Tyrone Schiff Chris KokoczkaBrett Serafin

Dr. Strangelove

StrategyThroughout the course of the movie,

Dr. Strangelove

, there were a number of instances in which there were games of strategy. In particular, there were features of “Plan R,” which was a retaliation against Russian forces that could only be made bysenior ranking officers, that expressed multiple representations of strategy. It is importantto recognize that “Plan R” essentially set all of the events of the movie into motion

.Having this plan is a strategy within itself. For instance, “Plan R” is an effective means of retaliation, because it allows for a senior officer to authorize a defensive attack vianuclear weapons during a time of urgency. However, without this plan there would be noset strategy for retaliation. Then again, plan R has the ability to begin a systematic chainof events that can in turn cause nuclear demise, as was the case in this film.The Doomsday Machine is a device that is capable of automatically retaliating toany attack but has dire consequences. After a US attack, the Doomsday device wouldeither retaliate or not. However, the Russians also had the choice of creating a Doomsdaydevice or not. Seeing as they created the device, they could then choose to make itautomatic or manually triggered

. Based on the events in the movie the Doomsdaydevice was automatic, which in turn lead to a nuclear catastrophe. This clearly was notthe best strategy to be employed by the Russians, because it led to a nuclear holocaustand a lot of people died. Additionally, the Doomsday device is merely a threat proposed by the Russian side. The US is not entirely positive whether or not this Doomsday deviceactually exists, so they do not know with complete certainty whether to attack or not.

See Game Theory of “Plan R”

See Game Theory of Doomsday Device