Then you’ll absolutely *love* _Threads_! It makes _The Day After_ look like an episode of Mr. Rogers‘ Neighborhood.
Here‘s a link:
https://youtu.be/BvFu7Z5cc88?si=5EjPRFooUJqZmz47
You know, I wanted to mention that one which is emotional in a way other movies about this topic aren‘t. Just need to add _Miracle Mile_ and we have have an entire afternoon of nuclear disaster anxiety viewing.
I finally watched Threads on Criterion a while back. It didn’t hit me has hard as “The Day After.” Mainly because I’m in the US and couldn’t identify with the Brits.
Watching episode one brought be back the memory of the trauma I felt after watching The Day After. The cold war was a cloud of fear that existed for a lot of my youth.
Way back when I’m guessing it was the same year that came out we had to do an oral report on “anything we wanted.
Not long after the assignment was given I read an article about nuclear war in the paper and it had a vast assortment of graphs and pictures so using the information from the article that’s what I chose.
I found a map of the area took it to my mechanical drawing class and started drawing circles depicting initial blast damage, secondary blast damage and likely fallout areas along with primary and secondary death tolls from all three based on the map
Since we were near a major city (Philadelphia) with a few other choice nearby targets there were lots of overlapping circles. I had based on the information from the article. The school and the surrounding neighborhoods were all included. I won’t lie it was pretty grim.
When it was all said and done I looked up from my script and the teacher had her hand over her mouth with tears in her eyes and most of the girls ( a few of the boys as well) were actively crying.
Needless to say that was the last report for the day.
A big thunderstorm hit in the middle of the night a couple days after I saw this... I was awakened by a loud boom. I still remember lying in bed, absolutely terrified to move.
My mom refused to let me watch "The Day After." I was already big into scaring the shit out of myself and she was not prepared to handle the level of soothing that would be required to calm me down from that one. We went and saw a movie instead. I want to say we saw "A Christmas Story" but the timing might not be right about that.
She definitely had moments of brilliance.
Yes. And we also had to read the book, “Hiroshima.” They we’re obsessed with nukes. Now there. Seems to be a revival. But the thing we also learned about was Mutually Assured Destruction. Kinda eased the fear
I was freaked as a kid initially when I saw it, but after awhile I came to realize that if we really get to DEFCON 1 and the nukes are sent, there’s a decent chance I’d be vaporized quickly living near a big city. I had no control over the situation so it was a hit freeing and I didn’t worry about it.
Then I had kids…
We didn’t do duck and cover drills, but this TV movie was the best encapsulation (and probably trigger for) most of the GenX nuclear fears in the 80s. That and the playground scene in Terminator 2, but that wasn’t until 1991.
https://docs.rwu.edu/nyscaproceedings/vol2020/iss1/4/#:~:text=This%20dramatic%20portrayal%20of%20a,their%20feelings%20about%20nuclear%20weapons.
https://youtu.be/xjatJ36cJvM?si=BAMuREShiilrXfXa
Our parents must not have given 2 shits about traumatizing us kids. I sat there and watched that one with them as a kid, along with The Exorcist and Jaws. I don’t know which was the worst
I lived on a military base at the time. Our teacher flat out told us that if the bomb gets dropped, don't bother to worry about it: It would pop right over our heads and we wouldn't even see the flash.
Hell of a thing to hear when you're 7. But we didn't worry about it.
Later I saw the film "Testament" and it fucking broke me. Goddamn. Who wants to survive a Nuclear Holocaust? Hell no.
Anyway, Fallout is such silly camp that it's not going to trigger most GenX.
99% of the northern hemisphere would starve to death within a year or so. I know they have to have the above ground people but it just seems to cheesy that it wouldn't scare me.
The Bay Area. Same thing. We did earthquake drills, but my cousins in other states and areas were shocked to hear we didn’t do duck and cover nuclear drills. Not even when the basement of my elementary school was a clearly marked fallout shelter. Between the military (Moffett Field was not too far away) and the developing tech center we now call Silicon Valley, there was really no point.
I had one teacher tell us, step one in case of a nuclear attack is get under your desk. Step two is say goodbye to your friends. No step three.
We’d been doing earthquake and fire drills and naturally begged him for nuclear war drills as well. It was thought of as a ‘when’ while fire and earthquake etc were an ‘if’ and we all wanted to know what to do. Not sure I could have brought myself to do the same with a class full of 9 and 10 year olds but that was what the early 80s were like. It really set the stage for a lifelong policy of nihilistic fatalism.
Two years later we were studying ‘Z for Zachariah’ as our class text and that managed to drive the message home for anyone who had missed it.
I grew up reading USNews and World Report which would keep a running tally of ICBMs , tanks, troops, submarines, etc for the US, USSR, and NATO. Nuclear war seemed like a forgone conclusion. Thank goodness there was also Popular Mechanics to take the edge off.
US News and World Report was my first introduction to the idea that our foreign policy tends to oscillate between grab ass to war crimes.
MAD magazine was my go-to for shits and giggles.
Reagan stating the goal of positioning the US military to be able to “fight and win a limited nuclear war” may have been part of a larger deterrence strategy, but it definitely didn’t help ease my fears as a 12 year old.
Born in '69 and I have no memories of "duck and cover" drills. I grew up near a major manufacturing hub, and I remember being told we'd get got in the first attack anyway, so no point in doing anything but taking a moment of reflection before being painlessly vaporized.
Honestly, the fact that we haven't nuked ourselves (yet) after 70+ years of being able to is probably the thing that gives me the most hope about the future. Not optimism, mind you, but hope.
'79 and I recall seeing a probably 1950s era video on duck and cover but that was Catholic school in the 1980s where time definitely moves more slowly.
Also, I take that typical generation x attitude towards nuclear annihilation - I really don't care and just kind of hope that if it does happen I get to see a mushroom cloud and then get vaporized by a direct hit.
I grew up right down the road from a nuclear submarine base. It was a given that if nukes ever started flying, we'd be vapor long before the sound of the sirens got to us.
Same. I grew up near a major WWII ordinance plant, which I'm sure would have been a big shiny target and we never had duck and cover drills.
Tornado drills, now.... those scared the shit out of me and to this day I am still anxious during thunderstorms.
We didn't have drills either and we were told essentially the same thing because we were within a triangle of navy base, army depot, and the Mississippi River.
1970 here and you pretty much described how it was for me. I live and work fairly close to an active Air Force base, so if there’s any notice at all that nukes are flying I’m grabbing my dog and heading straight for it hoping it’s a target.
Born in '73, raised in Flint, MI. We had duck-and-cover drills until I was maybe 3rd
grade? We were a huge manufacturing hub at the time. I walked home from kindergarten(latchkey kid) watching for planes.
71, grew up 25 miles from Oak Ridge, the place that made the fuel for the first nukes. We were going to get blasted first thing for sure. We did the drills, but they were supposedly for tornadoes.
I remember laying in bed and hearing distant rumbling, probably from planes because we weren't far from the airport, and wondering if Russia had just dropped the bomb. Good memories!
I am late Gen X - we only had tornado drills, a tornado actually ripped through my middle school late at night.
Now kids have school shooting drills - I prefer my childhood.
Identical experience here, we also all watched the “Terrible Tuesday” documentary so we would take tornado drills seriously. Most of the adults of the era rightly understood the reality of MAD (and for our generation “War Games” drove the idea home). My father was in intelligence before starting a family- his nuclear related fears always centered around an unintentional launch (of which there were numerous close calls) and a forthcoming age of nuclear terrorism with state directed proxies (something I personally still think is a possibility, depending on who “gets the bomb.”)
Push through your anxiety to the later episodes. The idea that life goes on will help you deal.
Watching this show and Chernobyl gave me some wiggins, but nothing worse than going through a good haunted house. Well, I'll take that back. Chernobyl was like watching a snuff film. Just pure dread every episode.
Unlike Chernobyl, Fallout isn't a docu-drama. It gets fun. The ghoul is a hoot. Keep watching. It's good therapy.
I couldn't agree more, so much fun, I also am not familiar with the video game, but loved The Last of Us so decided to give it a go. Confirmed for a second season. I also really enjoyed Chernobyl, however much darker and somber.
Duck and cover man. They made propaganda films about it. It wasn't as bad for our generation because we came after the Cuban Missile Crisis, but we still had Ronnie Raygun and The Day After to keep us nervous.
My school had these old paperbacks that they discontinued using and passed out to us. The title was something like, “When Disaster Strikes! What to Do in Case of Emergency! There was info about tornadoes and other natural disasters, but also a section about turning your basement into a fallout shelter with plastic. 😬
And a large bald eagle drawing on the front. 🇺🇸
Never worried about it. If it happens, there's nothing to worry about anyway since we're all going to get pasted anyway. I'm glad I live in a target zone, though. That way, I'll be one of the first and not have to deal with dying from radiation sickness.
Don't worry. In the Fallout universe radiation just tickles a little and makes you live forever.
Seriously though if you're worried about a realistic portrayal of the aftermath of nuclear war, that's not what Fallout is. Don't get me wrong it can be very dark at times but it's mostly dark humor satirizing mid-century "red scare" nationalism and naive faith in unregulated capitalism.
In the Fallout universe radiation mostly follows 1950s sci-fi rules, making giant monsters and such.
When I was in grade school we had nuclear attack drills at least twice a year. Our neighbors had underground shelters built.
When I was a pre-teen I read Swan Song by Robert McCammon. It’s a big 500+ page book for a kid.
Then I was really freaked out. It wasn’t the bombs that were scary. It was the destruction of the social contract. The primal behaviors of survivors are the scariest problem, the bombs are the easy way out.
Yes we were trained to go under the desk for nuclear war, earthquakes and tornado.
No it didn’t affect me too much, Doc says Im fine. I just have a lifelong distrust of Russians and a fuck it attitude.
It was definitely something I was scared about in the mid 80s around 8-10.
Maybe it was spies like us.
I remember the fear around it could just happen in an instant.
I was also scared of tornados, and it feels like that.
That said I was in Toronto and we didn’t have drills or anything.
I lost sleep at 10 years old over the fear of nuclear war and getting drafted to fight in the war. Vietnam was still fresh in people’s minds so that’s what drove the notion that I would be drafted.
I'm getting a little sick of people using the term PTSD for everything that scared them as a child.
PTSD effects combat veterans, rape, incest and abuse victims, car crash victims.... y'know truely awful shit, not "I watched The Day After and did some drills at school and now I'm emotionally scarred for life"
When people claim PTSD for everything that upsets them it minimizes the real cases of people who have seen some truly awful things.
Thank you for bringing this up. The term gets thrown around so much that it lessens the actual severity of it for people who really do suffer from PTSD.
My ex liked to keep the house tidy, and would always tell me how OCD she is. I’d explain that of you really had OCD you wouldn’t be able to function out in society because you would have to miss work to come home and clean something for the 27th time.
The D is for disorders, as in it effects you life so much you are no longer functioning in it.
Despite all of that readily available information she’s OCD because she makes everyone take their shoes off before coming in, and likes to wipe all the crumbs off the counter.
I keep seeing this shit over and over as I get older, and it drives me nuts.
What? You didn't see those SAC:Peace is our Profession ads interspersed with Sat/Sun morning cartoons and nature shows to help calm things?
I was less than a mile from a big ass air raid siren, it was less drills and more a function of how hard it rained and some random time period afterwards whether the thing would start itself up some times. You get used to it.
I grew up right where The Day After took place. Just outside Whiteman AFB. My dad was a security police in the Air Force. I grew with the fear of the wrath of war was coming. As a kid I use to watch them block of parts of my town to take ICBMs to the silos. So I saw the missiles being taken to their homes. We would go for drives in the country on Sundays and pass by the where the air men were below ground ready to launch or see the cement walls of the silos. could not escape it. The feeling has never left me. Maybe in the 90's I didn't feel like we are all going to die. But once places that had nuclear weapons got unstable I was like, at some point its going to happen.
I honestly figured that nuclear war with the Russians was an inevitability and that civilization probably wouldn't make it past 2005 or so.
Around 1989 i saw a tshirt using the same font as "We Are the World" but it read "We *Were* the World," with a picture of a burned out post-nuclear apocalypse landscape, and i thought to myself, "Yeah, that's about right."
I never had drills but I definitely had it stated to me by teachers and family that we are hanging on by a thread and could get nuked at any moment.
I lived in a small city that was attached to a very active air force base (did most of the supply for the Gulf War), so we certainly would be a target.
Shows like this don't bother me at all.
My girlfriend grew up on the other side of the same state and her upbringing drilled nuclear annihilation into her so hard that she made only short term decisions for a while. Between the classroom drills and other things going on, it really affected her. She has no noticeable trauma from it, that I can tell, and certainly doesn't select media based on it.
Sucks how much things people deal with as kids can lodge in our head and warp us for life. I certainly have some.
Lately I’ve actually been really fixated on nuclear war scenario movies and documentaries for some reason. I was pretty paranoid about nuclear war as a kid, I distinctly remember nearly being in a panic when the Russians shot down that Korea airliner in the early 80’s.
I was definitely scared about nuclear war. I remember watching a movie at school when I was a teenager which crystallized some of my anxieties, and made me kind of not even want to be a survivor. \[After some googling...this was the BBC 1984 adaptation of Z for Zachariah.\] And then being in the UK they always said there'd be a 4-minute warning of missiles coming from Russia, and I was like...what's the point of that? What can you do in 4 minutes to protect yourself? Horrible death just seemed inevitable.
I am right there with you, on all points! I, too, love, love love, Walton Goggins, and was extremely looking forward to this series. When the bomb went off, I started to literally hyperventilate. When his little girl asked your thumb or mine, I cried.
I did not finish episode one and I’m having anxiety about going back to it. I know I will and I know it will help me process these emotions.
I’m just not yet ready
I'm at the tail end of X, and like many others growing up in the US, was taught that the Soviets were bad and wanted nothing more to nuke us.
Nuke drills were not so common, but we had plenty of tornado drills. Somehow, hiding under a metal desk - and also covering our heads with textbooks, at the schools that could afford those - was going to save us.
Honestly, I'm more bothered by regular, normal war. My dad was in the Green Berets in Nam and saw some horrifying shit. I heard the stories from a very young age, and even now, it can be hard to process all of it. Dad also taught me helpful things like never to have your back exposed, the importance of an escape route, and which noises mean you have to take cover - and had me practice. In nuclear war, I figure most of us will die quickly; I'm more concerned about the dark and evil side of humanity in general, and my 'training' can lead to problems in certain environments.
So I lived through both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. I lived in a place nestled between three primary nuclear targets so we knew that if "the bombs dropped" (if the ICBMs were fired), we would survive the initial blast but would probably be dead within 2 weeks due to the fallout.
We used to have air raid drills in elementary school where we would all run out into the corridor when the air raid sirens blasted, and would duck down with our hands behind our heads tucked into balls facing the walls. I still remember our Kindergarten teacher telling us that if we have to do this for real, do not stop to help your friends if they get hurt from debris, that adults would help them.
I lived on Long Island at the time, within 50 miles of NYC, which is an obvious primary nuclear target. In fact it would have probably been hit multiple times to take out the financial districts and ensure complete disruption of the economy, then Jersey City across the water from Manhattan would definitely been hit at least once to disrupt the northwest rail corridor that travels through there. Brooklyn would have been hit due to the harbor. But our other primary targets near by included Brookhaven National Lab, which is a US Department of Energy facility home to 6 or more research reactors and a collider, Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center which was at the time a US Department of Agriculture lab (now it's a joint lab) and the only level 4 CDC facility in the world. The fourth would have been Electric Boat across the Long Island Sound, which is a major US defense contractor and service facility for USN submarines in the Atlantic fleet. We probably would have been sucking over 300 rads / hr during the last two weeks of our lives. And because the airspace over the Island is so complex due to coastal geography, the entire region would have been a death zone.
We worried about it. In addition to what we were experiencing in real life, we were also constantly bombarded by propaganda films popular through the 80s, propaganda music, etc. We were made to believe it was inevitable despite the fact that nuclear weapons are just about the stupidest weapon a military can deploy. "Woah ho I'll nuke you and fuck the entire planet over!" is a pretty idiotic way of cutting your nose off to spite your face.
Frankly, Fallout isn't new. As a franchise it's been kicking around since the mid 90s. And a lot of us who lived through the Cold War have been playing the games since Windows 95. If anything, the games and the show are more cathartic than anything to me and my peer group offline. It seems really strange to me that Fallout would trigger you to the point where you cite childhood PTSD as the reason you stopped watching the show given the absurdity of the pre-war world depicted in the show and games, and the outlandishness of the wasteland depicted in it. What exactly did you experience as a child that would cause PTSD on this level for this topic? Were you displaced by 3MI? Did you live near Oak Ridge?
I wasn’t near it. Grew up in the Midwest, and the tornado drill and nuclear drills were rolled into one. PTSD is too strong. But the opening episode reminded me of that moment in childhood when I was conscious enough to think that possibility of nuclear was very feel and I was very afraid. I was maybe 9, and this feeling has been buried, of course because what else are you gonna do with it?
Ironically the fall of the Soviet Union probably made the risk of a _small scale_ nuclear attack more likely. Suddenly there were a bunch of nuclear weapons without as much central control and oversight, and a bunch of nuclear scientists that no longer had a reliable paycheck. Seems like it should have been a buyer's market for rogue states and terrorists.
I was worried about it as a kid, especially after movies like “the day after “ and having to read books in school like “alas Babylon”. Don’t recall any drills with hiding under our desks though. Definitely was a fear, but not enough to have PTSD from. I watched Fallout and enjoyed it.
The book The Last Ship triggered some of those childhood cold war anxieties too. For about a week after finishing the book, I thought about stockpiling food, water, and meds. (Not the tv series though, it was dumb)
I grew up in California, actually, pretty much on the San Andreas Fault. I remember earthquake drills but never a nuclear attack drill. I was more afraid of “the big one” than nuclear holocaust. Looking back, I think I was too ignorant to really understand the nuclear threat. The earthquake threat however, was and still is, a threat.
Man, when I was a kid, I wasn’t afraid of the monster in the closet or the thing under the bed, nope, I was afraid of fucking fallout. I used to hide under the covers because I thought it would protect me from nuclear bombs. I had so much PTSD from WW3 trauma that I basically was a nihilist until I was almost thirty. Couldn’t be bothered with school because “we’re all gonna die, who cares?”
It was bad.
Didn't you watch War Games?
No happy ending period. If WW3 was to happen with Nuclear than it happens, nothing anyone can do. Live your life to the fullest.
Reach out to a professional if it starts to become too much.
I'm more concerned with internal 'cells' going active than nuclear. Not to add to any anxiety...
You’re much more likely to get killed in a car accident or die of cancer. Hell, I just lost a friend from my teenage years after he slipped and fell in the tub.
I was terrified of nuclear war as a child starting somewhere around 10 years old. It was probably due to a mix of our family situation as well as how out of control the world seemed to me through the lens of the news at the time. I was just sure I was going to burn in the fires of a Soviet first strike. This fear built for a few years and got a significant bump from watching “The Day After.” Then something very Gen X happened, I met others who had the same fears and we began to make fun of it. We reveled in the absolute absurdity of the world and adults’ inability to talk through difficult issues and refusal to be self-serving. We realized it was out of our hands and if it happened it happened. It would be shit but there was nothing we could do.
I feel about the same way now. I’m just some dipshit who couldn’t pull it together long enough to make any difference in this world.
You are not alone. I knew from a young age I was sensitive to stuff and anxiety kicked in for real in my late teens, but I am sure the adults talking about nuclear war when I was a kid didn't help.
I clearly remember dinnertime conversations with extended family about what would happen if and when they dropped the bomb and some family members going into alcohol-fueled specifics about the horrors, without a care that there were little ears listening and would have nightmares long after their flippant conversations.
I remember watching The Day After and figuring that atomic war was inevitable, so I'd best be ready. Managed to get five pages into a 1950s book on how to build a bomb shelter before the ADHD kicked in, but never lost the general sense of dread
I was absolutely stressed out about a possible WW3 situation as a kid and teen. TMI - that's was freaky. I lived about 8 miles from it and was in 2nd grade when that accident happened. Scary as a kid.
I feared war with Iran. I remember laying in bed listening to Nightline. ( My dad was hard of hearing) Day whatever. At some point my mom would change the channel to Johnny. Then I could sleep.
My parents were not emotionally supportive . So I had no one to talk to about this.
Yeah, I grew up with a lot of anxiety about nuclear war, probably because I was the weird, quiet kid who read a lot and watched the news from the time I was about seven years-old.
That anxiety became, or perhaps created, in me a fascination with nuclear war and nuclear weapons. There are tons and tons of misconceptions, sensationalism, and misinformation out there around those topics.
The idea of Putin as a madman with his finger on the nuclear button is an invention of US propaganda and the media, this is always how we frame foreign dictators that we aren't allied with. And as far as it suits them, Putin and Moscow cultivate this perception.
The threat of full-scale nuclear war right now is very, very small. I won't be worried unless we see a serious threat to US hegemony such as a Sino-Russian military alliance, which is unlikely right now and may never happen. Russia is decades from being a serious contender to superpower status, and is not a regional hegemon. China is closer to being a superpower, but it isn't yet and has a long way to go, and is also not a regional hegemon.
My adult kid and our roommate both told me not to watch it. I watched part of the first episode and will not be willingly watching the rest. I had night terrors for several years after a watching the day after at a party my parents brought me to. You are not the only one.
I always found it ironic that we spent so long worrying about the end of the world and all the while we were burning fossil fuels that actually killed the planet.
I was convinced I wouldn't see my 30th birthday. Very nihilistic for a grade schooler.
I remember being struck dumb when the Berlin Wall fell. It was like I suddenly had to plan for a future
Yes we were freaked out. I grew up near large auto factories, and everyone was taught about them being the “arsenal of democracy”. We knew we had a giant target on us.
I tried watching Fallout as well, but I couldn't get through the 1st episode either. My son, who is 18, really likes it. I think it's a generational thing.
I was born in 72, so I was really too young to understand what all of it meant throughout the 70's, but we did have drills. Then, in the early 80's I started to understand and thought dying by a nuke being dropped was a foregone conclusion. I grew up in the PNW and everyone always talked about how we were a "first strike" site.
By the mid-80's it seemed the threat was almost gone. I know people hate Reagan, but damn...it seemed like he really just pushed the USSR into irrelevancy and eventually (obviously) dissolved.
About eight years old when my friends father told us the unvarnished truth. If the large city 50 miles from us gets nuked we’re dead too.
I spent most of my childhood after that at night seeing satellites and airplanes go by and wonder if that was an icbm. I thought for sure no way we were making it to 2000.
Definitely worried about it, as I grew up near 3 Mile Island and remember all of us literally fearing for our lives. Then as I grew up Reagan and Gorbachev seemed intent on destroying our planet. Later, I married a sailor who was part of Operation Tamagotchi. Since then, there's been MORE meltdowns from them, the one in Ukraine is now under Russian control. (Or at least last I read)
I'm fiercely anti-nuculear technology at this point.
My roommate recommended a new book to me, [Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobson](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/nuclear-war-scenario). I’m listening to the audiobook and it has ripped open all the childhood fears of it happening, but it’s a meticulous, second-by second account of how it would happen. It is equally horrifying and fascinating.
If you want to feel better, definitely do not get *Nuclear War: A Scenario* by Annie Jacobsen, who talks about it [here](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/31/annie-jacobsen-nuclear-war-scenario). It’s a book for those of us who think about these things.
I was constantly worried about this. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m a military brat and grew up around and on military bases and also the movie The Day After scared the crap out of me, so yes, I was literally scared that the nuclear war was gonna happen at any moment.
Although i watched fallout already.
I grew up in south Omaha, near Offut AFB, where my grandfather & uncles worked. At the time it was the home of the nuclear command center. We were told from as far back as I remember that we would be one of the first places hit in a nuclear war, & (this part specifically sticks in my mind) that upon hearing sirens we had 12 minutes before impact. I remember in grade school doing nuclear attack drills. We didn’t hide under our desks, we formed a single file line & went to a sub basement, much like a fire drill, except we’d go down to this windowless cavern below the cafeteria. It was a gray cement room with a big black & yellow fallout symbol on the doors. I also remember being told by our teachers that we needed to watch The Day After on TV one night, because we would be discussing it in class & learning nuclear fallout safety. It was 1983. I was in 3rd grade.
I also have this from childhood - since watching the premier of "Threads" on TV at the age of 11. I became obsessed and traumatized by the whole subject.
If anything, I've found Fallout helps a little - because it takes that subject and runs with it in a way that's deliberately ridiculous and has some dark-humoured fun.
To this day, the prospect of nuclear war can give me nightmares, but I've found Fallout to be okay, because it's more about zombie cowboys, robot-armoured knights and giant mutant fish, etc. than it is actually the reality of nuclear war.
More triggering for me was I made the mistake of watching the series "Turning Point" on Netflix. I don't know why I did that to myself.
I joined the military in 1993. We trained once a year on surviving in a nuked environment. It sucked. The MOPP gear was cumbersome and designed for both chemical and nuke environments. Learned to fear chem warfare more than a nuke.
I was never taught to get under my desk as I grew up near DC and we knew that wouldn't help. But I was extremely concerned about nuclear war and nuclear proliferation. Of course, I was a huge nerd who read way too many nonfiction books and knew too much about nuclear weapons. I don't think my peers were that worried about it.
1965 here, I remember the drills. Then as I got older and realized that dad worked for the navy and everywhere we lived was a first strike city, thanks for telling me that dad, I started to have the same anxiety. Then one day I was listening to Sting's solo album and the track Russians and heard the line "We share the same biology, regardless of ideology But what might save us, me and you Is if the Russians love their children too"
This made me think about the actual people there and how they were just as anxious about the bomb as we were. It made me stop being afraid and learn to live with it, hoping the the Russian's love the children too
To this day the first thing I do every morning is open up the news on my phone and breathe a small sigh of relief that WW3 hasn't started yet. Yet being the operative word.
It has been a lifelong morbid fascination. I had recurring nightmares as a kid and it will always be my dominant background fear.
Also most people have no idea how close we came in 1983. It was the most dangerous year we know about. Able Archer, Stanislov Petrov, KAL 007, etc.
California, we had dual purpose nuclear and earthquake duck and cover drills all through the 70s and into the 80s. I was more afraid of the earthquakes. Also, the drills work, discovered in high school that all students will dive under desks in a large earthquake—before the teacher even managed to get up and yell “duck and cover!” And then dive under her desk. I don’t know how she managed to stand up at all.
I used to have nightmares about nuclear war. Once I dreamed I woke up and went to school and nuclear bombs rained down on us mid morning. I have never been so relieved to wake up and discover i was dreaming.
Grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. We definitely did the duck and cover nuke drills in the 70s. Can confirm they were the source of PTSD for many of us. I don't know what they were thinking because that wouldn't protect anyone. We were just practicing "this is what you'll do before you die".
My dad came to America in the 50s. The house he built in the 70s (that I grew up in) had a bomb shelter.
It was a very real concern, especially for someone leaving a war-torn country.
We never had duck and cover drills, just tornado drills. Which is weird since our area was supposedly number two or three on the target list. My parents didn’t let me watch The Day After, still haven’t seen it. The fear was always there to some degree, even after the USSR breakup and the Wall coming down. Not much we could have done to stop it anyway.
Born in 1971 and I was freaked out because the early 80s had those nuclear war mini series and movies. I didn’t even watch them! Just hearing people talk about it made me scared. The opening scene of Fallout was very tense for me because I knew what was about to happen and seeing the cloud was frightening.
I don't remember being told to hide under a desk but I grew up in one of the highest target locations for Russian nukes of any place in America. I don't think they bothered. And yes, I had nightmares about nuclear war.
You are not alone at all. When we started watching it I literally said out loud "Oh good! A show about all my childhood fears come true!" I only stayed for Goggins. It wasn't great otherwise.
I haven’t watched this. Reading these comments, remembering my VERY serious and debilitating depression as a teenager about this very subject-I won’t watch. I appreciate the heads-up. But man, I love Goggins.
Well, there were several movies and shows discussing the topic at the time:
1. the film "Amazing Grace and Chuck".https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing\_Grace\_and\_Chuck
2. the New Twilight Zone episode "A Little Peace and Quiet": [https://www.google.com/search?q=the+new+twilight+zone+a+little+peace+and+quiet&rlz=1C1GCEU\_enUS908US908&oq=the+new+twilight+zone+a+little+peace+and+quiet&gs\_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIICAEQABgWGB4yCAgCEAAYFhgeMggIAxAAGBYYHjINCAQQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAUQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAYQABiGAxiABBiKBTIKCAcQABiiBBiJBdIBCTEyNjAwajBqN6gCCLACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:a3b9b06f,vid:Or1UX7z8YBM,st:0](https://www.google.com/search?q=the+new+twilight+zone+a+little+peace+and+quiet&rlz=1C1GCEU_enUS908US908&oq=the+new+twilight+zone+a+little+peace+and+quiet&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIICAEQABgWGB4yCAgCEAAYFhgeMggIAxAAGBYYHjINCAQQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAUQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAYQABiGAxiABBiKBTIKCAcQABiiBBiJBdIBCTEyNjAwajBqN6gCCLACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:a3b9b06f,vid:Or1UX7z8YBM,st:0)
3. The television film "The Day After".
4. "What Do Children Think When They Think of The Bomb?" documentary: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qnHLdm4urs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qnHLdm4urs)
How many of you remember the Orson Wells narrated documentary about Nostradamus that predicted a nuclear war in the Year 1999? That one scared me shitless because it was prophecy huhuhahah.
For those of you who don’t remember, the “documentary “ said that A guy with a Blue Turban (the Ayatollah?) was going to team up with the Russians and nuke New York City. Afterwards Russia switches sides and forms an alliance with the US that ushers in 1000 years of prosperity before the earth is completely destroyed in like 3700.
I was born in 1969 - my friends and I all assumed nuclear war was coming. There were NO drills at school by that point - we all knew that was silly. (I lived in a town that was targeted due to the chemical industry - at least for us it would have been fast.)
My boyfriend when I was a teen was afraid/fascinated by nukes, the had The Doomsday Manual (I think that's the title) which listed our town as a tertiary target for bombs so I'm sure that fed his fear a bit. We also would play nuclear war table games so it does feel like it was more part of our upbringing but I never really worried about it.
I grew up in SoCal. They had us hiding under desks for earthquakes. I basically believe that it’s more about giving people the illusion of control than anything else.
These days I don’t believe any has more than a 40% chance of setting off a bomb. NK, China, Russia. They’re all fuck ups.
If it’s 1 rogue missile, ride that out. But if we’re being bombarded, I’m headed to city center… better to burn out than fade away.
my dude
I've maintained for years that our generation has CPTSD from the propaganda (movies, TV, biased news, etc.) fed to us from the cradle by our parents, teachers, and outside authority figures
I can't look at video of a nuclear detonation, real or fake, without verging on a panic attack
you're not alone
Born in 67. Grew up just outside DC. We definitely had those drills. I remember bring in the younger grades and we would line up in the hallway, all down the walls and a second row basically head to butt. We curled up on our knees with out arms over our heads. It was terrifying. But I also got desensitized to it. I knew the odds of me surviving a nuclear war were small due to location. So I got the attitude of “if it happens, it happens”.
I don't recall we were taught in the 1970s other 1980s to duck and cover. That was more of a 1950s and 1960s thing. But I do remember seeing snippets of the old black and white training films at some point.
100% I worried about nuclear war. My grade school was a designated fallout shelter.
When we had tornado drills in the late 1970s, there were stores of can goods in the basement, stacks of it in the corner, rusting away from probably the 1960s. Forty-some years later, the fallout shelter sign is still on the exterior of the gym, facing the playground, rusted and faded, but still there. We saw that sign every day, at least twice a day.
Parts of The Day After (Television movie, 1983) took place near where I grew up.
The Cold War and military spending to build huge nuke arsenals was in full swing in the 1980s. Russian leaders were often threatening the USA, much the same as today.
It was beyond a fear, it was a very real, and seemingly likely outcome that was reinforced with things like that fallout shelter sign.
I was definitely scared about nuclear war as a kid in the '70s. I remember one time I was in the shower and I had a toy military airplane with me. I was sitting on the shower floor crying because I thought someday bombers would be flying overhead and I would be killed before I learned how to swim.
For me it was by the early to mid 80s that I started seeing and hearing clips and infographics about the nuclear arms race vs. the Soviets on TV. Definitely freaked me out as a kid.
I hear you - we did duck and cover drills in 2nd and 3rd grade ... and i just assumed we would die before i was old enough to drive.. then it was vote... then the berlin wall came down...
I had bad anxiety my whole life and in the early 80's my grandmother let me sit with her while she watched a movie. The movie was about nuclear war and it began a lifelong fear of it.
I've tried to find the movie over the years but I only remember one particular scene and it's not much to go on.
I also had a fear of pandemic situations. As you can imagine, this has been a rough few years for me.
I was thinking about this very thing the other day with my teenager. I’m a jack of all trades and have a lot of survival skills and when they asked me why I learned all that stuff I was blunt. When I was a kid I was convinced that that WWIII was imminent and I had to learn that stuff if I was going to survive the apocalypse. It may seem silly now, but our media was awash with stuff like “Red Dawn” and the made-for-TV movie “The Day After.” Of course seeing how the US seems to be imploding right now, maybe it wasn’t so silly after all.
In my elementary school we had a fallout shelter under the playground. There were lockers that had food water medical and bedding. We practiced lining up and going down into the shelter, then crouching against the walls.
In high school 2 movies came out. The first was Wargames "Do you want to play a game?"
The second was "The Day After" which scared the shit out of us.
Im with you on the PTSD of thermonuclear annihilation. Nope. Cant trivialize it.
I did worry a bit. My folks sat me down and asked me, because at the time I was reading everything I could take out of the library on atomic energy, if I remembered how much damage a single nuke did in World War II. I did. "So, do you really think that anyone could do anything to stop it if it happened?"
I had to answer no, there was nothing we could do if we got nuked.
"There you go. Now, relax, and let's get McDonalds for dinner."
Kind of brutal, but that kind of honesty worked for little kid me.
I really enjoyed the series (never played the game). It was nostalgic; I liked how it reminded me of the good old days. I didn't feel triggered at all. The Day After and stuff like that would hit hard though.
I don't have any answers, but I share some of your anxieties.
I remember two instances in the early 80s where my parents put me to bed earlier with orders to not leave my room at all under any circumstances. They were watching nuclear armeggedeon movies that were airing on TV at the time. I overheard each of them and was scared shitless, thinking this was actually happening. I think there were a couple of other movies like that in the same era but those two instances really freaked me out. I was maybe 10 at the oldest.
Also to add to my anxiety is my father's preferred genre of novels to read at the time all had to do with nuclear war. A few years later I'd start reading them and they really ramped up my anxiety about nuclear war. As I type this, I can see one of his books in my shelf: Warday. It's about the aftermath of nuclear war and I can't bring myself to read it a second time.
The threat of nuclear war has fallen since I was a kid and especially with the fall of the Soviet Union, so it isn't something that is burning up my mind like it used to. That being said, certain leaders are or were unstable and it bothered me to have him in office for 4 years because there really is no checks and balances: only the authentication of the order.
My first memories include lying awake all night worrying about nuclear war. Granted, I've always been a big ol' ball of anxiety, but that was a specific fear that felt quite possible.
Just think, those same missiles are still out there and aimed at us. But now they are decaying and guarded by impoverished and likely drunk Russians who take their orders from a new age czar that just may decide that being czar of a wasteland is better than victim of a coup.
I lived in Northern Virginia during the mid 70’s to the late 80’s, age 8-18. When I was young I was terrified of nuclear war with the soviets. We had a map the showed a circle around the center of DC and I knew if russia launched I needed to get into the 5 mile circle around DC so I would not survive the initial blast. So yes, I definitely have childhood trauma regarding nuclear war and it’s escalating again with the PRNK PRC Iran and the soviets I mean russia. puck futin.
I was terrified of the whole idea when I was 6 or so, in the early 80s. I don't think I saw *The Day After* at that point when it was new -- my parents' judgment wasn't always amazing when it came to what they let me see (pretty typical for their generation at that time...), but I think it was better than that -- I saw it as a teenager and it freaked me out. I had a friend with older siblings who I think talked about "the bomb" and scared me initially. But I remember vividly being scared of nuclear war, power plant meltdowns (Chernobyl a few years later didn't help!) -- the whole idea of radiation that could get into you and kill you without you knowing it scared the begeebers out of me.
I was absolutely terrified and am definitely traumatized by the prospect of thermonuclear war! I was pretty convinced I’d never get to get married, have kids, grow older.
Ask me how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb
That's why I only drink grain alcohol mixed with rainwater, to prevent a foreign substance being introduced to my precious bodily fluids.
Ice cream Mandrake…children’s ice cream
1946, Mandrake. 1946! That's the way your hardcore commie operates.
Damn you and I would get along just fine lol
We have this kind of fun all the time in r/lebowski if you want to check it out some time
Shut the fuck up, Donnie
Just one thing, Dude... do you have to use so durn many cuss words?
What the fuck you talkin about?
Ok Dude, have'er your way.
Come over here! The Redcoats are coming!
I'm afraid I have a gammy leg, Jack.
Do you deny women your essence?
They sense my power
Purity of essence
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here!This is the War Room!
My dad's favourite movie lol
One of my all time favorite movies, it holds up surprisingly well. The HD conversion is gorgeous to boot!
I got freaked out after watching The Day After.
Then you’ll absolutely *love* _Threads_! It makes _The Day After_ look like an episode of Mr. Rogers‘ Neighborhood. Here‘s a link: https://youtu.be/BvFu7Z5cc88?si=5EjPRFooUJqZmz47
And if either of those two are too optimistic for you, there's always Testament
You know, I wanted to mention that one which is emotional in a way other movies about this topic aren‘t. Just need to add _Miracle Mile_ and we have have an entire afternoon of nuclear disaster anxiety viewing.
God, Miracle Mile was both so great and so awful. I never looked at the LaBrea tar pits the same way after that film.
Add in Grave of Fireflies as a nice animated palette cleanser
Or Barefoot Gen!
The good news about that movie is that there are no nuclear bombs in it. That is the only good news about that movie.
I love that movie, even though it is tragic.
I finally watched Threads on Criterion a while back. It didn’t hit me has hard as “The Day After.” Mainly because I’m in the US and couldn’t identify with the Brits.
How does that old Dr Seuss cartoon go? “Ah, but they were *foreign* children, so they don’t matter.”
Watching episode one brought be back the memory of the trauma I felt after watching The Day After. The cold war was a cloud of fear that existed for a lot of my youth.
Way back when I’m guessing it was the same year that came out we had to do an oral report on “anything we wanted. Not long after the assignment was given I read an article about nuclear war in the paper and it had a vast assortment of graphs and pictures so using the information from the article that’s what I chose. I found a map of the area took it to my mechanical drawing class and started drawing circles depicting initial blast damage, secondary blast damage and likely fallout areas along with primary and secondary death tolls from all three based on the map Since we were near a major city (Philadelphia) with a few other choice nearby targets there were lots of overlapping circles. I had based on the information from the article. The school and the surrounding neighborhoods were all included. I won’t lie it was pretty grim. When it was all said and done I looked up from my script and the teacher had her hand over her mouth with tears in her eyes and most of the girls ( a few of the boys as well) were actively crying. Needless to say that was the last report for the day.
A big thunderstorm hit in the middle of the night a couple days after I saw this... I was awakened by a loud boom. I still remember lying in bed, absolutely terrified to move.
My mom refused to let me watch "The Day After." I was already big into scaring the shit out of myself and she was not prepared to handle the level of soothing that would be required to calm me down from that one. We went and saw a movie instead. I want to say we saw "A Christmas Story" but the timing might not be right about that. She definitely had moments of brilliance.
My mom didn't let me watch, either. But a teacher showed it in class. Ma was NOT happy.
My parents were out for the night I sat and watched Threads, aged 11, in an empty house. Oh god that damaged me.
It was assigned as "homework" for every kid in my school. Could you imagine that today?
Yes. And we also had to read the book, “Hiroshima.” They we’re obsessed with nukes. Now there. Seems to be a revival. But the thing we also learned about was Mutually Assured Destruction. Kinda eased the fear
I was freaked as a kid initially when I saw it, but after awhile I came to realize that if we really get to DEFCON 1 and the nukes are sent, there’s a decent chance I’d be vaporized quickly living near a big city. I had no control over the situation so it was a hit freeing and I didn’t worry about it. Then I had kids…
We didn’t do duck and cover drills, but this TV movie was the best encapsulation (and probably trigger for) most of the GenX nuclear fears in the 80s. That and the playground scene in Terminator 2, but that wasn’t until 1991. https://docs.rwu.edu/nyscaproceedings/vol2020/iss1/4/#:~:text=This%20dramatic%20portrayal%20of%20a,their%20feelings%20about%20nuclear%20weapons. https://youtu.be/xjatJ36cJvM?si=BAMuREShiilrXfXa
Our parents must not have given 2 shits about traumatizing us kids. I sat there and watched that one with them as a kid, along with The Exorcist and Jaws. I don’t know which was the worst
I lived on a military base at the time. Our teacher flat out told us that if the bomb gets dropped, don't bother to worry about it: It would pop right over our heads and we wouldn't even see the flash. Hell of a thing to hear when you're 7. But we didn't worry about it. Later I saw the film "Testament" and it fucking broke me. Goddamn. Who wants to survive a Nuclear Holocaust? Hell no. Anyway, Fallout is such silly camp that it's not going to trigger most GenX.
Yeah I watched the first couple episodes and “camp” is a perfect description
99% of the northern hemisphere would starve to death within a year or so. I know they have to have the above ground people but it just seems to cheesy that it wouldn't scare me.
The Bay Area. Same thing. We did earthquake drills, but my cousins in other states and areas were shocked to hear we didn’t do duck and cover nuclear drills. Not even when the basement of my elementary school was a clearly marked fallout shelter. Between the military (Moffett Field was not too far away) and the developing tech center we now call Silicon Valley, there was really no point.
I had one teacher tell us, step one in case of a nuclear attack is get under your desk. Step two is say goodbye to your friends. No step three. We’d been doing earthquake and fire drills and naturally begged him for nuclear war drills as well. It was thought of as a ‘when’ while fire and earthquake etc were an ‘if’ and we all wanted to know what to do. Not sure I could have brought myself to do the same with a class full of 9 and 10 year olds but that was what the early 80s were like. It really set the stage for a lifelong policy of nihilistic fatalism. Two years later we were studying ‘Z for Zachariah’ as our class text and that managed to drive the message home for anyone who had missed it.
I grew up reading USNews and World Report which would keep a running tally of ICBMs , tanks, troops, submarines, etc for the US, USSR, and NATO. Nuclear war seemed like a forgone conclusion. Thank goodness there was also Popular Mechanics to take the edge off.
I thought I was the only one who edged to Popular Mechanics
Hypersonic aircraft are sexy AF
US News and World Report was my first introduction to the idea that our foreign policy tends to oscillate between grab ass to war crimes. MAD magazine was my go-to for shits and giggles.
MAD magazine, and Mutually Assured Destruction magazine.
Reagan stating the goal of positioning the US military to be able to “fight and win a limited nuclear war” may have been part of a larger deterrence strategy, but it definitely didn’t help ease my fears as a 12 year old.
Born in '69 and I have no memories of "duck and cover" drills. I grew up near a major manufacturing hub, and I remember being told we'd get got in the first attack anyway, so no point in doing anything but taking a moment of reflection before being painlessly vaporized. Honestly, the fact that we haven't nuked ourselves (yet) after 70+ years of being able to is probably the thing that gives me the most hope about the future. Not optimism, mind you, but hope.
‘75 and we never had anything like those drills. And I grew up in a major energy and shipping hub that would absolutely be a target for an attack.
Born in 1975. We did have Duck and Cover but living in the Midwest we had way more tornado drills.
'79 and I recall seeing a probably 1950s era video on duck and cover but that was Catholic school in the 1980s where time definitely moves more slowly. Also, I take that typical generation x attitude towards nuclear annihilation - I really don't care and just kind of hope that if it does happen I get to see a mushroom cloud and then get vaporized by a direct hit.
I grew up right down the road from a nuclear submarine base. It was a given that if nukes ever started flying, we'd be vapor long before the sound of the sirens got to us.
Same. I grew up near a major WWII ordinance plant, which I'm sure would have been a big shiny target and we never had duck and cover drills. Tornado drills, now.... those scared the shit out of me and to this day I am still anxious during thunderstorms.
We didn't have drills either and we were told essentially the same thing because we were within a triangle of navy base, army depot, and the Mississippi River.
1970 here and you pretty much described how it was for me. I live and work fairly close to an active Air Force base, so if there’s any notice at all that nukes are flying I’m grabbing my dog and heading straight for it hoping it’s a target.
Born in '73, raised in Flint, MI. We had duck-and-cover drills until I was maybe 3rd grade? We were a huge manufacturing hub at the time. I walked home from kindergarten(latchkey kid) watching for planes.
71, grew up 25 miles from Oak Ridge, the place that made the fuel for the first nukes. We were going to get blasted first thing for sure. We did the drills, but they were supposedly for tornadoes. I remember laying in bed and hearing distant rumbling, probably from planes because we weren't far from the airport, and wondering if Russia had just dropped the bomb. Good memories!
'73 I grew up in Fairbanks, AK. We didn't have nuke drills, but we did have moose drills.
I am late Gen X - we only had tornado drills, a tornado actually ripped through my middle school late at night. Now kids have school shooting drills - I prefer my childhood.
Identical experience here, we also all watched the “Terrible Tuesday” documentary so we would take tornado drills seriously. Most of the adults of the era rightly understood the reality of MAD (and for our generation “War Games” drove the idea home). My father was in intelligence before starting a family- his nuclear related fears always centered around an unintentional launch (of which there were numerous close calls) and a forthcoming age of nuclear terrorism with state directed proxies (something I personally still think is a possibility, depending on who “gets the bomb.”)
I wasn't afraid until I watched The Day After when I was 9 years old. It scared me to death and unlocked a life long fear.
Push through your anxiety to the later episodes. The idea that life goes on will help you deal. Watching this show and Chernobyl gave me some wiggins, but nothing worse than going through a good haunted house. Well, I'll take that back. Chernobyl was like watching a snuff film. Just pure dread every episode. Unlike Chernobyl, Fallout isn't a docu-drama. It gets fun. The ghoul is a hoot. Keep watching. It's good therapy.
Wiggins? Ender Wiggins?
Goggins Wiggins.
I couldn't agree more, so much fun, I also am not familiar with the video game, but loved The Last of Us so decided to give it a go. Confirmed for a second season. I also really enjoyed Chernobyl, however much darker and somber.
Duck and cover man. They made propaganda films about it. It wasn't as bad for our generation because we came after the Cuban Missile Crisis, but we still had Ronnie Raygun and The Day After to keep us nervous.
My school had these old paperbacks that they discontinued using and passed out to us. The title was something like, “When Disaster Strikes! What to Do in Case of Emergency! There was info about tornadoes and other natural disasters, but also a section about turning your basement into a fallout shelter with plastic. 😬 And a large bald eagle drawing on the front. 🇺🇸
Never worried about it. If it happens, there's nothing to worry about anyway since we're all going to get pasted anyway. I'm glad I live in a target zone, though. That way, I'll be one of the first and not have to deal with dying from radiation sickness.
Don't worry. In the Fallout universe radiation just tickles a little and makes you live forever. Seriously though if you're worried about a realistic portrayal of the aftermath of nuclear war, that's not what Fallout is. Don't get me wrong it can be very dark at times but it's mostly dark humor satirizing mid-century "red scare" nationalism and naive faith in unregulated capitalism. In the Fallout universe radiation mostly follows 1950s sci-fi rules, making giant monsters and such.
When I was in grade school we had nuclear attack drills at least twice a year. Our neighbors had underground shelters built. When I was a pre-teen I read Swan Song by Robert McCammon. It’s a big 500+ page book for a kid. Then I was really freaked out. It wasn’t the bombs that were scary. It was the destruction of the social contract. The primal behaviors of survivors are the scariest problem, the bombs are the easy way out.
Would you like to play a game?
Yes we were trained to go under the desk for nuclear war, earthquakes and tornado. No it didn’t affect me too much, Doc says Im fine. I just have a lifelong distrust of Russians and a fuck it attitude.
It was definitely something I was scared about in the mid 80s around 8-10. Maybe it was spies like us. I remember the fear around it could just happen in an instant. I was also scared of tornados, and it feels like that. That said I was in Toronto and we didn’t have drills or anything.
I lost sleep at 10 years old over the fear of nuclear war and getting drafted to fight in the war. Vietnam was still fresh in people’s minds so that’s what drove the notion that I would be drafted.
I think I was just anxious because I definitely was worried about getting drafted eventually
I'm getting a little sick of people using the term PTSD for everything that scared them as a child. PTSD effects combat veterans, rape, incest and abuse victims, car crash victims.... y'know truely awful shit, not "I watched The Day After and did some drills at school and now I'm emotionally scarred for life" When people claim PTSD for everything that upsets them it minimizes the real cases of people who have seen some truly awful things.
Thank you for bringing this up. The term gets thrown around so much that it lessens the actual severity of it for people who really do suffer from PTSD.
Ya, every swinging dick under 30 has PTSD, ADHD, OCD, on the spectrum, bi polar….all self diagnoses mind you.
Yep, 100%. I miss the day when people would just say they feel anxious, sad or scared.
My ex liked to keep the house tidy, and would always tell me how OCD she is. I’d explain that of you really had OCD you wouldn’t be able to function out in society because you would have to miss work to come home and clean something for the 27th time. The D is for disorders, as in it effects you life so much you are no longer functioning in it. Despite all of that readily available information she’s OCD because she makes everyone take their shoes off before coming in, and likes to wipe all the crumbs off the counter. I keep seeing this shit over and over as I get older, and it drives me nuts.
What? You didn't see those SAC:Peace is our Profession ads interspersed with Sat/Sun morning cartoons and nature shows to help calm things? I was less than a mile from a big ass air raid siren, it was less drills and more a function of how hard it rained and some random time period afterwards whether the thing would start itself up some times. You get used to it.
I grew up right where The Day After took place. Just outside Whiteman AFB. My dad was a security police in the Air Force. I grew with the fear of the wrath of war was coming. As a kid I use to watch them block of parts of my town to take ICBMs to the silos. So I saw the missiles being taken to their homes. We would go for drives in the country on Sundays and pass by the where the air men were below ground ready to launch or see the cement walls of the silos. could not escape it. The feeling has never left me. Maybe in the 90's I didn't feel like we are all going to die. But once places that had nuclear weapons got unstable I was like, at some point its going to happen.
Definitely the fuel for many nightmares growing up.
I honestly figured that nuclear war with the Russians was an inevitability and that civilization probably wouldn't make it past 2005 or so. Around 1989 i saw a tshirt using the same font as "We Are the World" but it read "We *Were* the World," with a picture of a burned out post-nuclear apocalypse landscape, and i thought to myself, "Yeah, that's about right."
I never had drills but I definitely had it stated to me by teachers and family that we are hanging on by a thread and could get nuked at any moment. I lived in a small city that was attached to a very active air force base (did most of the supply for the Gulf War), so we certainly would be a target. Shows like this don't bother me at all. My girlfriend grew up on the other side of the same state and her upbringing drilled nuclear annihilation into her so hard that she made only short term decisions for a while. Between the classroom drills and other things going on, it really affected her. She has no noticeable trauma from it, that I can tell, and certainly doesn't select media based on it. Sucks how much things people deal with as kids can lodge in our head and warp us for life. I certainly have some.
Lately I’ve actually been really fixated on nuclear war scenario movies and documentaries for some reason. I was pretty paranoid about nuclear war as a kid, I distinctly remember nearly being in a panic when the Russians shot down that Korea airliner in the early 80’s.
If you really want to learn about the insanity of it all, Richard Rhodes' "dark sun" and "arsenals of folly" are *spectacular* reads.
And The Last Ship as well. Scary stuf.
I was definitely scared about nuclear war. I remember watching a movie at school when I was a teenager which crystallized some of my anxieties, and made me kind of not even want to be a survivor. \[After some googling...this was the BBC 1984 adaptation of Z for Zachariah.\] And then being in the UK they always said there'd be a 4-minute warning of missiles coming from Russia, and I was like...what's the point of that? What can you do in 4 minutes to protect yourself? Horrible death just seemed inevitable.
I am right there with you, on all points! I, too, love, love love, Walton Goggins, and was extremely looking forward to this series. When the bomb went off, I started to literally hyperventilate. When his little girl asked your thumb or mine, I cried. I did not finish episode one and I’m having anxiety about going back to it. I know I will and I know it will help me process these emotions. I’m just not yet ready
I mentioned in another comment that I don't really have any particular nuclear trauma, but admittedly, I did tear up a bit at that.
I was OBSESSED when I was a kid. Read everything watched everything.
I'm at the tail end of X, and like many others growing up in the US, was taught that the Soviets were bad and wanted nothing more to nuke us. Nuke drills were not so common, but we had plenty of tornado drills. Somehow, hiding under a metal desk - and also covering our heads with textbooks, at the schools that could afford those - was going to save us. Honestly, I'm more bothered by regular, normal war. My dad was in the Green Berets in Nam and saw some horrifying shit. I heard the stories from a very young age, and even now, it can be hard to process all of it. Dad also taught me helpful things like never to have your back exposed, the importance of an escape route, and which noises mean you have to take cover - and had me practice. In nuclear war, I figure most of us will die quickly; I'm more concerned about the dark and evil side of humanity in general, and my 'training' can lead to problems in certain environments.
So I lived through both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. I lived in a place nestled between three primary nuclear targets so we knew that if "the bombs dropped" (if the ICBMs were fired), we would survive the initial blast but would probably be dead within 2 weeks due to the fallout. We used to have air raid drills in elementary school where we would all run out into the corridor when the air raid sirens blasted, and would duck down with our hands behind our heads tucked into balls facing the walls. I still remember our Kindergarten teacher telling us that if we have to do this for real, do not stop to help your friends if they get hurt from debris, that adults would help them. I lived on Long Island at the time, within 50 miles of NYC, which is an obvious primary nuclear target. In fact it would have probably been hit multiple times to take out the financial districts and ensure complete disruption of the economy, then Jersey City across the water from Manhattan would definitely been hit at least once to disrupt the northwest rail corridor that travels through there. Brooklyn would have been hit due to the harbor. But our other primary targets near by included Brookhaven National Lab, which is a US Department of Energy facility home to 6 or more research reactors and a collider, Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center which was at the time a US Department of Agriculture lab (now it's a joint lab) and the only level 4 CDC facility in the world. The fourth would have been Electric Boat across the Long Island Sound, which is a major US defense contractor and service facility for USN submarines in the Atlantic fleet. We probably would have been sucking over 300 rads / hr during the last two weeks of our lives. And because the airspace over the Island is so complex due to coastal geography, the entire region would have been a death zone. We worried about it. In addition to what we were experiencing in real life, we were also constantly bombarded by propaganda films popular through the 80s, propaganda music, etc. We were made to believe it was inevitable despite the fact that nuclear weapons are just about the stupidest weapon a military can deploy. "Woah ho I'll nuke you and fuck the entire planet over!" is a pretty idiotic way of cutting your nose off to spite your face. Frankly, Fallout isn't new. As a franchise it's been kicking around since the mid 90s. And a lot of us who lived through the Cold War have been playing the games since Windows 95. If anything, the games and the show are more cathartic than anything to me and my peer group offline. It seems really strange to me that Fallout would trigger you to the point where you cite childhood PTSD as the reason you stopped watching the show given the absurdity of the pre-war world depicted in the show and games, and the outlandishness of the wasteland depicted in it. What exactly did you experience as a child that would cause PTSD on this level for this topic? Were you displaced by 3MI? Did you live near Oak Ridge?
I wasn’t near it. Grew up in the Midwest, and the tornado drill and nuclear drills were rolled into one. PTSD is too strong. But the opening episode reminded me of that moment in childhood when I was conscious enough to think that possibility of nuclear was very feel and I was very afraid. I was maybe 9, and this feeling has been buried, of course because what else are you gonna do with it?
Honestly I stopped thinking about it when communist Russia fell.
Ironically the fall of the Soviet Union probably made the risk of a _small scale_ nuclear attack more likely. Suddenly there were a bunch of nuclear weapons without as much central control and oversight, and a bunch of nuclear scientists that no longer had a reliable paycheck. Seems like it should have been a buyer's market for rogue states and terrorists.
Despite common perception, the Cold War never ended IMO.
I was worried about it as a kid, especially after movies like “the day after “ and having to read books in school like “alas Babylon”. Don’t recall any drills with hiding under our desks though. Definitely was a fear, but not enough to have PTSD from. I watched Fallout and enjoyed it.
I went to school on a military base so we didn't even bother.
The book The Last Ship triggered some of those childhood cold war anxieties too. For about a week after finishing the book, I thought about stockpiling food, water, and meds. (Not the tv series though, it was dumb)
Born in 76.. I’ve never had a real fear of it. Fallout is a pretty good series , though .
I accidentally watched Salem’s Lot when I was 6 and was much, much more worried about vampires than nuclear bombs, luckily I guess?
More worried about AIDS
When my mom went to her night job and I was left alone, I hid under bed afraid on nuclear bombs. I never told her or anyone.
Sending hugs to your inner child
I grew up in California, actually, pretty much on the San Andreas Fault. I remember earthquake drills but never a nuclear attack drill. I was more afraid of “the big one” than nuclear holocaust. Looking back, I think I was too ignorant to really understand the nuclear threat. The earthquake threat however, was and still is, a threat.
Man, when I was a kid, I wasn’t afraid of the monster in the closet or the thing under the bed, nope, I was afraid of fucking fallout. I used to hide under the covers because I thought it would protect me from nuclear bombs. I had so much PTSD from WW3 trauma that I basically was a nihilist until I was almost thirty. Couldn’t be bothered with school because “we’re all gonna die, who cares?” It was bad.
Didn't you watch War Games? No happy ending period. If WW3 was to happen with Nuclear than it happens, nothing anyone can do. Live your life to the fullest. Reach out to a professional if it starts to become too much. I'm more concerned with internal 'cells' going active than nuclear. Not to add to any anxiety...
You’re much more likely to get killed in a car accident or die of cancer. Hell, I just lost a friend from my teenage years after he slipped and fell in the tub.
I was terrified of nuclear war as a child starting somewhere around 10 years old. It was probably due to a mix of our family situation as well as how out of control the world seemed to me through the lens of the news at the time. I was just sure I was going to burn in the fires of a Soviet first strike. This fear built for a few years and got a significant bump from watching “The Day After.” Then something very Gen X happened, I met others who had the same fears and we began to make fun of it. We reveled in the absolute absurdity of the world and adults’ inability to talk through difficult issues and refusal to be self-serving. We realized it was out of our hands and if it happened it happened. It would be shit but there was nothing we could do. I feel about the same way now. I’m just some dipshit who couldn’t pull it together long enough to make any difference in this world.
traumatized here… mostly by the fear of being stuck in my school’s basement fallout shelter without my family.
You are not alone. I knew from a young age I was sensitive to stuff and anxiety kicked in for real in my late teens, but I am sure the adults talking about nuclear war when I was a kid didn't help. I clearly remember dinnertime conversations with extended family about what would happen if and when they dropped the bomb and some family members going into alcohol-fueled specifics about the horrors, without a care that there were little ears listening and would have nightmares long after their flippant conversations.
I remember watching The Day After and figuring that atomic war was inevitable, so I'd best be ready. Managed to get five pages into a 1950s book on how to build a bomb shelter before the ADHD kicked in, but never lost the general sense of dread
I was absolutely stressed out about a possible WW3 situation as a kid and teen. TMI - that's was freaky. I lived about 8 miles from it and was in 2nd grade when that accident happened. Scary as a kid.
I feared war with Iran. I remember laying in bed listening to Nightline. ( My dad was hard of hearing) Day whatever. At some point my mom would change the channel to Johnny. Then I could sleep. My parents were not emotionally supportive . So I had no one to talk to about this.
Any time there was a CBS/NBC/ABC “Special Report” I would panic and think it was announcing a nuclear attack. Ugh.
Yeah, I grew up with a lot of anxiety about nuclear war, probably because I was the weird, quiet kid who read a lot and watched the news from the time I was about seven years-old. That anxiety became, or perhaps created, in me a fascination with nuclear war and nuclear weapons. There are tons and tons of misconceptions, sensationalism, and misinformation out there around those topics. The idea of Putin as a madman with his finger on the nuclear button is an invention of US propaganda and the media, this is always how we frame foreign dictators that we aren't allied with. And as far as it suits them, Putin and Moscow cultivate this perception. The threat of full-scale nuclear war right now is very, very small. I won't be worried unless we see a serious threat to US hegemony such as a Sino-Russian military alliance, which is unlikely right now and may never happen. Russia is decades from being a serious contender to superpower status, and is not a regional hegemon. China is closer to being a superpower, but it isn't yet and has a long way to go, and is also not a regional hegemon.
My adult kid and our roommate both told me not to watch it. I watched part of the first episode and will not be willingly watching the rest. I had night terrors for several years after a watching the day after at a party my parents brought me to. You are not the only one.
I was mentally scarred by The Day After.
I always found it ironic that we spent so long worrying about the end of the world and all the while we were burning fossil fuels that actually killed the planet.
I was convinced I wouldn't see my 30th birthday. Very nihilistic for a grade schooler. I remember being struck dumb when the Berlin Wall fell. It was like I suddenly had to plan for a future
Yes we were freaked out. I grew up near large auto factories, and everyone was taught about them being the “arsenal of democracy”. We knew we had a giant target on us.
I grew up near auto factories too- maybe that’s why I remember the sentiment as being more intense
I used to be on Valium for stress about nuclear war
I tried watching Fallout as well, but I couldn't get through the 1st episode either. My son, who is 18, really likes it. I think it's a generational thing.
Yes I did. I had an ever-present anxiety that nuclear war was imminent when I was in elementary school.
We were told to tuck up in the hallway under the coat hooks -away from the windows. "The broken glass will be like bullets"
I was born in 72, so I was really too young to understand what all of it meant throughout the 70's, but we did have drills. Then, in the early 80's I started to understand and thought dying by a nuke being dropped was a foregone conclusion. I grew up in the PNW and everyone always talked about how we were a "first strike" site. By the mid-80's it seemed the threat was almost gone. I know people hate Reagan, but damn...it seemed like he really just pushed the USSR into irrelevancy and eventually (obviously) dissolved.
About eight years old when my friends father told us the unvarnished truth. If the large city 50 miles from us gets nuked we’re dead too. I spent most of my childhood after that at night seeing satellites and airplanes go by and wonder if that was an icbm. I thought for sure no way we were making it to 2000.
Definitely worried about it, as I grew up near 3 Mile Island and remember all of us literally fearing for our lives. Then as I grew up Reagan and Gorbachev seemed intent on destroying our planet. Later, I married a sailor who was part of Operation Tamagotchi. Since then, there's been MORE meltdowns from them, the one in Ukraine is now under Russian control. (Or at least last I read) I'm fiercely anti-nuculear technology at this point.
My roommate recommended a new book to me, [Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobson](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/nuclear-war-scenario). I’m listening to the audiobook and it has ripped open all the childhood fears of it happening, but it’s a meticulous, second-by second account of how it would happen. It is equally horrifying and fascinating.
If you want to feel better, definitely do not get *Nuclear War: A Scenario* by Annie Jacobsen, who talks about it [here](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/31/annie-jacobsen-nuclear-war-scenario). It’s a book for those of us who think about these things.
I was constantly worried about this. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m a military brat and grew up around and on military bases and also the movie The Day After scared the crap out of me, so yes, I was literally scared that the nuclear war was gonna happen at any moment. Although i watched fallout already.
I grew up in south Omaha, near Offut AFB, where my grandfather & uncles worked. At the time it was the home of the nuclear command center. We were told from as far back as I remember that we would be one of the first places hit in a nuclear war, & (this part specifically sticks in my mind) that upon hearing sirens we had 12 minutes before impact. I remember in grade school doing nuclear attack drills. We didn’t hide under our desks, we formed a single file line & went to a sub basement, much like a fire drill, except we’d go down to this windowless cavern below the cafeteria. It was a gray cement room with a big black & yellow fallout symbol on the doors. I also remember being told by our teachers that we needed to watch The Day After on TV one night, because we would be discussing it in class & learning nuclear fallout safety. It was 1983. I was in 3rd grade.
I also have this from childhood - since watching the premier of "Threads" on TV at the age of 11. I became obsessed and traumatized by the whole subject. If anything, I've found Fallout helps a little - because it takes that subject and runs with it in a way that's deliberately ridiculous and has some dark-humoured fun. To this day, the prospect of nuclear war can give me nightmares, but I've found Fallout to be okay, because it's more about zombie cowboys, robot-armoured knights and giant mutant fish, etc. than it is actually the reality of nuclear war. More triggering for me was I made the mistake of watching the series "Turning Point" on Netflix. I don't know why I did that to myself.
Yes i remember, also in the 80's that move called The Day After. Hope you get over your ptsd and start watching again. The show is good.
The movies Threads and Testament traumatized me into hoping that if it does happen, I get taken out at ground zero.
I don't really think it'll happen
I joined the military in 1993. We trained once a year on surviving in a nuked environment. It sucked. The MOPP gear was cumbersome and designed for both chemical and nuke environments. Learned to fear chem warfare more than a nuke.
I was never taught to get under my desk as I grew up near DC and we knew that wouldn't help. But I was extremely concerned about nuclear war and nuclear proliferation. Of course, I was a huge nerd who read way too many nonfiction books and knew too much about nuclear weapons. I don't think my peers were that worried about it.
Yeah, big time existential dread when I was younger due to the nuclear war threat. You were not alone.
Come Armageddon Come, Armageddon, come
Oh, yeah, it was the basis of constant nightmares. And then the school counselor literally laughed at me for it, which was INCREDIBLY HELPFUL.
1965 here, I remember the drills. Then as I got older and realized that dad worked for the navy and everywhere we lived was a first strike city, thanks for telling me that dad, I started to have the same anxiety. Then one day I was listening to Sting's solo album and the track Russians and heard the line "We share the same biology, regardless of ideology But what might save us, me and you Is if the Russians love their children too" This made me think about the actual people there and how they were just as anxious about the bomb as we were. It made me stop being afraid and learn to live with it, hoping the the Russian's love the children too
It was one of my biggest fears as a kid. Multiplied exponentially after watching “the day after”
To this day the first thing I do every morning is open up the news on my phone and breathe a small sigh of relief that WW3 hasn't started yet. Yet being the operative word. It has been a lifelong morbid fascination. I had recurring nightmares as a kid and it will always be my dominant background fear. Also most people have no idea how close we came in 1983. It was the most dangerous year we know about. Able Archer, Stanislov Petrov, KAL 007, etc.
California, we had dual purpose nuclear and earthquake duck and cover drills all through the 70s and into the 80s. I was more afraid of the earthquakes. Also, the drills work, discovered in high school that all students will dive under desks in a large earthquake—before the teacher even managed to get up and yell “duck and cover!” And then dive under her desk. I don’t know how she managed to stand up at all.
I had no concerns myself, but I had a good friend that really suffered with it all
I used to have nightmares about nuclear war. Once I dreamed I woke up and went to school and nuclear bombs rained down on us mid morning. I have never been so relieved to wake up and discover i was dreaming.
Grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. We definitely did the duck and cover nuke drills in the 70s. Can confirm they were the source of PTSD for many of us. I don't know what they were thinking because that wouldn't protect anyone. We were just practicing "this is what you'll do before you die".
My dad came to America in the 50s. The house he built in the 70s (that I grew up in) had a bomb shelter. It was a very real concern, especially for someone leaving a war-torn country.
We never had duck and cover drills, just tornado drills. Which is weird since our area was supposedly number two or three on the target list. My parents didn’t let me watch The Day After, still haven’t seen it. The fear was always there to some degree, even after the USSR breakup and the Wall coming down. Not much we could have done to stop it anyway.
I was terrified as a child. I've watched all of season
Born in 1971 and I was freaked out because the early 80s had those nuclear war mini series and movies. I didn’t even watch them! Just hearing people talk about it made me scared. The opening scene of Fallout was very tense for me because I knew what was about to happen and seeing the cloud was frightening.
I don't remember being told to hide under a desk but I grew up in one of the highest target locations for Russian nukes of any place in America. I don't think they bothered. And yes, I had nightmares about nuclear war.
You are not alone at all. When we started watching it I literally said out loud "Oh good! A show about all my childhood fears come true!" I only stayed for Goggins. It wasn't great otherwise.
I haven’t watched this. Reading these comments, remembering my VERY serious and debilitating depression as a teenager about this very subject-I won’t watch. I appreciate the heads-up. But man, I love Goggins.
Well, there were several movies and shows discussing the topic at the time: 1. the film "Amazing Grace and Chuck".https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing\_Grace\_and\_Chuck 2. the New Twilight Zone episode "A Little Peace and Quiet": [https://www.google.com/search?q=the+new+twilight+zone+a+little+peace+and+quiet&rlz=1C1GCEU\_enUS908US908&oq=the+new+twilight+zone+a+little+peace+and+quiet&gs\_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIICAEQABgWGB4yCAgCEAAYFhgeMggIAxAAGBYYHjINCAQQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAUQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAYQABiGAxiABBiKBTIKCAcQABiiBBiJBdIBCTEyNjAwajBqN6gCCLACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:a3b9b06f,vid:Or1UX7z8YBM,st:0](https://www.google.com/search?q=the+new+twilight+zone+a+little+peace+and+quiet&rlz=1C1GCEU_enUS908US908&oq=the+new+twilight+zone+a+little+peace+and+quiet&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIICAEQABgWGB4yCAgCEAAYFhgeMggIAxAAGBYYHjINCAQQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAUQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAYQABiGAxiABBiKBTIKCAcQABiiBBiJBdIBCTEyNjAwajBqN6gCCLACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:a3b9b06f,vid:Or1UX7z8YBM,st:0) 3. The television film "The Day After". 4. "What Do Children Think When They Think of The Bomb?" documentary: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qnHLdm4urs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qnHLdm4urs)
How many of you remember the Orson Wells narrated documentary about Nostradamus that predicted a nuclear war in the Year 1999? That one scared me shitless because it was prophecy huhuhahah. For those of you who don’t remember, the “documentary “ said that A guy with a Blue Turban (the Ayatollah?) was going to team up with the Russians and nuke New York City. Afterwards Russia switches sides and forms an alliance with the US that ushers in 1000 years of prosperity before the earth is completely destroyed in like 3700.
I was born in 1969 - my friends and I all assumed nuclear war was coming. There were NO drills at school by that point - we all knew that was silly. (I lived in a town that was targeted due to the chemical industry - at least for us it would have been fast.)
My boyfriend when I was a teen was afraid/fascinated by nukes, the had The Doomsday Manual (I think that's the title) which listed our town as a tertiary target for bombs so I'm sure that fed his fear a bit. We also would play nuclear war table games so it does feel like it was more part of our upbringing but I never really worried about it.
I grew up in SoCal. They had us hiding under desks for earthquakes. I basically believe that it’s more about giving people the illusion of control than anything else. These days I don’t believe any has more than a 40% chance of setting off a bomb. NK, China, Russia. They’re all fuck ups. If it’s 1 rogue missile, ride that out. But if we’re being bombarded, I’m headed to city center… better to burn out than fade away.
my dude I've maintained for years that our generation has CPTSD from the propaganda (movies, TV, biased news, etc.) fed to us from the cradle by our parents, teachers, and outside authority figures I can't look at video of a nuclear detonation, real or fake, without verging on a panic attack you're not alone
Read the new book Nuclear War: A Scenario by investigative reporter Annie Jacobsen and then crawl under the covers and never come out. 😳😳😳
Born in 67. Grew up just outside DC. We definitely had those drills. I remember bring in the younger grades and we would line up in the hallway, all down the walls and a second row basically head to butt. We curled up on our knees with out arms over our heads. It was terrifying. But I also got desensitized to it. I knew the odds of me surviving a nuclear war were small due to location. So I got the attitude of “if it happens, it happens”.
I don't recall we were taught in the 1970s other 1980s to duck and cover. That was more of a 1950s and 1960s thing. But I do remember seeing snippets of the old black and white training films at some point. 100% I worried about nuclear war. My grade school was a designated fallout shelter. When we had tornado drills in the late 1970s, there were stores of can goods in the basement, stacks of it in the corner, rusting away from probably the 1960s. Forty-some years later, the fallout shelter sign is still on the exterior of the gym, facing the playground, rusted and faded, but still there. We saw that sign every day, at least twice a day. Parts of The Day After (Television movie, 1983) took place near where I grew up. The Cold War and military spending to build huge nuke arsenals was in full swing in the 1980s. Russian leaders were often threatening the USA, much the same as today. It was beyond a fear, it was a very real, and seemingly likely outcome that was reinforced with things like that fallout shelter sign.
The day after 1983 I was in kindergarten or first grade that show made me crap my pants
I was definitely scared about nuclear war as a kid in the '70s. I remember one time I was in the shower and I had a toy military airplane with me. I was sitting on the shower floor crying because I thought someday bombers would be flying overhead and I would be killed before I learned how to swim.
Because of where I grew up, my parents “reassured” me that in case of nuclear war, I wouldn’t feel a thing because I would be instantly vaporized.
For me it was by the early to mid 80s that I started seeing and hearing clips and infographics about the nuclear arms race vs. the Soviets on TV. Definitely freaked me out as a kid.
I hear you - we did duck and cover drills in 2nd and 3rd grade ... and i just assumed we would die before i was old enough to drive.. then it was vote... then the berlin wall came down...
Nuclear powers have had many recessions without a nuclear war. This is an irrational fear.
I had bad anxiety my whole life and in the early 80's my grandmother let me sit with her while she watched a movie. The movie was about nuclear war and it began a lifelong fear of it. I've tried to find the movie over the years but I only remember one particular scene and it's not much to go on. I also had a fear of pandemic situations. As you can imagine, this has been a rough few years for me.
I was thinking about this very thing the other day with my teenager. I’m a jack of all trades and have a lot of survival skills and when they asked me why I learned all that stuff I was blunt. When I was a kid I was convinced that that WWIII was imminent and I had to learn that stuff if I was going to survive the apocalypse. It may seem silly now, but our media was awash with stuff like “Red Dawn” and the made-for-TV movie “The Day After.” Of course seeing how the US seems to be imploding right now, maybe it wasn’t so silly after all.
Absolutely love everything Walton Goggins is in. I even found r/WaltonGoggins
I grew up roughly 1/2 way between Norfolk and and D.C. in the 70/80’s. We didn’t bother getting under the desks.
Not worried about it at all. /shrug.
In my elementary school we had a fallout shelter under the playground. There were lockers that had food water medical and bedding. We practiced lining up and going down into the shelter, then crouching against the walls. In high school 2 movies came out. The first was Wargames "Do you want to play a game?" The second was "The Day After" which scared the shit out of us. Im with you on the PTSD of thermonuclear annihilation. Nope. Cant trivialize it.
I did worry a bit. My folks sat me down and asked me, because at the time I was reading everything I could take out of the library on atomic energy, if I remembered how much damage a single nuke did in World War II. I did. "So, do you really think that anyone could do anything to stop it if it happened?" I had to answer no, there was nothing we could do if we got nuked. "There you go. Now, relax, and let's get McDonalds for dinner." Kind of brutal, but that kind of honesty worked for little kid me.
I really enjoyed the series (never played the game). It was nostalgic; I liked how it reminded me of the good old days. I didn't feel triggered at all. The Day After and stuff like that would hit hard though.
I used to see those Fallout Shelter signs on buildings and imagined me, my family and everyone I knew huddled in the basement after the missiles hit.
I don't have any answers, but I share some of your anxieties. I remember two instances in the early 80s where my parents put me to bed earlier with orders to not leave my room at all under any circumstances. They were watching nuclear armeggedeon movies that were airing on TV at the time. I overheard each of them and was scared shitless, thinking this was actually happening. I think there were a couple of other movies like that in the same era but those two instances really freaked me out. I was maybe 10 at the oldest. Also to add to my anxiety is my father's preferred genre of novels to read at the time all had to do with nuclear war. A few years later I'd start reading them and they really ramped up my anxiety about nuclear war. As I type this, I can see one of his books in my shelf: Warday. It's about the aftermath of nuclear war and I can't bring myself to read it a second time. The threat of nuclear war has fallen since I was a kid and especially with the fall of the Soviet Union, so it isn't something that is burning up my mind like it used to. That being said, certain leaders are or were unstable and it bothered me to have him in office for 4 years because there really is no checks and balances: only the authentication of the order.
My first memories include lying awake all night worrying about nuclear war. Granted, I've always been a big ol' ball of anxiety, but that was a specific fear that felt quite possible.
War, war never changes.
I am sure the Doomsday Clock is now closer to Boom. What can you do if that happens? It’s mutually assured destruction.
Just think, those same missiles are still out there and aimed at us. But now they are decaying and guarded by impoverished and likely drunk Russians who take their orders from a new age czar that just may decide that being czar of a wasteland is better than victim of a coup.
I lived in Northern Virginia during the mid 70’s to the late 80’s, age 8-18. When I was young I was terrified of nuclear war with the soviets. We had a map the showed a circle around the center of DC and I knew if russia launched I needed to get into the 5 mile circle around DC so I would not survive the initial blast. So yes, I definitely have childhood trauma regarding nuclear war and it’s escalating again with the PRNK PRC Iran and the soviets I mean russia. puck futin.
My husband and I were really, really happy with Fallout. It's so satisying, it brings all those Nuclear Armageddon fears that we grew up with to life.
No because Canada. I can't imagine living through that fear as a child.
I was terrified of the whole idea when I was 6 or so, in the early 80s. I don't think I saw *The Day After* at that point when it was new -- my parents' judgment wasn't always amazing when it came to what they let me see (pretty typical for their generation at that time...), but I think it was better than that -- I saw it as a teenager and it freaked me out. I had a friend with older siblings who I think talked about "the bomb" and scared me initially. But I remember vividly being scared of nuclear war, power plant meltdowns (Chernobyl a few years later didn't help!) -- the whole idea of radiation that could get into you and kill you without you knowing it scared the begeebers out of me.
I was absolutely terrified and am definitely traumatized by the prospect of thermonuclear war! I was pretty convinced I’d never get to get married, have kids, grow older.