Cabaret Bar
Saturday 11:30 – 12:30
From 1945 onwards, it was a war that never broke out that occupied the minds of millions of people around the world. During the Cold War era, World War Three remained an apocalyptic fantasy, but it was a fantasy with enormous impact, relevance, and resonance.
Facing this ‘spectre of ever greater annihilation’ politicians, officials, military leaders, and ‘boffins’ all pored over its implications, planned for its outcomes, and wrestled with the morality of it all. The global public consumed ideas about a third major twentieth century conflagration through an untold number of novels, comics, films, plays, artworks, news media articles, and games.
This talk will cover the imaginary of World War III more generally, and then focus on how analogue games approached this topic and what this can add to our understanding of the twentieth century.