But you're right that I've never worried about being nuked. It's really a weird way to live. I grew up with this idea that everything could just be gone just

But you're right that I've never worried about being nuked. It's really a weird way to live. I grew up with this idea that everything could just be gone just like that: family, hearth, civilization. Things became odder, personally, when I joined the Marines. Suddenly it looked like being in the military gave one a better chance of surviving World War III than staying on the home front. Assuming one wasn't at an SAC base, or stationed near a target. Then one day ... the threat just vanished. Very odd. Thomas Jefferson's quote about the moral effects of dependence on manufacture. On the other hand we can't all be farmers. And life on a farm back in those days wasn't idyllic just .. necessary. For all of Jefferson's love affair with the yeoman farmer, he himself wasn't one, wouldn't have been able to think his grand thoughts, read his books if he had to spend 15 hours a day behind a plow.