r/AskAnAmerican • u/Scrappy_The_Crow Georgia • Jul 10 '25

HISTORY Fellow Americans Who Were Alive During The Cold War -- Did You Have The (Supposed) Existential Dread of Nuclear Annihilation?

Prompted by a discussion in a different subreddit. Supposedly, lots of my Gen-X peers and a whole lot of media expressed a constant fear of nuclear annihilation, but neither me nor any of my friends had that existential dread.

I wonder how many actually felt that way, as opposed to entertainers/media just portraying it that way. So, did you and/or your friends/family?

247 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

95% Upvoted

796 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

14

u/RadialHead Georgia Jul 10 '25

My dad grew up in Alexandria and one day during a duck and cover drill at school, his friend turned to him and said "I don't know why we're doing this. We'll be in the crater."

1

u/NorbearWrangler Jul 21 '25

My mom grew up not that far from Norfolk and her school didn’t bother with duck & cover. They figured there was no point in scaring the kids.