Did you live in constant fear of being nuked? Or was it more chill most of the time?
I was old enough to really remember only towards the very end, but from a kid’s POV in the US:
- It was mostly chill. The Russians were the bad guys in every action movie though.
- We were taught that Communism was bad and the people who lived under it had no freedoms and were hungry all the time.
- We didn’t really do nuke drills or anything, no “duck and cover” or whatever. We knew about it and that it was a possibility but it seemed like that was about it.
- It really was a cool feeling of optimism when the Berlin Wall fell.
Do you have any feelings about the whole situation now?
In terms of the optimism - it really is true that we thought it was the “end of history”. But I won’t fault someone my age thinking that - it was a movie or video game. The good guys won and that was that.
And the 90’s were pretty fantastic, at least for me. Not so much for the folks in, say, Yugoslavia. We were blinded by our ignorance and hope. Putin came into power and started behaving like a former Soviet dictator.
9/11 was……a huge wake up call. For all of the horrible things that happened on that day itself, it was a realization that we weren’t “done”. We had been naive. And that was depressing to come to terms with. It wasn’t going to be like the movies, ever.
It’s great to see the EU doing well regardless of Brexit. I think they’re a good example of what can happen when everyone decides to work together, and it’s been good to see them make rational decisions while the US has not been in some ways.
TLDR The Cold War was just 1 conflict with a lot of stories. When it ended, that conflict may have been over but there were other conflicts that had been brewing, they just didn’t have our attention and we saw what came after.
There is no movie and the good guys don’t always win. There is no “end of history”. Human rights and democracy need to be constantly worked on if we want to have them. Different countries and cultures working together is a good way to do that. Diversity and accepting people who are different from you are also important. No one can do this on their own; isolationism isn’t the answer.
Germany, born early seventies. Background, there was a strong “never again” sentiment after WW2 and to that end we were educated about the horrors of war from an early age. WW2 and the Third Reich was discussed in school and also very present in living memories of grandparents and their friends.
It was made very clear to us where the first nukes would drop (Germany) and who would drop them (Germans). Flexible response was explained to us, the Nato strategy of using nukes first, as well as MAD. We were given estimated times from sirens blaring to explosion. We visited a bunker, and we were imagining nuclear hellscapes and asking ourselves if one should even try to enter a bunker to try to survive. Pershing II were discussed and MIRV, which were new technologies at the time.
Sonic booms from military jets were common, we would respond to that with “Russians are coming”. Not fear, but fatalism was the usual response, and a large number of young men would reject draft and opt for civilian service, wanting to do something productive during service instead of training to get pulverized in the first wave.
Then came Gorbatschow, and Reagan would still pursue his star wars programme, which left us scratching our heads.
Less of a fear that we would get nuked and more of a fear that Reagan would do something colossally stupid.
When the apocalypse is hanging above your head, you tend to appreciate life while it lasts.
Also, music was better.
I remember my school calling everyone in to the gymnatorium for a special announcement. They then told us that our town, and our school specifically, were going to be featured on a television show that night. And that we should all watch it with our families.
When little rizz watched that night with their family, they saw a shot of their school. And they pointed and said, “look!” Right as the warheads detonated over the school and everyone turned into skeletons.
And rizz lost their fricken mind from watching The Day After.
Wait is that the name inspiration for “the day after tomorrow”?
I doubt they put that much thought into the name.
For reference, born in 1966. The possibility of nuclear war was something everyone was aware of but people weren’t in constant fear. I think we did nuclear attack drills in grade school but can’t say for certain though the joke in the playground was “crawl under your desk, place your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye”. Just like today there was always some shit hitting the fan folks would freak out about until the next thing came along (Swine flu, Iran hostages, gas shortages). The oddest think I remember is the end of the Soviet Union and tearing down of the Berlin Wall. It was (fortunately) anticlimactic. We had been heard so much about the red scare. After that calling politicians “communist” disappeared for awhile until the kook media revived it
You know how schools have active shooter drills now? We had nuclear attack drills…. Duck and cover people, duck and cover.
If you haven’t seen it consider watching Wargames 1983 starring Mathew Broderick. It’s fiction and a story of course, but a crazy time capsule as well.
Inundated pop culture - War Games, Red Dawn, Rocky and every movie that needed a bad guy; If the Russians love their children too …
We often joke now about how the “foreign enemy” in every action movie in the 80s was Russian. Then, in the 90s, it wasn’t cool to pick on Russians anymore, and they switched to “Chechin” and “Bosnian” militants. Then, after 9/11, all Arab terrorists. Now, we’re getting back to Russians again.
I wouldn’t say constant fear. We did duck and cover drills alot in school. That’s about it.
The thing about mutually assured destruction is that it assures everyone loses. I wasn’t too worried. Accidental launches could happen and we got close a couple of times.
Most of the time it was chill. Lots of spy movies. And all sorts of propaganda was flying about.
In school there were signs for nuclear fallout shelters. Some drills, sort of like tornado drills. Discussion of the bomb was quite frequent and fatalistic. I grew up in a town that did arsenal and weapons testing that often shook the classroom windows.
These are still all over New York City.
Well, growing up in the 80s, I thought for a while I might not live to be an adult. I saw The Day After and I lived three blocks from a naval air station.
Born early 70s. Depends where you lived I think
If you lived in a country full of gun-owning shitebag cowards, yeah, people are scared of their own shadows
In other countries it was more “Meh”
