Or the link dissolves over time. Meadows writes about how system behavior is defined over time, but there is also the possibility that components of the system become necessary over time (perhaps as systems become more inefficient). We are then left with a kind of systemic residue (we might think here of agencies created by the government in response to certain crises which no longer retain their primary function but linger as part of bureaucratic residue of a past system - still potentially influencing the formation of new systems).

Does "crisis management" in part serve to make the deterrence system visible in particular to the public?

perhaps purposefully so. Part of the power of the deterrence system is the threat of what is not made visible.

With nuclear deterrence in the 1950s and 1960s then, is there also a corresponding effect on society through stigma (again blurring the boundaries of the system).

In this sense would the artifacts be films? photos? technological devices? all 3? Certainly what is "being said" of atomic weapons happens through films and photos, a sign is manufactured for consumption by the other side. However, the mere presence of the artifacts themselves and the assumptions that go into their production are also influenced by the deterrence system.

I wonder if there is an intersect between procedural rhetoric and systems/the deterrence system. "War Games" published or produced by the government in particular, can construct worldviews.

Gotcha. The shift to nuclear deterrence accompanied a shift in government rhetoric. Where under Truman the military was emphasized and even flouted through his proposed universal military service program (both visually and through speech), whereas under Eisenhower militarism was substituted with a sort of science-oriented outlook based on organized, coordinated response to a threat that is mostly hidden and emphasized when it can be manufactured to support hidden system of protection.

Thought on Iconoclastic Imagination: perhaps it becomes bound up in neoliberalism because deterrence is framed as system to protect capitalism.

Or perhaps the system also contains an "irrationality" of the system. Both parties (at least in the case of nuclear deterrence) have to be willing to believe that the other party could act irrationally. There is a distrust that lives within the system and balances the system such that we avoid catastrophe but catastrophe is avoided because the assumption of irrational behavior.

If common sense is based on history rather than psychology, where does fear fit? Certainly the specialized scientists, technicians (thinking here of Operation Ivy and similar films) and professors are part of a national narrative about controlled nuclear development, but a sense "belief" in the deterrence system also seems to rely on fear. I think there are multiple narratives at work building on both the pragmatic scientist and the fear that the other side will act irrationally, therefore necessitating preparation (rather than hysteria). Although common sense may not be psychologically based, certainly phantasm can contribute to emotional reactions it seems.

So does a deterrent system require consent? IT may not be a sort of active consent (like assigning some sort of deterrent agreement) but perhaps a point at which passive defenses reach a point where they seem threatening (so for example after your neighbor erects a barbed wire fence, you decide to erect your own fence, until you both become entrenched a competition to protect your property without ever consenting formally to be involved in the system yet somehow agreeing on a narrative - although you may indeed talk about it but at that point your interaction may be colored by the assumed system at work).

Is this also a narrative system? Narrative can be a powerful rhetorical tool and deterrence rhetoric (particularly through film) projected a certain narrative about the world. It almost seems to exist as stories that create filters or lenses through which the actors see the world; the system exists because they allow it to color their perceptions.