Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to The flow of the conversation wasn't that surprising.

re: The flow of the conversation wasn't that surprising.
ER — (archived)

As far as the concept of civil defense against nuclear war is concerned, I'm not opposed to it in principle, but it is not a straightforward issue, as I tied to explore in my post below on the topic. And like many efforts of this type, it can quickly degenerate into just a scheme to persuade the public that the government has a plan in place to protect them. I believe the CD program in place throughout the 60s fell firmly in this category. My objections to CD were not against the concept, they were strictly practical, as I hope my post below, "Overly flippant remark...", tried to point out. BTW, the overly flippant remark was not yours, it was one of mine, from a previous post. I meant no accusation.

But I had other reasons for choosing that topic for this thread, reasons I'm surprised you didn't pick up on, since they are sympathetic to your point of view. It's fashionable to poke fun at the whole duck and cover idea and the naive PR techniques used to push it (at least, judging from those ghastly films). Since I went through that era without ever experiencing anything like that, I started wondering if it wasn't a highly exaggerated, or even non-existent event that was now being used to unfairly ridicule the entire concept of civil defense. After all, duck and cover is a valid response to tornadoes, too. Those events happened almost half a century ago, most people comment on them now without ever having experienced them: an urban legend, if you like. As the other posters seem to indicate, D&C did happen in some schools, but I still believe it never really caught on in a big way and slamming it was pretty unfair.

Think of it as a left-wing version of the Vietnam vets being spit on by antiwar protestors, you'll recall we went round and round about that urban legend in one of my first posts here.

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