The Old Way of Terrorizing Kids at School

Like many of you, I have clear and vivid memories of the last decades of the Cold War. But by the time I was a kid, the whole “duck and cover” incoming nukes drills were a thing of the past and seen as a bit hokey and archaic. One of the things I’ve learned in the post-Cold War era is that the U.S. and the Soviet Union actually came terrifyingly and ridiculously close to an accidental or misunderstanding-based nuclear exchange in the early 1980s. If you’re interested, look up “Able Archer” and related tensions around 1983. TPM Reader MM has some thoughts and memories of the earlier era.