Some of you remember "Duck and Cover" and other classroom exercises from the '50s...

[TreasonousBastard]

In my elementary social circle, we had little fear of a Soviet nuclear attack. It was just so horrible a thought that we simply discounted it as impossible.

After all, we saw the pictures of Nagasaki and assumed if it happened there was no way to survive anyway, so it can't really happen. Can it? I believe the usual reaction was "Drop to the ground, stick your head between your knees, and kiss your ass goodbye."

That was then, and even as little kids we knew something was wrong. A lot lot people thought the Soviets were a real threat, but there was no smoking gun, or real evidence that they might actually try something. It was global politics and fear mongering.

That was then. These days they see the shootings at schools, concerts and malls. They know it's not fear mongering, but real fear.

Duck and Cover gave some us back then a healthy suspicion of wild-eyed prophets of doom, but how are these kids growing up seeing this?

It's horrible for the kids growing up elsewhere with war and revolution, but there they can at least hope for an end to the terror. Here, the terror is all our own.

[LiberalArkie]

1. Yes, I am very much surprised that I am 71.

We knew that we would die from nuclear war.

We knew that we would die in Nam.

We knew that something would kill us before we reached 30.

We knew that cancer would get us before we were 50.

Just how in the did I make it to 71? It was not supposed to work like that, or I would have taken better care of myself.

The only thing we can figure is that during primary school all of use got the vaccines from the same needle. Probably picked up some terrific immunity.

[JoeOtterbein]

2. I remember drills, and everyone upset, also food & water stored in the church...

...basement.

I've also had a healthy sense of doom and the feeling that if I lived to be old, that our generation would be the last to live a full-life.

And everyday the sense of dooms gets stronger.

[Blue_true]

5. Now you know that if a nuke went off, you need to be many miles away.

Those were the innocent days, believing that we could duck and cover, or survive in a basement if a nuke went off near us.

[dameatball]

3. I remember them well. We were about 20 miles from MacDill Air Force Base and knew what would happen.

Fire drills were sort of fun. "Duck and Cover" not so much.

[real Cannabis calm]

4. Even by the 60's people were building fallout shelters. And "Duck and Cover" was on TV...

This statement, in the O.P. is more timely:
"Here, the terror is all our own."

Let me add that this type of terrorism is just beginning and will increase.

[elocs]

6. I was in grade school in the 50s, but don't remember Duck and Cover. n/t

[abqtommy]

7. Many US citizens have lived with fear all their lives

and I'm one of them. As a child I went through news reports of a young girl who was missing and never found. I took part in exercises to prepare for a nuclear attack. Today I went shopping at WalMart and didn't get shot...this time.

[nolabear]

8. In the early 60s my father was stationed at a SAC base.

We took that shit seriously. Not only did we duck and cover, when the alert siren went off all the fathers disappeared and the mothers got together and smoked cigarettes and worried until the calls came that it was just an alert and they weren't really going off to stop a bomb or drop one. I had nightmares about sirens for years.