The Prisoners Dilemma

 During the Cold War the opposing alliances of NATO and the Warsaw Pact both had the choice to arm or disarm. From each side's point of view, disarming whilst their opponent continued to arm would have led to military inferiority and possible annihilation. Conversely, arming whilst their opponent disarmed would have led to superiority. If both sides chose to arm, neither could afford to attack the other, but at the high cost of developing and maintaining a nuclear arsenal. If both sides chose to disarm, war would be avoided and there would be no costs. Although the 'best' overall outcome is for both sides to disarm, the rational course for both sides is to arm, and this is indeed what happened. 'Mutually Assured Destruction' was the idea that waging war would be so destructive to both sides that neither could possibly win. Both sides poured enormous resources into military research and armament in a war of attrition for the next thirty years until reform in the Soviet Union caused ideological differences to abate.

The Cold War and arms race can be modeled as a Prisoner's Dilemma. The Prisoner's Dilemma is the story of two criminals who have been arrested for a heinous crime and are being interrogated separately. Each knows that if neither of them talks, the case against them is weak and they will be convicted and punished for lesser charges. If this happens, each will get 20 years in prison with the possibility of parole. If both 'rat' on each other, its a slam dunk case for the prosecution and they both face death sentences. If only one person 'rats' and testifies against the other, the one who did not cooperate will get the death sentence while the other will go free.

1) What would you do? Why?

2) What did your partner do? What was the result?

3) What was the surprising outcome of the Hollywood version we watched in class?

4) What is M.A.D. and how has it kept us safe from nuclear annihilation?

5) What are the risks of nuclear war in the future if more countries get the A-bomb?

How is this famous variation different from our class example? What was the surprising outcome?

Whatever happened to the 'Daisy Girl' from the 1960's commercial?

Zero Sum Game

The friendliness of Tic-tac-toe games makes them ideal as a pedagogical tool for teaching the concepts of good sportsmanship and the branch of artificial intelligence that deals with the searching of game trees. It is straightforward to write a computer program to play Tic-tac-toe perfectly, to enumerate the 765 essentially different positions (the state space complexity), or the 26,830 possible games up to rotations and reflections (the game tree complexity) on this space.

An early variant of Tic-tac-toe was played in the Roman Empire, around the first century BC. It was called Terni Lapilli and instead of having any number of pieces, each player only had three, thus they had to move them around to empty spaces to keep playing. The game's grid markings have been found chalked all over Rome. However, according to Claudia Zaslavsky's book Tic Tac Toe: And Other Three-In-A Row Games from Ancient Egypt to the Modern Computer, Tic-tac-toe could originate back to ancient Egypt.^[1] Another closely related ancient game is Three Men's Morris which is also played on a simple grid and requires three pieces in a row to finish.^[2]

The different names of the game are more recent. The first print reference to "Noughts and crosses", the British name, appeared in 1864. The first print reference to a game called "tick-tack-toe" occurred in 1884, but referred to "a children's game played on a slate, consisting in trying with the eyes shut to bring the pencil down on one of the numbers of a set, the number hit being scored".

Use the Tic Tac Toe handouts at the front of the room to challenge your classmates and then answer these questions:

1) What strategies did you use to win?

2) Why does Tic Tac Toe lose its appeal the more you play?

3) Is Tic Tac Toe an example of a Zero Sum Game?

4) What comparisons can we make between Tic Tac Toe and Global Thermal Nuclear War?

5) What is the only way to win?


Today gamblers can challenge a Tic Tac Toe Playing Chicken.

Can you beat the bird?

War Games

WarGames follows David Lightman, a high school student who unwittingly hacks into WOPR (War Operations Planned Response), a United States military supercomputer programmed to predict possible outcomes of nuclear war. Lightman gets WOPR to run a nuclear war simulation, originally believing it to be a computer game. The simulation causes a national nuclear missile scare and nearly starts World War III.

The movie illustrates the very real fear of an 'imminent' nuclear attack during the late Cold War and teaches a valuable lesson in the end.

How was High School different in 1983?

How have computers and the internet changed our lives since then?

Would you like to play the game?

Doomsday Clock

The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic clock face, maintained since 1947 by the board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The closer the clock is to midnight, the closer the world is estimated to be to global disaster. Originally, the Clock, which hangs on a wall in the Bulletin's office in the University of Chicago, represented an analogy for the threat of global nuclear war; however, since 2007 it has also reflected climate change. The most recent officially announced setting—three minutes to midnight (11:57)—was made in January 2015 due to "[un]checked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals". This setting was retained in January 2016.

When was the clock closest to the End of the World?

When was the clock the farthest back?

Where is the clock set at now?

Why do we hope the Russians loved their children too?

Is it the End of the World As We Know It?

What can we do to turn back time?

The Wall

WHAT IN THE WORLD?

Within a short period of time after the war, living conditions in West Germany and East Germany became distinctly different. With the help and support of its occupying powers, West Germany set up a capitalist society and experienced such a rapid growth of their economy that it became known as the "economic miracle." With hard work, individuals living in West Germany were able to live well, buy gadgets and appliances, and to travel as they wished. Nearly the opposite was true in East Germany. Since the Soviet Union had viewed their zone as a spoil of war, the Soviets pilfered factory equipment and other valuable assets from their zone and shipped them back to the Soviet Union.

When East Germany became its own country, it was under the direct influence of the Soviet Union and thus a Communist society was established. In East Germany, the economy dragged and individual freedoms were severely restricted. By the late 1950s, many people living in East Germany wanted out. No longer able to stand the repressive living conditions of East Germany, they would pack up their bags and head to West Berlin. Although some of them would be stopped on their way, hundreds of thousands of others made it across the border. Once across, these refugees were housed in warehouses and then flown to West Germany. Many of those who escaped were young, trained professionals. By the early 1960s, East Germany was rapidly losing both its labor force and its population. Having already lost 2.5 million people by 1961, East Germany desperately needed to stop this mass exodus.

The obvious leak was the easy access East Germans had to West Berlin. With the support of the Soviet Union, there had been several attempts to simply take over West Berlin in order to eliminate this exit point. Although the Soviet Union even threatened the United States with the use of nuclear weapons over this issue, the United States and other Western countries were committed to defending West Berlin. Desperate to keep its citizens, East Germany decided to build a wall to prevent them from crossing the border.

WATCH THE MOVIE HERE

 How was the Wall both a physical and ideological barrier?

Silver Parachute

We are probably all familiar with the Silver Parachutes from Suzanne Collin's The Hunger Games.

The parachutes bearing meds or food float down, courtesy of Panem sponsors, and they are considered last-minute, unforeseen gifts.

What would your 'Silver Parachute' bring?  Who would sponsor you?

Post War Germany was divided into three sections--the Allied part was controlled by the United States, Great Britain and France, and another part by the Soviet Union. The city of Berlin, although located in the eastern Soviet half, was also divided into four sectors --West Berlin occupied by Allied interests and East Berlin occupied by Soviets. In June 1948, the Soviet Union attempted to control all of Berlin by cutting surface traffic to and from the city of West Berlin. Starving out the population and cutting off their business was their method of gaining control. As part of the Marshall Plan the Truman administration reacted with a continual daily airlift which brought much needed food and supplies into the city of West Berlin. The Berlin Airlift lasted until the end of September of 1949---although on May 12, 1949, the Soviet government yielded and lifted the blockade.

How did the airlift affect West German attitudes toward the United States and 'contain' the spread of Communism?

Imagine you are a child in Postwar West Berlin.  Write a 'Thank You' like the ones in the story to "Uncle Wiggly Wings."

Does the End Justify the Means?

The survivors of the atomic bombing were scarred for life, mentally and physically. No passage of time, however long, can relieve their memories. The scars on their faces, hands, and legs bear witness to that. In the vicissitudes of the last forty years, they must have struggled with recurring memories of their fears. The event at Hiroshima did not end in 1945; but began a new historical era leading toward the twenty-first century. It is certain that Hiroshima still exists in each one of us.

Given that the Atomic Bomb literally vaporized thousands of people its amazing that anything survived. These items found amidst the ruins of Hiroshima offer a startling reminder of the destructiveness of the bomb; not just on buildings and bridges but on real people.

1) What did you learn from listening to the survivors?

2)Was the attack on Hiroshima a crime against humanity?

3) Does this story change your original opinion about the bomb? Why/ not?

4) How many nuclear attacks have happened since?

5) Why are these stories and images important in preventing future nuclear attacks?

Mother Do You Think They'll Drop the Bomb?

The United States government secretly spent billions of dollars on a program code-named the Manhattan Project.  Its highest national priority: developing an atomic bomb.  The project was encouraged by Albert Einstein himself and led by J Robert Oppenheimer.   In a barren desert in New Mexico, on the morning of July 16, 1945,  the bomb was tested.  The flash of light could be seen 180 miles away.

President Truman did not agonize over the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. For the President abstract ethical issues did not outweigh very real American lives and an opportunity to end the war. Later some historians would condemn Truman's decision. What would you have done?

"Little Boy" was the codename for the type of atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., commander of the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces. It was the first atomic bomb to be used in warfare. TheHiroshima bombing was the second artificial nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity test, and the first uranium-based detonation. It exploded with an energy of approximately 15 kilotons of TNT (63 TJ). The bomb caused significant destruction to the city of Hiroshima.

Did the pilots regret their role in the mission?  How would they live with the guilt?

Did the Japanese immediately surrender? What happened next?

Bushido

 How do you defeat an enemy who will not surrender?

There are countless stories of the Japanese 'kamakazi' pilots who would rather die themselves than give up. On Iwo Jima, a 5-mile-long desolate island rock 650 miles southeast of Tokyo, more than 23,000 marines became casualties.  The fight for Okinawa was even deadlier as many Japanese troops readily killed themselves. The Japanese fought by a code they thought was right: 'Bushido' The way of the Samurai warrior.

 How was this code different from the more Western idea of 'Chivalry?'

 Who was Hiroo Onoda?

 Who would win:  Knight vs. Samurai?

Word Power

There is no stronger bond of friendship than a mutual enemy.

-Frankfort Moore

At a time when America's best cryptographers were falling short, the Navajo Indians  were able to fashion the most ingenious and successful code in military history. They drew upon their proud warrior tradition to brave the dense jungles of Guadalcanal and the exposed beachheads of Iwo Jima. Serving with distinction in every major engagement of the Pacific theater from 1942-1945, their unbreakable code played a pivotal role in saving countless lives and hastening the war's end.

1) Who was our 'mutual enemy' during WWII?

2) How does is this idea reflected in the mysterious message on the back of our penny?

3) Write your name using the Navajo Code Talker Dictionary.

4) How had the Navajo been treated by the US Government in the century before WWII?

5) Why is this ironic?

6) What is happening to the Navajo Language today?

7) What does Star Wars sound like in 'Din'e,' the official language of the Navajo?

8) What other movies have been translated into 'Din'e'?'

Go for Broke!

The motto of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team was “go for broke.” It’s a gambling term that means risking everything on one great effort to win big. The soldiers of the 442nd needed to win big. They were Nisei - American-born sons of Japanese immigrants. They fought two wars: the Germans in Europe and the prejudice in America.

1) Would you have joined the 442nd and risked your life for a country that had discriminated against you?

2) How did the 442nd ultimately prove themselves on the battlefield?

3) Were theses soldiers ever recognized for their service?

4) Were they ever considered 'equals' by their countrymen?

Fighting WWII

Can you name these men?

Throughout 1943 the leaders of the Allied Forces squabbled over when they would start a second front in France.  Up to that point Soviet troops had done most of the fighting in Europe.  At the historic meeting of the 'Big 3' in Tehran, Stalin had insisted that Britain and the United States carry more of the military burden by attacking Germany in the west.

Why?

General Dwight D. Eisenhower was promoted over 350 other more qualified generals to lead the operation.  He  called the operation a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” More than 5,000 Ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end on June 6, the Allies gained a foot- hold in Europe. The D-Day cost was high -more than 9,000 Allied Soldiers were killed or wounded -- but more than 100,000 Soldiers began the march across Europe to defeat Hitler.

What was Eisenhower's message to the troops?

Rationing

After the shock of Pearl Harbor many Americans wondered what would happen next?

Everyone would have to make sacrifices in support of the Armed Forces.  This included accepting 

Rationing:  a system of limiting the distribution of food, gasoline, and other goods so the military could have the equipment and supplies it needed.

What challenges and hardships did 'rationing' create?  

Did everyone accept it willingly?  Why was it necessary?

'Prices Unlimited 1944'