The Apocalypse Will Be Televised

It had been the summer of the future.  Seattle’s Century 21 World’s Fair had previewed visions of the coming technological utopia:  cheap, abundant nuclear power; clean, planned and efficient urban centers linked by networks of high-speed, unclogged highways; household conveniences and entertainment devices; material plenty for all.  And it had all been a huge popular and financial success; Seattle had come of age on a world stage.  Science.  Creativity unbounded.  Cultural and political concord.  Elvis had even made a movie at the fair.

But as it drew to a close on October 21, there was one tiny negative note.

President Kennedy had a cold.

He had planned to be here for the closing ceremonies, or to at least deliver a televised address.  But at the last moment, those plans were cancelled due to his “illness”.  The coming millennium would have to be inaugurated without him.  Oh, well.  Other dignitaries spoke, the flags in the Flag Plaza came down, and the bands disbanded.

The next night, October 22, 1962, President Kennedy, apparently recovered from his cold, asked for time for a live address to the nation on all three television networks.  It seemed a bit late for his missing farewell to the fair address, but what else could he possibly have to say?

Just the imminent end of the world.

For the previous twelve days, the Cuban Missile Crisis had been unfolding, unreported behind the strictest secrecy.  Now, in what some call the “scariest speech ever delivered,” the President announced that we were undertaking an undisputed act of war:  a “quarantine” of all shipping to Cuba.  What he didn’t say at the time was that it went even further: the U.S. military was a DEFCON level 2, the highest state of alert short of actual war.  The bombers, armed with nuclear bombs, were warming up on the airfields.

And we watched it on television.  We watched government spokespeople brief us on the types of missiles the Soviets had installed in Cuba, their potential striking ranges and estimates of their devastation.  We watched network anchors discuss the options:  limited bombing of the missiles, extended bombing of other Cuban bases, even full-scale invasion.  And we watched reports of Soviet ships steaming undeterred toward Cuba, ever closer to a ring of American warships ordered to stop them by any means necessary.

This was the first real demonstration of the immediacy of television.  While newspapers were still the primary source of news and commentary for most people, print media couldn’t provide instant information; they were always past tense.  We wanted to know the moment the missiles started flying.  And, for agonizing days, we lived in escalating fear.  I was in ninth grade at the time, and it looked likely that I’d never reach tenth.  My teacher told the class that she and her husband had gone to bed after the President’s speech, kissed, and said their final goodbyes.

Most of the Russian ships turned around, but one, accompanied, we learned later, by a submarine, steamed stubbornly toward the blockade.  We watched, helplessly, as the crisis built, in the moment, the present rather than the past tense.

Of course, it didn’t happen.  Sanity prevailed, and the politicians reached an agreement.  But for those few days, we went from the high of a future paradise to the low of an imminent apocalypse, and we watched it all live.  It was, effectively, the debut of a new mode of human experience, a virus of terror that spread via a new medium:  television.

I read recently that somewhere in the vaults of CNN is a tape, simple images of sunsets while a band plays “Nearer My God To Thee,” the hymn the band played while the Titanic went down.  It was made to be played as the last transmission when the world ends.  Had it existed at the time, we almost would have had the opportunity to view it.

(You can watch all of President Kennedy’s speech at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgdUgzAWcrw )