Those of us of who came of age in the 1950s lived with the then novel threat of nuclear war. The government told us that, if the Soviet Union launched a nuclear strike, five hours or longer would elapse between our Distant Early Warning radar line detecting the Russian bombers and their arrival over American cities. During that interval, there were supposedly many steps that we could take to seek shelter and stay alive once the bombs dropped.

One of those steps was supposedly evacuation of the targeted cities.

When I was in 5th grade, the Atlanta Civil Defense authorities conducted a practice evacuation of all school children from the city to the near suburbs. On a designated date and time, the volunteer mothers drove to the schools, loaded their cars with kids and drove to “safety”.

I recall sharing a car with three boys and two girls. One of the 11 year-old boys – who was an expert on nuclear war because his father was in the Army – gleefully announced that, if radioactive dust landed on us, we would have to take all of our clothes off. According to him, boys and girls would be “bare nekkid” in plain view of each other! I was horrified at the thought and immediately decided that I would rather die with my clothes on and modesty intact.

Anyhow, the practice evacuation turned into the biggest traffic jam in the history of Atlanta and a complete fiasco. The official estimate was that it would take the Russian bombers between six and seven hours to strike Atlanta. By hour six of the drill, we were still stuck in gridlocked traffic inside the city limits.

There were no more practice evacuations.

But the Civil Defense authorities weren’t out of tricks. Under their guidance, children were taught to hide under their school desks in the event of attack.

But what if you weren’t in school when the bombs dropped? Not to worry. Here’s Bert the Turtle in a 1950s Civil Defense movie telling kids to “duck and cover”.

I vividly recall seeing this movie several times at school and on television. Looking back, the best I can figure is that it was primarily calculated to allay children’s fears of the unthinkable and secondarily reduce casualties among the population far removed from the blast zones.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, the nuclear war fear meter was dialed back a bit. But now, with the United States fighting a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, it seems that the geniuses who got us into this mess are starting to worry in case, you know, things go sideways and those sneaky Russians try to exploit the obvious mental incapacity of our Vegetable in Chief by launching a nuclear strike on America.

Are the Biden regime and its subsidiaries becoming more concerned about the possibility of nuclear war? That would appear to be the case based on this public service message broadcast last week by New York City’s Emergency Management agency. Take a look.

Unlike Bert the Turtle, this simple-minded PSA seems to be aimed at adults. But its advice for survival is about as useful as “duck and cover” or hiding under a desk. Does anybody believe this stuff? Or is it being broadcast to allay fears by offering false reassurance that there are ways for dwellers living in a city targeted with multiple hydrogen bombs to survive.

And yes, I found this PSA to be – pardon the expression – an unwelcome blast from the distant past. It brings back not-so-fond memories of childhood and raises the question of why is this warning being given and why now? What has changed such that, after decades of not issuing similar official advisories, a major city government has decided to tell its citizens to, in effect, “duck and cover”?

That’s it for now. I have a few articles in the works that I hope to post in the very near future. So stand by.