[LINK] Surviving a nuclear bomb
Ash Nallawalla
ash at melbpc.org.au
Fri Dec 17 19:51:00 AEDT 2010
I was an exchange student in New Jersey in the winter of 1979-1980 and the
sabre rattling by the Soviets led to some talk of a possible nuclear strike
against the US East Coast. So the New York based TV stations went into the
usual beat-up mode with lots of experts talking about the worst possible
outcomes for us. Then one day a TV crew started to knock on the doors of old
buildings that still displayed faded signs from the 1950s "Bomb Shelter".
I recall a bank manager looking very bemused when asked to show the bomb
shelter. It was now a storage room with no space for huddled masses.
Another building was fully stocked but that had been done in the 1950s, so
the cans were all rusty and the water looked quite unsafe. So many private
homes there had basements (a great invention), so my host family was quite
nonplussed about the sabre rattling, other than to note that the wooden
construction of the homes meant that they would be turned into match sticks
and there wouldn't be much likelihood of long term survival.
Ash
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jan Whitaker
>
> I guess 'duck and cover' was right all along. Who else was taught in the
50s
> and 60s to jump under your school desk if the big one hit?
> Raise hands. I wonder if kids today have ever heard the word 'fall-out'
> before. I think I was probably 6 or 7 when I first heard it. We didn't
have one,
> but many people had 'fallout shelters'. My grandparents had a room in the
> basement with a cot and lots of food, just in case.
>
> How times have changed.
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