# You who who grew up tall and proud, in the shadow of the mushroom cloud **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 21, 2014, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022 "2014-10-21T13:29:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/101 "2014-10-22T15:39:28Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Except we’re talking about the Cold War. You can bet if we had released WMDs, they’d have come sailing right back at us. Remember, back then, Russia was still a world power – they had the means and then they’d have the motive to retaliate. \*\* The Soviets didn’t fuck around.\*\* Yes, they did. We tried to goad them into wars on four continents with a constant barrage of Jesse Helms-isms, and they refused to take the bait. If Kennedy had served for 8 years, he would have eventually gotten around to it, and Oswald might have been a legitimate candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. . As for the OP, I was never so scared as I was during the Kennedy administration. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/102 "2014-10-22T16:04:29Z")
Up until High School, I was pretty safe – well into the mountains in the hard coal region which was already a non-target by then. And the winds went towards NYC rather than from. Then we moved just outside Pittsburgh (a prime target if Uncle Sugar is to be believed) ringed by NIKE sites and stuff like that. My plan was to duck, cover and kiss my ass goodbye. (As they started to close, the NIKE sites became historically fantastic places for rampant teen sexual escapades so I guess they sort of went from readiness to friendly fire) ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/103 "2014-10-22T16:25:15Z")
This thread makes me think of the book _Warday_ and make me wonder…what the hell kind of plan was that? > [@](#): > > The “limited attack” by the USSR only destroyed Washington, D.C., San Antonio, the Brooklyn and Queens boroughs of New York City, and ICBM missile fields and major air bases in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, killing a total of 7,340,548 people. The subsequent firestorms and fallout from these attacks destroyed Long Island, Baltimore, and most of Southwest Texas. The Soviet Navy also launched nuclear attacks on the United States Navy, destroying the Third, Sixth, and Seventh fleets, killing tens of thousands of sailors and reducing the strength of the US Navy by 90%. But in book apparently it worked. The USSR loses ‘only’ it’s capitols. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/104 "2014-10-22T16:29:46Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Right outside Washington DC. I’d survive by crawling under my desk and covering my head. Yeah, we had those same air raid drills. (Grew up just a few miles south of Alexandria, Va.) Can’t imagine why anyone bothered, because if things went nuclear between the USA and the USSR, everyone in our area was totally fucked. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/105 "2014-10-22T16:38:04Z")
I voted didn’t know, because I grew up about 15 miles south of LA. Not next to anything in particular. > [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > From the map of likely Soviet warhead targets found [here on page 4](http://www.psr.org/assets/pdfs/projected-us-casualties-and-destruction.pdf) (warning, pdf) it looks like Chicago is in some serious shit. But according to the map above, that whole peninsula would be taken out. If they’d multi-bombed like on the map, I’d have been gone. I’m guessing that Torrance Airport wasn’t a priority, but LA/Long Beach Harbor might have been. How far does the blast and lethal radiation travel anyway? ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/106 "2014-10-22T16:54:31Z")
> [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > This thread makes me think of the book _Warday_ and make me wonder…what the hell kind of plan was that… An interrupted one. Both sides rapidly lost control of their forces after the first EMP attacks. Air Force 1 ends up shot down after 40 minutes or so, IIRC. I also remember that Minuteman got largely stomped on the ground, between the satellite deployed warheads and the Soviet counterforce first strike. Just dumb luck that San Antonio got smoked along with DC and NY. In fact, the attack on NYC missed to the east by 30 miles or so, which explains how Strieber could be on a bus on 5th Avenue, and not get vaporized. Bad day if you were on Long Island though. The impression I got was that the attacks would’ve been a lot worse if either side had adequate C3I. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/107 "2014-10-22T17:51:39Z")
Relatively speaking I would probably be in pretty good shape. I grew up in Los Alamos New Mexico. While we designed bombs, we didn’t have any on hand, and were probably not an immediate target. Also if the USSR did manage to take over we would likely have been seen as an asset. The nearest likely target was Albuquerque about 80 miles away. On the defense side, we had extensive fallout shelters as a legacy of our old DOD days. Basically as good a place as any to rise up from the ashes, [build a giant flying head](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz), and lord over the savage scraps of humanity that remained outside our utopian enclave. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/108 "2014-10-22T18:46:04Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > I grew up in the north Bronx during the 1950s and 60s. Probably not enough of a direct target so that the blast would have gotten us (unless they were aiming to take out some of the bridges), but the NY metropolitan area would no doubt have received enough strikes that radiation would have been fatal to almost anyone there. From that map, the entire Northeast Corridor from DC to Boston was pretty much fucked. Plus, even if the Bronx were to survive the attack…it’s still the Bronx.😃 ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/109 "2014-10-22T20:15:10Z")
This thread pretty much illustrates why the UK decided to rely solely on submarine-launched missiles and gave up bombers and silo missiles: land based assets simply gave the Soviet Union more incentive to target Britain. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/110 "2014-10-22T20:52:06Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Yeah, we had those same air raid drills. (Grew up just a few miles south of Alexandria, Va.) Can’t imagine why anyone bothered, because if things went nuclear between the USA and the USSR, everyone in our area was totally fucked. We were ground zero. We were damn sure the first bomb was coming right for us. Tons of buildings were marked as Fallout Shelters, and plenty of people had their own private shelters where eventually a lot of youngsters lost their virginity. We had a whole box full of government literature explaining how to survive the nuclear blast, but even as a little kid it was apparent no one had enough food to survive until it was safe to go outside. As I recall things were the worst during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were let out of school early one day, and civil defense guys were going around the neighborhood getting every one ready for armageddon. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/111 "2014-10-22T21:37:34Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > We were let out of school early one day, and civil defense guys were going around the neighborhood getting every one ready for armageddon. I remember that day well. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/112 "2014-10-22T21:53:28Z")
> [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > This thread makes me think of the book _Warday_ and make me wonder…what the hell kind of plan was that? > > But in book apparently it worked. The USSR loses ‘only’ it’s capitols. Haven’t had the chance to read the rest of this thread yet but this caught my eye. Good book and I would have liked to have read the proposed ‘sequel’ detailing the war and aftermath from the Soviet side, but unfortunately for whatever reason it never came to pass. As for myself I grew up in a rural area of Northern Ireland and always thought the nearest legitmate Soviet target was a town with a significent military base twenty miles away, I mean its not like we wouldn’t have got our hair mussed, but we should have been OK. As an adult with an interest in the Cold War I have a better understanding of just how much the UK would have become a series of interlocking fireballs in an all-out exchange and discovered that a fairly important US Navy communications relay was sited about three miles up the coast from my parents house. We’re also pretty much opposite the Machrihanish airbase which the Rooskies would probably have hit with enough firepower to turn Cambeltown Peninsular into Cambeltown Island… Oh yeah and for reference I was a child in the 1980’s. ---
**Author:** ![Whatever4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@Whatever4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whatever4)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/113 "2014-10-22T22:35:36Z")
Close enough to NYC to be pushing up radioactive daisies. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/114 "2014-10-22T22:39:27Z")
I suspect I win the thread. We grew up in the Seventies and Eighties on the Clyde in the west of Scotland, in close vicinity to the UK submarine bases at Faslane and Coulport and the US one on the Holy Loch. Now there may have been more urgent Soviet targets in a strike - planes that might be caught on the ground or Midwestern silos - but these were the most obvious A-list strategic nuclear targets in the whole of western Europe. Any explosion over any of these would have killed us. But that isn’t the off-scale possibility. For the cherry on the top of all this was the (unofficial) suggestion that this was one of the few targets on the planet that might merit one of the really large weapons. Cities are better dealt with via a series of smaller warheads, etc., but something on the scale of 50 megatons can start to make a really big crater (at least by nuclear weapon standards). Big enough to start messing up the sub approaches to their home bases in the Clyde by altering the geography. And the suggestion for the best place to put this ground-burst? About half-a-mile from our house. Let’s run that possibility past you again: _the equivalent of the Tsar Bomba in a surface-blast about half-a-mile from where we lived_. If true, this would have been orders of magnitudes worse/better than most everybody in the thread (or indeed _Threads_). It’s a whole different set of physics. While quite possibly none of the rest of you would have been engulfed by a central fireball, we’d have been deep within one. Joking aside, we’d have been possibly the only ones literally completely vapourised.[sup]\*[/sup] Estimating the crater size is tricky, but back-of-the-envelope suggests that the site of our house might well have been within the resulting hole. For those of you worried about fallout, we’d have been fallout. [sub]\* Bit of a myth here. Probably nobody was completely vapourised in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but then nobody was in contact with the fireballs. The famous shadow photos involve cases where the victim would have then fallen, fatally burnt and irradiated. All these particular photos were then taken after the bodies had been removed and cremated. The earlier photographers had, after all, the bodies themselves to photograph as the more obviously horrific record.[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/115 "2014-10-22T23:03:34Z")
After the war, you could lord it over us that your dead was more dead than our dead 😉 “Killed by the wave of super heated radioactive air, huh? That’s nice, I guess. But let me tell you about how I died…” ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/116 "2014-10-22T23:29:09Z")
> [@bonzer](#): > > For those of you worried about fallout, we’d have been fallout. I think at that level of radiation exposure it’s scientifically proven that you will get superpowers. Incidentally as _Warday_ was mentioned upthread, good catch as I’m half way through it right now (they’ve just got to Missouri, a barren windswept hellscape…and then the war happens, hardy har har). One thing - why did the US put its silos in the Dakotas, where the fallout would decimate the American agricultural heartland? Why not put them all next to D.C. that would get nuked anyway? Or why bother at all and have subs instead? It’s mentioned that a surviving _Typhoon_ class submarine was minutes away from wiping out California when the British came to the rescue (as an Englishman, the depiction of Her Majesty’s subjects brings a tear to the eye). ---
**Author:** ![Grestarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grestarian/32/3227_2.png) [@Grestarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grestarian)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2014, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/117 "2014-10-22T23:57:47Z")
Well, well! 🙂 Where I grew up we were always reminded that Point Loma was a key target for being The farthest southwestern point of the US mainland, plus having a major submarine base just on the inside curve of the point, plus having NAS North Island (repair & testing facility?) across the bay, plus having the Navy Ocean Systems Center (NOSC, also called Naval Operations Support Center, Navy Operational Systems Center, and a couple other unofficial variations of the acronym), plus (incidentally) having the Marine Corps Recruit Training Depot (MCRD), not to mention Lindbergh Field all bundled right there (and nearby was the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command - SPAWAR). However, according to Wellerstein’s blast map application, a single strike from the average Soviet nuke (800 kiloton airburst) wouldn’t actually have fried me. I grew up in San Diego, CA just north of La Mesa and apparently that’s twice the blast-radius eastward from the Point. And, while NAS Miramar (made famous by the movie Top Gun) was just up the road, a single drop above their tarmac would also have left me a half-radius outside the blast area. To be efficient, though, a Soviet attack would probably either be on both points at the same time, or be multiple strikes throughout the area – and the maps from Mr, K’s link seems to have a target-splotch that stretches from the Mexican border through northern Los Angeles and from the coast to the Sierra Madre mountain range. So I’m pretty sure I’d be toast – and I think that would be fortunate, because I really wouldn’t want to have to deal with the aftermath. :eek: –G! I ain’t cleanin’ that up! …–Berta (Two and a Half Men) ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2014, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/118 "2014-10-23T00:07:03Z")
I grew up east of Toronto, so I was probably toast. Not sure how toasty, though. I read that Dean Ing book too, so I knew it wasn’t instant bang, you’re dead, though. But when you live between the two combatant countries, it isn’t going to be pretty. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2014, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/119 "2014-10-23T01:19:03Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Yes, they did. We tried to goad them into wars on four continents with a constant barrage of Jesse Helms-isms, and they refused to take the bait. If Kennedy had served for 8 years, he would have eventually gotten around to it, and Oswald might have been a legitimate candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. . > > As for the OP, I was never so scared as I was during the Kennedy administration. Three words: Mutual assured destruction. You honestly think that if we lobbed a nuke at the Soviets, they wouldn’t retaliate? An actual, honest to god, nuclear missile? ---
**Author:** ![LH75](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lh75/32/4438_2.png) [@LH75](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LH75)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2014, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022/120 "2014-10-23T01:21:53Z")
I grew up in South Omaha, Nebraska. SLightly more than five miles from where I went to grade school, in the small out lying community of Bellevue, NE is Offutt AFB. SAC Headquarters was there, and this is the airfield from which Looking Glass, the Flying Command Center flew. I used to have a sweatshirt with a map of Bellevue with crosshairs centered. It said: "Greetings From Bellevue Nebraska! Ground Zero, USA We would have been toast, but we knew what to do. We had duck and cover drills at my grade school. The nuns had us hide under our desks and pray the rosary… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-who-who-grew-up-tall-and-proud-in-the-shadow-of-the-mushroom-cloud/702022.md?page=7)