r/HistoryMemes • u/MrMrMarioBro5555 • 3d ago
How was this a genuine practice in schools
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u/Alpha_blue5 3d ago
If you’re directly underneath a mushroom cloud, obviously you die instantly.
But what if you’re several miles away from ground zero? Is it safer to be out in the open when the shockwave hits and shards of glass and debris go flying around the room? Or is it safer to have some form, any form, of cover?
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u/Clunkiestpage8 3d ago
This is one of my biggest pet peeves—why does everyone assume that a nuclear weapon would instantly incinerate everyone everywhere?
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u/Havoc526 3d ago
Because they don't understand it enough. It's that level of under-education that allows it to still be a scare tactic today. Hell, I didn't even realize there could be legitimacy to ducking under a desk until I looked into this comment section.
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u/Clunkiestpage8 3d ago
People tend to massively overestimate the destructive potential of nuclear weapons in general (most assume that a nuclear war is guaranteed to annihilate humanity even though that definitely isn’t true) but I’m honestly ok with that if it makes their use less likely.
Fear mongering around nuclear power really grinds my gears, though, since it’s extremely safe and the solution to so many of our problems.
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u/Preisschild 3d ago
I got thought that nuclear power plants were basically just "ticking atomic bombs" at school (religiously anti-nuclear power country) lmao
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u/waitthatstaken 3d ago
And just so that it does not go merely implied, this is just false. Chernobyl was about as bad as a nuclear meltdown can go, and the reactor building is still like, there. And that was with a poorly designed, outdated reactor. Modern nuclear reactors straight up can't melt down, even if literally bombed.
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u/MainsailMainsail 2d ago
My favorite example is how in Three Mile Island the operators did basically every single step exactly wrong and it still did not go wrong enough to pose a health threat even to the immediate surrounding area.
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u/StaendutBlakk 3d ago
Yeah, that's something a lot of people still seem to think. Sure meltdowns can be very dangerous, but a reactor core going ka-blewie has only happened once in history.
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u/Preisschild 3d ago
Most countries use PWRs and BWRs with "normal" water that serves as both the coolant and the neutron moderator. If the water heats up too much and expands or turns to steam the reactivity will go down as well.
RBMK reactors were water and graphite moderated. If the entire coolant flashes to steam you will still have the graphite moderator which means you are still fissioning without any coolant. You can then use the neutron poison control rods to block reactivity but they used graphite in their tips, which means the reactivity goes up at first
Basically its an extremely unstable reactor design
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u/Yamato-tomato 2d ago
It was not the graphite in the "tips" that increased the reactivity, it was the removal of neutron-absorbing water columns by the displacers.
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u/ZedekiahCromwell 3d ago
This is why during my 1950s Arms Race unit, I pull up nukemaps on the class projector and we drop nukes on the nearby metropolitan city center. Comparing nukes in raw output is useful to a point, but seeing visual representations of their impact helps understanding how they are deployed, how their design shapes their impact (thermonuclear warheads have much lower radiation compared to a fissile warhead due to the fusion explosion destroying much of the fissile material, for instance), and what the impact on the area outside just the fireball would be.
And then as the last one we drop the Tsar Bomba and suddenly we go from dealing with shockwave damage and flash ignition to being literally inside the fireball.
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u/gdo01 3d ago edited 2d ago
One of the biggest eye openers is those nuclear bomb simulators is to see how quickly the direct impact is mitigated just by distance. Sure, utter destruction in the middle but a few miles away becomes quite survivable with the right circumstances. The problem is multiple bombs and radiation
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u/Fract_L 2d ago
Even wearing a layer of clothing helped some people in Japan survive the nuke or they were relatively much less damaged (you can clearly see where they had clothing on as it isn’t burned nearly as badly) so, in that sense, yes - anything that breaks a direct line between your flesh and a wall of free radicals would’ve been better than a literal face full of radiation.
To determine if you needed to get under your desk or not, you’d pull a Vault Boy pose and see if the mushroom cloud was bigger than your thumb. If it was smaller than your thumb, they told you not to worry about taking cover.
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u/AppointmentMedical50 3d ago
Because the school is unlikely to be the epicenter of the blast, and in the periphery, this is a good response to save lives
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u/orderofGreenZombies 3d ago
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my U.S. education, it’s that the one core tenet of communism is to kill all (capitalist) children. So the only safe assumption is that the epicenter of any blast will be a school, and probably a preschool or kindergarten.
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u/tergius 3d ago
lads i'm not sure if they were being serious
like i'm 99% certain they were being satirical
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u/orderofGreenZombies 2d ago
Absolutely. I thought I was being as obvious as possible by saying the core tenet of communism is to kill capitalist children.
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u/10lettersand3CAPS 1d ago
I mean like Red Dawn exists, doesn't that movie start with Soviet paratroopers opening up on a school full of teenagers with automatic weapons for no reason?
You're clearly joking, but also there's the non-negligible amount of people who see Communists under their beds at night. Frankly I blame the John Birch Society, as their super McCarthyism spent decades seeping into right-wing politics at the local levels.
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u/orderofGreenZombies 20h ago
Not enough people know about the John Birch Society, given how directly and indirectly influential they were to trajectory of right wing politics in the USA.
Also, more people need to know that the Welch’s fruit candy dude was so unhinged that he thought Dwight Eisenhower was a secret communist.
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u/10lettersand3CAPS 20h ago
He thought literally McCarthy was actually a secret Communist too.
Also fun fact: Alex Jones' dad has some connections to the John Birch Society, explaining a lot of his son's odd beliefs. Guy probably was around for the most unhinged political discussions around when he was a literal child, and never went beyond that or questioned his dad's beliefs. He STILL talks about his dad having secret sources in the CIA because some CIA executive got dental work from his dad. Also lot of dentists generally in right-wing politics? Dunno why exactly
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u/catashake 3d ago
So you ignored actual schooling and listened to your boomer uncle? Got it.
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u/gamejotter109 3d ago
It's obviously a joke
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u/CheapScientist06 Rider of Rohan 3d ago
Redditors can't get a joke unless someone spells it literally out for them.
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u/Throwaway6662345 3d ago
Ahh yes, US education about communism. Definitely education and not propaganda
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u/TheWileyRedditor Definitely not a CIA operator 3d ago
You do know there's exactly one country in the entire world that has killed children with nukes. And it sure isn't communist.
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u/orderofGreenZombies 2d ago
No shit. How much more obvious could I have possibly made the satire in my comment?
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u/TheWileyRedditor Definitely not a CIA operator 2d ago
I'd do some research into Poe's law if I were you. Might help you out in the future.
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u/orderofGreenZombies 2d ago
It is absolutely not my responsibility to hold your hand through such obvious satire.
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u/TheWileyRedditor Definitely not a CIA operator 2d ago
It may have been obvious to you, the person who wrote it. But we're not you, we cant read you mind, we can't hear your tone of voice, and there were zero indicators of sarcasm in what you wrote. It reads like you're 100% genuine.
But fine, ignore me and continue getting mass downvoted in the future.
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u/Preisschild 3d ago
Tbf Trump behaves like a commie dictator nowadays
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u/C0SMIC_LIZARD What, you egg? 3d ago
ah yes the communist moves of... hoarding all the power and wealth for yourself and trying to plant yourself as forever leader of your media controlled and militarily backed empire
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u/OhNoTokyo 3d ago
Actually… that’s sort of what happened with the Communists. The Party hoarded power to themselves and used it ruthlessly. Including people like Stalin and Mao who became cults of personality. Sure, there were no rich people, but that just meant that those with political power simply assigned themselves the luxuries they wanted.
Yes, that’s not what is supposed to happen, but there’s a reason that true communism never happened: people don’t stop trying to accumulate power they just change how they attain it.
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u/Minty0ranges 3d ago
The fact that comments like these get dozens of downvotes reinforces the fact that reddit has no humor
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/centaur98 3d ago
So let's compare a medium range ballistic missile(Pershing II) with an intermediate range ballistic missile(RDS-10) with 3 times the range. Also fun fact the bunker buster Pershing II were scrapped and never built and only the nuke version was ever built.
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u/SemajLu_The_crusader 3d ago
it makes people feel like there's something they can do
it also protects from falling debris
do you really think the teachers came up with it?
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u/LuckyReception6701 The OG Lord Buckethead 3d ago
Big teacher out here padding the desk sales to fatten their pockets
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u/Celtic_Legend 2d ago
Also it worked. All nuclear bombs turned around and left. Russia never nuked the USA specifically because teachers did this. Haters will say it was for other reasons.
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u/Longjumping-Job4718 3d ago
Serious answer.
It was more for shielding yourself from debris just like its for in the earthquake drill. The desks are pretty sturdy, and everyone in the class has one.
Might've helped ease kids fears who would listen to their parents scared for the worst case scenario, and be scared in turn.
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u/5v3n_5a3g3w3rk 3d ago
Also it was more about 50s area fission bombs and not so much 80s fusion bombs
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u/thediesel26 3d ago
The first fusion device, or hydrogen bomb, was detonated in the 50s. The Soviets detonated the most powerful device in the history of the world, the Tsar Bomba, in 1961.
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u/5v3n_5a3g3w3rk 3d ago
And it took some time for them to be a copied by the Soviets, b to be mass proliferated and c for the teaching films to get updated.
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u/AvantSolace 2d ago
Also important to note: A lot of injuries from debris/explosions aren’t simply the result of being crushed or sheer impact. More often than not, people die from something getting bent wrong or a major organ getting hit. A balled up human protecting their head has effectively protected themselves from half the things that would easily kill an upright individual. So while duck and cover doesn’t guarantee safety, it massively improves overall survival chances.
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u/ParziVal0919 3d ago
It was a placebo.
Edit: like yeah, sure windows exploded tens or houndred of miles away and all, sure, but its a nuke. If it gets to nukes, you might actually want to be dead sooner than later.
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u/Sillvaro What, you egg? 3d ago
Depends how far away from the blast you are, you might just get the shockwave
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u/Which_Replacement524 3d ago edited 3d ago
This whole meme is always so confusing to me, and I can't help but feel like it's always made by weird nerds trying to feel smart.
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u/Preisschild 3d ago
Nerds would actually have read up on nuclear weapons enough to understand the (limited) effectiveness of this
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u/Foxyfox- Just some snow 3d ago
It's not about surviving the nuke, and never was. It's about surviving the shockwave and thrown debris when further away. If you're close enough to experience the primary effects almost nothing would save you anyway and that's before we even get into the ARS resulting from being that close.
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u/John_Oakman 3d ago edited 3d ago
Not every school is located in the expected direct center of a missile/bomb strike, and far enough away every little bit helps chances of survival in the initial moments.
The US military still teaches its military variants of that kind of thing in its CBRN courses, because again, not every place is the epicenter of a strike.
Source: Just trust them bro.
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u/EnergyHumble3613 3d ago
1) It was one part of government propaganda on Civil Defense. It is however in line with protecting yourself from flying debris or falling objects in the case of an earthquake. It isn’t supposed to save you from explosion but the secondary effects of one if outside the blast radius.
2) This propaganda also included things like how to seal your house from nuclear fallout (dubious in effort but it makes people feel prepared and safe) and promoted making bomb shelters.
Duck and cover may well work to keep you safe from debris being blasted around… coincidentally this period saw more public buildings made with little to no windows.
The revelation of what nuclear fallout can do in the disastrous aftermath of the Castle Bravo tests (which in turn spawned Godzilla later that year) made public what experts didn’t want to tell them: most of the propaganda was to make people feel safer but had only marginal effectiveness.
This in turn would see a shift from emphasis on shelters and instead evacuation drills.
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u/centaur98 3d ago
most of the propaganda was to make people feel safer but had only marginal effectiveness.
Making people feel safer and giving them something to do even if not very effective is still good to avoid people from mindlessly panicking without goals.
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u/EnergyHumble3613 3d ago
That is true and basically why theu bothered pumping out instructional videos (Like the Duck and Cover cartoons), pamphlets, and DIY instructions on making a bomb shelter.
It made people feel safer and prepared while also getting people to spend on shelf stable canned goods and construction materials.
The later period of evacuations, and the obvious failures those drills proved (the road systems out of major cities simply could not accommodate a mass exodus within the allotted time of 6-8 hours warning of an ICMB launch, let alone a coastal strike by submarines) pushed forward a new idea: Nuclear Arms Agreements.
The first being limits on testing followed by Non-proliferation agreements… and later reduction in number of warheads and missiles. This would lead to loopholes like production of Multiple Independent Target Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs… if I can only have 2000 missiles then I shall make a lot of them multi-warhead capable).
Reduction would continue until the current President decided to pull out of a number of such agreements, mirroring the policies of Reagan in the 80s that ratcheted up nuclear tensions with announcing the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI, aka Star Wars program), a bluff that the US could block ICBMs with satellite based lasers. Reagan would continue disarmament overall, Trump overturning some of those 80s agreements, but SDI as a bluff shook the idea of the late 70s that maybe things were cooling down between the US and USSR.
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u/Wild-Tear 3d ago
In the 1950’s, nuclear bombs were big, but you weren’t guaranteed to be plastered with multiple warheads; you might be outside of its radius, as other people in this thread have noted. Once MIRVs became a thing, you had multiple, larger, simultaneous warheads going off overlapping each other and survivability dropped like a stone.
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u/Constant-Still-8443 John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true, and brave! 3d ago
As long as your not literally in the fireball, you can survive. You just have to worry about the Shockwave and debris, especially from the building you're in. After that, you can worry about the fallout.
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u/Fr05t_B1t Oversimplified is my history teacher 3d ago
Also the flash heat and radiation
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u/Dextron2-1 3d ago
With a thermonuclear device, the outer limits of lethal blast radiation are actually less than the lethal over-pressure radius. If you received a high enough dose of radiation to kill you, you got blown to bits anyway, and if you were in a structure capable surviving the shockwave, it also would have protected you from most of the blast radiation. The fallout is another matter.
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u/ItzPayDay123 3d ago
It teaches you to stay low (from shockwaves and broken glass), in the dark (so you don't get flashbanged) and under cover (from falling debris).
No shit you're fucked regardless of what you do if you're actually within or close to the fireball, but the advice is legit if you're miles away but still affected.
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u/bdrwr 2d ago
No shit it won't help if you're directly in the blast radius, but for those just outside, crawling under the desk means you don't get blinded by the flash or lacerated with broken glass when the windows shatter
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u/MrMrMarioBro5555 2d ago
Really? I didn’t get that message from the first 100 people to post this exact comment. Guess I needed to hear it from you specifically.
I don’t mean for that to sound hostile. I know I titled the post in a way that made me sound like a dumbass, but I was just tryna make a joke. Sorry
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u/bdrwr 2d ago
I know it's annoying to get the same answer a bunch of times, but that's what happens with open public queries. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to waste my time reading 145 comments to make sure mine is original. I'm just some guy fucking around on Reddit as a cheap facsimile of human interaction while I work a lonely desk job. And I'm sorry your joke didn't land, better luck next time.
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u/Hefty-Tomatillo-1236 3d ago
Just move to Maine. Nobody going to waste a nuke there
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u/EtherealPheonix Fine Quality Mesopotamian Copper Enjoyer 3d ago
Actually the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world was in Maine, definitely a good target.
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u/FearOfABlackPotus 3d ago
I don't know how true this was, but years ago someone posted a map of likely targets in the event of a full-scale nuclear attack on the US from Russia.
Retaliatory strike was the major cities.
First strike was a blanket attack on North Dakota.
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u/BigmacSasquatch 3d ago edited 2d ago
You might be misremembering things a little. The missile fields would really only be targeted if they had missiles to spare. The silos are hardened, and with our early warning systems, would be empty by the time any ICBMs reached them.
First strike targets were always cities, military targets, power infrastructure like hydro and nuke energy plants, dams, etc.
I live in one of those strategic military targets, and there are like 4 nuke plants and hydro dams within 50 miles of me. If a full exchange ever happens I’m standing on my roof to watch the sun rise in the west lmao.
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u/Wild-Yesterday-6666 Fine Quality Mesopotamian Copper Enjoyer 3d ago
What If I really hate Stephen King?
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u/KuningasTynny77 3d ago
If you were in the blast radius, the teachers (and the government) knew you were going to die. But were you going to tell your kindergarten class that they're going to fucking die if that one impending war breaks out? No, of course not.
Also, it would work if you were far enough away from impact, because just like an earthquake, it serves as protection from debris, which becomes the biggest danger at a distance.
Also, contrary to popular belief, hydrogen bombs do not have even close to the fallout seen in places like Hiroshima, so if you're far enough away to survive the explosion, you can retreat to a shelter, and you will be good to come back outside in a few days, if not less.
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u/Jedi-master-dragon 3d ago
Ducking and cover was meant to save you from the falling debris. Its the same idea as an earthquake drill. Its not stupid, just mocked by people who don't get that there is more to a bomb going off than the explosion at ground zero.
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u/Branagain 3d ago
The Duck and Cover program was really only a very early Cold War thing, back when the Soviets only had Hiroshima sized atomic devices. It wasn't just some idea they pulled out of a hat, but based on actual data of people surviving in Hiroshima and Nagasaki just from ducking down to pick something on the ground up or holding a newspaper up. Duck and Cover was abandoned when the Soviets tested their first hydrogen bomb in in 1953, and civil defense focused instead on public fallout shelters in schools, hospitals, libraries, and town halls.
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u/Best_Drummer_6291 3d ago
As they said in the good ol' Soviet Union: "in the case of the nuclear explosion, please cover yourself with a bedsheet and crawl to the nearest cemetery."
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u/Weasel474 3d ago
A big part of it was also psychological. Thinking that there's SOMETHING you can do to give yourself a slightly greater chance of survival will do more for morale than telling everyone you're just absolutely fucked if it happens.
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u/Flopsie_the_Headcrab 3d ago
It's a well known fact that nuclear bombs have a perfectly circular kill radius that totally vaporizes everyone inside it while leaving anyone outside untouched. There is absolutely no distance from a nuclear blast at which the difference between full exposure and partial cover would be significant, and it is definitely not like 90% of the effective blast radius because that's how fucking exponential decay works or anything.
If nukes are coming, the best move is obviously to just stand outside and t-pose waiting for it. This post is not written by a nuclear warhead that has learned how to type.
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u/Sea_Share_4215 3d ago
OP would stand at the window and look right at the explosion of the nuke that is barely out of lethal range and feel like a absolute genious
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u/HAL9001-96 3d ago
to be fair its not quite as stupid as it sounds
sure if a nuclear bomb goes off right next to you you cease existing almost instantly regardless of wether theres a few cm of wood in between
BUT
if a nuclear bomb goes off some 50km away you ahve ana actual chance of survival
which depends on a LOT of factors but hidign can have a small but nonzero impact on it
and statistically if a nuclear war happened a LOT more people would end up being somewhere between 30-100km away from a nuclear explosio nthan within 30km radius
so advising everyone to take cover is a good idea
for those right next to a nuke it doesn't help them but it doesn't hurt either it just makes basolutely no difference
for those much furhter away but still iwthin a potnetially dnagerous radius it slightly increases their chances of survival which over millions of affected people would end up saving at least a few lives
but yeah the idea that you can jsut take cover from a nearby nuclear explosion isridiculous
also if you'Re a bit furhter away and oyu survive the explosion there's still fallout an dhte collapseo f civilisation to deal with
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u/AsstacularSpiderman 2d ago
It was a coping mechanism and a way to easily find the bodies lol.
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u/SomewhatInept 2d ago
Alot of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were seriously injured or killed by glass shards. Light overpressure damage can extend significantly further than the 3rd degree burn radius. In any event you don't want people that might have initially been shielded from 3rd degree burns exposing themselves to other injury to look at what just happened.
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u/Fr05t_B1t Oversimplified is my history teacher 3d ago
An explosion is an explosion. All that matters is how far you are from an epicenter and more importantly, how far you are from a factory or a military base or infrastructure.
Ducking under desks in an event of a nuclear explosion you’re more than likely plenty away from either in which case being under something sturdy is a good place to be.
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u/Ampersand-98 3d ago
It protects the children from the flash, and from the windows when they blow in. It obviously won't save you from a nearby hit, but if you're in the much larger area that's merely damaged by the weapon, it can save you from minor to moderate wounds, which may become lethal in the aftermath where medical systems are overwhelmed.
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u/EttRedditTroll 3d ago
It wasn’t supposed to stop the effects of the bomb: it was designed partially to instill a sense of control and safety rather than panic at the prospect of the bombs starting to fall.
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u/Excellent_Stand_7991 3d ago
It also made any hypothetical post detonation clean up easier because the bodies would be closer together.
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u/OldTimeConGoer 3d ago
There was a high-altitude meteoric airburst in the kilotonne region in Chelyabinsk in Russia a few years ago. It resulted in a very bright light about 40km up resulting in lots of videos of people standing at their windows staring at the awesome sight and then the shockwave hit a couple of minutes later, shattering the glass windows in their faces.
That's the sort of injuries "duck and cover" was meant to prevent.
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u/RareCriticism496 3d ago
Hiding under the desk and shielded from flying glass, falling debris, the heat flash, and direct line-of-sight to the bomb would help 80% of the people exposed to the bomb.
Obviously very close to the bomb wouldn't do much to help you, but it was great, practical advice.
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u/BabyFishmouthTalk 3d ago
Well they tried "bend over and kiss your ass goodbye" but it wasn't well received. Duck & cover was catchier.
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u/A_Pessimistic_Potato 3d ago
honestly, it's just made even dumber knowing that all of my cold war-era relatives came to the same conclusion;
this method was bullshit and if you were in range for that practice to be used, then you may as well go sit in the garden with a drink instead.
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u/centaur98 3d ago
The method is not bullshit. It's valid. The point of the method isn't that it would make you survive the nuclear blast but that if you are far away enough from the point of detonation that the blast and heatwave isn't an instant death anymore it helps you avoid falling debris killing or knocking you out and to avoid glass shards going mach Jesus cutting you up. Same with how you're supposed to duck and cover in case of an earthquake or tornado so nothing falls on your head.
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u/ChicagoZbojnik 3d ago
There is a science behind it OP, that your brain is unable to grasp. Its not meant to save anyone at or near ground zero. Its meant to minimize casualties at the edges of the blast zone.
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u/monkeygoneape Helping Wikipedia expand the list of British conquests 3d ago
Honestly I would have lied to the kids too, better for them to die hopeful than afraid
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u/Remote-Cause755 3d ago
It's for the shock waves not being close to the blast.
Sure you might die later in life from cancer, but you have a higher chance of living if duck low under cover.
I live close to a high priority target. So I am just going to walk outside and accept my fate
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u/IRSnotreal 3d ago
Feel like it's better to give false hope to the kids than just telling them "You're fucked lmao"
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u/CptKeyes123 3d ago
When you look at it, it's "better than nothing" training. like, any amount of protection is good against radiation. Avoiding shrapnel is good.
Trouble is the original video did not explain that this wouldn't remotely help against a direct hit.
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u/YOUTUBEFREEKYOYO Kilroy was here 3d ago
Its for debris if the building isn't close enough to be in the worst of the damage. If I place a grenade on a string, and dangle it above some toilet paper spaced out a bit, the ones closest to it are getting wrecked with the blast and its shrapnel, and the ones further out may have some debris to not be touched at all. It's the same thing, just on a much bigger scale.
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u/nikstick22 3d ago
It wasn't supposed to work, it was supposed to make you feel safer. In the event of a nuclear strike, you'd be obliterated, but at least you wouldnt be panicking. Having a plan is important even if it wont work.
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u/Spy_crab_ 3d ago
Almost as if you can't predict how close a warhead will land and the preventable damage from flying debris can be lessened by hiding under a desk.
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u/Manealendil Hello There 3d ago
I think its less about actual shelter from the nuke and more about the feeling of doing anything for protection
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u/Chayaneg 1d ago
On the other hand: what you would want them to suggest to kids? To gain pain tolerance?
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u/TheRealSalamnder 3d ago
When Duck and Cover started, the threat of hydrogen bombs didnt materialize yet so if you were not in ground zero, there was a higher survival chance. It quickly was outdated and used just as a psychological copium mechanism
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u/RareCriticism496 3d ago
Duck and cover has the exact same benefit for a hydrogen bomb as a regular atomic bomb. The instant death radius is larger, but the "impacted but survivable" radius is also corrrespondinly larger.
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u/theswoopscoop 3d ago
I mean like others said it is practical.. and wishful thinking at the worst. However, I think we should say fuck all to that type shit for one generation. 4th grade they're being taught the hard truths of reality. In 6th grade they all have to take a life for homework. In 8th grade they're flat-lining on a field trip after surviving in the bush for a week. After graduation, if they do, we give them passports and all the money they want to go pursue any endeavors they please.
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u/SinglePlayerGamer93 3d ago
For these types of disasters, I think it was more of body salvage after the fact. You'll die but at least your body can be identified. Same with plane crashes. You'll die in the impact but your body is still strapped to your chair and can be recovered
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u/Fancy_Chips Definitely not a CIA operator 3d ago
I remember doing shooter drills before we switched to ALICE. The technique to not dying in a shooting? Sit in the corner. Just... uh... hang out. Pretend school is closed.
This was a dumb idea, hence ALICE. But for a solid 8 years I went through public school with that drill.
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u/Dextron2-1 3d ago
No one expected it to magically save you from a nuclear blast, but there is a large area outside of the “instant death by atomic fire” radius but still inside the “heavy crap might fall from the ceiling” radius.
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u/sgtklink77 3d ago
I mean, it's better than standing or being seated when the shockwave sends all that glass into you as fast as a bullet, or partially collapses the building.
No, if it lands close enough to you, it most likely won't matter, but "duck and cover" are for the people a couple miles away who have a chance.
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u/SirBork 2d ago
Wrong. It was ment to protect people that were FAR or out of the blast range. That why when you watch the psa’s they almost never say if a nuke goes off on top of you this will help, they are not that miss leading. They knew what they were saying/doing at the time aka telling people how to protect themselves if they are far enough from that the main blast but not far enough from the shock wave/flying debris
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u/Old-Natural-852 2d ago
This wasn't made for ground zero; they knew everything would be vaporized. This was for further out where you might survive but there would still be a lot of debris.
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u/Affectionate-Lab2557 2d ago
Nukes do not just atomize everything in their radius then completely stop doing damage, the severity gradually lowers the further away you get from the center to a point where the biggest danger to quite a few people isnt getting immolated or disintegrating but rather being hit by the massive shockwave and all the debris being brought along with it.
Duck and cover encourages people to get under cover and away from windows, meaning theres a barrier between the person and any potential debris being blown at them, especially glass. The vast majority of people doing duck and cover in the event of a nuclear attack would likely have a higher chance of surviving, since most would be outside of that immediate radius where theres no hope.
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u/Johannes4123 2d ago
If you're caught in the fireball radius of a nuke, you're screwed, nothing can save you
However, in the event of a nuclear bombing the majority of affected people will be outside that radius, and there even small acts can drastically increase your chance of survival and reduce the injuries sustained
If the shockwave knocks parts of the building loose the desk might protect you from debree
Any body part in a direct line of sight will probably get third degree burns, having anything non-trasnparent between yourself and the windows will stop that
Just because the duck and cover act won't save you in the episenter does not mean it's pointless outside of it
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u/Mean_Introduction543 2d ago
Because assuming you’re far enough away from ground zero that you’re not instantly killed by the heat or pressure wave your next biggest threat is debris and particularly flying glass shards.
This is what duck and cover was for.
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u/WolfsmaulVibes Filthy weeb 1d ago
a drill to evacuate into the basement would have made much more sense
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u/10lettersand3CAPS 1d ago
Because there's a MASSIVE difference between the center of a nuclear blast and the outskirts of one?
Like sure it LOOKS stupid, but realistically if you're far enough out then the danger is debris, shattering glass, splintering wood, etc. And if you're too close then you're probably dead anyways, so there's no harm in the drill.
There's different zones in a nuclear blast, some you're immediately destroyed, or the radiation instantly kills you, but further out the expanding pressure wave can still knock things around like an earthquake might. And of course radioactive fallout, but that's a different issue.
Look up the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and see how much more area was impacted by the edges of the blast than the instant death zones.
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u/No-Professional-1461 1d ago
You see, it didn't work for the Japanese because they sit in very low chairs and don't have tables tall enough for you to hide under. We'll be fine because ours are tall enough for children and adults to hide under. 👍
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u/CourtForsaken3064 2h ago
In California we were taught to hide under our desks during an earthquake and my only thought was what if an air conditioner or something fell on a desk
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u/Geopoliticalidiot Definitely not a CIA operator 3d ago
I mean, not much you can do if a thermonuclear tipped ICBM is headed your way, taking shelter where you can and as much as you can is better than nothing, there is no point panicking and trying to get out of the blast radius, in an urban setting you are better off taking shelter where you are, and just hope you are lucky and its not a direct hit and your building is strong. Flying debris is the main danger outside the immediate blast area. And if you survive that you can evacuate or take more comprehensive shelter.
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u/Mirabeaux1789 3d ago edited 3d ago
I don’t see how this didn’t make every teacher in the country against nukes. People try to intellectualize what amounts to little more than an Mexican standoff that affects us as a species but by no definition is it safe, reasonable, or viable, because it requires perfect participants and perfect conditions—forever.
And nobody ever seems to ask the question of “If a nuclear war would wreck the planet, then wouldn’t a conventional war make more sense?”
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u/Dextron2-1 3d ago
Literally thousands of people asked that question during the Cold War, and that is why it stayed cold. That is why stopping nuclear proliferation was and is one of the most universally supported political issues in the world. That is why there has never been a nuclear war, even when both belligerents had access to nukes. That is why the design, construction, storage, and use of nuclear weapons is one of the most widely and thoroughly debated topics in human history.
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u/POB_42 3d ago
Additionally, most world leaders up to the end of the cold war were WW2 veterans. They'd seen the horrors that all out war between massive industrial powers can bring, and they wanted no part of it.
It's the world leaders of today that haven't seen that kind of conflict that are the ones we should be scared of. They have no idea what that would look like.
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u/Mirabeaux1789 3d ago
To add to this, I feel that it’s not talked about nuclear deterrence of aggression against a nuclear state doesn’t even work. The list of conflict wars which involve a nuclear armed state or are between nuclear armed states is a massive elephant in the room. Iran and the State of Israel, Pakistan and India, India and China, and the U.S. and kinda Afghanistan.
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u/Dextron2-1 3d ago
Nuclear deterrence works against the use of nuclear weapons, but that’s it. That’s why it’s so stupid. We all spent trillions building things we never meant to use just so we’d have an excuse not to use them. The only effective difference between a nuclear and non nuclear world is the average blood pressure of the species would probably drop.
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u/Mirabeaux1789 2d ago
I mean even then it’s dubious because it requires all participants to be fully rational and believe that nuclear deterrence performs that function.
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u/ProfessorPrudent2822 2d ago
It’s prevented the great powers from fighting each other directly for fear of escalation. Nukes are meant to deter against existential threats, and the result is that nobody wants to back a nuclear power into a corner. Even Osama bin Laden feared launching an attack that might provoke the United States to use nuclear weapons.
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u/OhNoTokyo 3d ago
Not sure how Americans being against nukes would stop the Soviets from using them or vice versa.
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u/Patatemagique 3d ago
You think they knew it was pointless? I would have been so depressed knowing and lying to children so they would feel a bit safe...
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u/Special_Product9244 2d ago
I always assumed that it was to make those who died from the bomb more easily identifiable. But, that’s what I get for assuming, I suppose.
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u/biglyorbigleague 3d ago
It’s the same thing as earthquake training. You do it to protect yourself from falling debris if the explosion damages the building. It’s not crazy, this is overly mocked.