The Atomic Café
The duck-and-cover thing still shocks me a little bit. I’ve seen it before, of course — that footage is a staple now, used to point up the naiveté of the fifties or the sheep-like qualities of the American people in that era — and it’s played for laughs: “How silly to think hiding your face in a curb will protect you from a nuclear blast!”
But: really! It is A CURB. It is A SCHOOL DESK. If the bomb gets dropped near your wholesome mid-century picnic, you know what isn’t going to do fuck-all?THE BASKET. “Oh, fudge, the bomb. And I hadn’t even unpacked the deviled eggs. Nothing for it but to hide under this plate!” And nobody knew any better — or they did, but they just went along with the bomb-shelter hoo-rah, because if everyone’s doomed, why quibble over the particulars — and you have to laugh at it now because what else can you do, watching the soldiers at the test site talking about how exciting it is and the beauty of the cloud, but the footage of all of them in their foxholes is just depressing. “Well, it’s fine if we just duck down.” Oh, honey, no. No, it isn’t.
The movie is entertaining, not just because of the willfully cheery “Meet Mr. Atom”-type propaganda dressed in high-waisted pants that seems so vintage-y now, its retro-ness neutering it to a harmless hallmark of a bygone era like cabinet-style TVs or “Operator, get me Maple Grove 3774!” It parallels the U.S.’s situation today rather neatly as well, and I confess that I wouldn’t necessarily have articulated that thought if the Netflix sleeve hadn’t mentioned it — that it’s still timely, when you look at all the decisions getting made now that we won’t know the true, full effect of for decades yet. Hiroshima, and Nagasaki even more so, looks from here, to me, like a terrible cruelty, just out-of-scale gratuitous atrocity visited on civilians, but I have to admit that I don’t know very much about World War II except for the major basics, and you can see from the footage in The Atomic Café that decimating those cities was considered necessary and just at that time. And it “worked,” I suppose, in that it got the desired result. But we have the benefit of hindsight now, that that means is way too extreme for that end, that that end might have come about in any case.
The Cold War is a similar thing, as far as the perspective. As a kid in the early eighties, sure, I thought the Cold War could end, in that I could conceive of it ending, but the idea existed in the realm of daydreams; it could end, but it wouldn’t, because it had always been. And then…it wasn’t, anymore.
I liked that about the movie, even though it made me a bit nervous to contemplate what we’ll see about our lives now when we look back in twenty-five years, or fifty — the “oh, you think it’s bad now” future it forced me to contemplate. “Why the hell didn’t those aughties people switch to solar power? I mean, come on!” I commented somewhere recently that Joe McCarthy is hard for us to understand from here, the panic, the ridiculous lengths gone to in the name of quarantining Communism; he’s an antique, like patent medicine. Quaint. But at the time, he ruined lives; in its time, patent medicine contained ingredients like lead paint, and it killed people. I would love to see what Cheney is in 2068, which inscrutable relic he’s equated with: a sanitary belt? an unfiltered Pall Mall?
Tags: Bikini Atoll Dick Cheney ethical dilemmae Joe McCarthy movies
Coincidence, I just netflixed this myself.
I liked that there was little (no?) commentary on the clips, they were presented as is.
I nodded off to it the first run through though. Not a good idea; created some bad dreams.
And a follow up: there was a PBS documentary a few years back (NOVA?) that traced the history of Bikini Atoll since the tests.
Horribly depressing. The natives were moved to a lousy island without a lagoon, so they have to go out to meet cargo ships, or haul supplies in through the water on their backs.
I haven’t seen Atomic Cafe, but we have several DVDs of public information films from the 1940s-1960s about what to do in a nuclear attack, how to deal with fallout, living in a bomb shelter, etc. For me, the most striking aspect of the films was the sense of inevitability — it wasn’t about IF we got nuked, but WHEN. We definitely were going to suffer nuclear annihiliation, and we would take down the Reds before succumbing to radiation poisoning, so goodbye world. That didn’t screw up a whole generation of kids like my Fox News-loving dad at all.
The part that scares the crap out of me, and always will, is that they didn’t know if the atoms would ever stop splitting, if it would be limitless and screw up the entire planet…and they DID IT ANYWAY.
(Those duck-n-cover drills seemed pointless to me even in second grade. “Sister? Wouldn’t my desk just catch on fire?”)
Thanks for the review, Sars! I definitely want to see this!
I would swear that I had to do the duck and cover thing in elementary school. In 1982. Facts move slowly to those areas of Washington that are not Seattle apparently…
I think about the “Duck and Cover” propaganda a lot. I haven’t seen Atomic Cafe, so I’d be curious as to their explanation of the purpose of Duck and Cover. The government knew that Duck and Cover was useless, and there are various town evacuation plans from that era that show the total range of destruction radii. People who’d looked at these plans knew, somewhere, that total destruction was likely and that Duck and Cover when you really think about it was useless.
But when it comes to explaining to your kids about nuclear war, Duck and Cover works. It also works to walk down the street during the day, look at a curb, and think “that curb will keep me safe against an atomic bomb.” You know this is not true, you’ve seen the evacuation plans like every good American, but it’s not possible to allow yourself to think about the raw facts. Duck and Cover was successful not because it would have actually protected people against the bomb, but because it introduced understandable faith against possible total annihilation. It kept people from losing their shit and made them able to squirrel away rationality like nuts for the winter. It made them feel ready, as if you can ever be ready for a nuclear holocaust. People still pray when their planes crash and when they’re told they have terminal cancer, as if God is going to reach down a hand and personally hold up the plane or give you your life back. When people are faced with powerlessness, they turn to the alternatives that make them feel like they have at least a little bit of power and control. It keeps them from being terrified.
The more skeptical people became about the government, the less it worked – but by the harmonic convergences of the late 60s and the Day After movies of the eighties, the country was kinda used to the idea of nuclear holocaust and no longer needed a safety blanket to deal. I can’t imagine what it must have been like in the 1950s to have a normal life one day, and the next know that you might be wiped off the face of the earth any day. Bending over to hide is a lot better than bending over to kiss your butt goodbye.
Mimi, we did the duck & cover thing during elementary school here too… in Oklahoma. But not because of a nuclear threat. We did it to hide from the tornados. lol
Mimi, I’m guessing your elementary school “duck and cover” drills were earthquake drills (at least, we did them through high school in California and Oregon). In that context they make a bit more sense (a sturdy desk will keep the ceiling from falling directly onto you) as long as you actually fit under your desk. That said, knowing the protocol did not make me feel any less stupid crouched under my desk last week once I realized the earthquake wasn’t getting any stronger and I was not actually in any kind of danger.
I remember in the late 70’s/early 80’s in Upstate NY, doing civil defense drills that involved going into the hallway and facing the wall. I had nightmares about nuclear war for years after we had to do that. I remember one nightmare where John Ritter was kind of “hosting” the impending nuclear war. I guess I watched too much Three’s Company, too.
We did the duck-n-cover in San Antonio in the late 70’s, ealry 80’s….I didn’t find out until I was an adult that we had nukes aplenty pointed right at us because we had so many military bases in one concentrated area. ***so nice to be so naive***
You know, what’s funny is that the “duck and cover” advice is taken directly FROM the experiences at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People in the shadows of walls and buildings survived where people out in the open were vaporized. The author of the (somewhat autobiographical) manga Barefoot Gen (available in English, and, along with Spiegelman’s Maus should be required reading in every high school classroom when the kids hit WWII) survived the bombing of Hiroshima in exactly that way. And I’ll tell you, it’s no less shocking in comic book form.
I LOVE this movie, though it is terrifying. Growing up in VT, where natural disasters don’t really occur (other than flooding–which, like everything else, ducking and covering will not save you from), we never had to watch safety videos like the rest of you mention. However, I still crack up every time I recall a college professor of mine talking about how when she grew up in Northern California, every year her school showed an earthquake preparedness video called “San Francisco: The City That Waits to Die.”
As a kid I guess I never really questioned duck-and-cover drills (mostly for tornadoes, I think), in the sense that it was just another thing the school wanted me to do, and I didn’t really understand long division, so why should I understand this?
Now I’m a teacher, and I find them pretty funny. In my school, if a tornado ever comes to visit, we shepherd the kids out into the hallways (…lined with glass windows and big metal lockers) and make them hunker down into a semi-fetal position to silently await their doom. No talking allowed, because talking nullifies the magic of duck-and-cover.
Meanwhile, those of us over the age of 19 stroll around freely, chatting with other staff and maybe buying a bag of chips from the vending machine. And yelling at the kids who whisper. Personally, I think that tornado drills are just recess for teachers.
I also enjoy that we make them lace their hands across the back of their necks, as though your hands could stop a 9″ glass sliver propelled by 100-mph winds.
If there is a nuclear bomb, “duck and cover” is actually not the worst advice you could get. “Get thee some potassium iodide pills” is better advice; nonetheless, assuming you are not in the immediate radius of the bomb (and my [weak] understanding is that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both less sprawling than most major American cities, NYC excepted), you do want something between you and the fallout.
We did the duck-and-cover stuff for tornadoes too, in Birmingham. My mom–who grew up in the 50s in Birmingham and in Kansas City, MO–gets upset TO THIS DAY about the duck-and-cover nuclear stuff they used to watch back then. She recalls seeing TV programs in which the bomb hits, and unsuspecting families lie abed with their faces melting as their houses blow away like paper models. Which they were, actually, but that wasn’t the point. It was apparently really traumatic.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and never really felt fearful about the possibility of nuclear holocaust. It just somehow seemed too utterly horrible to be within the realm of possibility. Then again, things that might actually happen don’t scare me, while things like werewolves, giant spiders, and reanimated corpses freak me right out. Go figure.
I was in elementary school through the 1950s, and I don’t recall a single instance of “Duck and Cover” — no posters, no drills. I do recall Air Raid sirens that went off at certain times of day for practice, and if we heard them we were supposed to… well, I’m not sure just what. But I’m wondering if my grade school just refused to partake in the silliness, or my memory is completely faulty on this particular point, or what.
“Duck and Cover” was pretty much the mid-20th century equivalent of our decade’s “Duct Tape and Plastic Sheeting”–a pointless placebo aimed at placating the fears of the general public and making it look like the gummint was Protecting Us. So sad.
I can’t remember if it was The Atomic Cafe or some other documentary where I first saw, up close and personal, the physical consequences of our attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It gave me nightmares. It is salutary to keep in mind that, while we run around the world trying to keep people from having nuclear options, we are still the only nation ever to have actually USED nuclear weapons on another nation. We did that. We deformed a generation. We annihilated neighborhoods. We poisoned their air. We did that.
@Rachel: hee, here in San Diego when the earthquake “hit” (or rolled gently by, whatever) one of the managers near where I was standing called out commandingly “down on the floor everybody get down on the floor!” So those of us in that area did, and felt mighty mighty silly about it later. For one; as if kneeling down in one spot will save you from the ceiling landing on you (hiding under a desk is WAY more sensible) and for two: people in other areas looked calmly around and said “Huh, earthquake. Hey, why is everybody over there sitting down on the ground…?”
I still find the definitive take on this business to be Robert Klein’s standup bit on it, from his album Child of the 50s. I just reacquired it on CD, and it’s as good as ever. The best line in it goes something like this:
They taught us that the siren means disaster, had the presence of mind to set off a siren every day at 12:00. I used to worry, “What if the Russians BOMBED at 12:00?” They’re not stupid: “Ve bomb at tvelve o’clock, Ivan, they don’t know, they theenk it’s lunch.”
Many a time in the early 60s, living eight blocks away from a firehouse, I found myself thinking the same damn thing.
(Longtime listener, notquitefirsttime caller, btw- also, longtime friend of May, who actually met you at a reading a few weeks back and reported that it’s all true in person too:)
Also ducked and covered…in about 1986. It was definitely separate from the tornado drill — one was under the desk, one was in the hallway. The teachers never fully explained it to us…I think by then they were probably rolling their eyes at the whole thing.
EB, I did tornado drills at my elementary school in Ohio that sound like your “civil defense” drills. Basically, we all trooped into the central corridor, and sat against the inner walls. The main point was to ensure that none of us sat facing a door or window, which could be launched into the building by a tornado. Fortunately, we never had to test this out with an actual tornado, as they usually struck in the summer, when school was out of session. (I did, however, see funnel clouds and tornados from our house in Cincinnati, which was high up on a hill – they never got close enough for us to need to run to the basement and take cover.)
What we had were drills against school shootings. We’d crouch down and turn off the lights and lock the doors at a specific time, in hopes the shooter would look in through the window, see a dark and empty room, and move on. You’d think they would have instated it after Columbine, but what really terrified my school district was the sudden rash of parents coming in to kill teachers or bullies or whoever else was tormenting/punishing their precious child. Therefore, the drills. Probably pretty effective, but mostly we just yawned and grumbled a lot.
Our school was also built as a bomb shelter for our town if the Commies ever did hit NYC. Which is why none of us could ever get reception in the damn place.
Tornado drills in Illinois, going into the hall which had no windows. Duck and Cover in the early 60s. I obsessed about dying in a nuclear war.
So was the “duck and cover” supposed to protect you from the radioactive effects of a nuclear blast or from the shockwave. Because I am thinking it will probably not protect you from being vapourized, or from being exposed to high levels of radiation, but if it might save you if hte actual blast shock wave knocks part of your building over.
My middle school was, at one time, my town’s high school, and it was built in the 30s or so. I can recall that at the bottom of all of the school’s staircases there were fallout shelter logos on the walls of the landings. It always had me wondering a couple of things: (1) How they did practical drills for the entire school getting into these “shelters,” as the school only had, like, four stairways, the landings could hold maybe 20 people comfortably, but the school had a student body of about 500, to say nothing of the fact that (2) it’s a freaking STAIRWAY, and the bottom of it isn’t even under ground. They didn’t even lead into anything resembling a basement, just to the first floor of the building. Sigh. Clearly, our civil defense dollars were money well spent back then.
Huh. I went to an international school in South America, and we sometimes had bomb and sniper threats. Like, real bomb threats. Yet we never, ever, drilled for anything. Duck and cover might have been sort of reassuring. Mostly the headmaster would just come around and lock everyone into the classrooms… which, come to think of it, sounds dangerous as all get out.
A year ago, I was volunteering at an elementary school with a ‘code black’ drill. You shut off the lights, lock the door, and hide the entire class in a small area not visible from the window in the classroom door. That way they think no one is home, you see. This is for when there’s a school shooting/estranged parent/unbalanced stranger situation.
Or, as we put it to our 7 year olds: “It’s in case a strange dog wanders into the school.”
Back in the 80s, the Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday magazine had an article, detailing, minute by minute, what would happen when a bomb hit. Not “if”, but “when” – Philadelphia’s right in the middle of an “aim here” zone, what with Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Willow Grove Airforce Base, and being comfortably situated between New York and Washington.
It was a heckuva well-written article, and it did make me think I’d like to be right under it when it went off, because there weren’t a lot of good places to be, in the city. And the magazine got an incredible response – all from readers who were angry that the article had been written. Because … ? I guess, because writing made it true, and they were safer before it had been written? It was around the same era when Threads, a British movie, was produced (1985). Put that in your Netflix cue; it’s a whole lot scarier than The Day After.
@Drew: from what I’ve read, structurally, the staircase IS the best place to be if you don’t have a basement in which to hide. They were doing the best they could under the circumstances.
@Karen: yes, we did. There were other countries racing to do the same thing at the time, and they weren’t going to stop at two cities. We did try to negotiate a surrender before we dropped the bombs; do you remember that? Japan wasn’t going to surrender. The choice was made, during war time, between our dead and their dead – and most Americans preferred enemy dead to friends and family dead.
Albert Einstein once said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” I don’t know if we need to worry more about warfare or stupidity, however – according to the United Nations report on April 26, 2000, “At least 100 times as much radiation was released by this accident as by the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. . .”
I’d hate it if our last word as a species was “Oops.”
I grew up in Southern Oregon in the 1980s, and my school district required all juniors to do a nuclear war project. We were assigned various scenarios and had to do a whole bunch of activities related to it across different classes — I remember writing a paper in social studies about mutual assured destruction, writing a short story in English about what it felt like to know I was going to die, designing a fall-out shelter in physics, and sprinting in PE (the PE teacher said it was so we could run faster to our shelters). It was terrifying — but at the same time it was kind of cool the way they came up with so many projects related to this one issue. My scenario was that secret missiles planted in the floor of the Pacific by the Soviets shot up in the air and blew up, filling the atmosphere with radiation which then floated over the land and rained down on us. I still have nightmares about it.
Hmm. I seem to remember seeing the Atomic Cafe on late night T.V. some time in the past.
I grew up in the second-most targeted city in Canada (substantial army base, naval base, airforce base, large port, oil refineries, etc). we always assumed as kids that the Cold War would turn hot eventually. The Day After was some serious nightmare fuel for me. Thankfully (or not?) we never had the duck and cover drills in school. I don’t think I ever lost that fear until around 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell–I sure as hell remember hearing it announced on the radio as I was doing homework one night, and rushing to the T.V.
I did some reading not too long ago which suggested that during the 50’s and a fair portion of the 60’s, “duck and cover” was a valid response to the big one. Even in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union and the United States were still largely relying on bombers to deliver their weapons. It was estimated that had the Missile Crisis turned “hot”, maybe two or three Soviet bombers would have been able to strike targets in North America, ten at the most. These would not have been the ICBM H-bombs we grew up with, but “regular” (is there such a thing?) nuclear weapons. Much more survivable, in the same way that losing a leg is more survivable then losing your head. I think the point of “duck and cover” was what to do if the bomb went off in the distance. From the pysics of it, keeping you head down would be a Good Idea.
As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as monstrous and evil as they were, the alternative was arguable worse–the defence of Okinawa and the fire-bombing of Tokyo produced far greater casualities. God only knows how much death and destruction an invasion of Japan would have entailed.
[i](Those duck-n-cover drills seemed pointless to me even in second grade. “Sister? Wouldn’t my desk just catch on fire?”)[/i]
@Margaret in CO: Ouchie. I’m hoping the nuns in CO didn’t give you a ruler across the knuckles for your Commie sass, you radical, you.
My US Government teacher in high school had us watch Atomic Cafe one day. The part that has stayed with me over the last decade is where the person (I think it was a woman) showed how the radiation burned the pattern of her clothing into her skin. Gingham skin.
Secondly is the footage Sars mentioned of the soldiers out testing the things – they show the badges they were given that would “change color” from too much radiation to the interviewer, but they weren’t told what color meant death. They were already dead.
We had earthquake drills all through school (in Alaska) – under the desk. When earthquakes actually hit (none terribly bad, thank goodness), we mostly just looked around at each other. They would generally pass before anyone could even think about getting under a desk.
Now I live in Oklahoma, and tornadoes scare the living bejeebus out of me.
I grew up in a small town in Western Mass that was also the location of a GE plant, as did my parents. They had to do the duck-and-cover drills but by the time I was in school that stopped. I was only 7 when the Cold War ended and I didn’t find out until much much later that my town was on a potential target list, on account of the GE transformer and aerospace manufacturing operations. Ignorance is bliss.
@Sandman, I still have a scar from 2nd grade on my pinky finger. (Bitch used a metal-edged ruler!) Friendly advice: NEVER ask a nun “If God can do anything, can He make a rock so big He can’t pick it up?” It just pisses them off beyond all reason.
“Tori Says:
What we had were drills against school shootings.”
Damn, that’s scarier than the nukes! I never saw a nuke, but I saw other students every day.
Down here in Texas we had tornado drills almost every freaking month, which basically involved being herded into large closets (depending where on campus you were) or into windowless hallways. They also didn’t allow talking; because if you’re going to die in a tornado, it’s best to do it silently.
We also had one drill (and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was for) that involved getting every single student out of their classrooms and onto the football field in a reasonable order. Did anyone else have those? I honestly can’t recall what kind of drill they were only that a bunch of students always saw those as a great way to skip out of school.
I grew up in Maryland, close enough to DC that I was sure that we were in the “instant vaporization” zone, so I didn’t worry too much. It was fun to try to guess which random grassy knolls contained the Nike anti-aircraft missiles, though.
The first time I heard the tornado siren after moving to Texas, I got out the ladder and climbed onto the roof, to see if I could spy a funnel cloud. I have been told that this is not the proper response.
Jenny 2, sounds like the bomb threats my high school had to me. Lots of kids never came back from those, and most were pranks by kids who wanted the afternoon off (this was pre-Columbine, but that wouldn’t have stopped most of the douchebags I went to school with.)
Good points, all who pointed out that Fat Man and Little Boy were A)weaker than present day nukes (and that’ll help me sleep soundly tonight!) and B) delivered by plane and not missile. In that context, “duck and cover” doesn’t sound quite as laughable and insulting as it could be.
And Jesus, the natives from the Bikini Atoll–is it Official Policy to make sure that this kind of stuff is carried out in the most disruptive, condescending way possible? It’s like Government Science has a huge surplus of Insult, and is hard at work making more Injury to attach it to.
And you have to dig that catchy song in the 50’s YouTube clip!
“Duck and cover” works during an earthquake (like the one we had here in LA last week) but in a nuclear attack? In the quake aftermath I even joked about the duck and cover and how funny it was that back in the day people thought that would save them in a nuclear attack.
Jenny 2 – growing up in SoCal when we had an earthquake our immediate response was to get under our desks. When it was over the fire drill rang and then we all went out onto the football field. And yes, that’s when a lot of students just took the opportunity to go home for the day!
My son goes to KU, so watching “The Day After” is like home movies for me.
Seriously, I think we did hourly D&C drills during the Cuban Missle Crisis.
@Jen S: “It’s like Government Science has a huge surplus of Insult, and is hard at work making more Injury to attach it to.”
Hah! ::tucks new favourite turn of phrase under arms and sneaks off with it::
My family lived in West Germany during the mid- to late 70s, and Dad served on what he called the “Watch”. I thought he sat around looking at different things all day. Only later did I find out he was one of the people tracking where the Soviets had their missiles and if they were preparing to strike. He and my mom had the not so subtle code of him calling to wish her a good trip to see her mother, meaning she was supposed to grab my brother and me, head for Frankfurt airport and grab the first plane to New Zealand. I remember we wound up at the airport several, but never actually made it to a plane. I thought it was great fun – we always wound up with new Smurfs or Barbapappas.
I miss being blissfully ignorant of what things really mean.
I was in grade school in NYC during the 50s and not only did we do duck and cover, but I remember a campaign to have all children wear army-style dog tags so that we could be identified in case of a nuclear attack.
@Diane: That reminds me of the campaign when *I* was in school to have all the kids fingerprinted IN CASE we were KIDNAPPED.
My mother did not pull any punches explaining the reasoning to me, either.
“But I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“I know, honey, but it’s in case we have to identify your body.”
…Oh.
So, Sars, who has all those fingerprints now?
And when will we start taking DNA samples from all children so that we can protect them from the latest threat of something-or-other?
Or have we already started doing that?
I’m from a town where uh…we’re known for nukes. My mom told me once that there weren’t bomb shelters or drills or anything when she was growing up because we’d be FIRST to be nuked. Well. That’s…not comforting. (Note: I now live in a “nuclear free zone.”)
“Duck and cover” lodges in your brain. I grew up with that for earthquakes. Last week we had to listen to a talk on “what happens if students shoot up your office,” and the police are NOT fans of “duck and cover and hide under a table” for that situation. I was all, “Um, what else am I going to do in a panic? Also, there’s nowhere to hide here but under desks and tables.”
@Jenny 2: We did those! Those were “fire drills,” very plebian. I don’t remember doing “duck and cover,” although it’s certainly my era. What I do remember is that, until I was nearly through high school, my mother never had to buy salt. That’s not a non sequitur; Mom had read Alas, Babylon, and it made a tremendous impression on her. She wasn’t going to be all panicky about it, but she had the cellar stocked with canned goods and other necessities, and was prepared to use the water in the water heater for drinking, if necessary.
My dad was away a lot for work; it had to have been a scary time to be alone with five little kids, hoping they’d live to grow up.
For what it’s worth, and to the people having a hard time believing that duck and cover drills continued for so long: we did them, in the MID 80S, in the San Francisco Bay Area.
And, no, they weren’t earthquake drills. We had those too, of course, but they were shorter, and after the immediate ducking under our desks, we went out to the ball field, where we would be free of downed power lines in the eventuality of a quake.
During the duck and cover drills, there was an enormously loud air raid siren, and we were instructed to get under our desks, cover our noses and mouths with our shirts, and wrap our hands around our ears to protect them from blast-noise damage. This wasn’t te 50s, folks. I’m 32 years old.
The Apple computer campus, in its nascient form, was less than 5 miles away. The dawn of the new age of tech had already come and was spreading. The Cold War, and its propaganda campaigns, died a long slow death, despite what everybody now claims, in the infinite wisdom and cynicism of hindsight, to have known all along.
@ J: Funny – I grew up in Germany in the 80s, and my dad was barely around because he was so busy prepping for…the invasion? Something like that. But in terms of ignorance, I entirely missed the cold war, for all the Jem, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and cabbage patch kids furor I had to keep up with. We only started doing bomb threat drills after the army invaded Iraq (the first time around).
In terms of duck and cover, I worked at a museum that had some sort of exhibition about the mid-c state of mind and art, or what have you, and that song was on a loop. Well, that song, and the sound of a nuclear bomb exploding, and something about a mid-c slut smoking reefer and her parents confronting her about it. I hated working that floor.
In my first day at my current job (in an office not too far from the White House), there was one part of the orientation in which the office manager told me, “Okay, here’s your red bag — keep it under your desk. It contains a blanket, flashlight, MREs, bottles of water, decontamination suit, and gas mask. And here’s a video you have to watch to demonstrate how you use the gas mask.” And I’m sure these things are about as effective as “duck and cover” ever was — but people seem to find it reassuring to think that they’ve planned for a disaster, even if that planning is really not so effective. (Personally, it freaked me out.)
@ Sars & Diane: My parents had us finger printed, too. I think my dad still has the cards put away in a file somewhere. And my prints were (and maybe still are) on file with the FBI from when I worked as a bank teller. So I’m covered either way. ;)