From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!npois!houxm!houxa!houxi!54343gm
Newsgroups: net.movies
Title: Special Bulletin
Article-I.D.: houxi.175
Posted: Tue Mar 22 13:45:26 1983
Received: Tue Mar 29 17:36:28 1983


     Yes, I also thought "Special Bulletin" (NBC, 9 pm, March 20) was well
done.  It was original, suspenseful, believable, and shocking.  I suspect
it will wake up a lot of people to the realities of nuclear weapons.
     For those of you who didn't see the broadcast, it was about a small
group of anti-nuclear war activists who threatened to decimate the city
of Charleston, S.C. with a homemade nuclear device unless the U.S.
Government disarmed 986 nuclear warheads in the Charleston area that
are maintained for strategic purposes (e.g., bombers and submarines).
To our government's credit, it had the intelligence to appreciate that
the threat was genuine.  Unfortunately, the outcome of the movie was
a sad display of the government's stupidity and machismo.  Rather than
turn over some easily replaced components of nuclear warheads, it chose
to risk (and lose) the lives of thousands.
     The thesis of the movie isn't farfetched, since it is to some
degree an extrapolation of an event that occurred last December in
Washington, D.C.  A man, as you recall, threatened to blow up the
Washington Monument with a 1000 pounds of explosives (kinda hard to
believe, ain't it?) unless the government responded to some       
anti-nuclear weapon issues.  Unlike "The China Syndrome" (which I
thought was anti-corporate, sensationalistic trash), this
made-for-television movie acted in the public interest by emphasizing
the seriousness of the proliferation of nuclear weapons among nations
and, perhaps someday, among individuals.
     It was asserted by one of the terrorists that the real terrorists
are the superpowers -- since they hold each other's citizens as
nuclear hostages in an insane struggle for strategic supremacy.

George Maeda      houxi!54343gm       Holmdel, NJ