Duck and Cover

I was recently writing about the basement rooms in the house I grew up in and mentioned the dozens of bottles filled with water in one of the rooms. They were part of an attempt by my parents to prepare the family in case of a nuclear war. We were all ingrained with the fear that the Russians would drop bombs on us any day and we needed to be ready to survive throughout the 1950's and 60's.  We all learned to "duck and cover" in school. 

As kids we were taught to fear the Russians. Nikita Khrushchev was going to bury us and we were constantly reminded of that by the regularly scheduled air raid siren tests that we learned to almost ignore. We also spent a lot of time learning how to duck and cover in our classrooms as if hiding under our desk was going to save us from a nuclear explosion. Sometimes they had us hiding along the hallway walls. Was that supposed to be safer? Apparently studies showed that hiding under a desk or along a wall did make a difference if you were not directly in the bomb fireball.

And then there was that film. We probably saw it every year for some time. I just watched it again and I certainly remember every bit of it.

Now we still have the Russians to fear but instead of the bear from the steppes threatening to bury us we now have the moronic orange turd dangling on the Putin puppet strings willing to do anything for his masters to hide his crimes and someday maybe get a hotel in Moscow with his name on it that he won’t ever own.

And we now have active shooter drills in our schools which is pretty sick. Our society has gotten worse because instead of worrying about the danger from national enemies we now have to fear our neighbors and someone down the street with a house full of guns.

Duck and Cover; A 1952 civil defense social guide propaganda film for personal protection against the effects of a nuclear explosion.