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The latest fad in Moscow is a war game where players compete to find nuclear codes
Russian officials are playing on fears, staging a massive nuclear drill
CNN
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“Attention attention!” shouts the Russian voice from a loudspeaker. “Nuclear bombs will be dropped in an hour.”
Inside a room designed as a Soviet-era nuclear bunker, a pair of Russians race to prevent a catastrophic attack on the United States.
His quest, all the rage in Moscow, is to find the nuclear launch codes and deactivate a hidden red button, which has already been pushed by a mad Russian general.
It’s complete fantasy; just an interactive game housed in a building in a former industrial area of the city, harking back to Cold War fears.
But amid the current tensions with Russia, in which a possible nuclear confrontation with the West has been raised again, it feels a bit unsettling.
“I am worried because there is very stupid information from both sides,” said Maxim Motin, a Russian who just completed the Red Button Quest game.
“I know that normal people around the world don’t want any war,” he added.
But Russian officials have been preparing the nation for the possibility of conflict, stoking deep-seated concerns about a showdown with the West, Russia’s erstwhile Cold War rival.
Russian television has been broadcasting a massive training exercise, involving up to 40 million people across the country. It is designed to prepare responses, the government says, for a chemical or nuclear attack.
The video shows emergency workers in protective suits and gas masks leading the civil defense drill, the largest of its kind since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It suggests that the Kremlin wants the Russians to take the threat of war very seriously.
Of course, an all-out conflict between Russia and the West remains highly unlikely.
Analysts say the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD, still holds up as a deterrent, just as it did during the Cold War.
But with tensions rising over Syria, Ukraine and the Baltic states, analysts say the small risk of contact, misunderstanding and escalation between the nuclear superpowers has become very real.
“I don’t think a nuclear war is likely,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairsa leading foreign policy magazine.
“But when two nuclear superpowers are operating their military machines in the same area, very close to each other and they don’t have proper coordination, anything unwanted can happen,” he told CNN.
It’s a risk the Kremlin seems willing to take, with state television ramping up its hardline rhetoric in recent weeks.
On his main current affairs show, Russia’s top state newscaster Dmitry Kiselyev, dubbed the Kremlin’s chief propagandist by critics, recently issued a stark warning of global war if Russian and American forces clash in Syria.
“The brutal behavior towards Russia could have nuclear dimensions,” he declared.
The Russian Defense Ministry has also released details of the latest ICBM to be added to its nuclear arsenal.
He satan 2as it is known, it will be the world’s most destructive weapon, ensuring Russia’s place as a major nuclear power.
It’s an apocalyptic vision that adds a greater sense of realism to the fantasy quest players undertake in Moscow.
“I know that now in schools in Russia they tell children that our main enemy is the United States,” said Alisa Sokoleva, another Moscow player.
“But it sounds ridiculous to me and I am totally sure that war is impossible,” she adds.
Back in the fake Cold War bunker, the Russian players cracked the launch codes and disabled the missile launch. The United States, it seems, has again been saved from this virtual Russian nuclear attack.
Hopefully, the real world will also be spared from such a confrontation.