Post-Perestroika Tensions
Duck-and-cover, the 1980s, and the eradication of biological drives, in Two N-Words (Two N-Bombs), Part Six
[All chapters can be read independently, but this chapter is more independent than the others. The previous chapters are here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5]
I am not old enough to have lived during the era of “duck-and-cover” bomb drills. The classic routine called for American schoolchildren to hide under their desks so as to be protected, presumably, from ceiling pieces falling on them in the event of an attack by a foreign military. However ludicrous this seems—as if a small plank of wood could offer protection against a bomb—it becomes even more nonsensical when one realizes that duck-and-cover was meant as a defensive response that “should be done in case of an atomic attack”.1 The arbiters of history say that these schoolhouse drills, despite their “comical simplicity”, were useful in “Channel[ing] America’s Cold War Anxiety” and familiarizing United States citizens with their “new status quo.”2
What goes unsaid is that the main effect of the drills, intentional or not, was to increase paranoia and inculcate a form of learned helplessness. Habitual duck-and-cover drills reminded people of their vulnerability; they served as implicit warnings that the world could end at any time, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. When the alert went out, children were to scurry under their desks like scared animals; they were to be quiet and worry about whether or not this was the big one. And then, when the authority was good and ready, a voice would tell everyone that, no, this one was just for practice. That’s how it was. But I am too young to have experienced any of that.
I am also a bit too young to have watched (or remembered) The Day After, the famous 1983 made-for-TV movie viewed by 100 million Americans, showing what life would be like after a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. Reagan later claimed the film shook him, partially influenced his policies, and contributed to the eventual reduction in the US nuclear arsenal.3 The facts suggest otherwise, however. America’s atomic weapons numbered 23,305 in 1983; the inventory did not fall below that level until 1988, and did not significantly diminish until after the USSR dissolved a few years later.4 Reagan probably misrepresented things in order to appear more sensitive, and possibly as an attempt to ingratiate himself with Hollywood. That’s what I’m guessing; I’m too young to remember this stuff when it happened.
Gradually the Cold War made itself known to my 1980s childhood. The floors were mostly carpeted: some were single-color shag, others low-pile and with elaborate designs. The house was heated by a wood-burning stove in the corner of the family room, where we ate. I would sit in my little chair at the circular table, my mother across from me and my father to my right. To my left, the big heavy Zenith beamed out Tom Brokaw’s grainy visage. His voice dry and his demeanor professional, emotionless, he spoke of some faraway place called the USSR, sometimes also called Russia or the Soviet Union, which had something to do with “communism”. As a toddler I overheard these words on the nightly news, and eventually I put it together that these were vaguely negative, unfriendly concepts. Older family members must have sometimes mentioned these terms as well, sometimes when reacting to the news broadcasts, but their engagement with the topic would not have had the measured, consistent, direct impact of the television itself on my consciousness. The glowing screen, and the official men whose images spoke through it, conveyed transcendent importance to all matters, even when I couldn’t grasp many of the specifics. We were locked in some sort of stalemate with the USSR, and the conflict could potentially get much worse.
When it comes to when and how I learned about the existence of nuclear bombs, my memories are less clear. But there was a definite incident around the holidays when I was four or five: something on TV caused various half-understood words and phrases to add up in my mind. There was a worrying feeling, and the feeling festered. As usual, the news had been on during dinner, and after dinner I always went off to another room to play. Only that evening I didn’t feel like playing. Somehow the television had introduced the idea of nuclear war into my little world. Anxious, I remember asking my mother and then my father if Russia was going to drop a nuclear bomb on us. In short order my father indicated that this was not very likely to happen. My memory of this episode ends with me asking whether or not the past year (1986) was “a good one”. The news had given me the impression that, geopolitics aside, even domestically we could be tilting on the edge of catastrophe due to internal problems, and it was imperative that I learn immediately if the US was (or was not) still on solid footing. I don’t remember how my father answered this question—perhaps he said that the new year would be better—but somehow my concerns were allayed, and I commenced my usual playing. When my action figures battled, the bad guys always won, because that’s how I liked it; but that’s not how it worked in the real world (…r-r-r-right?).
A few years later I had grown enough to understand more and commit more details to memory. Aside from the brief moment mentioned above, I don’t remember ever being scared of nuclear war. It was, after all, the era of perestroika anyway: Gorbachev was opening up the USSR to market reforms, extending a hand to the West, and seemingly conceding to Reagan. When I entered kindergarten in 1987, we had fire drills but no bomb drills.
While economic restructurings had taken place for several months beforehand, Gorbechev first used the slogan glasnost (“transparency”) in a February 1986 speech to the Communist Party Congress.5 The same month, “Russians” by Sting topped the European singles charts.6 A voice in the dark pleads “I hope the Russians love their children too”, insinuating that only care for the next generation will save us all from mutually assured nuclear destruction. While beautiful and haunting, the song draws a bizarre equivalency between a Soviet leader issuing threats and an American leader offering defense:
Mister Krushchev said, “We will bury you.”
I don’t subscribe to this point of view.
[…]
Mister Reagan says, “We will protect you.”
I don’t subscribe to this point of view.
Observe the highmindedness of the 1980s European popstar. He politely refuses to endorse foreign sentiments of mass murder directed toward his own people. At the same time, he bravely distances himself from the wicked Republican president: Sting insinuates that if he had it his way Reagan’s “help” would be summarily rejected on principle, but alas it is forced upon him and he is condemned to sit securely under American-led NATO protection.
—Excuse the snark. I like the song, though the prevaricating tone typifies many artistic shortcomings of the era. The nostalgia is strong with this one. And I like ’80s Sting. I don’t know what happened to him in the ’90s, though.
The Soviet Union was dissolved on my tenth birthday, but still throughout my adolescence and into my teenage years nuclear concerns persisted in the Zeitgeist. This continued well after the ascension of Boris Yeltsin, whom we knew as a friendly drunken bear. It was before China became a major rival, and before North Korea became a potential menace. In other words, for a while the nuclear threat had no specific source, but the same 50-year-old atomic apparition still floated in the air. People had lived under this imaginary mushroom cloud for so long, they still intuited its presence.
From the late ’80s through much of the ’90s I remember hearing young people—other kids, teenagers, and twentysomethings—casually remarking that nuclear war was inevitable, only a matter of time. Sometimes this was said as a sardonic throwaway retort to an adult who wanted us to plan for the future: “Why would I save my allowance money when we could get blown up by a nuke next week?” Sometimes it was said more morosely, especially by girls: “I don’t know if I want to get married and have kids. Why bring life into this world when radiation could kill us all anyway?” We didn’t live in active fright—we didn’t think of it all that often—but when future prospects frustrated us, we sometimes said that maybe there wouldn’t be a future anyway. We might live to see the end of everything. People were living longer, and if our natural lifespans would stretch to around 80 years, we reasoned that surely something would go very wrong before then. Supposedly it wouldn’t take much to set it off.
After all, these matters were so fragile. Weren’t they? My perception of a nuclear bomb was of a very delicate device that could explode at any moment. A nuclear bomb was like a jack-in-the-box only a fraction of a turn away from popping. It was like a toy snake in a can whose top was barely on, and any slight touch might—
In my mind’s eye I saw one big nuclear warhead—it looked just like a cartoon missile—and suddenly, through some cosmic fluke, a small crack appeared in the smooth metallic shell. That’s all it would take, right? If even one side of one nuke container mysteriously got a crack in it, the nuke stuff inside would simply explode with unfathomable power a few seconds later. This explosion would send a shockwave through the entire atmosphere and trigger all other atomic weapons on the planet to also explode. This is what I thought when I was a kid, and I was supposedly one of the smarter ones. So forget the Dr. Strangelove-style strategies of “If you nuke us, we’ll nuke you.” That was far too formal and slow. This scenario of mine was not any sort of military decision or automated response involving computers. No, this was how the raw science worked, as far as I could tell, from how everyone talked about nuclear bombs. This was an immediate law of the universe itself: If one nuke goes off, they’ll probably all go off. And an actual detonation wasn’t even necessary to start the process: A planet-destroying chain reaction would almost instantly result from one slight ding to one warhead. Within a matter of minutes, Earth itself would crack apart like an egg. That was literally the image I saw in my head: I saw our planet, as viewed perhaps from the Moon, with several continent-long cracks in it. And these fissures would be growing. That was what a nuclear bomb could do. Before long afterwards, everything would be gone and only some random rock debris would be left drifting in outer space.
Remember: Aside from that brief moment when I was four or five, I don’t remember ever being scared of nuclear war. I wasn’t scared, per se; I just accepted that complete annihilation might happen due to an accident.
What amazes me most in retrospect is that, despite all these vague but hyperbolic doomsday premonitions, the adults back then generally got on with life in a way that today seems normal and happy and healthy. A good many of them sometimes said that everyone might die next week, if an idiot in Washington or Moscow did something stupid; but their actions show that, by and large, these average people still finished school, had children, and saved for retirement. These Americans, who came of age during the Cold War and its immediate aftermath, still planned for the future, lived for the future, and believed in the future more than we do now. They did this even though the government, media, and education industries kept telling them that a radioactive dystopia might commence at any time.
Innumerable studies show how Americans back then were less depressed and less anxious than we are now. Everyone knows this, and many studies corroborate it. To cite, for good measure, one set of recent trends:
It’s a pity that these statistics weren’t collected prior to 1998, but we can safely assume that more than 6 out of every 10 adults used to want to have children. Surely that was the case even back when they first heard about Khrushchev promising to “bury” them in the late ’50s7, and surely it was still the case in the ’80s when Sting’s lyrics reminded them about Khrushchev’s foreboding words. From the 1950s through the ’80s, most Americans went forth and became mothers or fathers, all while nodding anxiously that, yeah, very possibly the Soviets would bomb them someday. If hell wasn’t around the corner, it was probably around the next corner after this one. But all along life went on and people found a way, despite the external threat and despite the internal bickerings that might prove fatal. The natural instinct to reproduce had not yet been broken. Life bred life and life was worth it, mostly, for most people. There was no question of choosing life, because it wasn’t a conscious decision. No one really even needed the Bible to tell them to be fruitful and multiply, because almost everyone was doing that already.
As late as 1993, even one of the biggest sad sacks ever understood this, at least for a while. And he explained the process very well:
[Having a wife and child] really does change your attitude about things. I mean, four years ago I would have said the classic thing, like, “How dare someone bring a child into this life, y’know? It’s a completely terrible way to go, the world’s gonna explode any day” and stuff like that. But once you fall in love it’s a bit different.
Humanity used to get along relatively fine, even under the nuclear gun. What changed?
Nuclear fears lingered in the mass mind after the Cold War ended. They slowly dissipated but were eventually replaced by a more free-floating form of anxiety. From the baby boom through the early years of the 21st century, humanity proliferated, falteringly but ultimately, despite known dangers and enemies of great magnitude. In more recent years, however, we’ve contracted. It seems we’ve lost our nerve.
Perhaps, paradoxically, the more abstract the threat, the more it actually hinders the core vitality of humanity.
The threat of nuclear war with the Soviets had been real, albeit exaggerated at times8, and the threat was relatively specific: The bombs, the bombings, and the clouds could all be visualized. As noted, these worries persisted in the population even after Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin smiled and yucked it up for the cameras. Russia had become friendly, China and North Korea had not yet become major concerns, yet the hellscape visions of nuclear Armageddon (1950s vintage) still stayed with us at least through the mid-’90s. This tells us that existential paranoia does not need to come from a known adversary or a particular direction. The scary images—indelible, internalized—lingered, but they weren’t nearly nervewracking enough to break our spirit.
Perhaps we were able to cope with those old end-of-the-world expectations because, thanks to various popular media productions, we pretty much knew (or thought we knew) what that sort of apocalypse would look like, how it would happen and play out.—But what if we were told that the world was ending, told this repeatedly, without being given any palpable details of how it would happen or what it would look like?
Could the even more formless, omnipresent concern of climate change have resulted in a deeper sort of existential dread? We can visualize a nuclear bomb; we can’t visualize a climate change. At best we can point to some weather phenomenon and bicker about the degree of indirect or causal evidence. With nukes, the signs are clear; scary as they are, they’re apprehensible. We can make love under the specter of a mushroom cloud—and isn’t that the cover image of a prog-rock album?—but we don’t want to fuck while thinking about the nebulous, amorphous idea of climate change, the most tedious and least sexy thing ever.
The decision not to “burden” the planet with more children is not the only symptom of recent inner decay. Increased rates of anxiety and mental illness also help prove the case. Interlinked techniques of mass media, consumption, and propaganda have all improved and increased in the last few decades, making urgent messagings of all types (climate-, health-, and politics-related) all the more impactful, and all the more demoralizing. Every single concern has the potential to become debilitating when you’re increasingly detached from reality. The rise of the internet facilitated immersive mental environments, bubble communities in which perspectives skewed and reliable reference points became hard to locate. As a consequence, many people have lost track of themselves. Various well-marketed distractions—from trivialities to obsessive-compulsive disorders—have usurped their biological instincts and sense of self-preservation.
It goes without saying that diminished economic prospects also lessen our enthusiasm for tomorrow. But the poor people of Eastern Europe seem to have gotten through the Soviet era with their souls intact. I’d ask why we’re finding it so difficult, but it’s starting to seem like a rhetorical question.
However much ducking under a desk might have scared a few generations of schoolchildren, it didn’t radically forestall the development of families, patriotism, or community life for most citizens.
Today we have different values and concerns. Societies evolve. Dangers that once seemed fearsome—that were once used to control us—we now find blasé. Eco-warriors and Underground Men alike mutter that the complete obliteration of civilization might be preferable—necessary, even. Oh, the many drastic proclamations we make these days.
That’s not to suggest that we’re fearless or free to say anything. Some sentiments and words really bother us—a certain word terrifies us—but bombs don’t. Not if we’re dropping them, and certainly not if we’re selling them for someone else to drop for us. Today there is no anti-war movement. We’ve acquiesced, and we’re willing to let our leaders risk nuclear war.
I can tell now that 1986 was a good year, and every passing year makes it seem better. Yes, it’s nostalgia, but it’s also the truth.
______
This ends the sixth essay in this series. If you like it, consider sharing it somewhere.
Ibid.
The context of Khrushchev’s actual words makes the statement, uttered in 1956, slightly less maniacal. See <https://medium.com/exploring-history/we-will-bury-you-how-a-mistranslation-almost-started-ww3-4a285162e2b9> for one of many “well actually”-style defenses of Khrushchev. In a later chapter we’ll detail how Khrushchev visited America and toured Hollywood in 1959, so evidently the “We will bury you” kerfuffle did not have a lastingly negative impact on his reputation in Washington.
A later chapter in this series of essays will address how the US aided the USSR, extending their geopolitical foe vast lines of credit and selling them food at subsidized prices.