If You Enjoyed Oppenheimer, You Should Be Watching Netflix's New Series On The Bomb And The Cold War

I love when the Lights, Camera, Barstool guys (Jeff D. Lowe, Kenjac, Gooch) put out their list of what they are watching, because they always have great reccomendations. The Bomb is thermonuclear level hot in these streets thanks to Christopher Nolan's masterpiece, Oppenheimer, dropping last July, and going on to dominate award season. If you're interested in the United States atomic weapons program that spawned from the work done at Los Alamos, and the aftermath that ensued, Netflix has released a new 10 part documentary that's perfect for you - Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War.

Starting this docuseries might seem daunting with there being ten episodes that are an hour long, but the content is far from dry and boring, so they've flown by. This series came out at the perfect time, with college basketball over, there is actually down time between sporting events, and I refuse to watch April baseball. Every year I try to get excited for opening day, then I see games being played in snow storms, or 40 degree torrential rains, and remember the MLB season should be less games, and shouldn't start till May. Then again, I'm also a sicko who cares about NBA basketball in November. 

Not to brag too hard, but I know a good amount about this era of history thanks to doing the Twisted History Podcast with Large and Anne, and I'm not only learning a ton of new information, but there's also a bunch of incredible video footage that's new to me, and I'm still only halfway through. In episode 3 the doc goes into detail with charts and graphs (love a good chart) about Mutual Assured Destruction, and how many people would wiped off the earth if the US government decided to use nuclear weapons on communist Russia and China in the 1950's. It's low key terrifying and hard to wrap your head around the casualties. The US was willing to wipe out 1/5 of the world's population in a single bombing operation, and that's not including the retaliation that would have been done to the United States. But let's keep pretending those were the picture perfect good ol' days. 

This doc sets everything up perfectly by not only explaining the cold war, but by starting with the bomb and how its creation turned the entire globe into a chessboard for the major superpowers. Turning Point also has a docuseries about 9/11 that I'd also recommend, especially if you were old enough to live through September 11th, but not old enough to understand the workings that led up to the attacks. Turning Point 9/11 and the War on Terror helps fill in those history blind spots that aren't really talked about in history class. So, between games in the NBA / Hockey playoffs and The Masters, or on a worthless, rainy, April weekend give one of these docs a watch. IF you're REALLY bored, be sure to check out Twisted History in podcast and video format on Rumble. Or, I'll go fuck myself and you can watch Jeff D. Lowe's other recommendation of Godzilla vs. King Kong. It's probably better to live in ignorance, than realize we are at any moment, seconds away from being turned to ash by an atomic weapon. Unless Godzilla turn out to be real, then we are shit out of luck.