You need to look no further than the title to trace the meaning. "Amused to Death" (the whole album actually) relates to Neil Postman's book "Amusing Ourselves to Death". Neil is big on how technology negatively affects the human race and especially public discourse. In this tune from the album Roger sums up all the rest. Take popular culture, consumerism, technology, etc. put it all together and this species has amused itself to death. Personally, I don't see it really related to nuclear war - otherwise why would the alien anthropologists be so perplexed when trying to figure out what happened to us? They'd easily see the destruction of a nuclear war, but instead they just find our shadows around a TV set. They have to repeat every test and the only logical reason they can come up with is that we've amused ourselves to death.
You need to look no further than the title to trace the meaning. "Amused to Death" (the whole album actually) relates to Neil Postman's book "Amusing Ourselves to Death". Neil is big on how technology negatively affects the human race and especially public discourse. In this tune from the album Roger sums up all the rest. Take popular culture, consumerism, technology, etc. put it all together and this species has amused itself to death. Personally, I don't see it really related to nuclear war - otherwise why would the alien anthropologists be so perplexed when trying to figure out what happened to us? They'd easily see the destruction of a nuclear war, but instead they just find our shadows around a TV set. They have to repeat every test and the only logical reason they can come up with is that we've amused ourselves to death.