Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic

Duck and Cover
ER — (archived)

I started first grade in '53, graduated from high school in '64. It covered a big piece of the Cold War, roughly from Korea to Vietnam, and included the Cuban Missile Crisis. It ws pretty hard getting away from it, I remember the air-raid siren tests, the Civil Defense shelters and the yellow trefoils that identified them and evacuation routes, and I remember the CONELRAD broadcasts, which interrupted radio programming to exercise the system which would supposedly confuse Russian bomber's navigational gear but still leave radios available to provide emergency information to the populace. I even remember the fall-out shelter program that was supposed to encourage the citizenry to build backyard hideouts in the event the balloon went up. The swimming pool industry was gearing up big time to do the construction, but the people never bought into the program.

What I don't remember was the duck and cover drills that everyone was supposed to be having in the schools. You've seen the movies, kids jumping under their desks and crouching in fetal position, covering their heads while that ridiculous music played in the background. They often show these films to convince us of the futility of trying to defend ourselves from nuclear warfare with London Blitz methods. It must have happened, we've all been told about it, seen it on TV, read about it. But I never saw it. I never participated in any of those drills. I was in plenty of conventional fire drills, but never anything like that. No one I know ever did, either. Was it a regional thing, did Florida schools not hold these exercises? Surely it happened somewhere, I'm sure they didn't just make it up, but where? How often?

You zoners are a bunch of old farts, many of you were in grade school back then. Did you ever take part in a Duck and Cover drill? Be honest, don't figure you've just forgotten about it, think hard. Did you do it? How often? Did your friends from other schools tell you about it? Or is this just another one of those things that maybe had some germ of truth to it, but never really happened on the scale we've been led to believe it did. I asked my wife, who is a few years older than I and who grew up in Pittsburgh, and at first she said "yes", but when I pressed her on it, she had to admit she couldn't remember ever being in one.

Is this just an other urban legend from the 50s and 60s? I eagerly await your responses.

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (90 posts)