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[kaijyuu]

Wait. So I'm not allowed to use substances because some old guy said it wasn't okay fifty years ago, but people can murder their fucking children and excuse it with religion?! What the fuck?

They don't exactly get away with it.


Well I hope not. Wouldn't surprise me all that much if such a defense succeeded, somewhere.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There used to be a federal mandate to include religious exceptions in state child abuse law, but it has hence been removed. Most of the state child abuse laws retain the exceptions, however. I don't think you could use it to get away with murder, but it is in there.

[SalmonGod]

But these kids were scared for weeks, and all the while their parents reassured them that yes, demons really possess people. Stuff like this really happens.

Once again, it sounds like you're assuming these people's parents don't actually believe in possession and exorcism themselves.  Wasn't The Exorcism of Emily Rose marketed as based on a true story?  I've heard adults talk about that movie as if it was fact.

[kaijyuu]

I don't see how the parents believing it or not makes it any better or worse. If they believe it I don't find it unreasonable for them to tell their kids that, and if they don't, well, I can go on my "lies to children are inherently bad" rant.


And yeah it was marketed as a True Story (insert lots of footnotes here).

[SalmonGod]

It read to me like most of the outrage was based on the assumption that the parents were lying just to frighten their children.

[RedKing]

Grew up near the end of the Cold War. In line of sight of a Boeing plant.

My nightmares consisted of a flash of light, and knowing that duck-and-cover does jack-and-shit.

Recently had a flashback to those times when a red light camera (I think) went off near me for no apperent reason. I paused for a second waiting for the shockwave.

Ahh, the good old days. Weirdly, it never really bothered me. I think I was mildly jealous that I wouldn't get to take part in the super-cool mutant-infested post-apocalypse, but I wasn't bothered just because I was growing up about two miles from the largest petroleum distribution facility on the East Coast. It was a common assumption (and a false one, as I later discovered once the Soviet target maps were declassified) that we had at least one ICBM targeted directly at us and that if the shit hit the fan we'd all be vapor before we had time to even worry about it.

That said, I *still* occasionally get these waking 'visions' where I'll be driving down the road and suddenly have a mental overlay of what the landscape would look like with all the grass burned away, the trees just blackened husks, the buildings piles of smoking debris, etc. Kind of like that scene in T2 with the playground.  Guess that's a holdover from the Cold War I'll never fully shake.

[penguinofhonor]

It read to me like most of the outrage was based on the assumption that the parents were lying just to frighten their children.

No, it wasn't. I don't find it acceptable for someone to scare the shit out of their kids because of their religion. Just like I don't find it acceptable for someone to make their kids hate themselves for their religion, or for someone to let their kids die because of their religion. They're all different degrees of the same thing. If your religion is going to convince you that you need to make your children's lives worse then you probably shouldn't have kids.

[MaximumZero]

as I later discovered once the Soviet target maps were declassified

Are those available to the public?

[Hanslanda]

as I later discovered once the Soviet target maps were declassified

Are those available to the public?

Somehow, it makes me nervous that MZ wants old Soviet nuclear weapons target maps...

[RedKing]

as I later discovered once the Soviet target maps were declassified

Are those available to the public?

They're public info through FEMA. Google "FEMA nuclear strike maps".

Somehow, it makes me nervous that MZ wants old Soviet nuclear weapons target maps...

He just wants to check to see if the Soviets were on to his secret lair. (They didn't know about mine either, it appears.)

[Hanslanda]

Basically my entire life, I have live in areas that were either direct targets, or very close to direct targets. o.O I guess its good nuclear weapons don't particularly scare me. Radiation would be a shitty way to go, but a nuclear warhead would kill you instantly, or close enough to instantly to not matter.
Nuclear weapons: Way better to die from than sharks.
Sharks: Worse than a nuclear warhead.

[RedKing]

Here's the whole FEMA document with state-by-state breakdowns.

Here's a composite map of all the primary (first-strike) targets and blast/fallout zones.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Bear in mind that both of the above are "best guess" info based on CIA/DIA analysis, not on the hard Soviet data itself. I misspoke when I said the Soviet data had been declassified. Apparently it hasn't. There was a bit of a fooferall a few years ago when Poland threatened to release its Warsaw Pact-era documents on planned Soviet strikes in Europe.

Most of the first-strike targets were the US nuclear strike capabilities themselves (which is why the sparsely populated Midwest gets turned into amber waves of glowing glass in this scenario). Secondary targets were military, political and population centers (with the exception of D.C. and a handful of coastal cities nuked because of their major harbors). Tertiary targets were anything else worth pulverizing. So many towns would have made the tertiary list, but honestly if it got to that point the war would probably already have been over. Despite the millions of American teenagers ready to arm themselves and fight off the Soviets while screaming "WOLVERINES!!!", I think we'd have crumbled if they'd nuked every major city in the country and still had any kind of military infrastructure capable of inflicting tertiary strikes.

[nenjin]

The Midwest: The last place you want to visit and the first place you want to wipe off the face of the Earth.

[Jervill]

Only the western "Empty Lands" part of the Midwest (ND, SD, NE); the eastern segment (IL, IN, OH, WI, MI, MN) that gets nuked later (many large cities) with the people is quite nice in certain areas.

[Darvi]

Wha? Since when is Australia the Midwest?