I'm old enough to remember blast curtains in our school basement, and the bomb drills we had every month or so. Years later they became ''civil defense' drills, which were bomb drills lightly euphemized.

When I got to college, there never were any bomb drills or civil defense anything, and I wondered why.

Now I think the bomb drills were to frighten children so they would grow up to be frightened adults. It worked.

Posted by: CRM-114 | December 23, 2007 1:27 PM

I remember seeing that turtle in first or second grade. They would also show video of whole houses being blown over or set on fire by the bomb. I could never figure out how ducking and covering would help at all. In Chicago we had air raid sirens that went off every Tuesday at 10:30am. We all had to duck and cover. And in my school if you covered and then ducked you would get a strong whack from the nuns.
What was really scary about this vid is the fact that they always referred to "the bomb" like they knew it was coming. Between looking for the flash and for Communists, growing up in the 50's was tons of fun.

Posted by: wrpd | December 23, 2007 6:35 PM

They had the ear-splitting air raid sirens here, but I don't recall the turtle. I think the fear-mongering was worse because we lived on a military base.
Merry Christmas to you and yours.

Posted by: witchypoo | December 24, 2007 1:44 PM