As a youngster, coming of age in the ‘50s and ‘60s, I gradually became aware of the absurdities of life in Cold War and Atomic Age America.
With above-ground atomic testing taking place just a few hundred miles from our house in L.A., I would keep my bedroom window closed at night whenever a test was announced. Crazy, right? Maybe not. Mom died from the Hodgkins Lymphoma she got a few years later.
Over four decades, beginning in 1951 over one thousand nuclear explosions were detonated at the Nevada Test Site, the hundred or so atmospheric tests carrying fallout from the mushroom clouds on the westerly winds. Marked increases in cancers, such as leukemia, lymphoma, thyroid cancer, breast cancer, melanoma, bone cancer, brain tumors, and gastrointestinal tract cancers, were reported from the mid-1950s onward.
But if you think closing my windows was crazy, our schools had us doing “drop drills” and being told to “duck & cover” whenever warning sirens went off. It was as if hiding under your desk could protect you from atomic radioactive fallout.
It was on this day in 1961 that Pres. Kennedy, speaking on civil defense, advised American families to build bomb shelters to protect them from atomic fallout in the event of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. Kennedy also assured the public that the U.S. civil defense program would soon begin providing such protection for every American. Only one year later, the world hovered on the brink of full-scale nuclear war when the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted over the USSR’s placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba. During the tense 13-day crisis, some Americans prepared for nuclear war by buying up canned goods and completing last-minute work on their backyard bomb shelters.
No, as apartment dwellers, we were in no position and had no desire to build a bomb shelter. And my parents were politically conscious enough to know that canned goods would be the least of our problems in the event of nuclear war. Becoming active in the anti-war, anti-nuke movement seemed like a more rational response.
These memories remain vivid as the Atomic “Doomsday Clock” pushes ever closer to midnight and today’s cold warriors from both parties are at it again. Today’s Cold War is directed against China. The Soviet Union no longer exists but the existential threat of cold war turning into hot war remains.