Duck and Cover

Having discovered the joys of podcasts downloaded to iTunes I’ve been watching archival footage supplied by Vintage ToonCast. One I watched this morning is entitled “Duck and Cover”, being a 1950s US Government Propaganda Film that purported to guide its citizens and children in particular as to how to protect themselves in the event of nuclear war, seems to be an historical artefact presented for our amusement. With what we understand of the nature of nuclear war the idea that, ducking under one’s classroom chair and covering one’s neck, would protect one strikes a modern viewer as sinister.

“When you see the flash” it instructs. Half a century later we know for anyone seeing that flash it will probably be the last thing they ever see. Those who survive the immediate blindness will be subjected to the nuclear shockwave, followed by the shockwave of air from the blast, and finally the equivalent of an earthquake caused by tremors set off in the earth and a tidal wave if a body of water is nearby. For those who actually survive all this there will be nuclear burns, radiation sickness, and slow agonizing death. Anyone who still manages to survive will suffer the side-effects of exposure the rest of their lives.

When we consider that the radioactive elements produced by a thermo-nuclear explosion will be around for hundreds of thousands of years the idea that surviving a nuclear attack in a bomb shelter containing carefully laid in supplies is laughable. That scenario, even if it were practicable would make the Frank family’s confinement look like a picnic by comparison. Perhaps it’s only appropriate that as I write this I’m listening to the first disc of a recording of Wagner’s Ring.