I'm old enough to have lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 'duck and cover' drills in 1st and 2nd grade, a child of the Cold War for sure.
I turned 70 this year and have lived all of them essentially 30 minutes away from going out in a Blaze of Glory after the sirens go off. So like most things that terrified us as children, I've always had a fascination with that Boogey Man of nuclear Holocaust.
Any seriously interested in this (and at four thick volumes, you'd have to be serious or OCD to read them, as well written as they are) needs to read the four books that Richard Rhodes wrote about this era:
The Making of the Atomic Bomb (the discovery of nuclear fission and the Manhattan Project)
Dark Sun (the post Manhattan Project transformation and birth of the AEC and the development of the Hydrogen bomb)
Arsenals of Folly (the Cold War and the START era with Gorbachev and Reagan)
The Twilight of the Bombs (post Reagan, nuclear proliferation and terrorism)
I can recommend any and all of these.
My father was a B-47 captain during the missile crisis. We lived off base and didn't see him for the duration once the base went on lockdown. I don't remember the name of the PBS documentary but it was talking about secret cold war cities in Russia when my father out of the blue and in a matter of fact tone said "That was my target during the missile crisis." It was kind of chilling to hear as an adult where I could understand just how close we were to a nuclear war.
As far as duck and cover goes it doesn't make any difference when you live a couple of miles from a major SAC base also known as ground zero.
