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Tensions were so high in the 80s, I remember me and a few other kids discussing that very thing with a teacher in 3rd grade on the playground. (back when kids a
by Clubber 9y ago
Tensions were so high in the 80s, I remember me and a few other kids discussing that very thing with a teacher in 3rd grade on the playground. (back when kids actually had daily recess plus P.E.)
- metaobject 9y agoMy kids still have daily recess and PE.
- Clubber 9y agoMine have no daily recess and PE once a week. :(
- QAPereo 9y agoThis is literally the decade and context in which I had the same discussions!
- skygazer 9y agoMe too. We're either all 43, or there's something about that third grade recess.
- Clubber 9y agoPretty close. How did that happen!? I feel like I was 23 just a few weeks ago!
- KGIII 9y agoDid 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.
- alethiophile 9y agoIn 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.)
- KGIII 9y agoFor 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.
- alethiophile 9y agoFair. But most schools aren't, and they aren't going to roll out those procedures unevenly.
- KGIII 9y agoYou 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.
- mikeash 9y agoHow 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.
- Clubber 9y agoI 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."
- QAPereo 9y agoIt really does all speed up the older we get.
- SubiculumCode 9y agoIt is the worst.
- cocoablazing 9y agoThe mid-80's were actually the peak of cold war TNW preparation. NATO's provocation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83 Soviet response: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RYAN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RYAN