How the threat of nuclear war after World War II shaped the attitude of baby boomers


If you’re a true baby boomer, you know what it was like to feel that the world might come to an end at any instant with nuclear war in the 1950s and 60s. And since I was born in 1958, and I fall into the category of "Baby Boomer", I'm discovering that there was a subtle change that happened around the time I went to grade school, and high school in the '60s and '70s.

I don't know what your experience was, but I never did any of the preparation stuff for a nuclear war, like "duck and cover" - which from what I understand was something that children were taught to get underneath their desks in the event of a nuclear attack. I do recall grownups talking about the threat of the end of the world from nuclear attacks, but apparently it never really affected me. My attitude was more like what I read in "Mad Magazine" - which was to just "kiss your __ goodbye!" What, me worry?

That someone, somewhere, could push a button and cause ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) to come raining down all over the earth seemed something that wasn't worth worrying about for me, and most of the kids my age. Of course, that was just the way that I and most of my friends dealt with it - the other way was to build bomb shelters, stockpile food and ammunition, that sort of thing. Most of the people my age and younger didn't do that, but it really was, and continues to be, something that Baby Boomers did a LOT of.

When I lived in Los Angeles in the 1980s, disaster was always imminent, either from "the Big One" (an earthquake on the San Andreas fault), or missiles suddenly flying in across the Pacific. For a potential earthquake, I kept a gallon of water around, and a flashlight, and for the nuclear attack I just didn't think about it. In theory the "Star Wars" satellites would shoot down an ICBM before it got to California, but I really didn't know.

I've spent a fair amount of time today thinking about where I where like to be, and what I would like to be doing at the end of the world, and it's here, and this. The more I learn about how precarious life is for humans here on planet earth, the more I'm amazed that we've made it this far as a species. And maybe it's not "Mad Magazine" cynicism that makes me not worry, maybe it's hope, and confidence in the human race.

If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. If you like Phoenix history and would like to help support my efforts to preserve and share precious digital historic images, please consider becoming a patron. Thank you!

Become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more