Like Trump, I grew up during the Cold War.

[Dave Starsky]

I was always afraid that I'd be nuked to death.

Unlike Trump, I read the books Alas, Babylon; On the Beach; War Day; Swan Song; and A Canticle for Liebowitz.

I also watched the movies The Day After, Threads, Fail Safe, World War III, Colossus: The Corbin Project, Dr. Strangelove, A Boy and his Dog, War Games, The Atomic Cafe, and even Terminator 2, for crying out loud.

We practiced duck-and-cover drills in school before it became obvious to everyone that they probably did more harm than good.

My friends and I played a card game called Nuclear War. The object was to assemble a hand of nukes by matching up warheads with compatible missiles and then "launching" them at your friends' populations. Anyone wiped out by this had the privilege of "final retaliation", in which they could combine all of the missiles and warheads in their hand and launch them at whomever they pleased. These losers also got "final retaliation", and so on and so on. Eighty percent of the time, NOBODY won, but it was still fun to play.

I got REALLY good at the arcade game Missile Command. I mastered the technique of spreading my antimissile fire evenly at just the right height to take out the MIRVs before they broke up.

I stumbled upon a Civil Defense shelter once. It still had a lot of big cylindrical cans filled with post-nuclear supplies. The cans themselves were to be used as latrines, once you dumped out all of the iodine tablets, bandages, burn ointment, etc.

I didn't run across this stuff out of selection bias. I wasn't just some studious kid with a demented interest in morbid things. EVERYONE encountered this. EVERYONE with at least half a functioning brain knew how mutually assured destruction (MAD) worked. EVERYONE knew how serious it all was. EVERYONE worried or at least thought about the fact that we might be vaporized in our beds at night and never even know.

And despite all of the worries and the dark humor, there was always this one little thought at the very back of my mind: Someone at the top is competent enough to make sure it doesn't happen. Someone in charge has a family and/or friends and doesn't want to see them, or anyone else, get killed. It was cold comfort, but it was all we had.

We lived every day for decades under the shadow of nuclear war. Decades of time, effort, and energy, and many, many billions of dollars that could have been far, far better invested elsewhere.

But through it all, none of us got nuked to death. That whole MAD idea worked.

If Donald Trump gets any of us nuked to death, I am going to be righteously, insanely pissed off. Assuming I am still alive in the radiating rubble, I will crawl out of the ruins and be mad. I will be mad at Donald Trump.

[lunatica]

1. I grew up in another country at the same time

A country that feared the US of A and its nuclear weapons, because they felt the US would use them on that country.

And I'm already mad as hell as Trump. If he gets dragged off to jail or to a loony bin I will celebrate.

[MuseRider]

2. Right there with you.

I also remember having to provide a map of where we would meet our mother should we have enough warning, I guess when the threats got bad enough. We walked our path daily to and from grade school marking the place where our mother would be when or if we had time.

I live in Kansas. We would have known early I think. They told us that if something happened it would look like our entire Eastern part of the state was sprouting large sunflowers there were/are so many missile silos around here. They are everywhere and I suppose a lot of them are still here, here and Western Missouri.

I also remember my mother telling me not to worry because of those missiles we would likely be first strike and there would be nothing to worry about then. Thanks mom. My grandfather had a fallout shelter built behind the apartments he owned. It was kinda cool but scary and really awful thinking that we would have to live there with all his renters who were very old people. Ick!

Oh yes, good times. Meet me somewhere. He will no doubt survive it and I will be looking for him as well. I am sick to death of this crap and sick of being jerked around all the time by him.

[Wounded Bear]

3. Maybe you grew up, but Trump definitely didn't...

[Amishman]

4. Ha! I clicked this topic to make the same joke

[Wounded Bear]

5. GMTA...

[KT2000]

6. Cold War kid here too

Lived near Boeing which was tagged a target. We all knew the drills would not help - we would be incinerated.
Some neighbors built bomb shelters.

A slight correction though - some did get nuked. The workers in nuclear weapons development/manufacture, military member who were participants in the testing, and those who lived downwind of development and testing sites. Many died early deaths because of the build up of nuclear weapons.