How the threat of nuclear war after World War II shaped the attitude of baby boomers


If you’re a true baby boomer, you know what it was like to feel that the world might come to an end at any instant with nuclear war in the 1950s and 60s. And since I was born in 1958, and I fall into the category of "Baby Boomer", I'm discovering that there was a subtle change that happened around the time I went to grade school, and high school in the '60s and '70s.

I don't know what your experience was, but I never did any of the preparation stuff for a nuclear war, like "duck and cover" - which from what I understand was something that children were taught to get underneath their desks in the event of a nuclear attack. I do recall grownups talking about the threat of the end of the world from nuclear attacks, but apparently it never really affected me. My attitude was more like what I read in "Mad Magazine" - which was to just "kiss your __ goodbye!" What, me worry?

That someone, somewhere, could push a button and cause ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) to come raining down all over the earth seemed something that wasn't worth worrying about for me, and most of the kids my age. Of course, that was just the way that I and most of my friends dealt with it - the other way was to build bomb shelters, stockpile food and ammunition, that sort of thing. Most of the people my age and younger didn't do that, but it really was, and continues to be, something that Baby Boomers did a LOT of.

When I lived in Los Angeles in the 1980s, disaster was always imminent, either from "the Big One" (an earthquake on the San Andreas fault), or missiles suddenly flying in across the Pacific. For a potential earthquake, I kept a gallon of water around, and a flashlight, and for the nuclear attack I just didn't think about it. In theory the "Star Wars" satellites would shoot down an ICBM before it got to California, but I really didn't know.

I've spent a fair amount of time today thinking about where I where like to be, and what I would like to be doing at the end of the world, and it's here, and this. The more I learn about how precarious life is for humans here on planet earth, the more I'm amazed that we've made it this far as a species. And maybe it's not "Mad Magazine" cynicism that makes me not worry, maybe it's hope, and confidence in the human race.

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