People mock Duck and Cover, or hide under your desks, but if you are outside the fireball/ionizing prompt radiation/ and upper psi blast radius, it could save your life from the flying debris. If you are upwind of the detonation and outside those zones.....you will likely survive if you took cover.

We took up duck and cover again in the early 80's due to the rising tensions while Reagan was in office. They told us it was "tornado" drills, but I overheard some teachers talking.....

We were a lot closet than that, a lot more recently than then. Two incidents immediately come to mind. We had a valid launch order for our alert EC-135, with the Battle Staff onboard. That NEVER happened in an exercise. During an exercise, they scrambled, went out one taxiway, and in the next one. This time they halted all flights and launched, which was supposed to only happen when missiles were flying. It turned out to be a faulty computer at Norad.

The second time, a Soviet missile commander was given the codes and ordered to launch, because a missile had been detected in flight from Europe. Since it was only one, he choose to disobey and wait a few minutes to get a better picture of where it was heading. It turned out to be a space launch, but no one had passed the word to the right people in Moscow.

They sent us home from school that 1st day...to "be with your families". We thought that it was our last day on Earth. I wont forget that day...and when Kennedy was shot. We all thought too that was the "1st strike" of an enemy attack...and they sent us home then as well.

This ordeal never made any sense to me.

So there are missiles on Cuba. Okay.

We handle it with threats?

If they were going to use the missiles threatening them wouldnt have worked.

The fear of nuclear war is an irrational one. Even in a leader of a nation is a hellbent psychopath there are still plenty of hands between the mythical maniacal super villain and the actual launching of a missile.

As much as we would like to believe that there are suicidal lunatics with their shaky fingers hovering over the button that just isnt the case or we would have experienced at least one attack in this last half century.

MAD works because no one can win and even in the cases of fanatics who dont care to win there would be no one left to worship their great leaders struggles in an endless conflict with the great satan nor would there be resources or land left to conquer.

Castro never would have fired them. Kruschev never would have fired them. Ahmadinejad wont ever fire them. NK is a bit of an anomaly but I am reasonably sure they would never fire them.

Barring some sort of accidental launching nuclear war is mythical for all intents and purposes and will never happen nor would it have in the past.

Our s school windows had not been opened in a long time.. It took some of the bigger boys(elementary school) to get the windows open. We then had to rub soap on the window slides to make them easy to open... We did watch duck and cover. We pushed the large tables up against the out side windows after raising the windows. We were all under the tables. I guess sirens would let us know that we needed to open the windows and move the tables and stuff. I do not remember moving into the halls but maybe that did not stick with me.

I always figured we were closer than was let on, later in life when you are old enough to consider such things.

Originally posted by thisguyrighthere
This ordeal never made any sense to me.

So there are missiles on Cuba. Okay.

We handle it with threats?

If they were going to use the missiles threatening them wouldnt have worked.

The fear of nuclear war is an irrational one. Even in a leader of a nation is a hellbent psychopath there are still plenty of hands between the mythical maniacal super villain and the actual launching of a missile.

As much as we would like to believe that there are suicidal lunatics with their shaky fingers hovering over the button that just isnt the case or we would have experienced at least one attack in this last half century.

MAD works because no one can win and even in the cases of fanatics who dont care to win there would be no one left to worship their great leaders struggles in an endless conflict with the great satan nor would there be resources or land left to conquer.

Castro never would have fired them. Kruschev never would have fired them. Ahmadinejad wont ever fire them. NK is a bit of an anomaly but I am reasonably sure they would never fire them.

Barring some sort of accidental launching nuclear war is mythical for all intents and purposes and will never happen nor would it have in the past.

Nuclear war will never happen?
Go tell that to the people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima whose cities were annihilated by nuclear weapons dropped by America.

There was no need to use them except to end the war sooner.
Yet they were used.

We haven't had a world war since then.

If, or when, the third world war happens, with so many nations now armed with nuclear weapons and many more with the capability to develop them quickly(Japan, Australia, Germany etc), the likelihood that a nuclear exchange will occur is very high.
One flashpoint would be Pakistan-India.
The world powers would have more restraint, but if they are loosing the war, why wouldn't they use nuclear weapons to turn the tide in their favor?

Nuclear war is not only probable, but an almost certainty in the next world war.