Any real world basis for that highly distinctive design? It keeps popping up in disaster movies and parodies (like The Simpsons) again and again. Specifically the round table under the huge ring of lights paired with “the big board.”
It resembles a futuristic version of Churchill’s WW2 War room.
Or the Fighter Command war room, same country, same war.
Not to mention Watchmen
Apparently, kindasorta.
The design was copied from casino tables. They even covered the giant table with green felt so it would look like a casino table in black and white.
The 30th anniversary DVD edition has documentaries and interviews as extras. Upon Reagan’s first visit to the Pentagon he asked “Where’s the Big Board?” No one understood him. He said, “The War Room, like in Dr Strangelove.”
Very good interview with the art director who designed the rough draft of the opening credits. He totally wanted it to look like copulating insects, just like we all thought it did. Interesting is that he did the credits in grease pencil on glass with the stock footage running behind it. Kubrick loved it and never corrected the typos.
Good interviews with James Earl Jones and others too. Includes stills from the pie fight scene that was cut from the ending. weren’t you always wondering why that cart full of pies appeared near the end? Also includes a few cut scenes where they tried to make President Muffley into an idiot before they they decided it was better if he was cool and calculating.
And Monsters vs. Aliens and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (for Starfleet Command). The SAC/NORAD War Room from War Games is pretty cool, too (and see an earlier incarnation in Fail-Safe).
“Gentlemen! You can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”
The last place I worked (I was DoD) had an operations center that was nicknamed the War Room. It was a large square room, but arranged in concentric “rings.” In the center was a round “cubicle” where the watch boss and assistant sat - these were the folks in charge for exercises and real-world situations.
Surrounding them on their level were a dozen or so positions where the senior analysts, researchers, and certain military folks sat - it was like the next tier of management. Raised above them was the ring of analysts, intel folks, IT support, and some other stuff I can’t recall. Around the outside perimeter of the room were lots of screens, including one really big one used for all briefings. There was also an inner ring of screens suspended from the ceiling above the second ring of work positions.
The folks in the very center could control what was on every screen. During exercises on the midnight shift, sometimes we watched TV or DVDs if we were waiting for assignments. One night, the watch captain brought in a manual ice cream maker, and we all took our turns cranking on it! Of course, during real-world operations, there were no movies or ice cream - we’d work our collective asses off during our shifts, go home for a quick sleep, then head back… I really miss that.
Oddly enough, the big mucky-mucks in the command didn’t have seats in the War Room - they’d come down to check in on us, but they had nothing to do with the grunt work. Mostly they’d show up for the morning briefing, then leave.
Semi-related: When I joined SDMB, I did briefly consider the user name “Brass Hat.”
The war room design came from Ken Adam. He’s also most famous as the production designer for some of the James Bond movies. Kubrick actually asked him to work on Strangelove after seeing Dr. No.