Same here. We lived near the Naval Ammunition Depot that had to be a prime target and my uncle was in SAC. I figured I’d go out in a childhood blaze of glory or die a long death from leukemia.
I always wondered how or if the adults knew the air raid siren tests were really just tests.
I grew up in Amarillo, which thanks to the helium reserve and Air Force base was number ten of the Soviet hit list. We did duck and cover in school, crouched down in the hallway. Survived anyway.
The tests were scheduled monthly at noon on the same day. Back then the same sirens were used for tornado and other alerts so the tests were always performed in that mode. The sirens would cycle like a sine wave. That was the normal alert for standards alerts but for a nuclear attack the sirens would run continuously, not in the sine wave pattern. The continuous mode was not supposed to be used for a test.