Do You Want To Play A Game?

So, I was hanging out in a Third Place - really, that's even what it's called - with a great common area that includes a cabinet of games available to play. Most of the usual suspects were present, along with a less-common specimen that caught my eye:

Yep, Nuclear War, that "fast-paced comical card game," which the back of the box informs us is the first in a series that includes Nuclear Escalation and Nuclear Proliferation!

War and Escalation have little cartoon mascots, and Proliferation looks to be chock full of goofy characters.

I was hoping to test-play the game - I mean, who wouldn't want to while away an afternoon playing a version of Monopoly spiced up with atomic death? But sadly, the box was empty; all that remained were two cards hinting at the gameplay.

If you really want to find out about this game, check out the publisher, Flying Buffalo Games. Me, I remain content with this response: after getting over my initial shock at the matter-of-factness of the game design, and reading the fine print that explains that the game was actually developed in 1965 at the height of the Cold War, I was actually overcome by a wave of nostalgia for those bygone days of fallout shelters and civil defense drills. I mean, when I was a kid, it seemed all we had to worry about was annihilation by A-Bomb and H-Bomb. Nowadays, the world seems much more complex and even scarier, what with diseases, ecological disasters, terrorism, economic meltdowns, and other threats apparently around every corner.

Maybe this game really is escapism after all.