How many remember duck and cover?

teapartysamurai

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Mar 27, 2010
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Totally non political discussion, or maybe it could be.

Anyway how many of you all had to do those dumb "duck and cover" exercises in school?

You know, the teacher would tell you it was "duck and cover" and you had to go under your desk, get on your knees, tuck your head in, and cover your neck or head.

We had to do them, although I think I was at the tail end of that nonsense. It was the late 60s and they weren't even telling us WHY we had to do these drills. They just made us.

Then one day in the nurses office, while waiting for my mother to pick me up (yeah I was sick), I read the posters on the wall under "In case of emergency."

There was poster for fire, one for tornado, and one with the boldest lettering, "IN CASE OF NUCLEAR ATTACK."

That's when, I figured it out. We had three safety drills, and there were three posters so that stupid, drill where we had to get under the desk was in case of nuclear attack!

Anyone else remember those dumb drills?
 
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What are you talking about? Duck and cover, as I recall it, is when Drill Sargent Edwards would yell "duck and cover" and you would have to IMMEDIATELY drop to your belly, tuck your chin into your chest and grab your balls. This was IMMEDIATELY followed by him yelling "recover" at which point you would JUMP to your feet and come to attention. Usually we did this routine ten times at a minimum.

Over 20 years later I have not figured out how my hands would have protected my balls in the case of a nuclear attack.
 
Yep I remember them.
Like hiding under your desk would help ;)

I remember when polio vaccine came out for the masses.
on a sugar cube for schoolchildren.

My first 4 years of school was in a one room school with a potbellied stove in the middle.
NO running water and outside toilets.
 
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Yep I remember them.
Like hiding under your desk would help ;)

I remember when polio vaccine came out for the masses.
on a sugar cube for schoolchildren.

My first 4 years of school was in a one room school with a potbellied stove in the middle.
NO running water and outside toilets.

I got the sugar cube too! Can't say my school was that primitive, but we did get those sugar cubes and we did have to do duck and cover.

I never understood why anyone thought a school desk would protect you from a nuclear attack.

I think it was like Big Sis's policy to cough into your sleeve. It's just propaganda, so it makes it look like the government is involved with your safety.

"Hey, the government came up with this neat idea to protect you all!"

Like the Emporer's New Clothes, only later does anyone speak up and say, "Hey this is really stupid!"
 
I clearly remember my teacher explaining to us that there is a map hanging on a wall in the Kremlin with a bull's eye over the upper Ohio River valley.

"The Russians will want to knock out all our steel mills at the beginning of the war so we can't fight back!" she said.

I used to day dream out the window and imagine the MiGs flying low out of the setting sun. they would form up over the hill just down river from our school and strafe the school yard before bombing our little town into oblivion.

There was a room (later called the General Purpose room) filled with olive green barrels of water, cases of crackers and nutritional supplements. I suppose we were supposed to face eternity well filled with water and soda crackers.

Now the steel mills are gone. I wonder if we could fight back.
 
I clearly remember my teacher explaining to us that there is a map hanging on a wall in the Kremlin with a bull's eye over the upper Ohio River valley.

"The Russians will want to knock out all our steel mills at the beginning of the war so we can't fight back!" she said.

I used to day dream out the window and imagine the MiGs flying low out of the setting sun. they would form up over the hill just down river from our school and strafe the school yard before bombing our little town into oblivion.

There was a room (later called the General Purpose room) filled with olive green barrels of water, cases of crackers and nutritional supplements. I suppose we were supposed to face eternity well filled with water and soda crackers.

Now the steel mills are gone. I wonder if we could fight back.


Our teachers didn't go that far. As a matter of fact, they didn't tell us what the drill was for.

I found out for myself.
 
People now laugh at the "duck and cover" propaganda drills of the 60's

But in reality,

the current Homeland Securities "Color-coded Threat Level System" to warn us of terrorist threats is just as idiotic. :doubt:
 
People now laugh at the "duck and cover" propaganda drills of the 60's

But in reality,

the current Homeland Securities "Color-coded Threat Level System" to warn us of terrorist threats is just as idiotic. :doubt:

I think if we didn't have some kind of warning system, liberals would scream about there NOT being one to have warned us after an attack, especially if Bush was still in office.
 
Totally non political discussion, or maybe it could be.

Anyway how many of you all had to do those dumb "duck and cover" exercises in school?

I do.

You know, the teacher would tell you it was "duck and cover" and you had to go under your desk, get on your knees, tuck your head in, and cover your neck or head.

Yup.

We had to do them, although I think I was at the tail end of that nonsense. It was the late 60s and they weren't even telling us WHY we had to do these drills. They just made us.

We did that foolishness in the late 50s. Given that my school was about 20 miles from Bethlehem Steel's largest plant, (and lots and lots of other strategic industry, too) I'd say that our chances of surviving a first strike, all out nuclear war with the Soviets were about zero point doodlesquat.


Then one day in the nurses office, while waiting for my mother to pick me up (yeah I was sick), I read the posters on the wall under "In case of emergency."

There was poster for fire, one for tornado, and one with the boldest lettering, "IN CASE OF NUCLEAR ATTACK."

That's when, I figured it out. We had three safety drills, and there were three posters so that stupid, drill where we had to get under the desk was in case of nuclear attack!

Anyone else remember those dumb drills?

I also remember that for a number of years every day at noon a civil defence siren sounded throughout the city.

Ah! ~ how simple life was back then.

We were the good guys, the Commies were the bad guys and that's all you needed to know.

Now the commies are most favored trading partners and much of the world hates us for our freedom to station troops all over the damned world.
 
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I remember them well and how much fun they were and how they gave us a little break from the old bag blathering on by the chalkboard about crap we didn't give two shits about.
 
I remember them well and how much fun they were and how they gave us a little break from the old bag blathering on by the chalkboard about crap we didn't give two shits about.

I feel like I've plagiarized something here. I posted the following in DROP AND ROLL before I read this (HONEST it WAS before :eusa_shifty: ). Said I need to get me a 1950s school desk.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNZ64_HPYts&feature=player_embedded[/ame]
 
Ah, yes. I remember being corralled into the main assembly hall by our school masters who told us that we were being visited by a very important guest.

This guest/comedy act was a specialist sent by the Ministry of Defense and the Home Office to try and frighten us into taking the whole session seriously.

He started off by displaying a large map of the world in which he pointed to what was then the Soviet Union and informed us that "the communist is a sly and sinister breed who should under no circumstances be trusted". But the show really got started when one of his assistants wheeled out a television that looked like a prop from the Flintstones, and started to play a government funded programme about what to do in the event of a nuclear attack, and how to survive a nuclear winter.

Now, seeing as this was a British school, and that we were fully aware of the devastation that would follow the detonation of a nuclear weapon, it was incredibly difficult to take seriously a video that instructed us to draw the curtains, hide behind the couch/sofa and hope for the best. Compounded by the fact that this video was shot on a very small budget.

But the pièce de résistance was when he asked us what we'd do for food after the fallout had subsided, to which someone shouted: "There's bound to be a Paki (asian) shop open somewhere!"

Even the teachers involuntarily contributed to the roar of laughter that swept through the assembly hall.
 
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