I am 75, I hid under a desk at school during the Cuban Missile Crisis

[TNNurse]

This is way scarier. We had a functioning government then. Those people were smart, well informed and cared about the country. This is being controlled by incompetent, ignorant and blindly loyal assholes.

[BOSSHOG]

1. With nary a check or a balance

Who needs the constitution?

[canetoad]

2. In October 1962

I was eight years old, living in the Midlands, England. Being a precocious kid, I was well aware of President Kennedy, the USSR and the missile crisis.

One night during the crisis, there was a loud bang and sizzle, a blinding flash and most everyone in the street rushed outside thinking it had ....happened. Nuclear war!

Turns out it was particularly icy and the powerlines had broken under the weight of ice and this caused the flash and noise. Over 60 years on, I still remember vividly the evening we were hit by a nuke!

[Retrograde]

17. I lived about 20 miles from major power stations

along the Niagara River, the Adam Beck on the Canadian side and the Robert Moses on the American. Between them they supplied much of the power for the northeast, including New York City. My parents were convinced they would be targets in case of Soviet retaliation, as would be my city, which wasn't then in the Rust Belt.

[electric_blue68]

56. see my post #55 living in NYC

[electric_blue68]

55. Woahhh...

Precocious here, too, on some ways. Was 9 in 1962 and, yeah, I knew what was going on.
.
Our grade school just marched up into the gym. But, we had an air raid siren on the school's rooftop! 🤪😔

The thing that drove me nuts was we lived at the top of a hill not too far from the Hudson River which faces New Jersey. The towns along the edge the cliffs that border the river there have a mix of professional & volunteer firefighters. To
call in the volunteers; they use sirens that sound exactly like the air raid ones we used.

At night laying in bed I'd occasionally hear them in the distance maybe not more than about 1 1/2 miles away. I'd wonder was it a fire, or our sirens were going off soon enough, and...

BOOM!!! Lights out!

This is 63 yrs ago, and I Still remember this!

[JPK]

3. In 1961

We went into the hallway because we had a lot of exposed windows in our classrooms. We were told to face our lockers and put our hands over our heads. Massachusetts, 1961.

[mitch96]

4. Yup, duck and cover drills in grade school

[homegirl]

6. Under your desk..

to identify your remains quickly!

[mitch96]

16. and if close enough you just might be dust in the wind..I remember seeing pic's from Hiroshima Japan

where tha only thing left of a person was the shadow burned into the sidewlk.. Uff
m

[electric_blue68]

57. In the early '70s Japan sent Atomic Bomb Artifacts, and Photos on a first time Tour across the USA....

I went.

And, yes, among many things I saw a piece of wall with the burned into it shadows!

[Wonder Why]

44. Nah! Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye!

[Conjuay]

48. My brother was issued dog tags

But that was before the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Consider that...

Kids were issued dog tags to wear to school.

[MuseRider]

5. Same here.

Having to give our slip that said we would stay at school until our parents came was terrifying. I have 2 granddaughters now and I fear for them.

[multigraincracker]

7. Scary times for this 12 year old.

[La Coliniere]

9. I can't think of a more dangerous time for this country

in my seven decades in this country of my birth. I will never forgive those who voted for the depraved, immoral, corrupt orange felon. Never.

[Godot51]

10. Evacuated

Our school was evacuated suddenly, perhaps a test, at this same time.

I forgot my Roy Rogers lunch box and hurried back to the empty classroom to retrieve it. When I got back to the school bus line everybody was shouting at me to hurry up.

All the students were on the bus except me.

I guess it was thought better if we died at home.

Soldiers from Ft. Jackson were camped in the forest around our house. I made friends with them. I knew where all the good wells were located.

[rickyhall]

11. In Ft Worth they called them tornado drills.

[Jack Valentino]

23. Well, the "duck and cover" routine was the same protocol as for a tornado...

but likely much more effective for a tornado....


I was born 2 months after the Cuban missile crisis, and didn't start in elementary school until Sept. 1968...

As I recall, during all my years in elementary school, we only had one such drill,
think it was around 1974, where we all went into the hallways near our lockers,
and crouched covering our heads... Yes, it was described as a 'tornado drill',
I only found out much later, one other possible reason for it...

[AllaN01Bear]

34. earthquake dril. duck, coverr and hold

we had signals and drills for chem , biological . . conventional air raid . we had to know what each signal meant and what action to take.

[Just Jerome]

12. The current clown car

of knuckleheads needs a few years with the nuns who had us hiding under the desks back in the day.

Yeah….kinda like the Blues Brothers.

[hamsterjill]

13. I remember the drills well.

It made us feel safe however ill-informed that was. It gave us something to DO in the case of something happening.

Right now, there are no plans in place should anything happen because of the very thing you state in your OP - incompetent, ignorant and blindly loyal assholes are in charge.

It's scarier than any time I remember in my lifetime, and I am not amused. I'm also sadly surprised at the amount of support for the bombing that I'm seeing on DU. Some people seem to think Trump is a genius. Let me assure you, he is not.

He is most likely lying as to the damage caused by the strikes last night, the nuclear material may have already been moved, who knows. With as much as he consistently lies, how could ANYONE believe ANYTHING that he says. He would sell out this country if it meant he had one more accolade than Obama. He is a sick idiot. Sick. Sick. Sick.

[Hornedfrog2000]

43. I think there are people here

Specifically to make us argue, and make things appear ways they actually are not... In order to sway us one way or the other.

[maveric]

14. I was in the first grade.Boston area. Somewhat confused about what was going on.

They continued it through grade two.

[Omaha Steve]

15. I was in kindergarten

We did the drill too.

OS

[niyad]

18. Being a military kid, in a military town, with many other military kids

in my class, we all shared the same thought each day. .would our fathers be coming home that night, or would they be shipped off for. .who knows what duty. No duck and cover for us, we and our teachers knew that was BS. So we waited. . it was a very long 13 days. Today has been equally long, only there are no sane people in charge. I feel for the military families.

[spanone]

19. I did too. You are correct.

[2naSalit]

20. I started school, 1st grade, in...

Key West, FL during the crisis, my dad was one of the sub chasers who followed the missiles to Cuba. I recall the stressed out shock of the general population and the duck and cover stuff, we did much more of it in Maine when we returned - where we lived before going to FL for 3 months.

A span of time I'll never forget.

[KT2000]

21. I save New Yorkers

because in the back of my mind, we will need them when we are stuck in our homes because of war. I have to do this. I have had a couple occasions where I was able to get rid of them but not now.

We had the drills under the desk and were told to go with one of two groups if we hear the air raid signal. One groups walked home and the other group went to get on a bus. I am sure all the bus drivers would report for work during an attack.

We lived across from Boeing which builds military aircraft. We knew were were a re target. In fact, during WWII, the roofs of the Boeing buildings were painted to look like farmland and neighborhoods. They took off the KC_135s in the middle of the night and they were so low, the windows rattled. So many times I knew that was it and we were going to die.

No - the Cold War did not affect me at all!

[Jarqui]

22. I still remember the 'fad' of folks in fear trying to build

bomb/fallout shelters underneath their homes or in areas nearby.

It was less than 20 years since Japan got nuked and WW2 ended.
Families were still recovering from that (some never did)
The Korean war was only about 10 years before.
Eisenhower, Truman & Churchill were still alive.
We were still living in the shadows of recent war.

As a young boy, there was no way to understand it all but you could see the worry etched on the faces of the adults around you. We had to be extra quiet when the news came on. Patience was more limited. You tried to be extra good because that might help your folks in some way deal with whatever it was you did not fully understand.

Yes, I remember it all too well. Yet in spite of that, I was caught up in JFK's Camelot - I believed in him and adored him. That confidence in him helped keep us calm.

I would handily agree with the poster above:
With Trump and his buffoons at the helm, this is a more dangerous time.
Not just for the conflict Trump is getting us into but there is no way those clowns in his admin have a clue about defending the nation. They can be played for the incompetent suckers they are. And Trump has alienated much of NATO. I do not see a lot of the world supporting Trump's behavior. If there is a second 9/11 or worse, I do not expect nearly as much sympathy or support from the rest of the planet like the US got after 9/11.

Meanwhile, the drunken, sexual assaulter who couldn't plan an effective military parade is the Secretary of Defense heading up the effort to protect the country.

These buffoons think they can lie their way out of this ...

[NEOBuckeye]

24. People following after a malignant narcissist.

A surefire pathway to disaster.

[boonecreek]

25. I'm going on 75.

We had air raid drills. They would herd us to the "basement" , which was actually the ground floor.
Chicago public schools were still fighting WWII.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

26. That's probably why they gave us all ID bracelets.

To identify the bodies after the attack. They never told us that part.

[radical noodle]

27. I was in high school in Indiana

I don't know about other schools, but ours didn't bother giving us silly instructions about diving under desks.

[purple_haze]

28. I live next to a top five target

My plan is to run toward the bright white flash when I see it. It will be easier that way.

And no, I'm not joking. I spend zero time worrying about this.

[TexLaProgressive]

29. I'm 75 as well

We had moved from New Orleans to rural central Texas. I have no memory of duck and cover drills. That might have been different in NO.

[Hugin]

30. I'm of the MAD generation.

Mutually Assured Destruction.

They didn't bother with any of that then.

We had to decide if we wanted to paint a big "X" on our butts and lay down in a known target area or try to survive long enough to emerge into a post-blast effect hellscape and die a slow lingering death.

We were eight years old.

[marybourg]

31. I was an adult during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

That was far far far scarier than this. That was actual nuclear weapons 90 minutes from us. This compares only to the oil crises of ‘73 and ‘79, not to the CMC.

[NNadir]

32. As a person who understands nuclear technology very well...

...and one who lived, albeit as a child, through the Cuban Missile Crisis, let me say this:

There is no way in hell that Iran has developed an advanced nuclear arsenal, if they have even attempted to do so.

The expense associated with doing so through enrichment as well as the time required in multistage enrichment is almost certainly prohibitive. It took the United States, once the richest country on Earth, decades to produce its large arsenal.

This is a wag the dog moment.

My wife reminded me this morning that most people do not understand nuclear technology and thus find this sort of thing believable. It isn't and it shouldn't be taken all that seriously.

Our credulity is our own worst enemy.

[ProfessorGAC]

47. Said Something Similar Yesterday

They supposedly have 60% enriched U235. They are 2/3rds of the way, but 1/10th of the difficulty to get to weapons grade.
The counter was that 60% has no practical uses, so they're up to something.
If they are still 10 years & half their oil revenues away, I refuse to accept there is an imminent threat.

[NNadir]

50. Most of the world's research reactors utilize highly enriched uranium, in order to maintain a high neutron flux.

This includes the HFIR at Oak Ridge, to which I alluded yesterday, which makes ²³⁸U, and the higher isotopes of curium, as well as ²⁵²Cf, an important neutron source.

I wrote about HFIR yesterday here: Smooth trends in fermium charge radii and the impact of shell effects

There has been a movement to move away from use of highly enriched uranium for research reactors, which is possibly unfortunate, since it requires longer irradiation times to make, say ⁹⁹Mo to provide ^99mTc.

The topic is covered here: Ridding research reactors of highly enriched uranium to take decades longer than projected Technical, political hurdles stretch goal from 2018 to 2035 or beyond, Science News 2018.

People who say "highly enriched uranium has no practical uses" are simply unaware of nuclear technology, and play into the hands of people like George W. Bush, and now the orange idiot to allow them to commit murder.

As I understand nuclear science very well, I find the whole thing appalling, particularly as there are people here who think this attack on another country is justified.

Given the number of human beings killed in Iraq, one could argue - as is the case with nuclear accidents in particular Fukushima, where the evacuations caused more deaths than radiation exposure - that fear of nuclear weapons has resulted in more deaths than the one and only nuclear war ever observed 80 years ago.

The case for Fukushima:

Comparison of mortality patterns after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant radiation disaster and during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Motohiro Tsuboi et al 2022 J. Radiol. Prot. 42 031502)

It's open sourced, but an excerpt is relevant:

However, in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant(FDNPP) accident, no direct health hazards due to radiation, such as acute radiation injury, were observed, while various indirect health effects were reported even in the acute phase [2, 3]. Major health effects are attributed to the initial emergency evacuation and displacement, deterioration of the shelter environment, evacuation from nursing homes, and psychological and social health effects. In addition, there were also the effects of medical collapse, where lives that could normally be saved by medical care could not be saved due to a lack of medical resources [4, 5]. It is known that these effects are particularly susceptible to the socially vulnerable [6].

.

I added the bold.

Now the rest of the cited text - some of these authors live and work in Fukushima and have always done so; their institution is Fukushima Medical University, Fukushima City, Japan - indicates that the fear of radiation killed people, but radiation itself didn't. By the way, this group has published hundreds of papers on the topic.

It is the fear that kills, not the nuclear materials. Iran has a right to enrich uranium, all nations do.

[ananda]

33. Agree. The Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis...

were nothing compared to this.

Not only is there the actual, credible threat of nukes being used,
but there are also sleeper cells ready to attack in the USA.

This is way worse.

[EmmaLee E]

35. I remember my dad saying that if we needed a bunker (as was advised on TV PSAs)

It wouldn't be enough to save us.

[Peacetrain]

36. I remember that well myself..

and if we were not under our desks.. we were in the hallways with our arms over our heads

[twodogsbarking]

37. I remember it. The Three Stooges were supposed to be on TV but this took its place. Still pissed.

Nyuk , nyuk.

[generalbetrayus]

38. I lived in SE D. C. at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. The thing that scared me the most was that on school days

my dad was at his government office in downtown D. C., my mom was at home, my oldest sister was at American University across town, my brother at his high school, and my other sister at her junior high school while I was at my elementary school. I always wondered if I would ever be able to find any of them after the big one was dropped on the Capitol. but I was old enough (9) to realize that most probably all of us were toast if that event actually happened.

[NEOH]

40. Gen-Xer here...

When things started getting real for us (late 70s-mid 80s) the only advice for protection in case of an all out nuke war was “Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye!”.

[Ping Tung]

41. I'm 81 and was locked in our barracks so we didn't go AWOL while JFK and Kruschev came to their senses

and decided that killing millions was a bad idea and making a deal was a winner.

[mgardener]

42. We were in the halls

With our coats or arms overhead.

We had no clue. I just always hoped we had a drill during math time.

[bluestarone]

46. Same here. THIS evil bastard IS the worst creature that was ever given the right to breath.

Never believed Americans would be so fucking DUMB! (Well, i could be wrong about that) Maybe it was a STOLEN election.

[Evolve Dammit]

49. And we had stocked fallout shelters in most communities. We have nothing like that anymore.....

[HAB911]

51. I may remember seeing you under there!

[Littlered]

52. Maybe it's different in other places.

No one around here even batted an eye over it. It happened during our show, and the only thing I heard people talking about was the game that was on. We went to a cookout/party yesterday and it barely came up. The host asked me if I had heard about it and that was pretty much all that was said by anyone. I believe as a society we have grown numb to these types of things.

[spike jones]

53. Just think how traumatic the active shooter drills are for today's children. Any and every minute it could happen.

[leftyladyfrommo]

54. I just remember walking to school that

morning wondering if I would live the day out. It was really scary.