaths there were in the entire war. i though America had a lot but compared to the Soviet unions, that just blew my mind
Yeah, I was legitimately worried when everything went silent as the Russian deaths kept piling up.
It was very interesting to see all the numbers and helped me see how many people actually died in which places and how they died. It was a very cool video that i was very engaged in.
Did you watch the Shadow Peace video as well?
Yes.
It was also very cool to see all the close calls and numbers of bombs dropped
I thought the close call where the Soviet Union detected missiles was very interesting. The Soviet Union detected five missiles originating from the US. It came at a time of high tension between the two powers. Petrov had only minutes to decide whether this satellite data was a false alarm or a very large problem. Without knowing for sure, he declared it a false alarm. The sun had taken part in fooling the satellites. Petrov was honored at the UN.
This might be weird but I dont understand why boys would be interested to go to war after hearing how many deaths there were
there is less of a risk now of war than there was during the Cold War