The Paranoia of Sputnik and Duck and Cover

The Russians sent Sputnik up in 1957. America caught its breath, stopped and anticipated the bomb that was to come and never did. Many things added to our national paranoia including Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on the desk in the United Nations. The politicians were very successful in making a business out of war and espionage. They kept us in a constant state of crisis and fear. In school we were required to participate in duck and cover practice just like fire drills. We actually had to get down under our wooden desks and cover our heads with our hands. Now I know that if an atomic bomb had dropped I would have been radioactive dust. I was in high school in New Jersey in 1958 when a FBI agent came to speak at one of our school assemblies in the auditorium. He told us all about the communists who were set up in the store fronts in New York spying on us. All of this served to make the population paranoid., and it scared us kids. We were sure they were coming to get us. People actually dug holes and made cement bomb shelters and filled them with food which is probably rotten by now. We had no idea what real fear was until 9/11. Now we know where our fears should be directed, and that what we fear is not always apparent.