Obviously you didn't see the "Heroes" Budweiser commercial that aired during the Superbowl? It featured soldiers returning from Iraq - with the intro to U2's Where The Streets Have No Name playing in the background.

As a sort of exercise in mixmaking, I sorted through the "songs about nuclear war from the eighties" list above and culled my favorites. Some of these (like "Silent Running") do an uncanny job of capturing that Cold War angst.

Adrian by Eurythmics
Breathing by Kate Bush
Cities in the Dust by Siouxsee and the Banshees
Countdown to Zero by Asia
Dancing With Tears in My Eyes by Ultravox
Distant Early Warning by Rush
Enola Gay by OMD
Everybody Have Fun Tonight by Wang Chung
Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears For Fears
Every Day is Like Sunday by Morrisey
The Final Countdown by Europe
Forever Young by Alphaville
Guns in the Sky by INXS
Hammer to Fall by Queen
I Melt With You by Modern English
It's a Mistake by Men at Work
It's the End of the World as We Know It by REM
Land of Confusion by Genesis
Lawyers in Love by Jackson Browne
London Calling by The Clash
99 Luftballoons by Nena
Maybe something by Planet P or The Thompson Twins
Red Rain by Peter Gabriel
Red Skies by The Fixx
Russians by Sting
Seconds by U2
Silent Running by Mike and the Mechanics
The Unforgettable Fire by U2
The War Song by Culture Club
Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood
War by Frankie Goest to Hollywood
Wild, Wild West by The Escape Club

I wonder: how old does one have to be to remember that ever-present dread that pervaded our lives, that fear of imminent destruction? Do Mac and Pam, five years younger than me, remember it? Do Joel and Aimee (who are ten years younger)?

Will the children of today be raised with a different fear, a fear of terrorism?

argh i saw that! Nothing says "Happy Valentines' Day" like a song about accidental nuclear annihilation.

(Add "one of our submarines" to the above list, by Thomas Dolby)

JD I'm 35 and i remember it. But i also grew up next to a major port surrounded by military bases, radar installations, nike missile sites, tank farms, things like Northrup and TRW.. so i may be on the young end of that. My 30-year-old friends don't seem to have that memory as much.

I kept hearing clips of Sunday Bloody Sunday last Sunday while I was unpacking. Paul has the superbowl on the tv . . . .Each time I heard it heat would rise around my neck . . . NO! Wrong, wrong, wrong. How much control, if any, do artists have here? I would like to think U2 wouldn't agree to having one of their anthems serve as the anthem for a dumb-ass football game. But hey, they sell ipods too . . .

The fear you describe was a bit part of my youth. I was obsessed with nuclear desctruction in my early teens. I would have vivid dreams about it. I felt angry. My 10th grade English teacher, unhappily I cannot recall her name but I see her face and stature clearly, introduced me to The Hundreth Monkey by Ken Keyes (http://www.worldtrans.org/pos/monkey.html)and encouraged her students to pracitice peacefullness (remember, this was in Eugene) in hopes that it would spread as a cultural trait. I couldn't really practice peacefullness in the way that she described at that time--I was a teen and completely self-obsessed. I have a better understanding of what she was encouraging now. It is more of a treat others and the world around you as you wish to be treated philosophy for me now.

Reagan introduced me to Mutually Assured Destruction and the rest of the jargon about nuclear war. However because I didn't believe that "trickle down economics" really worked, I didn't buy into the hype about nuclear destruction. Just as I currently don't buy into fearing a terrorist attack. The music continued the hype, though they were protest songs in a way, they made for good music generally. I like those songs, but I didn't fear that the artists new more than I did about having the button pushed.

Holy cats!

Read the wikipedia article on Stanislav Petrov. It's frightening. Here's the intro:

Stanislav Petrov (born c. 1939) is a retired Russian Army colonel who, on September 26, 1983, averted a potential nuclear war by refusing to accept that missiles had been launched against the USSR by the United States, despite the indication given by his computerized early warning systems. The Soviet computer reports were later shown to have been in error, and Petrov is credited with preventing World War III and the devastation of much of the Earth by nuclear weapons. Because of military secrecy and political and international differences, Petrov's actions were kept secret until 1998.

"Hast du etwas zeit fur mich, dann singe ich ein lied fur dich..."

It's really put me back in that frame of mind, almost as if it were the eighties once again.

...except now it's North Korea instead of the USSR.

My German Professor at ASU made us listen to the German version in our 'Deutsch Lab' - we had to write down what we understood in English.

Knowing the English version of that song came in very handy that day.

I remember the dread all too well. Jethro's point about North Korea is very close to what I was thinking myself: perhaps scarier because their leader appears to be actually, legitimately insane.

Does anyone have the 99 Luftballons music video?

yeah, i want the 99 luftballons music video too!!!