KA-BOOM!! Your fears about nuclear war (+ your age)

[Bucky]

I'm fixing to teach the Cold War next semester. In fact, it takes up more than half the semester. It seems from my previous year's experience teaching that today's kids have a completely different viewpoint about nuclear weapons than what we had when I was their age. I'm wondering what DUers from various ages recall about their attitudes regarding nukes, M.A.D., and the threat of it all.

Three possible answers...

• Growing up, I thought there was a very grave chance (or even fully expected) that there would be some kind of nuclear war in my lifetime
  
• Growing up, I thought there was at least a somewhat serious threat of nuclear war and that US & Soviet leaders needed to work to prevent
  
• Growing up, I was aware there were nukes, but I was pretty sure they would never be used (or I just never thought about it)
  

... plus three possible age groups.

• I was born before 1950
  
• I was born between 1950 and 1975
  
• I was born after 1975
  

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. If you are old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis

you likely thought we'd be vaporized. Very scary times.

[dflprincess]

8. Or just old enough to remember Duck & Cover

and the air raid drills at school.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis my elementary school (I was in fourth grade) ran a drill to see how long it took kids to get home. This was just south of Buffalo, NY which everyone assumed would be a target because of the steel plants and they apparently wanted to see if there would be time to send us home to die with our families.

And people wonder why so many Boomers had trouble planning for the future.

[kohodog]

11. Duck and cover

I remember being sent home from grade school and told to hide in the basement or under a bed during the Cuban missile crisis. I heard about prople who built bomb shelters on the news and didn't think I'd ever get to be a teenager. And all the yellow and black signs on buildings that indicated they'd be ok to go to in case of radiation.

Future, what future? No wonder we never bought into the system.

[pipi_k]

44. OMG that just gives me chills....

We weren't sent home during drills...we were taken to the basement and told to line up facing the wall in a squat, with our fingers laced behind our heads. Actually now that I think of it, it resembled suspects being lined up by the police before being searched and handcuffed, but whatever...


Now I don't know which is worse...being sent home to die with your family, or being kept in the school where, kids being kids, we thought we would be perfectly safe while our families died without us, leaving us orphaned.


God. Those bastards did a number on us, didn't they? I want to cry for all of us.

[Matariki]

75. You've got to wonder if it was some sort of psyops, don't you?

I mean whoever came up with that shit had to know it wouldn't save anyone from anything, but it sure made kids fear and hate the communists.

[Hatchling]

88. I remember being crouched on the cold marble floor.

Being told it was just a drill, but thinking they wouldn't really tell us if it was the real thing. I would wait for the heat blast from the bomb. I could imagine it frying my back. I had read a lot of SF novels so I knew the "duck and cover" was useless.

A whole generation suffers PTSD from those drills.

[madokie]

49. Or why many of us cannot embrace nuclear power now

[dflprincess]

60. That too

good point.

[murielm99]

31. Yup.

I checked out our crawl space. I was trying to decide if my family could survive down there until most of the radiation settled. I was thirteen, and I wondered if I would live to be old enough to wear lipstick and date. I know that sounds shallow, but I was an eighth grader!

[Raine]

81. Yup I had nightmares that I still remember

even though I was just 10 yrs old. We had drop drills at school where we got under our desks and covered our eyes and neck with our hands (like that would've saved us...not). :scared:

edit: added a couple of words.

[scubadude]

2. I've got a nice tune that goes to the song "Ring around a rosie"...

Ring around a Proton
A pocket full of Neutrons
A fission
A fission

WE ALL FALL DOWN!!!

Scuba

[StarfarerBill]

3. I was born in 1964,

and growing up and into my early adult years, I thought there was a possibility of nuclear war but never obsessed about it.

My dreams in my teen-early adult years (1978-1988, thereabouts), however, were a different story: I often woke up in a panic after having a nightmare of seeing a mushroom cloud looming above me; I guess that was my subconscious telling me to worry about something that my conscious mind was too ignorant of to take seriously.

[closeupready]

9. OMG, you and I had the exact same experience.

I vividly recall one time back in 1979 waking up in a sweat while having a nightmare about nuclear war/fallout.

You know what, I think it's possible that 3 Mile Island was a kind of generational trigger, because that is just too weird, the similarity in age and experience.

[StarfarerBill]

12. It could be that Three Mile Island triggered those dreams.

I do know that as prevalent as the fear of nuclear annihilation was at the time and as ignorant as I was of it in my waking life, my dreams seemed to be the only outlet for a quite sensible anxiety.

But as I've found since then, I wasn't alone in my unconscious horror of being atomized...and I've now met someone else who shared that fear.

[closeupready]

14. I'm glad we didn't get atomized. LOL

Aren't you? :) :hi:

[StarfarerBill]

16. lol. Yep, I am too.

Happy to meet you, fellow survivor. :hi:

[Bucky]

26. I dunno... if they'd taken out Wyoming would that really be so bad?

There's a few spots in Idaho we could probably do without too. But for the other 48 states, yes, I'm glad we never got nuked.

[romana]

29. Me, too!

Wow, same here. I was born in 1965 but had dreams about nuclear strikes and the aftermath all through the late 70s. Very vivid dreams, too. I read "On the Beach" at an early age, which I think triggered some of it. Three Mile Island probably contributed as well--that's an intriguing suggestion.

[StarfarerBill]

51. Yeah...looking back, perhaps reading novels like "A Canticle for Liebowitz" and "Level 7"...

...as well as watching movies like "Dr. Strangelove", "Fail-Safe", "The Day After", and "Testament", didn't help my nightmares any. :P

[mochajava666]

53. A Canticle for Liebowitz and Level 7

were assigned readings in high school. Add "On the Beach" to that list also.

[StarfarerBill]

62. Sounds like you went to a cool high school, dood.

I couldn't even get my senior-year English Lit teacher to consider assigning works by H.G. Wells.

[Terry in Austin]

76. "Alas, Babylon," too -nt

[csziggy]

83. That was the one that got me - it was set near where I grew up

We were less than fifty miles from McDill Air Force Base with the prevailing winds from that direction. I knew damn well that if someone set off the bombs, we were toast.

My Dad planned on trying to get us to his mother's house since it had a partial basement - really just an enclosed area under the house that was formed by the slope to the lake. But the open side faced McDill so it would have been no protection at all. Even at eleven, I knew that was no good.

I read a lot of science fiction and in those days a good portion of it was how to survive a nuclear war or how to live in the aftermath. Pretty early along, I decided I would rather die than go through the aftermath.

[Quantess]

4. It was a fairly looming threat in the late 1970s to mid 1980s.

The possibility of World War III involving nuclear war was on peoples minds then.

[Bucky]

18. That's something to think about. I do recall thinking that Gorbochev had calmed things down a lot

He uniquely understood how bad off his country was and did what he could (fortunately too late) to put the Soviet Union on a survival track. They just couldn't afford to divert resources out of an already grossly inefficient system for a war they wouldn't survive anyway. Just madness all around.

From our perspective today, it's easy to just give credit to Reagan for playing ball with Gorby when they began the START talks. I'm afraid most histories are going to totally ignore the influence that the West's anti-nuclear movement had on the course of events, making arms reduction a logical move that both sides really stood so much to gain by. When ordinary people in a democracy put forward a great idea, it tends to happen eventually--even if someone else ends up getting all the credit for it.

[Stinky The Clown]

5. Count me as old and formerly scared shitless.

I still recall the duck and cover drills.

We had actual atomic bomb drills at our school. We went to the basement and sat on the floor along the walls with ... *get this* ... sheets of paper on our heads to protect against fallout.

I had nightmares about nuclear war.

[Kool Kitty]

22. You can include me in that count, too.

Hiding under our desks or standing facing the wall in the school hallway. Yikes. I still get chills remembering that and how frightened I was.

[marmar]

6. I was born in 1972, and was a middle schooler in the Reagan-Andropov era....

..... and I thought for sure we were going to be wiped off the planet.


I think your date classifications need a little adjustment. 1950-1975 is a rather wide swath.

[GreenPartyVoter]

10. '71 here and I was scared to death.

[AwakeAtLast]

25. '70 here and me, too

I would lie awake at night and shiver in my bed if I heard a plane above my house. Silly now, but not back then!

[GreenPartyVoter]

74. I remember seeing something silver in the sky and was convinced it was a missile, but it turned

out to just be a plane.

[trotsky]

55. Another '71er, and I thought The Day After was a glimpse of our certain future. n/t

[GreenPartyVoter]

73. Oy! We watched that in class in 5th grade. Totally freaked me out.

[Bucky]

19. Agreed. I was trying to split the experience of the Cold War into its two halfs

There's the duck and cover generation, which peaked out at the Cuban Missile Crisis, and then there's the Red Phone/Detente/Reagan years crowd (like me) who grew up under the shadow, but in a time when some more safety protocols had been put into place, but also who grew up taking ICBMs and MIRVs for granted. I think we tend to forget how much of a game changer those missiles were... turning the threat of war from the president sending out the bomber planes to the president just pushing The Button.

Most days I think, well of course we avoided nuclear war. But the more I look at the details of the Cold War, the more amazed I am that there were only two serious scares and not any actual exchanges of hostilities between the superpowers. We really got lucky there.

[bananas]

59. You should read Martin Hellman's paper on the failure rate of deterrence

and watch his google tech talks video: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x419275
A couple of articles in the January issue of Scientific American: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4209238&mesg_id=4209389
More related info: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=185354&mesg_id=185354

The Doomsday Clock still lists nuclear war as the #1 threat:

http://www.thebulletin.org/content/doomsday-clock/overview

It is 5 Minutes to Midnight


Doomsday Clock Overview
Overview

The Doomsday Clock conveys how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction--the figurative midnight--and monitors the means humankind could use to obliterate itself. First and foremost, these include nuclear weapons, but they also encompass climate-changing technologies and new developments in the life sciences that could inflict irrevocable harm.

<snip>

[dysfunctional press]

7. born in 1961- i never thought that it was very likely at all.

:shrug:

[bananas]

58. It's likely to happen

unless serious changes are made:

"As explained in the paper, there is preliminary evidence that deterrence can be expected to work for about 100 years, which is far too high a risk. Aside from concern for future generations, that time horizon implies roughly a 1% chance of failure in any given year and a 10% chance of failure in any decade. With a 100 year time horizon, every 15 years is like pulling the trigger in a game of Russian roulette in which the whole world is at stake. Every 30 years is like pulling the trigger twice in that suicidal game. A sane person would never play Russian roulette even once. Neither would a sane world."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x419275

[dysfunctional press]

72. i never thought that it was likely in my lifetime...

and i still don't.
i don't really care what happens once i'm gone. :shrug:

[Ikonoklast]

13. Born in '55, and I remember the NIKE sites locked down, on full alert

and ready to launch during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Watched the sky full of contrails from bombers flying north out of WPAFB, and munitions being flown out of the Ravenna Arsenal.

So, yes, things weren't looking too peachy at the time.

That fear was far more real to me than any threat of a possible terrorist attack.

[hayu_lol]

15. Born in '35 and remember the bomb drills we had in...

grades 2-5. We had pads that we brought from home. At the sound of the alarm, we quietly walked out of our classrooms into the large central corridor where we unrolled our pads and lay down on them.

That was for conventional bombing of course.

The fire drills were always separate.

[cabluedem]

36. Born 55. Never bothered me at all. More scared of getting Cancer. nt

[MindPilot]

63. '54 and my dad was in the AF -- stationed at Wright Pat

We lived in Cincinnati, and I remember the same thing--the sky just being black with B52s. Engine noise and sonic booms that seemed to never stop. Lining up in the basement of the school in crouched position away from the windows.

And like you I can't find much to fear from "terrorists"; at least the people we were afraid of actually existed and had real weapons.

[debbierlus]

17. Do you remember the movie 'The Day After'?

1983

Scared the living shit out of me. I was 12 years old, so my parents probably should not have let me watch it.

I remember not sleeping for a week and I was terrified of nuclear war for months on end after that damn movie.

[Bucky]

23. Lots of bad craziness then. Was "The Day After" the miniseries or the Jane Alexander movie?

There was a great movie, released in theaters about that time, where William Devane was the dad who got killed in San Francisco (tho they didn't know for sure he'd died until they end) and Jane Alexander was the mom in the bedroom community that saw no direct effects, but just slowly died out after the EMP killed their electronics and the government was all gone and she had to bury two of her three children after they slowly died of cancer.

That was even a bigger bummer than the miniseries, which at least had commercial interruptions to remind us we could still go out get Big Macs tomorrow.

[Bluenorthwest]

45. Jane Alexander and Devane in 'Testament' theatrical film

Jason Robards Jr etc in 'The Day After' mini series. 1983 both of them. Good memory trick!

[pipi_k]

46. Yep....and I was 31

Absolutely terrified. Nightmares, upset stomachs, feelings of unreality, anxiety.

For months afterward.

[harun]

61. I was younger, I was not allowed to watch it, but everyone telling me about

it still scared the sh*t out of me.

[beac]

67. I have a friend who was SEVEN when a wretched babysitter let him watch it.

To add to the complete inappropriateness of it all, he lived in Lawrence, Kansas at the time! So, it was his actual hometown right there on the teevee just teeming full of radiation victims, widespread panic and general devastation.

Imagine how pleased his parents were-- only $5-an-hour for an entire childhood full of vivid and oh-so-realistic nightmares!

[Journeyman]

20. I was at Minot in '73 when Nixon sent us to DEFCON 3. . .

over developments in the Yom Kippur War. Even at the time, most citizens had no idea how close we came to nuclear war. But I was at the epicenter as the third greatest nuclear force on the planet readied for "battle," so I bore witness. It all proved for nought, however -- the Soviets stood down, Nixon sobered up, and US forces returned to base and locked away the launch codes. But as I said, most citizens had no idea the threat level had increased. It reinforces a belief I formed that frosty morning in North Dakota. . .

The only difference between the front line and the home front is your sense of perception -- if you know it's happening, you're a participant in modern nuclear warfare; if not, you're blissfully unaware you're in the midst of a war.

[Bucky]

24. I remember reading somewhere that Kissinger had to put off a call from Paris coz of Tricky

Henry's comment to Haldeman on the transcript that the president was "out of it" but obviously they didn't go into whether it was scotch or quaaludes (or both) he was out on. Scary.

But yes, people overlook the '73 scare cause it was less dramatic than Cuba '62 and got less play on TV. Imagine the effect of a nuke scare if the Cold War had continued under Clinton and a showdown happened during the worst of the Lewinsky mess. The idea of distracting a president with a personal lawsuit, however deserved, while he's president is just crazy. Nine to zero votes on teh Supreme Court crazy.

[era veteran]

39. I was on the East German border, Fulda Gap, around Bad Hersfeld on a

regular practice 'alert' , For you neocons Nixxxon had just cut our fuel budget so we were on foot with our tanks, 3/3/33 Armor, 60 klicks west. We used to always drive them up the Autobahn. It scared the shit out of me watching the Red Army detrain their tanks across the border.We had to sneak back at night, combat load them and drive back up the Autobahn in broad daylight. President James E. Carter gave us more money so it would not happen again. With Watergate next I resigned from the Republican Party (and Young Republicans) and been a left leaning Independent ever since. One of the most tense 48 hours of my life. I was prepared to die on the North German Plain . Cuba was scary, we lived in Augusta GA # 18 on Commie hit list, The bomb plant and Ft. Gordon. Just because I haven't said it for a while Fuck Nixxxon! I was born 1953 Ft Clayton Panama Canal Zone. Zoneless in America

[DevonRex]

57. Hoo boy. That brings back memories. Anybody who ever listened in on

the Russians during their practice nuclear launches knows real fear. And Fulda Gap was the epicenter. Glad you made it out safely.

[era veteran]

87. The W Germans living close to the border liked Americans a lot more than the

rest of the country. The Fulda Gap area is a beautiful part of the world. Glad we were able to leave it that way. Peace, Richard

[Hippo_Tron]

93. Some people think that even thas been hyped up, though

Nixon called it his "Cuban Missile Crisis" but some people think that's a bunch of crap. Taking the military to DEFCON 3 could've been nothing more than a bluff on Nixon's part. The Soviets, however, certainly weren't willing to call his bluff.

[Individualist]

21. Born in '43, and I remember October '62

Thank God JFK was president then.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

27. Ever see the silm Panic in Year Zero!

It was on TMC a few days ago.

[AlienGirl]

28. 1973. My class talked about what we'd do if we grew up.

[DangerousRhythm]

80. 1974 here... same deal.

I used to have nuclear nightmares regularly and of course too much of my favorite music (new wave, specifically) seemed to be nuke related in the very early 80s. This poll astonishes me just a bit, how concentrated into one or two generations the fear is and how people born after a certain year seem to have little to no concern about the issue. I shouldn't be shocked, I guess, but well... I still kind of am. :\

I almost feel like these people should watch a British movie called Threads, which is much more horrifying to me than The Day After. The latter actually gave me quite a few nightmares I can still remember to this day!

[thelordofhell]

30. I didn't think anyone was crazy enough to start a nuclear war

Then ronald reagan was elected President.......I was so scared that old fossil was going to kill us all. I should have been more scared of his dismal domestic policies.

[rucky]

32. My mom was a pretty big no-nuke activist in the 70's/80's

Which is cool, I suppose - but her activism was driven by a real fear & it scared the shit out of me and my brothers at a young age.

[Spider Jerusalem]

33. Born in 1977, and I thought nuclear war was quite likely at one time

but then, my father was on the front lines of the Cold War (he was in anti-submarine warfare, in P-3 Orions, hunting Soviet submarines over the North Atlantic...and did a tour aboard the USS Dwight D Eisenhower at the time of the Iranian hostage crisis). So my own perceptions of the early and mid-1980's may be coloured by that.

[Golden Raisin]

34. Born pre-1950

and raised with "Duck & Cover", fall-out shelters, 'Failsafe', 'On the Beach', Cuban Missile Crisis, Khrushchev haranguing, "We will bury you!", etc.

[elocs]

35. I was born in 1952 and never really worried much about it.

Besides, where would worrying get me.

I can remember in the 9th grade in junior high having an Earth Science teacher who told us that if we got nuked they probably would not keep us at school, but instead send us home to die there. Such honesty was nice.

[Echo In Light]

37. It'll likely happen just when the consensus "reality" dictates for most that it's impossible

Translation = It wasn't discussed in the M$M, so we didn't think there was any real concern.

[zeemike]

38. Born in 43 I thought it possible but unlikely because of MAD.

Only a mad man like Hitler would do such a thing when it meant the destruction of his country and the world
And for all his bluster Krucheft was no mad man like Hitler...and the was born out by the Cuban crissis....I was in the military during that event and we were proud of how JFK handled it.

[Bucky]

40. "Mad man like Hitler..."

Hitler instigated more than his share of war crimes against the innocent. But it's worth noting that he never ordered the German military to employ poisonous gas, as had been the case among the non-mad men running all the countries in World War One. Hitler in this less drastic case certainly complied with the rules of M.A.D. avoidance.

Hitler wasn't crazy, just obsessive. He wasn't delusional, just evil.

[zeemike]

41. That may well be true.

But he did not use gas because it is not that effective and can have unexpected results...Had he developed the A bomb first now that could be a different thing.
But even a psychopath would think twice about attacking if they knew the they, and their whole country would be destroyed.

The mad men (or woman) that we must fear is one the believes that they were chosen by God to bring about the destruction of the world.

[madokie]

42. I still don't like anything nuclear

born in '48

I remember the Cuban missile crises like it was last week.

[pipi_k]

43. Born in 1952...I honestly thought, and feared, that a nuclear war would happen

Duck and cover...the Soviet threat...images of Kruschev banging his shoe on the table yelling, "We will bury you!!!"...the Cuban missile crisis...those huge, awful yellow air raid sirens on public buildings (replacing the smaller ones) and how they would be tested each Friday at noon. The sound they made was, to me, blood curdling. There was no place to hide.

I spent many sleepless hours waiting for one to go off in the middle of the night, signaling an imminent nuclear attack.

I was literally terrorized as a child, and lived with that terror well into my adulthood.

[MindPilot]

69. Oh good lord, that mother-fucking siren!

I would aways try to be home from school by the time that thing went off; if I wasn't I would break into a terrified run for my life. I don't think I ever really understood it was a test. Only a test.

[comtec]

91. We still have that fucking thing here in Holland, every 1st Monday at 12

It's disturbing as hell!
The entire country, the first monday at 12 of every month.
Ever since *co ramped up things after 9/11
I was born in 75, and I'm still haunted by it all.

I was 15 in HS, and remember crystal clear when I heard the air raid sirens in Israel over my mate's head phones on his walkman.

We were rehearsing for a play...and we all thought we were going to die in a nuclear fireball (this was just before Desert Storm of course)

It's something you never forget, as you all know.

LOL "kids today" really don't know how good they have it.
And I would not have it any other way.

However my dad was a gov tech, and my insurance was Kaiser growing up.
As Cadillac as it got back then.

[MadrasT]

77. I grew up 10 miles from Middletown PA

And the sirens went off for real when TMI "happened". I was 12, out riding my bike, about 3 miles from home.

I was petrified (having spent my entire childhood convinced the commies were going to nuke us any second.)

:yoiks:

That was the fastest you have ever seen a 12 year old cover 3 miles on a bicycle...

[caitxrawks]

47. i was born in 1988, and

I've honestly never had huge fears about nuclear weapons. I know there's always the off chance that it might happen, but I've never gone into total "OMFG" mode about it. I'm terrified of much more likely things, like dying in a car crash or getting cancer or some crap.

[Iggo]

48. Born in the very early sixties...

...into a world where the threat of nuclear war was already a matter of fact. I was still pretty much a baby when the bejeezus was scared out of my parents during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I tried not to obsess about nuclear war. In school we learned about Mutually Assured Destruction. But I think by the time I was a teenager I started to realize that, outside the madman scenario, the big-boom war was unlikely.

[surrealAmerican]

50. The schools I went to made a concerted effort ...

... to keep us uninformed. We had what they called "air raid drills", which your teachers would never explain. We had no idea why we were squatting in the hall and covering our heads.

[BlueIris]

52. Born in '79, and I always felt they would be used. The worst time in my life was Jan-June '05,

when I woke up every day thinking that was the day I would find out a nuclear detonation had taken place here (to justify the U.S. invading Iran). But I'm not like most Gen-Xers I know, who either don't have a fucking clue, or have lapsed back into denial.

[niyad]

54. as a teen, I lived right next to NORAD--and, after the third time the sirens went off, I decided

that, being essentially at ground zero (having read wylie's "triumph" also) that it really didn't matter. that was the moment they stopped being able to scare me. a fatalistic sense of inevitability? possibly, but from that day forward, I was determined to live my life and just not worry about it-- que sera, sera.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

56. I was a school kid in Las Vegas. We were able to see a test from the schoolyard.

The teachers took the whole school out to watch. Kind of disappointing. A flash followed by the mushroom cloud. Then, back to the "duck & cover" drills.

[StarfarerBill]

64. Cripes. I'd probably still be having my nuclear-war nightmares if I'd seen that.

:wow:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

65. I was a helluva lot more scared in '62 when they locked us in our barracks.

Our squadron's planes had been junked and we were waiting to TransPac to Japan. The rest of the base (MCAS El Toro) was moved out of the "target area". They literally locked us down in case any of us decided we'd rather not be vaporized and hightail it.

[StarfarerBill]

66. I can definitely see that. Fortunately for me, I was born two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I don't really recall a similar scare anywhere close to that; my frights came from books, movies, and TV. I'm very lucky in that regard, I know. :)

[MindPilot]

68. I find it interesting that many people born in the 70s

recount their fears of a nuclear strike.

For those of us born in the late forties and fifties we never knew anything but the threat of atomic bombs, and it was real because we really didn't know much about radiation which meant that there would be very little hesitation to use them. We honestly believed that if you could survive the blast and the initial fallout all would be fine.

By the 70's Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) and Launch On Warning were real concepts, we knew that there was some restraint on launching the missiles. We also knew by then that radiation was a long-term killer and the blast was just the very beginning of the bomb's destructive power.

Into the 80's the idea of nuclear winter was accepted in the scientific community and the fear I think by then had morphed from being scared of an attack or exchange to being more afraid of an accident.

I believe movies like Red Dawn and The Day After were produced to keep the Reagan-ear fear ginned up when most of the older people realized that the fear was largely unfounded.

Edited to add: Another thing that sends chills up my spine to this day is whenever I see an old radio with those little CD (remember when CD stood for Civil Defense?) symbols on the dial. Those indicated the radio frequencies that would be broadcasting "official" information.

[Xithras]

70. Child of the 70's who grew up under Reagan here.

While you may be right that MAD was well understood, you have to remember that those of us born in the 70's saw the Reagan era through the eyes of children. MAD meant that nuclear war would wipe out the entire world, and no sane person would ever want anything like that. At the same time, you have to remember that Reagan declared that the USSR was an "evil empire" in 1983, run by evil people promoting an evil worldview. Evil people, as every schoolchild knows, can do crazy things. Like blow up the world.

As an adult I can look back on it and I realize that it was a silly way of looking at things, but as an 8 year old, it made perfect sense at the time. We were children, lacking the experiences of the older generations, listening to our nations leadership describing how the world was going to end. We thought it was going to happen.

[MindPilot]

71. That's a good point.

I was 25 by Reagan's inauguration, well aware of how the Iranian hostage situation had been used to manipulate the election, and I never saw Reagan as any more than a doddering old fool and strongly suspected most of the rest of the world did too.

But yeah, I can see how that would be really scary to a kid. I didn't mean to discount the fears of those born later, just to say that I think they had a somewhat different source and a much greater degree of manipulation.

[NMMNG]

78. I grew up during the Cold War

OMG the Russians are going to nuke us, Reagan and Star Wars, movies like The Day After, etc. But while I had the possibility of nuclear war in mind I didn't think it a looming threat.

[Tippy]

79. Born in 1944....

Never worried much about nuclear war...Always figured our country was prepared....and always kind of thought why would anyone want to start a nuclear war knowing they in all probability would die also..

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, I felt confident Kennedy would keep a cool head and get us out of the mess we were in...

[Bucky]

82. Interesting that those 60 and over are less pessimistic than those age 34-59

It's probably too small a sample (and not nearly random enough) to be statistically significant. But I wonder if the first television generation is somehow more passive and inclined to feeling helpless when compared to the kids born in the 30s and 40s.

[yurbud]

84. This is why the War on Terror seemed like BULLSHIT from the start

we faced a real enemy with as many and sometimes more nukes than us and neither dared to pull the trigger.

If some small country got a handful of nukes, they know that if they launch them at us or give them to terrorists to detonate, they would be lucky to take out one of our cities before their entire country is heated to a million degrees and everyone there has a very bad day.

Under extreme duress, even George Tenet was forced to admit that if Saddam Hussein had nukes, he would not use them unless he was in danger of losing his regime, and even then it would be a losing proposition.

[Art_from_Ark]

85. I started school in the '60s in Arkansas

a little after the Cuban Missile Crisis. At that time, they still had the yellow-and-black "Fallout Shelter" signs on some public buildings (like the public library, which could have accommodated maybe 50 people at most), but they were starting to call them "disaster shelters". We probably had more to fear from a local missile silo going haywire (as one did in Searcy County in August 1965) than from Russian missiles. And I don't believe I ever did a "duck-and-cover" drill-- by then, it had morphed into a "tornado drill". Ironically, the only time a tornado ever came close to my school (it was 10 miles away), we just stood at the windows and watched in awe as midday suddenly turned into midnight.

[Blue_In_AK]

86. I was born in 1946.

I remember those duck-and-cover drills, and the tests to see how fast we could get home (not very fast for me, since I lived a couple miles from the school). I used to have nightmares where half the earth would be just gone.

I don't know if I really thought a nuclear war would happen, but they sure put the fear in us back in those days.

[AngryOldDem]

89. Born in 1960...

...and I recall saying as a teen that I fully expected to see a nuclear war sometime in my lifetime. I'm still convinced of it.

[comtec]

90. I remember the nightmares... I had them again during the later years of *II

We expected to die
We had AIDS as a fairly new thing,
sex was bad n evil, and this was proof!
Family ties, and that kind of thing were everywhere.
we were expected to be good kids, and never have real enjoyment.
I really thought I would never see 2000 when i was a kid.

And if I did, I thought the world would end.

The feeling of impending death, destruction, and doom was everywhere. it may be why i'm not the most mentally healthy person LOL

But also in that was the hope that in competing with the russians we'd go to space, the stars...

LOL Boy was I wrong on ALL accounts!

[Rhiannon12866]

92. I grew up during the Cold War and remember the fear mongering.

I remember drills in kindergarten, when they sent us down to the basement, and, in the early grades, being trained to hide under our desks. :scared:

And when I grew up, back in the '80s, I got a letter from my grandmother, asking me to travel with her to Russia, as part of a peace group. At first, I thought she had to be crazy. I'd learned about the Russians, all those years ago, and I was taught that they hated us. But because it was my grandmother, I agreed to go, and it was truly the trip of a lifetime. :-)

We visited the USSR, shortly before it fell, and the people there were nothing like I expected. They were not only welcoming, excited and pleased to meet Americans, but they have a very real fear of war, having experienced it on their own land. The Russians that we were taught to fear are just like us, want peace and a comfortable life, wish for better for their children. They're also a nation of dog lovers. :D

I learned the truth on that trip, that people are not governments, and I try and spread the word whenever I get the chance. :-)