Watching the news about Japan and hearing about people in the U.S. worrying about fallout drifting over here brought back some memories. Wondered if other people on this site remember those magic times.

I grew up in a medium sized industrial city, but I would assume that wherever you grew up, the warnings were similar. There were occasional bulletins on the news. Don’t eat the snow. There was a possibility that it contained radiation from bombs being tested.
When the U.S. dropped the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 during World War II, it was a 15 kiloton bomb. We’ve all seen pictures of how much devastation that inflicted. But after the war, by 1952, we were testing bombs in the atmosphere like “Ivy Mike,” the first cryogenic fusion fuel thermonuclear weapon. It yielded 10,400 kilotons of energy. In 1954 we lit up “Castle Bravo,” which was detonated in the atmosphere, produced 15,000 kilotons of energy and created a serious nuclear fallout accident when the winds shifted. As late as 1961, the USSR detonated in the atmosphere “Tsar Bomba,” a 57,000 kiloton bomb. It was the largest thermonuclear bomb ever tested.
In 1953, we detonated 11 nuclear bombs in the atmosphere in Nevada. By 1957, the annual number in Nevada had jumped to 30. By 1958 we were detonating 37 bombs annually in the air in Nevada, 35 in the air near Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the South Pacific, and 3 in the South Atlantic Ocean. In fact, worldwide in total there were over 100 nuclear bombs tested in the atmosphere that year. This was also the era that ushered in Mad Magazine and Alfred E. Neuman with his iconic phrase, “What, me worry?”

I found photos of 24 of the 30 bombs we detonated in the atmosphere during 1957.
Attachment 9156

I don't remember worrying about the fallout that much. After all, what was it?

I do remember being paranoid about being attacked by the USSR though.


That got me thinking about Bert, the Civil Defense turtle and the Duck and Cover films we watched, over and over.
Talk about doom and gloom laced with paranoia. I was thinking the Duck and Cover film was about a minute in length. I found it on Youtube.
It’s over nine minutes long. It’s a series of scenes showing people reacting to a nuclear explosion. First, it could happen in school. Okay, I’m scared. It could happen while you’re walking to school. Additional scenes of it happening when you’re riding your bicycle. Really, you’ve got my attention. There’s a scene of a family enjoying a picnic on a sunny day in the park. Uh oh, a flash of light from the big one. Luckily this family has done their homework and know enough to throw the table cloth they’re sitting on over their heads and lay down on the ground. Whew, that was a close one. But it just keeps coming. Scenario after scenario. You could die like this, or like this, or possibly like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60

It's amazing that we don't glow in the dark. I do remember the Duck & Cover drills in school all the time.

Any glowing memories of that time period.