GENERAL BUCK TURGIDSON USAF (George C. Scott), in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, was Chief of Staff of the Air Force on D-Day--the D standing for Detonation or simply, Doom. For him the day's events began at about 0300, when Col. Frederick Puntridge called him with an alarming report: a coded message had gone out to the 843rd Bombardment Wing from Burppelson AFB. The cleartext: Wing Attack Plan R. All communications were dead, including even the normal Public Switched Telephony Network lines. But what stunned the general was Fred's report that the threat board had nothing on it.The general hied himself off to the Pentagon for the meeting he knew President Merkin Muffley would have to call, of all the senior military and civilian officials in the War Room of the Pentagon. In his usual slightly bombastic tone, he informed the President of Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper's unauthorized go code and its consequences.The general, rabid anti-Communist that he was, urged total commitment. The President refused. He actually invited the Russian Ambassador, Alexei Desadesky, to join them in the War Room. The general wrestled with Desadesky when he caught him using a miniature camera to take pictures of the Big Board and other War Room technologies. After that, there was no time for such accusations. The President called Dmitri Kissov, the Premier of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. to advise him of the situation.The Ambassador, after a spirited conversation in Russian with his superior, then broke dire news: the Russians had built a Doomsday Device that would poison the atmosphere with a doomsday shroud. It consisted of several 100-megaton bombs, jacketed with a cobalt-thorium alloy with a 93-year half-life.Sadly, their efforts to recall the 843rd Bomb. Wing came to nothing. One plane, damaged but not crippled, got through and dropped a bomb. All that remained was to accept a recommendation from Dr. Strangelove, the President's science adviser, to equip several deep mine shafts as long-term fallout shelters. Show less «