Herman Kahn - Cultural Influence

Cultural Influence

Kahn was reportedly one of the models for Dr. Strangelove from the eponymous film by Stanley Kubrick, released in 1964 (other prominent influences were John von Neumann, Edward Teller, Robert McNamara, and Wernher von Braun). It was said that Kubrick immersed himself in Kahn's book On Thermonuclear War. Kubrick actually met Kahn personally, and Kahn gave him the idea for the Doomsday Machine, which would immediately destroy the entire planet in the event of a nuclear attack. In the film, Dr. Strangelove refers to a report on the Doomsday Machine by the "BLAND Corporation". The Doomsday device is precisely the sort of destabilizing tactic that Kahn himself sought to avert, since its only purpose was a threat or bluff rather than actual military application.

Also based upon Kahn was Walter Matthau's maverick character Professor Groteschele in Fail-Safe, in which the U.S. President (played by Henry Fonda) tries to prevent a nuclear holocaust when a mechanical malfunction sends nuclear weapons heading toward Moscow.

In the The Politics of Ecstasy, Timothy Leary suggests that Herman Kahn had taken LSD.