Invented for a 1964 movie of that title, Dr. Strangelove was likely based on several men, including Nazi-turned-U.S. rocket scientist Werner von Braun and geopolitical strategist Henry Kissinger, but probably primarily on nuclear scientist Edward Teller and nuclear war futurist Herman Kahn. Teller zealously promoted the H-Bomb and the arms race, as well as grandiose schemes such as using atomic bomb explosions as excavation tools. Kahn…well, Kahn is another story.

Once it became likely that the next war could be an atomic one, the U.S. military wanted to know what to expect. A project within the Douglas Aircraft Company which soon spun off to become the Rand Corporation, and one of its guiding lights was Herman Kahn. Kahn and Rand made some lasting contributions to how we think about the future. Together with scientists at M.I.T. and elsewhere, they were among the pioneers of systems dynamics. Kahn developed and popularized the idea of developing “scenarios” to project a combination of chosen factors into a story of future happenings. Out of this emerged a technique common to all kinds of “futurists,” and computer “war games,” the basis for a lot of electronic gaming today. And we talk about “scenarios” all the time now, though before Kahn it was specialized theatrical term.

But in “Thinking the Unthinkable” and other works on nuclear war, Kahn was also the inventor or at least the popularizer of such terms as "deterrence" and "throw-weight" or the ghastly jargon of "megatons," and "megadeaths." Kahn insisted on the "rationality of irrationality" in studying nuclear war, and he advocated the Cold War situation which came to pass: two sides armed with the “overkill” capacity to destroy each other and humankind several times over, and with the technology to respond to an attack (or a presumed attack) with enough nuclear weapons to destroy its destroyers. This would be the basis of deterrence. He called this doctrine Mutually Assured Destruction. He used its acronym: MAD.

Doctor Strangelove was demonstrably mad in a characteristic nuclear age way. He spoke very rationally and intelligently about mass murder and global suicide. As played brilliantly by Peter Sellers, he was confused in his allegiances—was he serving democracy, or Hitler? Even his body was split, with a “paralyzed” arm that when he was about to commit the ultimate insanity, tried to choke him.

He was not the only crazy character. There was George C. Scott as a combination of several military leaders, who talked of millions of deaths as “getting our hair mussed,” and carried around a folder that said “the world in megadeaths.” But the moviemakers had trouble making the movie crazier than reality. General Jack D. Ripper (who started nuclear war to protect his “precious bodily fluids”) was based on a general whose real name was General Powers. He once said that if there are three people left alive after a nuclear war and two are American, it means we won.

In fact, the moviemakers had intended to make a serious drama, but the more they researched the subject the more they became convinced that it was all so crazy that the appropriate tone was as a “nightmare comedy.” The mood of the movie is reminiscent of the Marx Brothers, particularly their satire on war, “Duck Soup.” In another movie, Groucho and Chico negotiate a contract. Chico rejects every clause including the last one, the sanity clause. He says he won’t be fooled, because “there is no sanity clause.” That pretty much is the message of “Doctor Strangelove.”