Though this is indeed a bit morbid, I couldn’t think of a better place to start off something called The Boomer Blog. If it’s gonna’ start with a bang, it might as well be a big one. It shall begin with them, or at least our generation’s innate fear of them.

It was in the fifties when I was in elementary school that I became aware of the fact that, at any given moment, we were never much more than forty minutes away from nuclear annihilation. That, according to the Civil Defense films we were shown while our teachers were correcting our math quizzes, was the approximate flight time for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to travel between the USSR and the US, arcing high over the North Pole. When that happened, we just needed to remember the duck and cover jingle that these films introduced into our lexicon. The cute cartoon characters did their best to convince us that the safety of our desks would get us through the worst of it until we could make it into the fallout shelters located in the school, where we would find provisions for weeks of survival. 

In my elementary school at the time, Bennet-Hemmingway, we even made it into the local news with a test the local CD group ran keeping volunteers alive and fed in the school basement for two weeks one summer. It was taken at the time as a huge confidence booster. As I got closer to middle school, nuclear missile subs began coming online along with multiple reentry vehicle (MRV) warheads. Armageddon was now only ten minutes or so away. But they still kept playing that stupid duck and cover jingle.

As you can see by the kinds of films we were made to watch, things stayed pretty light-hearted. But what was as true then as it is today, kids aren’t as gullible an adults seem to think they are. Some of us even caught peeks at the movies and TV plays that hinted at the consequences of a nuclear exchange, intentional or accidental. We all grew up with an awareness that a moment could come where our futures would become measured in minutes and hours, rather than years. 

When the Soviet Union fell in the 1980s, I felt a huge weight being lifted from my life, only to have it return when Russia invaded Ukraine. As the weeks have gone on, we’re hearing nuclear stirrings again in the Mideast, South Asia, and possibly the South China Sea. The idea of something triggering a nuclear exchange is very triggering for a Boomer. It’s part of our makeup.

The idea of something triggering a nuclear exchange is very triggering for a Boomer.

In the early 2000s, I spent a few years working in middle and high schools. The duck-and-cover drills became duck-cover-and-hold earthquake drills. Then we began to have active shooter and lockdown drills. And I feel for those kids and even for the staff. Rather than having to prepare for an unimaginable, world-ending cataclysm, they are preparing for something they see in the news as often as every few weeks. During those  drills, it’s impossible not to think of what it would be like if there was someone with a sack of assault rifles going from classroom to classroom shooting people, imaging hearing the gunshots and screams as they came closer and knowing, that locked or not, that the doors are no match for ammunition designed to make mincemeat out of Kevlar. 

I can’t help wondering if today’s parents of school-age children can relate to the kinds of fears that these essential drills can’t help but instill in the students. School shootings are statistically rare. But lockdowns are more common than a lot of people realize. They’re a preventative measure taken against a possible threat. One may not be a life-altering trauma for a student. But I’m guessing that they add up, even if they’re only drills. 

What is particularly sad is that I eventually became acclimated to the idea of a nuclear exchange ending the world, accepting and almost complacent about the possibility. Now there are generations of kids who are adjusting to the idea that nowhere is safe from maniacal mass shooters. It would have been nice if all that wasn’t a piece of common ground we didn’t have to share.