Anybody here lived during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Me

Yes. In a first strike area. It was a terrifying time.

me too

I was but a gleam in my father's eye, at the time.

I was. I was really young.

It was nothing like it is today. You had 3 television stations, in black and white, and the news wasn't on all day long.

There was no internet, no cnn or msnbc or fox. The national news came on at around 7pm, so you would have to wait all day to find out if we were going to war with Russia. Sometimes they would break in with a special report, but that wouldn't happen too often

I remember my mother telling me if I heard the air raid warning siren coming from the TV to let her know.

I do remember being really scared. Mainly because my parents were worried.

LOL what was the use... you would have been dead a few minutes later.

Any details on what your parents did? Just waited and didn't do any preps?

The world as we know it today would not exist if them Russian ships didn't turn around and head back to moscow. Kennedy was serious...

Yes. No one knew how close it came. We only guessed.

Yes! Scary times.

Details, details!

Father was at local Air Force Base.

Mainly I remember my Mom carrying cartons of canned green beans down into the fallout shelter / tornado shelter. Also Welch's grape juice cans.

The neighbor kid and I played in the living room floor with the World Atlas trying to make sense of it all.

We had toy airplanes and guns, and used aluminum foil to improvise some sort of "missile shield" across the world map.

Yes, we had a tiny black and white television, which stayed on CBS with Walter Cronkite.

We were the proud owners of a state of the art fallout shelter, complete with complex air filtration, cots, shelves stocked with food and water, multiple firearms... and a wicked combination hammer / hatchet, which Dad didn't like to talk about.

The 'sense of the times' wasn't "if" there would be nuclear war, but "when".

I grew up with the general notion that Dad would get instantly vaporised, while Mom and I would return to primordial basket weaving and gardening.

There was little information available to the general public about the longterm dangers of fallout. Kind of the idea that you either got vaporised, or you didn't. Our world would get kind of 'reset', and we would return to medieval living standards. But little idea of getting slowly radiated.

Many families invested great money and effort into elaborate fallout shelters, and we furnished and stocked them comfortably.


Dad pretty much claimed the fallout shelter as his 'man cave'

Before air conditioning, the fallout shelter remained cool in the summer, and could be used for naps and general 'hanging out', reading and listening to music during the hottest days of summer.

Years later I discovered a trove of Playboy magazines down there.

We dealt with the whole Nuclear War thing with style and humor.

Cool, thanks. Are you a prepper today?

Decades later, when Dad was in his terminal illness, I asked him about Cuba.

The way he explained it to me, there was much political contrivance in relation to the way it was portrayed to the public... and we were not nearly as "close to the brink" as the public was led to believe.

About all I feel like I can say is this:

There were certain aspects of the Soviet missile transport logistics which were not consistent with the missiles becoming an actual threat.

Dad's opinion -- as told to me during his last days -- was that Kennedy gained great political stature at the expense of putting the public through fear and agony.

Yes, there were other close calls... but they were little known to the public.

Cuba was not one of those close calls.

Cuba was about posturing and appearances.

Why would you think that?

We were given an evac route with a destination believed to be far enough away if either the Houston/Galveston area got hit, or the Golden Triangle area got hit.

We had a farm/ranch with our own fuel pumps, and owned the largest rice dryer in town & sold limited other farm and feed needs.
Hurricane country, always prepared and resupplying.

Our car was packed with canned goods, non perishables, stored water. Sleeping gear. I remember having to put my feet up on the cases of food just to ride in the car.
It was packed like that for about 6 weeks. A daily reminder.

The news was all about nukes, and preps, how to treat nuclear sickness and radiation burns. In school, we had classes on it and basic first aid.
We did duck and cover drills more than once a day, every day, at school. We drilled loading all the school onto buses that were going to transport us 75 miles away, a park area, forest and lake.
I think they said that we were in a zone where we had about 90 minutes to evac to vehicles and get 75 miles away.

They gave us a talk every day about how our lives could change, and how fast it all could be. They told us that if it happened, not all of us would survive, and that we could all lose family members and friends, so to appreciate them.

It was very heavy. Very frightening. Traumatizing.

ChildoflightYes!I was terrified and could not sleep at night!I was living in England at the time...

ChildoflightYes!I was terrified and could not sleep at night!I was living in England at the time...

Well there's an historian, which I think he has a good point, is that those missiles the Soviet Union put in Cuba were NOT nuclear missiles...




True that.

You put nuclear missiles near to Soviet Union = good
They put nuclear missiles near to you = OMG HOW COULD THEY?!

In Baltimore, Civil Defense sent out brochures about where
to shelter in your home.
In the corner or side of your basement on the side of the
probable blast, which would have been downtown Baltimore.
We were all pretty sure it was Global Thermonuclear War.

According to reports, it came pretty close.
The Reds in Cuba had permission to cut loose if we attacked.
That would have been all she wrote.

We'll still get Global Thermonuclear War, but with a far
weaker America, and two of the best enemies money could buy.

America, under communism, has built up the two nations
that will destroy her.

Duck and cover drills. LOL

Those were only for moral.

Yep. And it'll be a ``surprise`` attack.

10-4

on a sac icmb base

To a moderate degree.

But this is tornado and ice storm country so it is just common sense.

We are all about flexibility and mobility in case of disaster, and know that our practical hands-on life skills will hold us in better stead than any number of canned green beans or wicked hatchets.

Your question brings a larger topic into discussion:

To what degree was my generation's world view influenced by the threat of nuclear anihilation?

I cannot answer that, but I do believe it is to a great degree.

My parents were deeply involved in making sure I knew how to accomplish most survival level skills -- food production, animal husbandry, sewing, weaving, carpentry, basic mechanics, etc.

They gut-level knew there would likely be a major reset in our -- or my -- lifetime.

Fortunatly we were -- and I am -- just one or two generations from self-sustaining farming, with little reliance upon purchased goods.

Many of my generation still know how to sew, garden, build things, fix things. Younger people generally don't.

It's the knowledge that's important, rather than physical preps.

For real... nice.

You worked underground?

Anyway I watched a documentary from the 60s a few years ago which followed a group of people being trained to take the course to be in the silos... it was quite insane...

They were heavily brainwashed to just do it.... don't think about it, just turn the key and kill 20 million people...

America went all the way to DEFCOM 2.

at the time our government didn't know that there were short range tatical nuclear weapons already in cuba and if we would have attacted the island they would have been launched and miami and who knows what other cities would have been leveled.

that was one close call and the whole world would have been destroyed.

i remember it very well back in the sixties.

Right. We aren't going to know what hit us.
They are going to make sure America never rises from the nuclear ashes.

To paraphrase Cresson Kearney,
There's no place in America where you will NOT hear the
thunderous booms of submarine launched nuclear missiles
detonating.


That will just be the beginning.

Then the big boys arrive.

America will be blown to bits and then incinerated
by the resulting fires from coast to coast.

"just turn the key and kill 20 million people..."

(relative) peace thru superior firepower.

it's worked for quite awhile.

Yes and I survived.

Unfortunately my parents are unwell individuals. Both divorced by this time I was living with my mother who was a 'drama queen'.

The Crises was a direct attack against her - as such it was accompanied by a lot of moaning, crying, and late night screaming as she told everyone we were all going to die.

No preps were made to 'survive', she just knew we all were going to die.