This Is How Close We All Came to Dying. Horribly.

Published Feb. 22, 2011 at 6:44 p.m.

Nobody wins a nuclear war...unless you're the United States and you take a whole mess o' them dirty red Ivans with you! That's the cheery premise of a 1956-1957 military training film recently unearthed by the National Archives.

George Washington University says this once-lost film is perhaps the only government production that ever explicitly depicted the nightmare scenario that haunted generations of Americans: all-out, global nuclear combat with the Soviet Union. It's just like you might imagine, except for one thing.

Notice how calm the actors are, despite having to pretend to issue orders that will kill hundreds of millions. Me? I get apoplectic when the office coffee maker seems to take too long. Watch the preview (of the nuclear holocaust, not me getting angry) below:

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