Okcupid, the popular dating website, offers its users the chance to answer several questions to match them up with possible love interests that share similar personalities and interests. Some questions may ask harmless questions like, "are you a morning person?", while some questions, like "Do you think women have an obligation to keep their legs shaved?", are more are a little more edged. While these questions provide chances for people to express their opinions, some questions are more strange than others. For example, the site asks, "In a certain light, wouldn't nuclear war be exciting?" Some might treat this question like a joke, and think little of it. However, in his essay on "Jokes and their relationship to the unconscious," Freud argues that jokes provide an important role in letting out forbidden thoughts and feelings the conscious mind usually suppresses.
While the Cold War fears of nuclear war have definitely been subdued, the threat of nuclear dystopia has merely been relegated to the unconscious. This unconscious fear finds itself released into our conscious, and spoken/written by the person in a slip of the tongue. This joke provides a moment of release for a society that must repress fears of a total apocalypse. We can all laugh at this joke, move on with our lives––and choose the response that says "No, it wouldn't." However, maybe some of us would respond, "Yes, it would." Is this a serious option, or is this just another joke? By using the concept of the Nuclear Sublime, we perceive the image of atomic war, signified by the infamous mushroom cloud, through the viewpoint of the bomber. This viewpoint provides an image of nuclear war that doesn't seem that bad. Therefore, we can choose, "Yes, it would." Nuclear war would be exciting.
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