Why did the police chief cry?
I can infer with whatever I gleaned but just curious about the answer of others?
shareI think he was getting ill and losing hope.
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MovieChat Forums > Testament (1984) Discussion > Why did the police chief cry?
Because he moved to the outskirts of San Francisco to be an in-the-closet police chief. With no gas, SF in ruin and all his local closeted lovers dead from radiation he could take it no more. Then a bunch of dudes started asking him to sit down with them and rubbed his arms and shoulders and his tone began to spike back up.
OR
The radiation made him suddenly crap himself and that was the last straw.
Really the only 2 likely reasons.
One of the side effects of fallout is an increase of libido but I am sure that is NOT why the chief cried. He was upset that millions of people were killed, for no reason whatsoever. That should make most people cry.
shareOne of the side effects of fallout is an increase of libido
One learns to expect bad science in movies and in many discussions about movies, but wow. The really puzzling thing is where stuff like this even comes from.
Below are a few basic resources that are easily available online for anyone wishing to get an essential grounding in nuclear weapons, their effects and a speculative war scenario or two by highly qualified people, including a couple who designed and built much of the current US thermonuclear arsenal.
Naturally, these are almost all cold war vintage so the political tones may be dated, but the technical data and descriptions are as valid as ever. The most recent US nuclear weapon is the W-88 Mk-05RV for the Trident D-5 SLBM, manufactured between 9/1988 and 11/1989, although all design work and full yield (475 Kt) tests were completed prior to the March, 1976 Threshold Test Ban Treaty. And in general, physics rarely goes out of date.
The links are valid as of the date and time of this post, March 13, 2016.
1. Derived from The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (#4.)
Nuclear Weapons Effects Handbook for Radiological Scientific Officers
Section C - Initial Nuclear Radiation
Section D - Residual Nuclear Radiation and Fallout
http://www.preppers.info/uploads/Nuclear_Weapons_Effects_-_handbook.pdf
2. The Effects of a Nuclear Attack on the Rio Grande Valley
5th ed./5 June 2001
by Wm. Robert Johnston
copyright 1983, 1999, 2001
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nukergv.html
3. The Effects of Nuclear War (Unclassified Version)
OTA (Office of Technology Assessment)
May, 1979
http://atomicarchive.com/Docs/pdfs/7906.pdf
Still a primary resource:
4. The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd Edition
Samuel Glasstone & Philip J Dolan
US Department of Defense and Energy Research & Development Administration
1962, 1964, 1977
Chap. I General Principles of Nuclear Explosions
Chap. VIII Initial Nuclear Radiation
Chap. IX Residual Nuclear Radiation & Fallout
Chap. XII Biological Effects
https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/effects/
http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Effects-of-Nuclear-Weapons-1977-3rd-edition-complete.pdf
http://nnsa.energy.gov/sites/default/files/nnsa/inlinefiles/glasstone%20and%20dolan%201977.pdf
5. Effects of Nuclear Weapons
Alexander Glaser WWS556d Princeton University
Class slides with some data from Glasstone & Dolan
https://www.princeton.edu/~aglaser/lecture2007_weaponeffects.pdf
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I think it was a combination of mental and physical exhaustion, and psychological stress. It also could have been a realization that things were pretty much hopeless, and that society would not recover what they had lost.
shareI just saw the movie for the second time (the first was when it came out in 1983.) He broke down for a number of reasons; the stress and sadness of the thinning ranks of the police force, the general mounting deaths in the town and the realization that he could no longer help people, which was his job/purpose in that small community.
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He was probably physically and mentally exhausted from the strain of dealing with the crisis at hand where there was no outside help coming. He had seen his colleagues and probably friends and family members die and was powerless to do anything about it.
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