We made jokes, as children do, because the reality was impossible to hold in our minds or just too harrowing. I think we knew even before we were out of 8th grade, when we read John Hersey's Hiroshima that there was no reliable way to really survive a nuclear attack on our city. I remember the yellow and black Civil Defense FALLOUT SHELTER sign over the stairs leading down to our school basement, where, I suppose, we were supposed to sit in the dark and eat canned goods until. We'd squish ourselves below our desks, chortle, giggle, and wiggle our backsides. "Duck and cover" was an actual jingle about Bert the Turtle, a cartoon character in a black and white civil defense film that was considered antique even by the time it was threaded up in our classroom. I am of that generation of Americans - Russians, too, I think - who grew up squatting under our school desks to practice how to survive a nuclear blast. Fallout shelter signs, like this one, still hang on buildings around the U.S.
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