The return of nuclear anxiety
The New York Times began running a series recently. Called "At the Brink" it is about “the threat of nuclear weapons in an unstable world.”
I would suggest not dipping into it late at night, because it is a harrowing read and may well haunt your sleep.
It may be enough to know that the Times, in summary, thinks that the threat of nuclear war is graver than it has been since the Cuban Missile Crisis: the last major arms treaty between the United States and Russia is about to expire; the number of nuclear powers has swelled; the man who could be the next president of the United States has said he would not come to NATO’S aid if Russia attacked it.
“We’ve condemned another generation to live on a planet that is one grave act of hubris or human error away from destruction without demanding any action from our leaders,” wrote the Times’ opinions editor Kathleen Kingsbury.
50-50 CHANCE
Journalistic handwringing, you say. Well, just consider a piece in the same series by W.J. Hennigan who reported that in the fall of 2022, U.S. intelligence thought there was a 50-50 chance that Russia would launch a nuclear strike if Ukrainian forces made enough inroads into Crimea.
In response, Ukraine has set up hundreds of radiation detectors around cities and power plants, trained doctors and nurses on how to treat radiation exposure and stockpiled potassium iodine tables which protect the thyroid gland from cancer-causing radioactive material.
Hennigan also reported that within days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States government struck a special task force to write a new nuclear “playbook,” which resulted in “a newly updated, detailed menu of diplomatic and military options for President Biden — and any future president — in case of nuclear war.”
Absolutely chilling stuff, especially for those of us who have been through it all before.
Who understand, perhaps, what anthropologist Margaret Mead meant when she coined the term nuclear anxiety, defined as the “fear of a nuclear war and its consequences,” a phobia which, in my eyes at least, is making a comeback.
CUBAN MISSILES
I was only six when the United States and the Soviet Union squared off over the presence of Soviet nucleararmed missiles in Cuba.
So, I didn’t think much about the threat of nuclear annihilation in the early 1960s, as I blithely went about my life centred around the Toronto Maple Leafs, Get Smart and Lik-m-aid.
But it was there. Ask anybody who was around during the ‘50s and into the ’60s, when tensions between America and the USSR — both suddenly building terrifying new arsenals of nuclear weapons — were at the breaking point, with Canada smack in the middle between the belligerent superpowers.
Marilynn Linley, for example, who was a primary-aged kid attending a one-room schoolhouse in West Gore, N.S., in 1956, six years before the Cuban Missile Crisis.
She didn’t know a thing about A-bombs and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, let alone why every so often all the kids in the school had to crouch under their desks and cover their heads with their hands, as practice for the terrible moment when a nuclear bomb was dropped.
At about the same time, Parker Donham, the Cape Breton-based communications consultant, was hiding under a desk as part of his own H-bomb drills at the Roaring Brook School in Chappaqua, N.Y.
“Apparently the desks were made of a miracle material that could withstand nuclear explosions,” he recalled on Facebook in March.
Things were a little laxer at Shatford Memorial School in Hubbards, recalled Rhys Harnish, now owner of the wellknown Shore Club there.
“During the Cuban Missile Crisis, we were kept in our seats until 5 p.m. just in case there was a nuclear attack,” said Harnish who was doubtful that being seated at a school desk would have provided much protection when the big one fell.
DUCK AND COVER
When I asked around, I discovered that duck and cover drills were part of Canadian childhood in the ‘50s and ‘60s, whether it was in Truro or Fredericton, Ottawa, Toronto or Montreal.
Writer and broadcaster Whit Fraser now lives in Ottawa with his wife, the Governor General of Canada Mary Simon, but he grew up in Stellarton.
“I remember the stern order: Get under your seats,” he recalled, and looking up at the gum deposits underneath the desks.
I honestly don’t recall ever crouching down on the floor and looking up at the hardened knots of Bazooka bubble gum during my Halifax school days even though folks who attended the same institutions say this was the case.
Neither does Ron James, the comedian who recalled nuclear anxiety being at a low ebb at Halifax’s Chebucto School which he attended for grades seven through nine.
“Given that our Assembly Hall/gym had a huge dip in the middle, we thought Chebucto School had already been hit by one (a nuclear bomb),” James said.
We must have heard the wail of the air raid sirens that, by all accounts, regularly sounded at schools throughout the province, so we would be ready when the Russian bombers headed in our direction.
Surely, I heard the clamour of the sirens that rang out coast to coast on Nov. 13, 1961, during a gigantic, government-directed test-run of our readiness for a nuclear attack.
FALLOUT SHELTERS
Stories abounded of backyard nuclear fallout shelters built by those most afflicted by nuclear anxiety, but my memory is that few of us knew anything of the nuclear fallout shelters being built across the country, to protect our military and political leaders, like the one in Debert, N.S., constructed so that 350 fortunate people could survive for 90 days as the rest of the world burned.
Today people play laser tag in there.
Which is more than they do in the 16-foot-by-eightfoot concrete shelter which was built directly beneath the operating area of the railway station in Middleton, N.S., around 1958.
“The railway station was a centre of communications in those days,” Bill Linley, director and treasurer of the Middleton Railway Museum told me. “It was a logical place for communications to be resurrected after a nuclear blast.”
Only two people of Middleton’s roughly 2,000 at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, would have sheltered there in the hope of then emerging to rebuild civilization: the senior Dominion and Atlantic Railway man and Middleton’s mayor.
“I doubt this would have been publicized widely at all,” said Linley.
But those were the anxious times in which we lived.
Even the young and unobservant, like me, had a sense that an existential threat loomed listening to songs like Barry Mcguire’s "Eve of Destruction" and watching the long list of nuclear-themed movies — "Godzilla," "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman," "Planet of the Apes," "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and 'Love the Bomb'" — from the era.
I notice with interest that a new Godzilla movie — in which he teams up with King Kong — is being released.
Last month, "Oppenheimer," the biopic about the father of the atomic bomb, won the best picture Oscar.
I’ve seen the flick. It’s powerful and terrifying. Just not so terrifying as the NYT series.
Within days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States government struck a special task force to write a new nuclear “playbook.”