Just got to my hotel. I see Trump boomers all over the place. In the restaurants, in the hotel, in the lobby, in the CVS, on the road, at the gas station, at the bar, in the mall, on the street. Everywhere!
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Just got to my hotel. I see Trump boomers all over the place. In the restaurants, in the hotel, in the lobby, in the CVS, on the road, at the gas station, at the bar, in the mall, on the street. Everywhere!
I am an Air Force brat, raised during the Cuban missile crisis and the murder of JFK. I remember seeing Sputnik for the first time over our heads and how my mom was afraid. I remember Duck and Cover drills...none of us had any idea we’d still die, but we practiced for the dropping of a nuke. I remember many things...that’s why they want us dead...we know stuff.
No way duck and cover would’ve saved anybody...not without a mask on.
We had no masks. No rona either, lol
Depends on what year we're talking about. ICBMs weren't a thing until 1957, and even then the number of deployed rockets were relatively small into the early 1960s, and most payloads weren't that large (relatively speaking), such that the odds were good that if a CONELRAD alert went out and you hit the deck you were probably going to survive unless you were an unlucky victim of one of those few ICBMs, or just happened to be at the hypocenter of a bomb run. For everyone else, survival was a thing.
As far as masks... a mask wouldn't really have been all that useful due to the limited number of bombs involved before, say, 1962. For a good idea of strategic rocket force dispositions at that time, check here, or go here for to get the numbers directly.
Tsar Bomba (RDS-220) was the 57 megaton Russian bomb that was the largest bomb ever made and dropped in 1961. In 1958 they tested almost 40 bombs in a single year. They had lots of bombs
...and not a lot of ICBMs. If you were in Europe then Russia was a lot scarier than if you were in the US, because there you were in range of their full arsenal of bombers and IRBMs. The US, by contrast, wasn't quite as vulnerable. Delivery vehicles, not warheads, are what determine how badly someone can be hit. That was the reason the placement of missiles in Cuba was such a huge deal, as was the US placing MRBMs in Turkey.
Oh, and for the record, the Tsar Bomba was mostly a dick-waving weapon. It wasn't something that could fit on an ICBM, just barely fit on a bomber at all, and there was only ever one of them. That wasn't something anyone really worried about.
Even with modern warheads, there is a very very large area outside the blast site where most injuries will be due to broken glass from the shockwave.
Duck and cover would work. Not for everyone, but it would absolutely reduce the number of casualties, so it really did make sense from a civil defense standpoint. The goal was to reduce the damage by any means possible.
nuclear war was still a danger way before 1957. both USA and soviets had 24/7 nuclear bombers and nuclear submarines ready to shoot each other just as immediate as ICBMs. in fact the nuclear subs are scarier than ICBMs. at least with ICBMs you get about 45 minutes warning. nuclear subs you don't get any warning at all.
Bombers were limited in their payload and presented a limited strike capability. It's the reason "Duck and Cover" worked as a policy at the time. SLBMs weren't deployed in large numbers at that time also due to their limited range. But yes, their addition to arsenals provided the same sort of fear that placing missiles in Cuba did: far less warning time to react.
KEK!
Well played, Pede!
But...but..they told us to duck and cover...UNDER our DESKS!...pfttt!
Actually plenty of people survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but nobody who had their throat slit by glass shards.
Ditto Yep. That desk of laminate, pressed wood and sheet metal was going to protect us from a nooklar blast.
They had us all prepped to run into the - ready for it? - FUCKING BOILER ROOM!!! So if a bomb hit, we would all be immediately cooked to death by the fucking bursting Boiler tank.
My kid story: I had just moved to a new school. Our teacher was a good Catholic lady who made us pray and sing God Bless America every morning at the start of school.
I remember coming in to class and she was just taking roll. All of a sudden there was a knock at her door. She went out to the hallway. We heard her scream, "No! NO! Oh GOD NO!"
We sat wide-eyed alone in that classroom for what seemed to be an eternity. She finally came in, sobbing, holding a hanky up to her face and shaking her head. You know kids, we were just shocked to see her fall apart. She finally went up to the blackboard and wrote, "Our beloved President Jack Kennedy has been murdered. School is out for the rest of the day. Please go home to your parents and pray." She was unable to speak. We all stood up, gathered our stuff and solemnly walked out of the classroom and went home like good little soldiers.
My town was a largely Catholic town and the Catholics took this assassination personally. Many of them still do.
I remember what she wrote on the board like it was yesterday. For me it was the odd familiarity of Jack instead of John F. That's how proud and connected the Catholics were to this first Catholic President. It was more than a political thing. And she didn't say assassinated. She said murdered. That made it more real. I think the word assassinated makes it sound so distant and formal.
We had drills that marched us out of the classroom into the hallway where we'd sit with our hands over heads.
We didn't know back then that all we needed was a mask to protect us from nuclear fallout.
Reading this makes me tear up. Thank you for sharing.
This is how I felt when 9/11 happened. Was my first week at a new school/first week of Jr. High, and my class was in the library for a kind of "here is the library, here's the librarians, here's how to use the library and it's 3 computers," kind of session. When we got there, it was probably right before the first plane hit, and all was normal. After a few minutes, we saw teachers collectively going in and out of the AV room (with the TVs) — like... teachers that should have been in their classrooms teaching. So that was weird enough. Then we noticed a few of them coming out panicked and/or crying and heading out of the library (presumably to go tell others, or call their loved ones), and then one of them signal to the librarian to come over. And then she came out crying. So all us students (and I still remember everyone who I was sitting with at that big, square, library table) just sat there wondering wtf was going on. Then, finally, the principal came on the intercom to tell us what had happened. What a weird day. My parents always told me I'd remember that day the same way they remembered the day JFK was killed, and they were right.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I appreciate reading this.
We had to go into the bomb shelters.
Just the flying glass
That’s why two boys were assigned to close the wall length curtains. That would save us.
We didnt have them but the farm and schoolhouse was within the zone of your vaporized anyhow
It was to protect from flying glass and falling ceilings. Do a little research on the subject.
Yep.
Yeah, the Cuban missile crisis era and a decade plus following that was more "the height of the cold war" Stateside than anything in the 80's. At least in terms of what was told to the public.
Although in Germany, that's another thing entirely.
i don't know. the 1980s cold war was pretty scary too. the soviets were dying economically even by their low standards of living and all it would have taken for nuclear war to happen was a handful of generals in siberia start shooting nukes in protest against gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost. it is a miracle and fluke that the backlash against gorbachev by other communists in the govt and military didn't happen until 1991. imagine if hardliner brezhnev/stalin types fired gorbachev in 1989 during the fall of the berlin wall and made sure to keep the soviet system intact at the very least. soviet union could have survived the 1989 disasters in the other warsaw pact countries if the soviet hardliners had moved quickly in late 1989.
Early 60's Cali Duck & Cover was disguised as earthquake drill. Navy brat - moved to Key West in September 1962 - right smack in the middle of what was a war zone. Hawk missiles and Marines all over the island. Movie "Matinee" with John Goodman catches some of the period.