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Comment by KGIII | Hacker News Reader

Did they still make you do the drill where they'd set off the fire alarm and you'd have to crawl under your desks? I'm a bit older and that was mandatory at my school. I am not sure why they felt a desk was good protection from a nuclear blast. Considering that my school was usually right next to a base, it probably would have been a fairly direct blast.

We were rather morbid kids and I think our leading child-theory was that they made us do that so that it would be easier to count the bodies.

This would have been in the sixties. I'd later go to a boarding school that was really remote, and they didn't make us do the exercise. In hindsight, getting under the desk while being that far from any likely blast might actually have afforded us some protection from falling debris.

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In most any kind of disaster, secondary effects kill way more people than primary effects. Even if it seems silly, taking effective measures against the secondary effects is very worth doing.

(Also, for nuclear bombs specifically, hiding under the desks keeps kids out of view of windows, and hence not vulnerable to being blinded/burned by a flash.)

For example, one school was maybe a mile outside the front gates in Quantico. No desk is going to help us there. We were going out in the very first volley, regardless of furniture.

Fair.

But most schools aren't, and they aren't going to roll out those procedures unevenly.

You may be right, though things were far less standardized back then. When I went to boarding school, they had no such drills. I'm not sure if that compares, as it was also in a different State. So, you may be right. I dunno, really.

How long ago was this? Soviet missiles were extremely inaccurate for a long time, so there's the definite possibility of a near miss at a range where the building collapsing on top of everybody would be the biggest danger.

I would imagine at the time, the first strike would be in the hundreds, of not thousands of warheads. Coupled with the blast radius, missing doesn't seem relevant in that scenario.

Like the saying goes, "almost doesn't count except horseshoes, hand grenades and nuclear warheads."

During the era of "duck and cover," the Soviets had an extremely limited ability to strike the US. They had a mediocre bomber fleet which would probably have been torn to pieces by North American air defense. They had ICBMs from the late 50s, but not in significant numbers until well into the 60s. The popular idea of nuclear war starting with thousands of warheads coming in over the pole all at once wasn't really a possibility until the 70s or so.

No they stopped that by the time I was in elementary in the 80s. I lived in a large military town as well. We'd be a first target too. I've always thought the desk thing was funny though. When you're a first target, that desk will be atomized, just like we would have been.

Growing up through the Cold War was definitely interesting. It's probably a hell of a thing growing up under the constant reminder that, at any second, we'd be gone and probably wouldn't even know it. I don't know any different though. It certainly puts the small stuff into perspective. Thankfully the Cold War was anticlimactic!

Even we children knew that we'd be atomized quickly, should the Cold War turn hot and go nuclear. We would sometimes discuss it and, being so tied to the military, we were pretty acutely aware of those periods where the level of tension changed.

Yet, I don't think it really bothered us. I'm not a psychologist but I know that children still laugh, play, and sing while they are in a war zone. We were not in a war zone, obviously. But, we were pretty normal children and did pretty normal children things. We were just aware that we'd all die if they dropped bombs or missiles on us.

There's probably an actual psychological term for it, but I don't know it. Children are remarkably resilient. Other than the drills, the PSAs, and the silly educational videos they made us watch, we weren't that concerned. We were kids, it's not like we had the power to change anything.

I'm pretty sure there's a psych term for it.

Yes, children are incredibly resilient. We just assumed it was a normal part of life. Now that I think about it, the end of the Cold War might be one of the causes of the great crime wave drop in the early 90s. Maybe when you don't think you're going to die randomly at any second, statically, society makes better decisions.

Interesting, I'd never considered that. I have read that the drop in crime was partially attributed to removal of the lead in gasoline. I expect there are many factors.

Yes, that is a highly probably one. Also I've read the legalization of abortion in the early 70s as well. All the unwanted and uncared for babies would be teens and young adults (highest crime age) by the 90s didn't exist.

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