I highly recommend the movie Countdown to Looking Glass. Through a series of newscasts by a fictional television network (CVN), we see a chain reaction that takes a mere eight days to go from the default by three South American countries on loans from the United States to the detonation of a nuclear weapon in the Persian Gulf.
Eerily, I realized that I watched people watch the media watch the world end. Complete with commercial breaks.
The credible ease with which one thing led to another was nothing less than frightening. It was like dominoes: once the chips are in place, all it takes is a single trigger, and the end is inevitable. Just like the nuclear fission process itself.
But perhaps what was more frightening was that only one television network aired the movie – and it did so at 2:15 a.m. on Christmas Eve. Apparently our real networks are not nearly as committed as the fictional CVN to keeping their viewers aware and informed. Those domino chips are in place.
