Fallout learning intentions

In my last post for The Manhattan Project², I talked about a single impact of the creation of the atomic bomb, that being the system of national labs that stemmed from it. Continuing on from that, we’ve started to look into what might be the largest consequence of atomic weapons in the 20th century: The Cold War

Background

Rapid development of atomic arsenals by global superpowers created an environment of constant fear and paranoia. While the Cold War did have conflicts, many were small proxy wars. The main conflict was the Soviet Union and the USA dancing in deadly lockstep, unable to directly get at each other without risking devastating retaliation. Our final benchmark for this project is a companion piece to our video, taking any form we please. Last time we had such a free-format benchmark, I got overly caught up in the technical execution as opposed to the ideas I was trying to communicate.

Ideas

All of this is a lot of talk considering I haven’t even said what format my companion piece could take so here are the most interesting ones along with a more specific angle:

• A simple resource-management simulation: shows the almost frantic need to keep nuclear weapons ready at all times.
• A concept album or concept song representing the ebbing rhythms and patterns of the nuclear arms race - a rhythmic, semi-looping call-and-response with different passages representing key scientific events.

Out of the two, I’m most fond of the concept album, however it also has every characteristic of something that could get away from me quickly.¹ This video does a good job of showing how interesting it could be, but also how overly in-depth it could get:

Since both are fairly ambitious, especially in their execution requirements. In their current form, I don’t think any of them would be very conducive to my goals for this project, and they’re each very dependent on a core thesis that is likely to change.

How we get there

Speaking of a core thesis: since my video was unilaterally focused on the U.S. national labs, the most straightforward connection to the Cold War is their role in the development and upkeep of the U.S. atomic arsenal.² In my VMV, I said I want to grow my communication skills by being intentional with how the medium can impact my message.[^3] While I’m talking about my VMV, some other useful success behaviours will be using my Zettelkasten to full effect (especially for the upcoming Socratic seminars) and keeping a record of my creative process. I’d like to try to push myself by using a format that’s outside of what I’m familiar with (as you can see above). A clear plan of what I want to make and the decisions made as I do so will help keep my message clear and make creation easier. With the amount of freedom we have here, I want to do something that I execute in a way I’m proud of, while still stepping a bit out of my comfort zone.

With the amount of freedom we have here, I want to do something that I execute in a way I’m proud of, while still stepping a bit out of my comfort zone.