One Utah

Sometimes, not often, I stop to reflect that I am now part of the “older generation” even though I’m fairly young by boomer standards. For example, when the AARP started mailing me application forms, or when people got excited about the so-called Global War on Terrorism (GWOT, pronounced “gee, what?”)

Back in 1998, CNN realized that a lot of people alive today don’t remember the Cold War, so they produced a Peabody Award-winning series of specials. It was a good series, from an historical point of view. However, CNN’s documentaries could not possibly convey the atmosphere of panic and hysteria during the Cold War.

Yes, when I was in elementary school we had regular drills like this. Every kid in America was taught to “duck and cover” under their desks to avoid dying in a nuclear attack. NORAD might be able to detect a Soviet missile launch 30 minutes before the warheads would arrive, but ordinary citizens could expect no warning– the first indication of an attack would be a bright flash. At that point there would not even be enough time to run to the basement before the shock wave hit. Not one of us thought the desks would save anybody, in fact we hoped to die immediately because we knew that life after surviving a nuclear attack would not be pleasant. “The survivors would envy the dead,” predicted Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev.

What if you did survive the initial attack? Well, the school basement was stocked with crackers and barrels of water. The idea was to stay down there for a month or so, until the radioactive fallout subsided to “safe” levels (i.e. radiation wouldn’t cause immediate sickness and death). You could find fallout shelters in the basements of most public buildings.

Some people built their own fallout shelters, in the hope that the month-long wait to see if they would live or die could be made more comfortable. What if desperate neighbors wanted in? What if there was a follow-up attack? Well, let’s not over-think this.

As a young child with inquiring mind, I wrote to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission for information. They sent me a packet of 8 x 10 glossy photographs of nuclear explosions, accompanied by optimistically-worded pamphlets about nuclear war. I lived in the New York suburbs, and my school was treated to a traveling exhibit put on by the US Army Air Defense Artillery. New York was ringed by Nike missile batteries (named after the goddess of victory): there were Nike Hercules missiles that were supposed to shoot down Russian bombers, and nuclear-tipped Nike Zeus missiles that were supposed to intercept incoming ICBMs. Of course, even if this worked the EMP from the Zeus warhead would probably knock out every electrical device on the eastern seaboard.

Al Qaeda and the Department of Homeland Security don’t scare me. I was prepared to die at age 9.

This entry was posted Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 6:47 am and is filed under 9/11, Military, National Politics, Nuclear Weapons, Society, This Blog, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.