For the record, I’m basing this on the movie, idk if the comic is fundamentally different or mostly aesthetically so.
The main difference was he didn’t nuke various cities, but created some giant mutant psychic squid and teleported it on New York, killing millions (somehow, between the splash and the dying psychic squid causing mass mind liquefaction), and making the world think they were being attacked by some space alien, rather than making Dr. Manhattan the enemy. Movie version was quite a nice twist.
Killing the people has never been proven to be a very effective way to stop a rogue government, if the government is not physically impacted by random civilians getting killed, however many of them are killed. But in Watchmen, he didn’t simply kill civilians - he faked a common threat that the governments would be afraid of to divert their attention. Space squids in the comics, Dr. Manhattan going biblical in the movie. Depends how hard the governments buy it. In the movie, Dr. Manhattan siding with that idea means he could probably sell it well enough to make it believable - giving the world an ultimatum after someone else already pressed the button. Who knows about the squid version. The conclusion given in the comics / movie is that he was kinda right as long as Dr. Manhattan said screw it and supported it (mass slaughter notwithstanding, of course). The whole premise also does rely on the inevitability of shit hitting the fan, which… yeah, world with or without superpowers, it’s hard to reject that notion. But today? Who knows if some sort of walking god nuke just glassing Moscow, Washington, and a bunch of other big capitals would even be enough to curb down the delusions of our major fascist nazi nutcases, outside of actually vaporizing the entirety of their armies, including the fascists in chief themselves in all countries.
Thank you for the thoughtful post! And yeah, perhaps strategically destroying arms factories and bases, and targeting those in power, would have worked better, that makes sense.
The main difference was he didn’t nuke various cities, but created some giant mutant psychic squid and teleported it on New York, killing millions (somehow, between the splash and the dying psychic squid causing mass mind liquefaction), and making the world think they were being attacked by some space alien, rather than making Dr. Manhattan the enemy. Movie version was quite a nice twist.
Killing the people has never been proven to be a very effective way to stop a rogue government, if the government is not physically impacted by random civilians getting killed, however many of them are killed. But in Watchmen, he didn’t simply kill civilians - he faked a common threat that the governments would be afraid of to divert their attention. Space squids in the comics, Dr. Manhattan going biblical in the movie. Depends how hard the governments buy it. In the movie, Dr. Manhattan siding with that idea means he could probably sell it well enough to make it believable - giving the world an ultimatum after someone else already pressed the button. Who knows about the squid version. The conclusion given in the comics / movie is that he was kinda right as long as Dr. Manhattan said screw it and supported it (mass slaughter notwithstanding, of course). The whole premise also does rely on the inevitability of shit hitting the fan, which… yeah, world with or without superpowers, it’s hard to reject that notion. But today? Who knows if some sort of walking god nuke just glassing Moscow, Washington, and a bunch of other big capitals would even be enough to curb down the delusions of our major fascist nazi nutcases, outside of actually vaporizing the entirety of their armies, including the fascists in chief themselves in all countries.
Thank you for the thoughtful post! And yeah, perhaps strategically destroying arms factories and bases, and targeting those in power, would have worked better, that makes sense.