Oddity of the Week - Cold War Childsplay
Created | Updated Jun 15, 2014
Highlights of the 20th Century: Remember the Cold War? Fun for kids.
Cold War Childsplay
Do you remember the Cold War? Then you're lucky. It was not one of the most fortunate periods of the 20th Century. In case you don't know, this was when the US, who had deployed the only nuclear weapons ever used against actual people, found itself face-to-face with the idea that other people had the nasty things, too. People like the Soviet Union. A lot of people worried about this, and there was actually a policy called NAD – Mutually Assured Destruction. Now you know what Bob Dylan was singing about. But before the Sixties got turned loose, there were the Fifties. And that's when this turtle showed up to reassure us kiddies.
Paranoia ran deep, as the song goes, and concerned citizens were seeing Commies under the beds. The problem was, if you listened to the scientists – like Oppenheimer, who designed the blasted thing – it wasn't going to be possible to survive a nuclear war. And the government had to convince everyone otherwise. That's why they came up with a brilliant plan. If the Soviets attacked with nuclear missiles, all the school kids had to do was to hide under their desks. Duck and Cover. It worked outdoors, too. All you needed was a newspaper.
They didn't know much about the effects of nuclear explosions back in 1951, when this uplifting film was made. But we shouldn't laugh. We really shouldn't laugh.
There are still plenty of atomic bombs around. And there's still not much you could do if one landed in your neighbourhood. And still, nobody has a sane plan to end the madness that started back in 1945, in the middle of the 20th Century.
So what's funny about it?
