In 1954, the Rand Corporation established the Ezra Arthur Square Table Study Group, an innocuous sounding research group whose purpose was to game out nuclear war scenarios. In 1963, with nuclear war imminent in the face of the Cuban missile crisis, five of the most distinguished members of the Square Table were cryogenically frozen, to be revived after radiation levels had stabilized and society had reestablished itself in order to advise whatever leadership established itself on how to rebuild American greatness.
These Truly Cold Warriors (the Rand Corporation was known for its preciousness) were promptly forgotten for 60 years.
It would be nice to say that the members of the Square Table were revived because Russian President Vladimir Putin's threats of using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine made their work relevant once again. Nice, but not entirely accurate. In fact, somebody in accounting wondered why the Rand Complex in California was using so much electricity, and found the cryotubes in a sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-basement. The Truly Cold Warriors were thawed out to save the company an unnecessary ongoing expense; the fact that they had a newfound purpose was just a lucky coincidence.
What follows is a partial transcript of the first modern meeting of the Truly Cold Warriors three days after they were revived.
JIM: You want to pay us how much money‽ Holy wow - we'll be rich beyond our wildest dreams!
RAND CORPORATION MODERATOR: Uhh, yeah. I wouldn't get too excited about that until you see how much a loaf of bread costs these days.
JIM: First thing I'm gonna do when we get out of here is buy a car with he biggest fins there are! I always wanted a car with fins! Buuuuut Judy insisted we get something practical. Guess the old man's gonna get the last laugh this time!
MODERATOR: Uhh, yeah. Why don't we attend to the matter at hand? You've all had time to read the materials we prepared for you. Preliminary ideas?
JERRY: I was flabbergasted. I mean, if your materials are accurate, this goes beyond the megadeath that we considered back in the 1950s...
MODERATOR: Interesting. I've often wondered: did you coin the phrase?
JERRY: What? Megadeath? I wish! It was a brilliant term - so descriptive. But, alas, no. It was Jim's idea.
JIM: Oh, don't make me blush, Jerry. I may have given voice to the term, but everybody in the Study Group had thought it!
JACK: The population numbers we're dealing with here are far beyond what we had in the past. A nuclear war at this time would result in, like...supermegadeath!
JIM: Jack was always a big comic book fan.
JACK: You got a better idea, Jim?
JIM: Since you asked, I'm partial to the term ultramegadeath.
JOHN: Why don't we compromise and call it superultramegadeath?
JACK: You always were one for the compromise that would satisfy nobody, John. Good to see some things haven't changed.
JOHN: Thanks. Heeeeeey...!
BILL: Geez, guys! We're talking about tens of millions of dead Americans, here, and you're cheerfully trying to coin a word to describe it!
JOHN: Bill always did have a problem with the mission...
JACK: Besides, we're well beyond tens of millions, here. We could be talking about 125 or even 150 million Americans dead.
JIM: In a worst case scenario. In a best case scenario, if Putin's missiles have decayed as badly as his conventional weapons and the prevailing winds blow away from major cities at just the right time, we could be looking at 70 million dead - 80 million tops!
BILL: Eighty million dead Americans is your best case scenario‽
JIM: You should see what'll happen to the other guy!
MODERATOR: So, we could win a nuclear war with Russia?
JOHN: It depends upon how you define "win." We will almost certainly be able to rebuild our productive capacity long before Russia does. It may take us a couple hundred years, but it will happen. At that point, the United States will rule the world once more.
BILL: The parts of it that are still habitable, maybe.
JACK: Those were always the only parts that mattered.
MODERATOR: What if we want to minimize American casualties?
BILL: The only way to do that is not play.
MODERATOR: Really? That's the best you can come up with? Man, I always hated that movie.
BILL: Movie? What movie?
JIM: Fins are the best thing to happen to cars since the creation of the internal combustion engine! Very modern - very space age! Are you telling me they don't make cars with fins any more? What kind of barbaric age do you live in‽