A little later, the county was dotted with the Minuteman missle sites and control centers. One silo was on a friends farm. He said it was sobering to think that the several-foot thick concrete lid would blow the better part of a hundred yards away just before launch.
The thing I realized as I got older, though, was the psychological impact that the threat of nuclear war had on that generation. My grandmother was not wealthy -- she worked most of her life at the cafeteria of the local high school -- and her husband died when he was in his 30's, leaving her to raise 5 children. At some point they decided to spend not-insignificant amounts of money on building a bomb shelter. As I grew up, I realized that this had a subtle but profound impact upon the attitudes of my grandmother and her children: they were all just a little paranoid, careful to the point of it almost seeming neurotic at times. My cousins and I did not share the same fear about the world at large that we witnessed in our parents, and came to believe that this was due to the fact that we grew up in a world where nuclear threats were not so pervasive.
It all tied back to the bomb shelter. The mere existence of this cinder block-lined hole in the ground was a daily reminder of what could happen, and what they believed would very likely happen. Many of my aunts and uncles were also prone to believe in the apocalyptic scenario de jure, from upcoming depressions[1] to stockpiling food and water in preparation for Y2K, to more extreme beliefs about race wars and the second coming of Christ.
Anyway, this shelter had an impact on me at a young age, but in the opposite direction. It taught me that living in fear like that is no way to live.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Depression_of_1990
http://www.ustornadoes.com/2013/03/19/monthly-tornado-averag...
I now live in a state with only 20 or so tornados per year and I sometimes feel weird not having a safe room in my basement like my grandparents.
To some extent a crude fallout shelter is just a tornado shelter with canned goods and camp gear. A "real" fallout shelter is somewhat more complicated.
"grew up in a world where nuclear threats were not so pervasive."
The people making a lot of money off the "war on terror" would not be happy to hear stuff like that.
My uncle told of a dinner invite he and my aunt got from a neighbor after a snowstorm that closed their particular road. Having been cooped up for the better part of a week, they decided to go. To travel, they hopped in the diesel tractor (think of a very small caterpillar) and, to the surprise of their hosts, showed up on time. I imagine they left early, as top speed of the tractor was maybe 5mph.
NB The novel "Arc Light" includes one thread where the crew from a a Minuteman control center surviving an attack and spending weeks underground then having to make an escape through the devastated landscape:
What I find weird is the attitude that it's better to die than survive with most all of your loved ones and friends, albeit at a reduced quality of life for a long time. A rather ultimate materialistic attitude, or perhaps it's as Dean Ing put it in Systemic Shock:
The American public had by turns ignored and ridiculed its cassandras: city planners, ecologists, demographers, socialists, immigrants, who had all warned against our increasing tendency to crowd into our cities. Social stress, failure of essential services, and warfare were only a few of the spectres we had granted only a passing glance. We had always found some solution to our problems, though: often at the last moment. Firmly anchored in most Americans was the tacit certainty that, even to the problem of nuclear war against population centers, there must be a uniquely American solution; we would find it.
The solution was sudden death. A hundred million Americans found it.
Its a manifestation of binary thinking. Well, either we "must" have no nuclear attack, or it "must" be post apocalyptic. Not allowed to be just one shipping container in LA or one maintenance accident at a missile field.
A good analogy is often heard for bicycle helmets. I'll either be squashed underneath the wheels of a bus or I won't get into an accident, either way the helmet doesn't matter so I won't wear one. Even if slipping on gravel and hitting your head on the curb is about 100x more likely than either of the binary options.
Studies seem to suggest that helmets reduce the risk of a head injury by as much as 85%. In 2012 for nearly 2/3 of bicycle accident fatalities the rider was not wearing a helmet. This used to be an even higher percentage but fortunately the # of fatalities has decliend signficantly in the last 20 years.
http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/pedestrians-and-bicyclists...
> In 2012 for nearly 2/3 of bicycle accident fatalities the rider was not wearing a helmet.
That's irrelevant, since it indicates nothing about what fraction of those 2/3 would have survived if they'd been wearing helmets (as an example, if someone is hit my a truck at 50 mph, it really doesn't matter if he's wearing a helmet or not). Also, what fraction of cyclists wear helmets? I'd be surprised were it so much as 1/3; if it's less, then that would indicate that helmet-wearers are more likely to die than non-helmet-wearers (due to risk-tolerance on the part of both cyclists and drivers, c.f. http://www.cnet.com/news/brain-surgeon-theres-no-point-weari...).
There are three types of head strike injury: those with so little force that no death or severe injury would occur, with or without a helmet; those with sufficient force to inflict death or serious injury without a helmet, but which a helmet would prevent; and those with so much force that a lightweight foam-and-plastic helmet wouldn't help.
> This used to be an even higher percentage but fortunately the # of fatalities has decliend signficantly in the last 20 years.
It looks to me from that IIHS graph that it merely reflects the fact that more people are wearing helmets now than previously.
The effect of helmets on skier injuries is also ambiguous--presumably because the widespread use of helmets has at least correlated with more risky behaviors.
Ah! I read that '95, and recently got to wondering what the title was. Could not think of it for the life of me.