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Subdeacon Joe

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Found on Facebook (you know that eeeevvvviiiilllll social media site that is totally worthless)
 

#DYK that Mister Softee was part of the Civil Defense network during the Cold War? Developed by WWII Navy vets William and James Conway, Mister Softee ice cream trucks carried a generator, potable water, freezer, refrigerator, loudspeaker and two floodlights that could be used to provide aid to communities suffering in the aftermath of an attack.
May be an image of outdoors and text
 
 
 
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When the fallout starts falling, an ice cream cone would make life more bearable.

 

The desk drills used to give me nightmares. I’d dream about bombs falling and not being able to find a desk, and I wasn’t in the heart of the Cold War being born in 1965.

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I was born in 1955 and remember the duck and cover drills in elementary school.  :(  Also remember the ice cream trucks that sold  great treats driving through the neighborhood.  :D

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42 minutes ago, Loophole LaRue, SASS #51438 said:

When I wrote that response, it never occurred to me that somone might not know about duck and cover drills; if you are not a boomer, you missed out on so much fun :blink:

 

LL

Some people have never been tethered to the wall by their phone. It’s amazing how fast technology is advancing 

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I remember the duck and cover drills. I thought they were fun. Yeah, I am odd. 
 

I also remember the Civil Defense shelters in my town with the yellow “CD” signs with arrows pointing you towards the shelter entrance. I remember in 3rd grade it was the first time I heard the test of the “air raid” siren. What an ominous sound that was. 

The day they tested it we had a “city wide” ( the town only had a few thousand people) test. All schools did “duck and cover” drills. We had literally just moved from Jefferson Pennsylvania to Waynesburg Pennsylvania. From a town of 1000 to a town of 5000. I thought to myself “What did my Dad get us into?” :lol:


It sounded like this. 

 

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Reading threads like this astounds me. I was born in 55. We always lived near military bases, because Daddy was career, and after he retired we still got the benefits - exchange, hospital. And I was raised in Florida, which is just a long swim from communist Cuba.

 

We never had any of these things. The first time I ever heard of Duck and Cover was on a Quantum Leap episode in the eighties. There was never any desk drills. They were never any air raid alerts. I do remember that Sears, which had a basement, had a civil defense sign on the stairs going down to the basement. But that was it. That was the extent of my cold war experience. And you people that were born in the 60s did Duck and Cover drills? Wow.

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11 minutes ago, Go West said:

Back in those days, some people with money built their underground shelters. I wonder what they use them for today.

In the 12th grade we were reading Fail-Safe, and Alas Babylon. And during discussion one day our teacher told us that they had put a bomb shelter in their backyard.

 

She said that they no longer lived there (I had been wondering, since her son was my best friend, and I had been to their house many many times, and I had never seen any sign of a bomb shelter), but if we were to drive by such and such address, we could see it in the backyard from the street. A big sod covered hump.

 

Underground shelter built in Florida, where the water table is at 8 inches :( She said they were never able to keep the water out of it. So it had been a massive waste of money.

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1 hour ago, Pat Riot, SASS #13748 said:

I remember the duck and cover drills. I thought they were fun. Yeah, I am odd. 
 

I also remember the Civil Defense shelters in my town with the yellow “CD” signs with arrows pointing you towards the shelter entrance. I remember in 3rd grade it was the first time I heard the test of the “air raid” siren. What an ominous sound that was. 

The day they tested it we had a “city wide” ( the town only had a few thousand people) test. All schools did “duck and cover” drills. We had literally just moved from Jefferson Pennsylvania to Waynesburg Pennsylvania. From a town of 1000 to a town of 5000. I thought to myself “What did my Dad get us into?” :lol:


It sounded like this. 

 

Town I grew up in was home to a SAC base.  The city well behind my backyard had a siren.   It would go off every day at noon, except for Sundays.  All the neighborhood dogs would start howling along with it.  During the summer it meant that I had to come home for lunch.

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I was born in '57 and after kindergarten went to Catholic School.  This was in San Diego County not far from Camp Pendleton We didn't do duck and cover, we prayed the Rosary.  Sirens went off Tuesday at noon every week.  

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1 hour ago, Go West said:

Back in those days, some people with money built their underground shelters. I wonder what they use them for today.

 

Great gun room.....

'

I was born in '52.  We had nuclear war drills during the early '60s, if I recall correctly.  Bells would ring in the classrooms; teacher would tell us to take cover; we were supposed to sit under our desk, with hands folded on top of our heads.  Sure protection against an atomic bomb blast...:wacko:

LL

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Ah yes. The Duck and Cover drills; Hide under your desk drills at the teachers command.

I lived and went to school, on an advanced interceptor base, (RCAF Cold Lake, strangely enough) where we had regular 1 second siren blasts signaling a scramble of the CF-100 squadrons.

We had a teacher that came to us from the south, (Edmonton) who thought these drills were going to be important for our potential survival and intended to start weekly drills, in her class. 

She stopped when we started to laugh and paled when the kids told her the base was a priority target and our school was in the direct blast zone, if the interceptors let one sneak through.

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8 minutes ago, Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474 said:

Ah yes. The Duck and Cover drills; Hide under your desk drills at the teachers command.

I lived and went to school, on an advanced interceptor base, (RCAF Cold Lake, strangely enough) where we had regular 1 second siren blasts signaling a scramble of the CF-100 squadrons.

We had a teacher that came to us from the south, (Edmonton) who thought these drills were going to be important for our potential survival and intended to start weekly drills, in her class. 

She stopped when we started to laugh and paled when the kids told her the base was a priority target and our school was in the direct blast zone, if the interceptors let one sneak through.

 

For a couple of years we lived near the end of the runway at Willow Grove Naval Air Station in PA.  For a kid, watching the jets take off and land was great entertainment.  We thought of the fighters as our personal protection; it never occurred to us that they might make us a target.

 

LL

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I remember in Arkansas when I was in 7th grade we had tornado drills. Everyone left the classrooms and went into the halls and sit with our backs against the walls, knees bent, heads on knees and covering head with arms.  
 

Twice it wasn’t a drill. There was an active tornado in town. 

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I was born in '42.  I went to Chicago public school through 6th grade. I only remember one duck-and-cover drill, although several times they had us go into the hall, away from the windows.  The Army had several Nike-Ajax batteries set up on the Chicago lakeshore, plus a 90mm AAA battery.

 

When I was selling real estate in Littleton, Colorado, we toured through a house that actually had a fallout shelter.  They were using it to store can goods and other junk.  Probably still there.  Never worried about "the bomb".  Figured if the Soviets targeted Cheyenne Mountain (NORAD) with a couple of 25MT's, one would probably fall short and so there was no point in worrying about it.  

Stay well and safe, Pards!

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14 minutes ago, Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474 said:

She stopped when we started to laugh and paled when the kids told her the base was a priority target and our school was in the direct blast zone, if the interceptors let one sneak through.

 

4 minutes ago, Loophole LaRue, SASS #51438 said:

 

For a couple of years we lived near the end of the runway at Willow Grove Naval Air Station in PA.  For a kid, watching the jets take off and land was great entertainment.  We thought of the fighters as our personal protection; it never occurred to us that they might make us a target.

 

LL


When my daughter was young we lived in Huntington Beach CA. Our house was a little over a mile, as the crow flies, from Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station.
Every year my daughter would come home from school with some document passed out by another liberal moron teacher freaking out, and freaking out the kids, over nuclear weapons possibly stored at that facility. 
I would just tell her to calm down and that the teacher was incorrect about their sensationalist suppositions. 
One year when she was in middle school she came home with “No Nukes” fliers and info in SBNS weapons storage and I had had enough of this crap. 
I took my daughter on a drive around the base and explained weapons handling as well as info on nuclear weapons and the procedures the Navy has on what to do in emergencies regarding nukes and so on. 
She apparently went to school and told her oh so knowledgeable teacher who wrote me a note about my misguided opinions and knowledge of US Navy weapons and, in particular, nuclear weapons. 

I will not bore you with the full diatribe I wrote back to this person but the gist of it was that living near that weapons station was exactly where anyone with any sense would want to be if there were ever a nuclear war. Mostly  because that base would be high on the list of prime targets and would be some of the first places to be hit. I wrote that life after nuclear war would not be worth living and that “It would be my hope to be standing under the bomb when it exploded and being bathed in the luminescence of its brilliance and the warm caress of gamma radiation and 6000 degree temperatures for just a fraction of a second.” 

I explained all that to my daughter as well. She actually told me it made sense. 
That teacher did not correspond further. 

 

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Ah, yes, Duck and Cover. We had a CD shelter in the basement of our grade school. We also had an Air Raid siren on the roof of the school. Couldn't hear yourself think when that thing went off!:blink::rolleyes::blush:

 

We were probably lower on the list of targets, we had steel mills. Akron was higher on the list, rubber factories. We were told that if they nuked Akron we would just fall in the hole afterwards:blink::ph34r::blush:

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I was born in 1948. We had the drills, but very rarely.

 

But we had the air-raid siren going off at 2 pm Wednesday for decades. I don't really remember when they stopped. Sometime in the '70s, probably.

 

I do remember as a young kid that if I heard a prolonged siren somewhere and it wasn't 2 pm Wednesday, I'd worry a bit about it. 

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In grade school, we had two different sirens: one for the bomb drills and the other for tornadoes. For one, we would "duck and cover" under our classroom desks; for the other, we would go downstairs to the lower level and be in lines ducked up along the wall. 

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The fire department in Old Washington had its fire siren mounted on a Civil Defense tower.

The original Civil Defense siren was powered by a 225 slant 6 Dodge engine.

The CD warden would climb the tower, put in his earplugs, start the engine and climb on a bolted-on bicycle.

He would pedal to rotate siren to give 360 degree coverage.

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5 hours ago, Go West said:

Back in those days, some people with money built their underground shelters. I wonder what they use them for today.

From what I’ve seen on tv and a few YouTube channels people are still building some pretty elaborate bunkers. 
 

 

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13 minutes ago, Buckshot Bob said:

From what I’ve seen on tv and a few YouTube channels people are still building some pretty elaborate bunkers. 

Now they call themselves "Preppers". It's a "Thing", and if you talk to them for more than twenty minutes or so, you came to the conclusion that they're NUTS!

I'm not saying that one shouldn't prepare for problems, ample supply of food, medicine, water, and such, but planning to live in a cave for years is a bit much. Even if the cave is in your backyard.

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I really appreciate the way all y'all jump in with bits and pieces of history and personal experience.   It's an interesting mix of commonality and diversity at the same time.   

 

Like Alpo mentioning the FL watertable. Living in coastal California all my life I would never have considered that.   Heck,  other than a few visits to family back east I haven't been in houses that have a basement,  and the last time was 50 years ago. 

 

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15 minutes ago, Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770 said:

Now they call themselves "Preppers". It's a "Thing", and if you talk to them for more than twenty minutes or so, you came to the conclusion that they're NUTS!

I'm not saying that one shouldn't prepare for problems, ample supply of food, medicine, water, and such, but planning to live in a cave for years is a bit much. Even if the cave is in your backyard.

It makes me wonder how many like this are in the US . 

 

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Car (and home) radios had the little triangles for the CD broadcasts. Yellow signs pointing to shelters that would not even hold the folks in that one city block.

 

In a midwestern town far far away and a long time ago, we had Tornado drills (and a few real tornados in the area). Same siren for duck and cover, but that was only one annual scheduled drill.

 

My young mind asked the teacher about how we were supposed to tell the difference between duck and cover versus tornado (since it was the same siren!)...

 

All I got from the teacher after some fumbling for an answer is that we duck and cover once a year, everything else was a tornado (real or drill).

 

Now as an adult, I have realized this question actually stumped the teacher... And since tornados really did happen all the time, any siren except that one annual drill was a tornado.

 

I have taken that experience to heart. I have food to last a serious snow-in because it happens here. I have the ability to run without electricity for as long as power might commonly be out. I have meds for as long as I might not reasonably be able to get off the mountain. I have everything for what might reasonably happen. If the S did HTF, all the reasonable and common stuff will at least give me a good head start. Or to get through the very rare but still likely to happen again someday New Madrid earthquake.

 

I don't think that makes me a prepper in the classic sense, I am not prepared to live in a hole for years eating dehydrated chemical crap. But I don't have to panic over what I know will happen every now and then. Amazing how many folks can't last even a week if all the fast food restaurants were not accessible.

 

The biggest real risk I think we all face is a solar storm that knocks out the power grid. If that happens, most of the grid will be impacted for several years... "Things" (transportation, supply chains, fuel, rationed electricity) will start working again within a few weeks, but the mess would linger for a long time.

 

But I do remember those times when the big fear was USSR nukes. Tempered with the much greater likelihood for tornados and how many lives those same CD sirens saved.

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After the blast the little ice cream truck music would be a welcome sound. Hopefully they stocked them with weapons too. ;)

 

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Thanks for sharing that Joe!

I don't remember duck & cover but I do remember the siren tests every Saturday at noon. I remember every large building downtown had a fallout shelter. Mom worked for Motorola in the government electronics division, they had them too as I recall. Before I went into the Army, I was impressed with the government's concern for our welfare whould the big one come along. LOL.

 

Early in my first assignment someone thought it would be a good idea to send me to NBC school. In addition to being the squad's machinegunner, I was that. It wasn't a promotion, being a self-mobile canary who could shoot back. haha

Years later, since our county has one of the largest nuclear power plants in the country we had survey teams and we had training and drills regularly. near the end of my career I found myself downtown and since I was the only guy who knew how to work all the cool gadgets, I did that same duty for the downtown complex.

 

No, civil defense for civillians was never what it whould have been. No, a nuclear war isn't going to kill everybody on the planet and yes, it is quite survivable with the right skills and tools unless you happen to be where the real bright flash is. Then of course it means everything suddenly become's someone else's problem LOL.

 

I have in fact kept up my training and have the basics to do survey work if need be. Of course I plan on using the plan an old wise sergeant told me; the best way to survive a nuclear, biological or chemical attack is not be there.

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9 hours ago, Buckshot Bob said:

Some people have never been tethered to the wall by their phone. It’s amazing how fast technology is advancing 

And I'm told they're removing analog clocks from schools because kids can't read them.

 

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7 hours ago, Alpo said:

In the 12th grade we were reading Fail-Safe, and Alas Babylon. And during discussion one day our teacher told us that they had put a bomb shelter in their backyard.

 

She said that they no longer lived there (I had been wondering, since her son was my best friend, and I had been to their house many many times, and I had never seen any sign of a bomb shelter), but if we were to drive by such and such address, we could see it in the backyard from the street. A big sod covered hump.

 

Underground shelter built in Florida, where the water table is at 8 inches :( She said they were never able to keep the water out of it. So it had been a massive waste of money.

There was a house on the edge of our neighborhood in S. Florida that had been built long before the housing development went in sometime in the 70s. They had a hum with an air pipe. I never stopped to ask em about that.Water table there was about 6 feet so it would have been feasible.

 

i remember seeing the Hawk missile batteries set up in the farm fields around Homestead Air Base during the Cuban Crisis.

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7 hours ago, Go West said:

Back in those days, some people with money built their underground shelters. I wonder what they use them for today.

Daddy's den for one I know of.  Several others are for storage (cold rooms so far underground).

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