Category Archives: September 18

Duck and Cover!

Posted on by

This video is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen. I can’t believe that this was ever shown to children in a classroom environment. The safety video basically implies that at some point an atomic bomb will actually detonate. The “duck and cover” method would probably not save anyones life, and I believe that if there was some type of atomic or nuclear threat today, the government would either arrange a mass evacuation or not say anything at all. When it comes to a weapon that is as destructive as an atomic bomb, there isn’t much hope for anyone in the blast radius. The reason this video upsets me is because it was more likely to scare children into thinking that they would soon be burned alive, and the government used a cartoon turtle to try and make this duck and cover method okay. If the government truly believed that an atomic bomb was going to be dropped, would they provide no more relief than a safety video?

It is interesting to point out that the duck and cover method gives the impression that if an atomic bomb were to go off, it would not be the end of the world. I can’t speak for children living in the 60s, but I feel like I would have been terrified that the end was near. Religion plays no role in this video – is this because the government purposefully tries to make this bomb threat look like a routine drill? Based on our readings so far, an atomic bomb could definitely appear to be a sign of the apocalypse to anyone religiously devoted to the Book of Revelation. Did anyone at the time consider this bomb to be a catastrophe related to the sound of one of the Trumpets? An atomic bomb would lead to bloodshed, violence, anger, possible destruction of the Earth (could be considered “poisoning” the water, soil), and darkness. I wonder if children believed what this video told them, and more importantly, what their parents and the rest of America thought about it.

Comments and Recommendations

Posted on by

Hi everyone,

This is a thoughtful group of posts.  I enjoyed reading your responses to the video, film, and article and hope you will continue to respond to each other over the next few days.  If you think you might want to pursue the issues of this week for your research topic, I recommend a documentary film, called “The Atomic Café.”  It has a lot of government footage from the time period and addresses some of the issues that were raised about the government’s intentions at the time.  The tone is polemical, but you will get a sense of the official messages that were being orchestrated.  You might also see “On the Beach” and “Fail Safe.”

I’ll call attention here to a few of the posts that stood out for me as a beginning model for your research papers because there was an effective argument and analysis made along with descriptions of personal response.  The essays of course will need citation and full use of sources, as indicated in the syllabus. Colby’s discussion of “Dr. Strangelove” and the role of satire for serious critique is excellent.  Remember that the film came out in 1964 to get a sense of how these governmental messages were being disputed at the time.

I want to commend Danielle’s post as well because she has drawn insightfully on material from another course.  The history of childhood is particularly relevant to the emergence of Christian fundamentalism in the late 19th and 20th centuries, as Kirsch points out in his discussion of Darby and the Scofield Bible.  Combining that analysis with cultural constructions of paranoia is a fruitful exploration.

I also want to make special mention of Amy’s responses as a model of interaction.  This is the kind of online discussion that sharpens our understanding.

As for my own experience of Duck and Cover life, I have this to tell.  When I was in 5th grade (around 1956), my elementary school called upon mothers to volunteer to pick groups of us up for atomic explosion drills and drive us to the military base in Orlando.  I was proud that my mother was a volunteer, but when the first drill came along, we filed out and into cars and as she drove around, she couldn’t fine the base.  So she just took us to the Dairy Queen instead and then delivered us back to school.  Maybe that was the best anti-paranoia strategy to employ!

But there was definitely tension, both in school and in neighborhoods.  We certainly practiced Duck and Cover and I think we both expected it to work and knew it wouldn’t at the same time. I also remember a group of neighbors meeting at my house to discuss the dangers of fluoridation in water—said to be a “commie plot” and whether or not to build fall out shelters—we didn’t.  From what several of you have said about 9/11, the aftermath may provide a similar ambivalence regarding terrorism.

Be thinking about your research topics!

Best, Lee

Protecting The Children

Posted on by

I was surprised, when watching the nine-minute “Duck and Cover” video, how strange it must have been to have been growing up as a child, or even to be living as an adult, when the very (seemingly) real threat of the world’s destruction hung in the air. In Charles Strozier’s piece, Fundamentalist Mindset, Strozier discusses how apocalyptic time is seen, to believers, as being within this kairotic, before-and-after way. However, though I couldn’t help thinking how believers may not have felt fear (or not as much fear) during the Cold War if they believed the end was The End. The “Duck and Cover” video remains fairly secular in the fact that there is no religious mentioning of being “saved,” but at the same time it deludes children with the idea that, if they properly follow instructions, they will transcend an otherwise disastrous fate – they will transcend a death that they might not even be aware of transcending (I dont’ know how many seven-year-olds are aware that the “Duck and Cover” methods were not actually preventing anything if a bomb was dropped near them).

Watching the “Duck and Cover” video also reminded me of my experience when 9/11 happened… though I was in Texas attending school about thirty minutes from Houston, kids were taken out of school for protection. My parents found the idea of taking children out of school because of 9/11 baffling when faced with the explanation of, “What if we are bombed?” Why my elementary school would be a target for bombing is an entirely other issue, but the idea that removing kids would have done anything in the face of real danger was a false attempt at controlling something completely bizarre – and in a way, unrelated to our small elementary school. The idea of transcending any danger is in itself an interesting topic, because it seems that for large portions of Christian Americans, this was a logical assumption and preparation against some kind of threat.

A Step Away From God A Step Towards Nuclear

Posted on by

During the Cold War, many individuals around the world, especially in America and the Soviet Union believed that the end of the world was very soon because of the high amount of nukes both sides controlled. There was a shift in belief of an apocalypse from God to an apocalypse from nuclear weapons.

In the 9-minute clip “Duck and Cover,” students in school are being taught to go under cover the moment they would hear a siren. In other words, they’re being conditioned to know fear and death is imminent when a nuclear weapon strikes. This in turn causes mental conditions such as paranoia to form. The threat of a nuclear bomb has elevated from devastating attack in WWII to the end of the world in the Cold War.

In fact, Strozier’s study states, “Nuclear weapons represent the religion of our age.” In the film “Dr. Strangelove,” paranoia was shown almost everywhere. From General Turgidson’s paranoia to anything related to Russia to General Ripper’s paranoia of communists tainting the “precious bodily fluids” of Americans through water fluoridation. Even when both sides of the army were fighting each other, there was paranoia because all personnel in Ripper’s base stuck to protocol and didn’t bother to use their brains about the situation when firing on other American troops. The role of the nuclear bomb was a thing of both great pleasure for some and great fear for others in “Dr. Strangelove.” The pilots who were on orders to carry out “Wing Attack Plan R” loved the divine power of destruction so much that one of them even dropped with the bomb itself. The characters in the war room on the other hand, thought of the bomb as their annihilation. Although the film is a satire, it is still able to show the symbolic power of a nuclear bomb as well as the paranoia associated with fundamentalists in a more “modern” view for the time.

Children and the Apocalypse

Posted on by

As the idea of “childhood” evolved during the last 150 years, special apocalyptical media has been developed to appeal to youth in the hopes of protecting and/or manipulating them.

Last class, we briefly talked about the existence of children at the end of the the world, in the context of the Shakers not having any. The Apocalypse is often portrayed as an adult problem to be dealt with by mature men and women. Children, when not born to sun-ladies and Jewish whores, are not native to the apocalyptical landscape but when they are they are shown to become its most innocent sufferers and pawns. Continue reading →