Thread by @NerdPyle

Let's watch Wargames (1983) together. #NedWargamesLT

I've seen the movie many times, but haven't watched it with full attention in years. I'm so much wiser now.

As a Gen-X kid who loved computers and lived under constant soviet nuclear annihilation, this was a doozy for young Ned

The opening in Kansas/Wyoming/SD/? Minuteman missile field is so great. I drew so many houses with tunnels to secret bunkers.

I still want a cool bunker

Gigantic armored door count: 1

omg that's Michael Madsen! He's so young! I forgot he was one of the missile jockies

Oh no here comes a mission. The use of extra physical security and two key systems is something admins could still learn from, 35 years later

Very tense right now

So did they give Michael Madsen blanks so that he wouldn't shoot the other guy during a training mission? That would be pretty fucked up otherwise

I spent a little time outside Cheyenne Mountain, joint exercises at Ft Carson. It rained every single day at 5 PM like there was a timer.

Woo the bi-ass command center. This was porn. Actual computer porn. Those screens.

22% of missile commanders not launching really wouldn't have been so bad. Back then we had like 10,000+ warheads. Sheesh, how many times ya gotta destroy the world over?

Oh nos dont take the men out of the loops the foreshadowing

Dabney Coleman! You should really go watch Dragnet again, he's amazing.

!!!

Home-nerd just slapped his hand on the WOPR and basically said "this computer can hold so much end of the human race" 😅

If you don't know, the men (and women) have been out of the loop on these silos for decades now. Literally all of that came true. I drove past a few hundred of them when I moved to Seattle. All networked up now

You think your datacenter has some embarrassing out of date gear? Feel better about yourself en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic…

Uh oh, they are gonna recommended McKittrick's idea to the president, and he said "you won't reget it" so I guess this movie is not going to end in the next 5 minutes

Seattle skyline is GONE holy damn

God I miss video arcades. Quarters! Galaga! Broderick!

He goes to Snohomish High School. Small problem there for a movie set in Seattle

Late for class. Bad grade. Under achieving. Smart mouthed. Does not respect authority - very identifiable.

Ally Sheedy I still love you call me

"ummm, your wife?"

It's ok to write down passwords, but not in a public or insecure place. I mean it depends on your threat model, but not next to a young Mathew Broderick.

I endlessly fantasized about changing my grades. Also riding on a moped.

IMSAI computer. Weird that David is super into computers that were 6 years old by the time this movie was made.

Do they still have Home Ec?

Michael Madsen and commander failbone watch as they are replaced by blinking lights. What was with those neckerchiefs the Air Force loved?

Reading of computer games in magazines. Mah memrreeees.

Lisa legit will eat corn raw like this she is a freak

Let's do some war dialing! Who would thought I'd still be getting those THIS WEEK, THIS IS THE YEAR THAT BLADE RUNNER WAS SET IN FORFUCKSSAKE

I would love to show this movie to someone in their teens and just watch their head explode.

Watching Ally touch the screen makes my skin crawl, don't touch my screen at work if you want them fingers

10000% sure that the percentage of unsecured networks shown here in 1983 is the same as 2019

Connection Terminated, how rude!

This didn't come from protovision

Backdoors are all gone by now too of course 😅

Going to a library to read microfiche and do research on hacking a computer network

The weirdest part of this movie is when Ally comes jogging to the door. Seriously, jogging was not yet a thing in the Midwest, this was disconcerting. I WAS BORN BEFORE JOGGING

"he was pretty old, he was 41"
"oh yeah that's old"

I thought that was a perfectly acceptable movie line at one point and now I want to kill them

Joshua

Voice modulation and natural language commands

Oh the vector graphics at NORAD are so boss. My absolute favorite style to this day.

It turns out that when this move was made, they were still using 1950s command technology at Cheyenne Mountain. Afterwards they got some Suns and whatnot

And now Broderick has just started nuclear war.

Remember, DEFCON gets worse as the number gets LOWER.

Crisis averted by the dog knocking over the garbage. A golden retriever nmed Bo literally saved the human race in this movie and gets ZERO credit

"You're not supposed to be running in here, someone could get hurt" is a beautiful homage to Dr Strangelove

Ally Sheedy is so cute that you forgive her asking "Can I tell Jennifer?" when they find out almost started a war.

Oh no this mad machine has called him back. And now there is a countdown

stop calling me motherfucker!

The most suspicious thing about the federal agent trailing David is that he is not white - this is Seattle, 1983 ffs. I mean, and everyone with giant white chords and cars with 6 foot whip antennas.

tour group visiting and OH NO YOU JUST PRESSED A NUCLEAR LAUNCH BUTTON no wait ahahaha just a Strategic Air Command prank. They probably legit did shit like that back them

Hey it's the principal from Back to he Future and the CAG from Top Gun! As usual he's having a slow burn

More air force neckerchiefs smdh

You forget just how normal it was to smoke everywhere whenever you felt like it back then

Joshua is legit better at communicating than Siri

"the launch codes have been stolen"
"it's fine, we can't launch missiles unless we're at DEFCON 1"
"ok, so take us to DEFCON 3"

There is some asshattery in this movie

Broderick partying on the boss man's unsecure terminal while everyone argues is absolutely legit make sure you have a lockscreen with aggressive timeout my peoples.

Yeah, the entire Cheyene Mountain NORAD facility doesn't have a brig, let's put him in a medical exam room

Tone & sound-based hacking for phone and door locks was totally legit once upon a time, young followers, this movie has it twice. I highly recommend reading about its colored past

Sgt Sexual Harassment lets David get away.

How do these govt stooges know their way around this giant facility they just visited for the first time ever which contains endless nuclear secrets they have no need to know, I mean who is running the local security in this joint I ask you

Corframs shoes. Get some leather & polish you lazy bastard

Giant armored door count: 3

David would be so screwed now in the remake: no payphones, no beer pull tabs, he would have no idea what anyone's phone number is...

Leg warmers!

At first the NORAD geeks think it's a simulation but that seems to have been forgotten as a lot of tings that are easily confirmed are not being confirmed and they are joking about having to like vodka

I love riding the ferries here

Broderick overacting hard and it's time to make out, she is way out of his league

DRONEDACTYL

They found Falken & he's eccentric, British, and sarcastic.

Remember light pens?

We're at DEFCON 2 due to 2 whole Russian bombers that are near Alaska which is something that happened constantly back then slow your roll general

Irritation: they scrambled F16s and then when they show their B roll footage they are F15s. But the pilot is snarky to a general so that's ok.

Time to watch claymation dinosaurs

Trying to convince this ancient adult in his late 40s about the need for the human race to survive but he's just so old now he can't understand it

First time I ever heard of "stealth aircraft". At the time these were just rumors even though they'd been flying in secret since the late 70s

It's time to make out again and OH SHIT HELICOPTER

Whew it was Falken, who has seen the error of his ways.

300 ICBMs launched. No one thinks its a simulation which is weird because we've now had half a dozen false alarms that I guess we can ignore

THEYRE CLOSING THE MOUNTAIN DRIVE THAT JEEP WRANGLER FASTER

I guess it's totally cool to blow through a gate outside the of our nuclear warfare command facility and not get shot to a thousand pieces by security forces

Giant armored door count: 5

Everyone is remarkably calm considering the human race is about to end.

Falken is slowly and inefficiently arguing against it in a way that makes me want to sap the everloving shit out him

slap*

But maybe sap is better

All we have to do is wait 1 minute... very tense. This movie's music and costumes are inconsequential, it's laser focused on the story.

Whew no missiles!

But wait...

wat

And now, for no particular reason, they decide to play tic tac toe with it . It's all very odd, things were nearly reasonable in the plot to this point

LEARN GODDAMNIT

Computers exploding from too much thinking! Fast forward nuclear wars! Seizure-inducing flashes!

Ever play DEFCON? introversion.co.uk/defcon/

Thanks goodness, Joshua learned the valuable lesson that nuclear war is bad and turned the lights back on. His reward for gaining sentience will undoubtedly be replacement by a newer model

I remember watching this in the theater, thinking "such silliness, this type of gigantic false alarm could never have happened and led us within a moment of total war" and then YOU READ LATER ITS BASICALLY A DOCUMENTARY sites.google.com/site/titan2vet…

And that is Wargames (1983). Some legit tactical hacking techniques combined with great effects and competent character acting, combined with the great dread of nuclear war.

I hope you enjoyed it.