Calling all DUers who were children in the 50's and 60's..your expertise is needed

[Peacetrain]

A whole new generation gets to experience duck and cover.. ~sigh~ Putin is an idiot. End of story.. Like we need to do this all over again. Can you imagine, we get to share with our grandchildren and grandnieces and grandnephews the wonders of hiding under your desk. Oh well.. "Everything old is new again"

I am being facetious, but jees louise.. we are having to re-fight women's rights, voters rights, and now oh boy.. some KGB nimrod wants to start up the cold war again, because he thinks those were the good old days..

End of Rant

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. I should have stayed hidden under my school desk.

Coming out wasn't such a smart move after all.

[Peacetrain]

4. ROFL...

I just got off the phone with an old friend and we were both sighing and laughing about the duck and cover days..

[RKP5637]

47. I've wondered where you went!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. Or, we could refuse to replay the cold war and mind our own business this time.

[William769]

10. And let all the Eastern Countries of Europe be looted & terrorized again? Not this time. nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. The Bogeyman is coming!! EEK! Quick! Send more money to the MIC!!

[avebury]

46. At some point they need to learn to stand up for

themselves and work with other European countries to achieve mutual security. I am so sick and tired of those who want the US to be the policemen of the planet. We should not be encouraging the MIC to promote more wars for profit. Nor should we be enabling others to play the pity poor us card. Say we agree to buy into the idea of a second cold war (the last one caused serious financial problems for the USSR because of the arms race) knowing that the US is in a far weaker financial position then before, how well do think it will turn out this time? And what happens if a third cold war begins 40-50 years from now? When does it end. History is doomed to continue to repeat itself if you cannot learn from the past. War and global conflict is the drug of choice for the MIC and Conservatives. They want their next war. The time has come to send them to proverbial drug rehab.

We certainly did not do much to help when they had the massacres in Rwanda. Heck if we decide to help someone, choose the people who live in countries where they can be killed for being gay, killed fro being from the wrong ethnic or religious group, etc. Help the people who have no way to fight for themselves. The people who are starving and don't even come close to having the means to protect themselves.

[840high]

84. We get involved when

there is a benefit for us. Oil comes to mind.

[TBF]

135. Exactly -

we don't care about looting and protecting people when oil is not involved. Rwanda comes to mind.

[840high]

81. They'll take care of themselves.

[arikara]

121. How about all the looting and terrorizing that goes on in other places?

like lands owned by the indigenous people in South America, Africa, even in north America. How about Iraq and Afghanistan.

Oh wait... that's all ok, its our side doing the looting and terrorizing.

[whathehell]

137. Why can't Europe handle it?

It's their continent.

[Cleita]

3. Duck and cover was a joke back then and it will be now.

We had a joke about after you duck and cover, then you bend over and kiss your ass goodby because most of us knew we would not survive an atomic bomb that close to seeing the flash.

[Peacetrain]

5. I was 8 years old at the time..

Scared the holy crap out of me.. gave me nightmares..

[Cleita]

19. That was the idea.

By the time I got to be a teenager, it got to be a joke.

[Peacetrain]

22. Do you remember all the backyard bomb shelters

people in the burbs were building.. what a time

[Cleita]

25. Yep, but in my neighborhood only a couple of families

could afford one. The rest of us were resigned to frying. Also did you ever do Civilian Air Patrol where they stuck you in a tower with binoculars scanning the horizon for enemy aircraft? Ridiculous how we were manipulated by the PTB.

[Peacetrain]

28. Well I was about 8 or 9 at the time..

I don't remember any scanning of the horizon for enemy aircraft.. but I do remember the drills in school.. just like it was yesterday..

[Cleita]

30. So you only had it for a year of your life?

It seems like I did it for a decade through grade school and part of high school.

[Peacetrain]

39. That is when it had the most impact..

3rd and 4th grade.. not a pleasant thing for little kids

[Quasimodem]

95. Does anyone remember that effing turtle cartoon they ran all the time?

What the heck was his name?

[Go Vols]

127. Bert

[nadinbrzezinski]

145. Here

http://m.

[Voice for Peace]

50. I remember running into the house every time a plane went overhead

because I thought it was Russians coming to bomb us.

I remember watching "On the Beach" which made nuclear war seem inevitable (to a child).

waltzing matilda

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=EMzEWpKKOZs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=yTMef0yhmyA

[pipi_k]

56. OMG those

B-52 bombers

As I said somewhere else in this thread, I lived near an Air Force base. Those things flew over my house all the time

I was terrified also, and even to this day, at the age of 61, I still can't stand to see planes fly overhead

And whatever trauma was caused by those bombers, it was made worse on 9/11


PS. And "On The Beach" was one of the scariest movies ever, along with "Failsafe"

[SummerSnow]

75. Living in NYC during the blackout of 1977. People were afraid

and thought the Russians caused the blackout. I remember my grandmother hiding stuff under the basement floor.

[tech3149]

91. Anyone who hasn't seen "On the Beach" is missing something

I heard about the film back in the 60's from an algebra teacher. It was decades later that I had the chance to watch it.
Today I think that it is an exemplary statement about what we can expect if we don't consider the risk of our actions.
I'm just sorry that my reaction to that time didn't do enough to turn the tide and wake up more people.

[Cleita]

100. Wow!

We were near an AFB where there was a lot of above air activity including a lot of breaking the sound barrier stuff. I am so sorry you were so frightened. I still live around a lot of this shit another close by AFB. I should start taking pictures.

[catbyte]

128. That movie scared the bejeezus out of me. So did the book.

I read the book first, then saw the movie much later. Waltzing Matilda, indeed.

[RKP5637]

55. I was too young, but my sister used to do that. They had a tower on the roof of the

school, she used to go there weekends. Sometimes I went with her, but I was too restless, sometimes I used to walk the corridors of the school. It was large and I just wandered around. ... then she would come screaming at me to get back in the tower, I was not supposed to wander the halls.

One time she did spot a low flying plane circling around. She called the phone line to wherever, They got very very concerned, I guess tracked it down from their end ... as just a local farmer or someone, probably doing crop dusting.

I was never allowed near the black old large dial phone on the desk. I guess it connected immediately or something, she was afraid I would pick it up for the hell of it. Yep, she was right, I probably would have.

[Frustratedlady]

105. Yes, I remember the CAP, shapes of planes, etc.

Royal waste of time, but it was exciting at the beginning. I'd probably seen too many war movies by the time we volunteered.

When you actually checked out the logistics, it was doubtful an enemy plane would have made it to the Midwest without having been identified/brought down. But, when you are a kid, you'll believe most anything the adults throw at you.

[Ms. Toad]

43. We explored the possibility of using the root cellar

as a bomb shelter - and my parents did consider the option of something more substantial. We were a slight miscalculation away from the SAC base in Omaha.

[Arugula Latte]

124. ...

[tech3149]

129. Thanks for the video

It's amazing how poor the sound is compared to my old vinyl. I might just fire up the system to listen to the whole album.

[catbyte]

126. My uncle built one in his basement that turned into my cousin David's room.

It was great to smoke pot in because the smoke went nowhere, LOL. This was during the 1967-1972 time frame.

[DonViejo]

6. We had a U.S. Nike site at the end of the street...

many communities did, missiles and troops. And then there was this thing called the "Cuban missile crisis"...and the missiles at the end of the street.

[Peacetrain]

9. It really is hard to explain to people

what that time was really like.. it was NOT the good old days by any means

[DonViejo]

21. Meanwhile...

In the NOT distant past, before the Nike craze; dogs and fire hoses being used on Black Americans. Kruschev ...LOL. you know, there's a lot of truth in this song. Yes! THAT one.

[Peacetrain]

23. Ah Yep!

that is the truth

[Lifelong Protester]

78. I spent two days in our bomb shelter

(in our house, under the driveway slab) during the Cuban Missile crisis. Although, I don't think we'd have lasted long-the bomb shelter had no bathroom, so we had to run out to the one in the basement, crossing our fingers the "big one" would not go off while we were, um, going.

[murielm99]

98. I went downstairs to check out the crawlspace

during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I wondered if my family could survive down there. I wondered if I would ever get old enough to be allowed to wear lipstick.

[dflprincess]

140. My dad found me poking around our basement trying to figure out where we could hide

(also during the Cuban Missile Crisis). He took me tenderly on his knee and told me "Don't worry, if they drop the bomb we'll never know."

[murielm99]

146. I'll tell you what did it for me:

I was in Modern Music Masters. We sold those damn chocolate bars as a fundraiser. I was supposed to bring the money to school. I kept forgetting to do it. Finally, the orchestra teacher yelled at me. He said, "Well, did you think they would drop the bomb over the weekend and you would not have to worry about it any more?"

That did it for me. I realized how stupid it was to worry about The Big One. I couldn't change anything. It was out of my hands.

[El Supremo]

7. Fogettaboutit

Putin is just trying to act like a stud. The radical Muslims are a greater threat.

BTW, 1962 was really scary.

[Peacetrain]

12. Putin with his shirt off

riding a polar bear to reclaim the USSR .. just silliness I thought we had behind us..

[AverageJoe90]

8. I'm not worried about global nuclear war now.....no reason to be.

Things really have changed. We are neither in a Cold War nor did we go back to the WWI era.....with that said, terrorism does worry me a bit.....including, possibly, that from *domestic* sources.

[RKP5637]

65. Same here, domestic bothers me. I fear there are a fair number of people in

the US that are not too tightly wrapped and a fair number of others with some kind of cause to grind.

[Art_from_Ark]

11. I think we had more to fear from our own missiles back then

At least, as someone living in Arkansas in August 1965 I got that impression.

http://www.techbastard.com/missile/titan2/accident_373-4.php

By the time I entered school, however, duck-and-cover drills had morphed into tornado drills. The Searcy Titan II missile accident occurred just before the beginning of the new school year. I wonder what kind of drill there would have been if it had occurred while school was in session?

[grahamhgreen]

13. It's not the KGB that's restarting the cold war, IMHO.

[stevenleser]

60. That is easy analysis to make since the KGB no longer exists. nt

[hobbit709]

113. It's now called the FSB

Федеральная служба безопасности Российской Федерации ; Federal'naya sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii)

[stevenleser]

114. Actually, its probably more accurate to say it split into two parts SVR and FSB

Although the GRU existed concurrently with the KGB in Soviet times, it seems to have taken over some KGB functions as well - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRU

FSB - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Security_Service

SVR - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Service_(Russia)

[hobbit709]

115. A lot of the same people, just under a different name.

Lenin's first head of the secret police was the number 2 under the Czar.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

15. Everything old is new again, including a brand new crop of McCarthyites.

It's pretty disheartening to see submoronic "you're a Putin lover" comments in reply to those trying to make sense of a very tricky and unsatisfyingly-nuanced set of circumstances.

[riqster]

16. I am older and less nimble. Better raise my desk up so I can get under it.

[Peacetrain]

18. I hear that!

That and a replaced knee..better put me under the old Library table

[mike_c]

17. this isn't even remotely a cold war like the Soviet/US relationship during the 50s and 60s....

Yes, I remember it well-- it was likely one of the most formative influences of growing up in America during the post-Korean war years. Of course, we were steeped in propaganda about all of the horrible-ness of life in the Soviet Union, but those who remember will find lots of echos today in America. State surveillance, an obsession with security, attacks against journalists and a free press, and so on. Oh, and one of the most impressive chestnuts of them all, the moving requirement. We recoiled in horror to learn that Soviet citizens had to report their internal movements to "the authorities" whenever they moved domiciles from one city to another! Oh the humanity!

In today's America, we need only do so within 30 days or so of moving in most states (via, at minimum, the Department of Motor Vehicles or the U.S. Postal Service). Nothing like the horror we read about in the Soviet Union. Nothing at all.

[zeemike]

89. I agree

We are more like them now and they are more like us.
They got rid of communism and got capitalism we got rid of the constitution and got oligarchy and a surveillance state...It seems that we learned from each other.

[KG]

20. I grew up in the suburbs of Wash DC and dont recall ever doing duck and cover...

[Peacetrain]

24. I don't know how you missed out on those fun and games

but you are better for it.. it did nothing but terrorize little kids..

[littlewolf]

26. probably because everyone knew that DC was gone no matter what. nt

[Nay]

58. Zakly. DC was gonna be a glowing crater ten times over. No need to duck/cover. nt

[countryjake]

29. Maybe they figgered anyone close to DC was a lost cause...

and never bothered training you. Main target and all.

[MyNameGoesHere]

54. Well DC would have been ground zero so

what would be the point? Not a strategic target but one of those psychological ones. I know what you mean, I never had to do it either. I think they knew we were screwed.

[spanone]

27. i remember when getting under my desk protected me from a nuclear holocaust.

we had drills.

[Peacetrain]

32. We did both..

The first drills they took us in the hallway and had us face the walls, get on our knees and cover our heads with our hands..and then we graduated to hiding under our desks.. and they wonder why we tuned in , turned on, and dropped out in the late 60's..

[spanone]

38. when as a child you could be vaporized in seconds, the 60's were a fabulous alternative..

i so enjoyed....

[blue neen]

69. "Why we tuned in, turned on, and dropped out in the late 60's"

You make an excellent point there!

Yeah, we'd do the drills where everyone hid under their desks---it was especially difficult for girls because we were only allowed to wear dresses in those days! Remember "sonic booms"? Every time one of those occurred, we'd think, "This is it!" and under the desks we would go!

The local high school was designated the "Bomb Shelter" for the whole town. It's all so ludicrous; that the public thought nuclear attacks on a town were survivable.

[rickyhall]

92. I was wondering

the last time I was in downtown Ft.Worth just when did those signs disappear?

[spanone]

97. one of our neighbors built a bomb shelter...professional co. built it

i went down into it. small, claustrophobic.... creepy

[delrem]

31. That's crazy.

I was a child of the 50's and the only thing similar between the late 20th c. cold war with the Cuban missile crisis and Vietnam dominoes and etc, and 2014 politics is MSM hype. MSM hype is, God help us, shallower - but it's the very, most awfully very same.

There is no - with some extraordinary exceptions - unembedded media today in The Western World (tm), whereas back then the notion of embedded media was either not acknowledged or not discussed using that word. It being somewhat shameful for the embedded "most trusted anchor" to admit to such terms of employment. I'd say that it's a positive for the 21st c. that the embedding of our MSM is acknowledged as fact, if only among the mainstream of the progressive left.

There's a lot of talk about "the evil of Putin" on DU, with all kinds of verbal slinging of arrows and discontent. I've been called a "Putin Puppet" and all kinds of alliterative slang merely for weighing in. There's the same kind of talk (from many of the same people) about "the evil of Maduro" on DU (I've been called an "***wipe" for that, and I'm now close to banishment from DU for mentioning that the author of the asterisks was uncommonly interested in asswipe), and it seems to amount to the same thing. A sergeant whipping up the troops with slideshows of atrocities, the more gruesome the better. Nothing much more than that. None of it amounts to political analysis, IMO.

[struggle4progress]

33. The best thing would be to get rid of the nuclear weapons world wide, but

this is not an entirely simple matter

The first thing you need to do is to understand some pieces of a very large puzzle

One goal should be Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty -- but this will depend on sufficiently transparent international inspection arrangements: thus (for example) the noise about supposed Iranian efforts to produce bomb-grade material must be regarded as part of the picture, or at least as part of the politics; and if the Iranian story ceases to excite interest, you should expect some other similar story to replace it in the news

Eliminating nuclear weapons will probably involve some covert action and espionage into the foreseeable future

IMO the Valerie Plame case was, in part, about Bush administration sabotage of counter-proliferation efforts, with an ultimate aim of jump-starting the nuclear weapons industry. At one point, Bush administration signals about nuclear weapons had Brazil threatening to back out of the non-proliferaton treaty

It didn't help any when Edward Snowden ran off to China and gave the Chinese press some information on Chinese nuclear policy sites the NSA had hacked or tried to hack

Because of the dangers of nuclear weapons, the very existence of nuclear weapons has helped build and justify the modern national security state

And aother piece of the puzzle is the nuclear power industry, governed in part under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which makes clear that "national security" is an overarching reason for promoting nuclear power

[Cleita]

41. Seems everyone who has tried has either been assassinated, discredited and

in one way or the other removed from power.

[struggle4progress]

67. That is empty ideological sloganeering

[Cleita]

77. No. It's historical fact. You should try looking at facts.

But I know you only look at what fits your narrative.

[struggle4progress]

110. "Hopeless! Hopeless! Hopeless" is a lazy substitute for activism

[villager]

87. That's kind of an empty ideological reply...

...to Cleita's rather astute summation

[struggle4progress]

109. "Hopeless! Hopeless! Hopeless" is a lazy substitute for activism

[villager]

120. "Never, ever questioning the official story" is a lazy substitute for citizenship

[struggle4progress]

134. That's also vacuous. It's interesting nobody addressed what I said in #33

[villager]

136. "That's also vacuous"

Indeed.

[rppper]

104. Really? Ask Oppenheimer.....

....what he thinks...or thought about it anyhow. The way this country re-paid him was a travesty.

[struggle4progress]

107. Do you realize that the Oppenheimer affair was over 60 years ago and

that he's been dead nearly 50 years now?

It's a pretty safe bet that anyone involved in the Oppenheimer affair is long gone now: McMahon died over sixty years ago; around the same time, Nichols left federal employ for private practice, and he has now been dead nearly fifteen years; Hoover has been dead for over 40 years; Strauss died about forty years ago; Teller retired shortly after Strauss's death and has been dead for more than a decade;

[rppper]

122. Thanks for taking the death angle and....

Running with it....my angle was more about the government not liking Oppenheimer's opinions on energy and non proliferation and stripping him of the clearances he needed to run the program, which also happened....Oppenheimer probably smoked himself to death, truth be told....whatever the case I'm not sure where you are headed with the death angle....yeah it was 60 years ago and yeah most everyone involved has passed away....we age and die....I guess I'm lucky enough to get an answer longer than one sentence, as most of the content of your previous responses being the same word spoken thrice.....It must have worn you copying and pasting "hopeless" so much....but when you don't have anything solid to add to a conversation short, sharp and insulting is always to best way to go right? Have a grand day!

[struggle4progress]

133. Most of my response was #33 upthread

[Thinkingabout]

34. I was thinking, perhaps we could offer Sarah Palin as a peace offering, she seems to have

Hots for him and she is on his side. Maybe this would keep both of them busy for a few years.

[Scootaloo]

37. Long meaningful glances from her back porch, and all...

[Thinkingabout]

40. He might even select her to run as his vice president.

[Scootaloo]

35. You know, when my generation wants to feel nostalgic...

We put "Thriller" on and pretend we can moonwalk.

We don't try to convince ourselves that the Grenada needs to be invaded again.

[Douglas Carpenter]

36. It's impossible to be in that age group and not recall duck and cover under our little wooden desks

But it is ludicrous to say that it is ONLY Putin and the Russians who want to start up the cold war again. Although he certainly is not helping matters at all.

[RebelOne]

144. Yup. Been there and done the duck and cover under the desks. n/t

[JackRiddler]

42. Duck and cover never really ended.

It was turned into Code Orange and the really sick surprise school-shooter drills with which children across the country are traumatized daily.

[DinahMoeHum]

44. "Kiss Your Ass Goodbye"

said it all for me (and I even had the poster!)

?cIr3PDeJ

[spanone]

57. i remember that poster!

[Cleita]

79. Yep, but long before it became a poster, it was said by the

older kids who were still forced to do the drills but who knew it was shit. I remember giggling about it with a classmate while under the desk.

[Brigid]

85. I remember that poster too.

Ah, the memories!

[RKP5637]

45. In my early youth I was afraid of Germany, then later the cold war. We used to

either go under the desk with hands over our heads in a braced position or in the halls, on the hall floor, in a braced position, always being told to keep our eyes closed and to not look at the bright light of an explosion. Building air raid shelters in back yards was vogue for some.

I grew up near a major munitions plant, a very large DOD facility and a major shipping port. We were a target for sure. They also built aircraft carriers, etc. down the way.

Even as a little kid, I used to wonder WTF, because I had seen films at the movies what areas looked like after an atomic bomb blast.

My parents house had an air raid siren on the telephone pole down the street. Every Saturday at 12 noon, it was supposed to sound, but it never worked, all one heard was a telephone on the same pole ring. Someone must have hooked it up wrong. Our school had the yellow shelter signs posted all over it. Thinking back, it was pretty freaky and frightening. ... but as kids it just seemed the thing to do, we were born into it.

All of this crap going on with Putin reminds me of those years, and he reminds me of the leaders of those years. To me, it's like history is starting to repeat, and those were not pleasant years. I also recall us having to have blankets on all of the windows in the house at night so our towns could not be seen from air. My sister was also part of the civilian air patrol and used to watch for airplanes in the sky on weekends.

The movie intermissions were always filled with status on the front and later what the communists were up to and all.

[Cleita]

86. We still have an air raid siren at the bottom of our property.

Every now and then they test it and it's very loud. It upsets all the dogs, horses and other animals. Today it's supposed to warn us about a nuclear meltdown from our local nuke plant. It will be just as effective. I mean what could go wrong in an area with major earthquake faults, situated by the ocean and with fracking being done off shore and proposed for future onshore?



Strangely, nobody gives a shit because there's money to be made, a few jobs and taxes for us and gobs of it for Wall Street.

[Downwinder]

48. Duck and cover was only for the cities.

If you were out in the sticks where you could see the tests, you were encouraged to come out and watch. You were urged to hide from a bomb 400 miles away and watch one 50 miles away.

[grilled onions]

49. The Fear We Had As Kids

It started when Krushev banged his shoe on a table and that little episode was replayed in news reels at school. The worst thing you could be called was a dirty commie. Russia was thee enemy. We were convinced the Russians would come one day and murder us in our sleep.
As kids we did not realize this was total propaganda from the White House, the War Machine and so many who had just come off of war and couldn't wait to jump in again.
We were taught how to look for bomb shelters around town. Those rusty signs were around but somehow you doubted places like the post office would be thrilled to have kids with Lik-A-Maid faces march into the bowels of their building,among the stamps,post cards and boxes when the big one came!

[dflprincess]

51. One of my coworkers grew up in Moscow

she is a good 25 years younger than I which probably makes her parents (still in Moscow) about my age. They are coming to visit in a couple months and I asked her to ask them is kids in the USSR had the same experience U.S. Boomers did with the whole duck and cover crap (or the Soviet equivalent).

She had never heard of anything like that but did tell me when she was a kid she was scared to death of Ronald Reagan and thought he was the most evil person ever. I told her I did to - and I was in my 30s then.

[Enthusiast]

111. You were both right. Ronald Reagan was evil.

And dumb. Mostly he was just dumb.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

142. I had a similar experience with visiting scholars from China

We talked about the Cold War, and I mentioned that we were told that China had developed nukes in order to bomb the U.S. The Chinese looked shocked and said, "No, we were told that our country needed nukes to protect us from the U.S."

[pipi_k]

52. Dirty kid-terrorizing bastards

We didn't do duck and cover under the desks

We were taken into the basement and told to line up facing the ugly green painted brick wall and cover our heads

Being a kid, I thought that would magically save me from the bomb(s), but the rest of my family would die. Horrible thing for a kid to think, and I never told anyone...just kept my fears to myself

Now, all these years later I realize that going into the basement would have done shit. Not if there was an Air Force base nearby (there was...less than 15 miles away) that might have been a target

And there likely wouldn't have been time for all the kids in the school to get to the basement in an orderly fashion anyway

We were dead any way you looked at it

I spent years as a child being afraid of being blown up in my bed at night, and dreading the sound of those horrible air raid sirens

[Brother Buzz]

53. That duck and cover shit was for wussies

The army taught me prioritize things by laying face down and grabbing my crotch with both hands. It always seemed like sound advice to me.

[Brigid]

59. Yep, been having Cold War flashbacks lately.

All we need now is for Putin to bang a shoe on a desk at the UN.

[jtuck004]

61. Recovery in manufacturing as we build 316,000,000 new desks... n/t

[El Supremo]

62. Our friends up the street built a bomb shelter.

Only problem was that it was miles away (10-15) and they would probably never be able to get to it.

[scarletwoman]

63. No one's going to nuke anybody - that's strictly old school.

These days they'll just fuck up your shit with trade pacts.

[Generic Other]

64. A blast from the past

[pipi_k]

143. Seeing this

Hurts my heart

The utter naive futility of it all...

[kardonb]

66. cold war

the cold war NEVER ended , it just simmered for a while . Putin , now, feels strong enough to try to reassemble the good old Soviet Union .

[2banon]

68. Raised during the early years of Cold War, finally de-programmed from all the Hate Commie Rhetoric

Well I did that a few decades ago..

In any event, if you haven't noticed that we have a hand in restarting the new cold war officially starting today, then you've got some homework to do, my friend.

All of this was knowable, predicable and preventable. <big sigh>

[Thor_MN]

70. Never had Duck & Cover, but did have Nuclear Missile Base about a mile from school.

It was a nuclear tipped BOMARC anti-aircraft missile base. The range of the missiles would just reach the Canadian border, so if they were ever used, it would be over US territory. The base was decommissioned while I was school, but for three or four years, my bus passed 4000 feet from 12 Hiroshima's worth of warheads, twice a day.

[reformist2]

71. This is not your father's cold war - it's a silly parody version, play acting.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

72. Putin is an old KGB guy and he will not change.

He's got his thinking the way he likes it. People don't usually change.

Or as my wise father said, "A bureaucrat is FOREVER."

That's what he said after the Soviet Union fell in 1989.

[SummerSnow]

73. I remember there was many fallout shelter signs in NYC. I also

remember those air raid drills in school where we had to face the wall in case Russia attacked us.

[valerief]

74. I remember going to sleep many, many nights wondering if that was the night

we'd be blown up. And then I had that DMT spurt and the elves and alien came and I had a new thing to worry about for the next 5 or 6 years.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

76. The biggest secret of the Cold War was,....

...their generals and spies and diplomats and our generals and spies and diplomats were meeting on the side with lots of drinking and hookers.

[BeyondGeography]

80. We still have plenty of fallout shelter signs in old NY

We're prepared.

[longship]

82. "THIS IS A CONELRAD ALERT!"

Tune your radio to 640 or 1240 for an important announcement.

I repeat.

THIS IS A CONELRAD ALERT!!

Tune your radio to 640 or 1240 for an important announcements.

[tea and oranges]

83. Cuban Missile Crises, South Florida,

High School. We didn't do our homework. It didn't matter. Neither parents nor teachers had the will to even mention it. Nothing mattered. The planes flew overhead constantly day & night. No one could sleep. We were zombies. Death & destruction was most assuredly just across the water.

The planes drowned our voices & spoke our fear. We went through the motions of ordinary life until it was over; I'm sure that's what kept us from breaking.

If you think I'm playing Drama Queen, I still visualize those days as grey, the sky dark w/ planes, the menace palpable.

It's no accident that an anti-nukes movement was formed by the people, who terrorized by nukes in their youth, decided they didn't want future generations, their own children, to be similarly mistreated.

[MindPilot]

90. My father was in the Air Force, at Wright-Patterson during that time

Everything you say is true; I recall the skies dark with 52s, dad getting that 3am phone call and having to pack...quickly.

[tea and oranges]

94. Oh no!

That would have been terrifying to have your dad enter that maelstrom! Those truly were hellish days.

[brooklynboy49]

88. Worst of all...

At least we had great music as a sountrack to our childhood and adolescence. I was 13 and a freshman in high school when The Beatles first appeared on Ed Sulluvan. I've always said the 60s were tumultuous, a difficult time to live through. But at least we had great music! I feel very fortunate to have grown up to the British Invasion, Motown and bands like The Doors and The Beach Boys.

[hfojvt]

93. "learn goddamit"

[3catwoman3]

96. I was born in 1951.

My mom would have built a bomb shelter in a heartbeat if we could have afforded it. We kept bottled water, canned food, and paper products in our basement for years.

She had lists of instructions taped to the wall of the stairs as to what we were to do should there be an attack when neither she nor my dad were home. At the bottom of each handwritten note, in capital letters, was, "WALK, DO NOT RUN, DOWN THE STAIRS." She was afraid we would be so scared that we would fall down the stairs and break our necks in the haste to seek cover in the basement. It felt as if she thought the communists were responsible for every evil in the world, even, it seemed, dust bunnies under the beds.

I would really hate to see us go back to that crap again.

[flamingdem]

99. haha too true

I had to duck and cover, what a thing to tell a kid to do! As if it would help.. very anti-science. We need to let go of the cold war.

[Hoyt]

101. Nope. I refuse to do that junk again. Unlikely to happen, but if it does

I'll walk outside and tan in the radiation. Had enough of fear and sabre rattling. Good luck to everyone but the warmongers.

[rppper]

102. My father was in the army until '75...

But he was special forces and we lived in the Canal Zone and Jackson Ms, and I was much to young to think about nuclear war. Dad never brought it home. The reality didn't hit until dad retired and we moved to NE Texas in the late 70s/early 80s, where we were an hours drive from Barksdale AFB in Shreveport, La....home to 1/3 of the nations strategic bombers...

Again, I was living in Mississippi and Texas during these times....when we ducked and covered it was for tornado drills, but we all knew Barksdale would definitely be nuked and we would all die....we just accepted it.

[MindPilot]

116. Yeah, for us military kids it was very real.

I recall being fascinated with my dad's dosimeter, and trying to reconcile what that whole radiation thing meant. Was his skin going to start falling off? Would he turn into a monster or a superhero? As it turned out, neither; after a couple strokes and some cancer, he didn't make 70.

[rppper]

125. Was he Navy?

I did nearly a decade on subs myself...always within 150 feet of a reactor and/or warheads....I wore a forward dosimeter, the engineers wore a different one.

My father had a run in with colon cancer in '72....his exposure would have been chemical though. He is a 40+ year survivor though....he'll probably outlive me! Lol

[Blue_Roses]

103. so true

Nt

[napi21]

106. I remember duck & cover AND being ushered to the cafeteria to stand

up against the wall and lean on it. The cafeteria was in the basement of the church so it was totally underground, and the walls were glazed tile embedded in cement. I also remember a little ditty they sang about duck & cover. I never knew anyone who built a bomb shelter, but my dad used to talk about building one.

Even back then, I thought the whole thing was kinda crazy. I was only in 2nd or 3rd grade, but I saw pictures of a bomb explosion, and I knew if something like that happened near us, we'd all be toast and a wall or desk wouldn't be any protection. Of course, we were all forced to do it anyway.

[TheKentuckian]

108. 50's and 60's? Shit we were still doing kiss your ass goodbye almost to the end

Seems like sometime in the 80's it kinda switched over go the more catch all disaster drill covering earthquakes, tornadoes, and bombing.

[hobbit709]

112. My earliest memories are of the occupation troops in the streets of Vienna.

I lived in the American sector but most of my relatives lived in the Soviet sector.
I remember having an American passport while my mother had Austrian identity papers.
This went on until 1955.

[LeftishBrit]

117. I remember as a little kid thinking that I wanted to be very rich one day, not for the usual reasons

though to be honest they probably played some part, but so that I would be able to give 'all the soldiers' money not to drop the atom bomb!

I also wondered why bomb demolition people couldn't just go around and destroy every atom bomb in the entire world, so that we didn't have to worry about them any more.

So obviously I worried about atomic war; but we didn't actually do the duck-and-cover bit in late 60s England.

[Peacetrain]

118. Just popped in and saw this

I wondered the same thing.. why they just could not all be destroyed and that would be that.

[LWolf]

119. We never stopped doing duck and cover drills.

Except that now, they are earthquake, not bombing, drills.

[PowerToThePeople]

123. unrec

drama.

There is not going to be another cold war.

[bvar22]

130. One thing for sure, Putin is no "idiot".

He may be a Sociopath, a Narcissist, and even a Megalomaniac....
but he is no idiot,
and to dismiss him as one is a grave mistake.

He played with George Bush,
and even made John Kerry and President Obama look like they slept late that day over Syria.

We (The USA) will do nothing about The Ukraine,
because there is NOTHING we can do beyond call them bad names.
SEE: The "Sanctions" announced by President Obama yesterday.

[tosh]

131. I still know where the FALLOUT shelters are.

((LOL but not really.))

[MineralMan]

132. It's not the same situation at all.

The nuclear threat is not anything like it was back then. We appear to have evolved enough not to wave our big nuclear genitals around at each other any more. We still have them, but we keep them well-covered up these days.

So, right now, we have Russian (not the USSR) looking to control Crimea. Not surprising, given the Russian ethinic supermajority on that peninsula. Nobody's flying bombers around or doing nuclear weapons tests.

2014 is a very different world than the world of the 50s and 60s.

No need to build your fallout shelter just now, like my father did in 1961. No need at all.

[whathehell]

138. Funny, I was just thinking about that today...We're not going to war with Russia..

I was born into the "Cold War" and spent most of my adult life in it -- I honestly never thought

communism, would end in my lifetime and felt that "peaceful co-existence" was the answer.

If, after all of that, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Checkpoint Charlie and all the rest of it,

we managed to avoid a war with Russia, it would be absolutely absurd to get into one Ukraine and Crimea.

Let the Euros handle it. It's their turf, after all.

[idendoit]

139. And we used to tune in to Sat. kids shows.

Skyking, Davey Crocket, Lone Ranger, Roy Rodgers, et al. That was my escape fix. Besides our emergency drills, south of KC, were centered more around tornadoes. I lived through a couple of bad ones and was a lot more afraid of them than crazy Nikki banging his shoe on the table at the UN. Even during the Cuban missile crisis.

[dflprincess]

141. So did anyone else go to a school where they had an air raid drill that timed how long it would

take to get the kiddies home?

This happened at my elementary school during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Those of us who were "walkers" were told we had to get home as quickly as possible and then our moms (who were all home in those days) recorded what time we got home on a card we took back to school the next day. We weren't told exactly why this was being done just that it was important that we not dawdle getting home and I, at least the kids I walked to school with all took it seriously.

I don't know when it dawned on me that it was done to see if we could be sent home to die with our families if it came to that. We were living near Buffalo, NY at the time and it was assumed that the steel plants (and I think some nike missile sites) would make the area a target.

Being only 9 I didn't realize the gravity of the situation until our TV broke. My brother and I always considered that a tragedy but our parents did not. After hauling our set off to the shop, the TV repairman came back with a loaner - that had never happened before and I heard him tell my mom that he thought they should have TV so they could watch Kennedy's speech that night not just listen to the radio.