What’s A Little Radiation?

A couple of weeks ago I was chatting with friends my age and we got to talking about fallout shelters and air-raid drills when we were growing up. They were a part of life because you never knew when the Soviet Bear was going to drop The Bomb and we’d all have mushrooms for dinner.

The local air-raid siren would go off and if we were in school we’d crawl under our desks, if we were at home Mom would get us into the basement and cover us with blankets. Those who could afford it had fallout shelters installed in their backyards – photo above. I’m not sure that small wood elementary school desks would be much help against the Bear’s Bomb, nor do I think Mom’s well-intentioned blankets would have provided significant protection – but hey, let’s not go out without a fight.

I remember a Twilight Zone episode (I think it was the Twilight Zone) when during a nuclear war a man locked himself in his fallout shelter with a time-lock that wouldn’t open for a few years. He was so smug; he was going to survive and his neighbors weren’t – problem was…he had all that canned food…but no can opener. Oh well…the best laid plans…

Back to the above conversation; one of my friends shared that the whole nuclear war thing with the air - raid drills and basements and school desks really frightened her. I don’t know that I was freaked-out frightened, but it wasn’t the most cheery way to spend 15 or 20 minutes, under your school desk contemplating a mushroom cloud. No wonder some of us went nuts in the 1960’s – I mean, think about it. Enough is enough – the adults spend a few years of our young lives reminding us that The Bomb could come at any moment and then they wonder what the heck happened when hedonistic nihilism becomes the order of the day – and besides that, I suppose if evolution is true and we are the products of time plus matter plus chance that nothing matters anyway.

Last night Vickie said to me, in effect, “It’s amazing that the Cold War ended. It’s amazing that the Berlin War came down.” I replied, “Yes it is, it is amazing.”

I suspect you would have had to have lived in the Cold War, and grown up in the Cold War, to really know how amazing the end of that war was – few, if any, of us ever thought we’d see the Berlin War come down peacefully.