[exit82]

What a good son you are!

We did the “duck and cover” drills in the early sixties in our grammar school, too.

Then we did one better—we crouched down along the hallway walls so we wouldn’t be cut down by all the glass windows(the real tall ones—remember the big wooden pole we used to open the top sash—you could have jousted with that thing!).

No one bothered to explain that we were only 12 miles from NYC—which means that in a hydrogen bomb blast, our whole town would have been incinerated.

[driftdiver]

“We did the “duck and cover” drills in the early sixties in our grammar school, too.’

Duck and cover from nuclear attack or tornadoes is one thing. Terrorizing young children like this is insane.

[WorkingClassFilth]

Yeah, we eventually had to go down to the hall by the engineers room and the boilers away from the windows. I remember those window opener pole/hook things. I would have made an excellent combat weapon. Now my PS is probably a community education center teaching yoga and global warming studies. Too bad Putin won't come and nuke it today.

[SoftballMominVA]

I remember having duck and cover, fire, and tornado drills in elementary school. I went to school in Atlanta and we were convinced that Castro was going to nuke Atlanta at any time. Each drill had a different type of ring that indicated what type of drill we were to do and where we were to go. Different places for each type. I used to go to sleep every night afraid I wouldn't’t wake up because of the Russians, the Cubans, and their nuclear weapons.

[Tokra]

I remember our "duck and cover" drills when I was a kid. My school was only 2 blocks from a huge auto factory complex which would have been a prime target.

I remember asking my teacher what good it would do to climb under a desk when the entire school would vanish in a blinding flash.

She told me to shut up and get under the desk.

Ahh - the innocent halcyon days of yesteryear when all we had to worry about was the instantaneous vaporization of the entire city.

[TalonDJ]

No one bothered to explain that we were only 12 miles from NYC—which means that in a hydrogen bomb blast, our whole town would have been incinerated.

Not really acurate. ICBM warheads are not that big. The shockwave or firestorm would have been what you got and the inner hall may very well have been plenty of protection. Yeah, they built bombs much bigger that could do that, but most of the ones actually FIELDED on both sides were not nearly that big.

[CremeSaver]

"No one bothered to explain that we were only 12 miles from NYC—which means that in a hydrogen bomb blast, our whole town would have been incinerated. "

We were about 50 miles from the city, doing the drills at least twice a month. I remember hearing one of my teachers say to another, "Aren't you going to get down?" The other one said, "No, because when it happens there won't be anything left anyway, no food, no water, a few horribly mangled survivors, and I don't want to be one of them."

I was terrified for years afterwards. LOL! Talk about scary stories, no wonder so many "Boomers" are basket cases.