Children of the 80's - did you seriously fear WWIII under Reagan?

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

I remember pictures of missles on the news all the time, the "evil empire" rhetoric, scads of movies about russians and nukes, etc...

I'm just saying that, when I think of the decade of my youth, I remember an atmosphere of fear and hatred - much like the one the * regime has ushered in (only now its much more frightening)

Reagan's legacy will be one of evil, saber-rattling, hate-mongering, blood-soaked tyranny!!!

[CO Liberal]

1. I Was an Adult in the '80s, And I Feared WWIII

That moronic cowboy was dangerous....

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

4. I guess, upon recollection, I think Reagan was perfect for children.

I remember my parents explaining why he was evil, and I understood, but he would hypnotize me into feeling good about Amerikkka despite my best efforts to resist.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

60. Me, too...and I worked for about three months inside the Pentagon...

...what a chaotic, super-charged atmosphere! I saw Navy captains and Army colonels surrying around pushing overhead projectors while carrying huge files under their arms. I also saw officers nearly come to blows about which officer's program was more important to National Defense.

And secrets? There were NO secrets in the Pentagon.

I still have nightmares about some of the conversations I overheard.

[LTR]

2. I signed up for Selective Service

And that night, Reagan bombed Libya.

Yeah, I was a little bit worried.

Same when the Soviets shot down the Korean passenger jet.

The other time was when I saw "The Day After". Scariest movie ever made.

:scared:

[samhonk]

3. Hoo boy, yes.

I was in college during Reagan's reign, and it was just as you describe. One of my professors asked the class how many of us expected to live long enough to die of old age, and only about 1 in 10 students raised their hand. The air of fatalism was astounding.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

I think, among those of us who were in grade school at the time, that

fatalist air was thick!

[bif]

It scared the shit outta me

And I was in my 20s.

[ikojo]

5. I entered my 20s during the Reagan years

and must say I really did not think I would see my 30s. I thought Reagan was going to start WWIII. I was wrong, it is Bush who has started it.

[camero]

6. It was closer than it has been up to now

But I didn't fear it. Gorbechov had a head on his shoulders and Reagan wasn't looney enough to fire the first volley. Bush on the other hand is that looney.

[Just Me]

7. As a young adult, I wasn't afraid,...but, I sure remember a LOT of others

who thought armageddon was gonna be delivered. Yes, I do.

:scared:

[swinney]

8. Reagan 'Most Feared" leader in world

A poll in England in two different years said he was.

[Robin Hood]

9. Yes, I feared WWIII under Reagan.

He ratcheted up the rhetoric.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

10. How old were you then?

[Robin Hood]

55. I was 12 in 1980. Born in 1968.

And I remember spending New Years eve 1984 alone on a balcony wondering if we would ever get to the millenium. It really seemed hopeless. I don't know where everyone gets this "Ronald Reagan was an optomist" crap. I didn't grow up optimistic under his presidency.

[bleedingheart]

11. I feared the Greed, Hubris and Nastiness of that era

all of which could have led us to WWIII

Personally I think that the "Greed is Good" mantra was not Gordon Gecko's...but Ronald Reagan's...

[ramapo]

12. WWIII Beats any terra alert

I feared WWIII under Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan. It has been less likely since Bush 1 but the Russians still have plenty of missiles lying about.

There's always the possibility of a pre-emptive US strike under the new Bush doctrine.

[trag]

13. I was in 6th grade when he was in office

I remeber a tv movie that came out about being attcked with nukes. It even had Raygun in it making a speech. Anyone remember that movie?

[myrna minx]

22. The Day After...

I was in junior high in the 80's and I was terrified. I remember one of my teachers asking our class to figure out how old we would be in the year 2000 and I recall thinking "will we even be here?" Movies like No Way Out, Gorky Park, War Games, Red Dawn and The Day After fostered such a panic within me that I had no doubt that Armageddon was near. Living with such a sense of dread all of the time was no way to spend your childhood and adolescence.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

27. "The Day After" 1983 - see link

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085404/

[porphyrian]

35. Miracle Mile was better

Here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097889/

"Now forget everything you just heard, and go back to sleep."

[robertpaulsen]

42. The Day After - but they got rid of Reagan's voice!

I remember very clearly when I saw the movie on TV in 1983 that the actor portraying the President giving a radio address sounded exactly like Reagan. I recently rented the videotape and the voice was replaced with someone who sounds nothing like Reagan. So if anyone out there has a copy of the original 1983 exhibition with the Reagan soundalike, please let me know!

[trag]

43. Thanks!

minx,chaves, porphyrain, and robert.
I've always thought about that movie but couldn't put a name to it.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

46. Did you see Red Dawn?

Just wondering

[CaptainClark23]

14. Nuclear death was a reality

Living in NYC, me and my HS friends were keenly aware that it could all go up in smoke with no warning.

And so we lit up and waited for it. I don't think we were afraid though, knowing it would be done in a flash. But it was very real. A nuclear exchange with Reagan in the Oval Office would not have come as a surprise.

[TexasSissy]

15. No.

[NewJeffCT]

16. To be honest, no...

I think Reagan is one of our 5 worst presidents ever (but, he's still miles ahead of *), but I did not fear nuclear war in the 80s, maybe due to MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) I was more in fear of the damage he did to the environment than anything else.

I am much more in fear of a bin Laden type (or, whoever replaces him in the future) using a nuke that they managed to steal out of Russia than I was of the Soviets actually using them.

I turned 18 a month after the '84 elections.

[SiouxJ]

17. I'm more scared now!

Maybe it's because I'm an adult and I'm up on the issues and I know what a complete moron we have in charge, whereas in the 80's I was in HS/college and I had other things on my mind. Also, in your youth, you tend to feel immortal.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

18. Yup. eom

[asthmaticeog]

19. Hell yeah.

I spent most of my youth convinced I wouldn't live to see the age of 18. How fucked is that? Especially given how we now know that the Soviet threat was systematically overblown and there was never nearly as much to fear as we were led to think. What a shit way to live that was. I hated the '80s.

[redqueen]

20. Yes

My dad is big on reading, and education. And as such, we were very worried that Reagan's fondling of the apocalyptic evangelicals would result in a rush to start WWIII.

It was only a preview, apparently.

[candy]

21. I was more afraid in the fifties than the eighties!!!

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

29. We didn't have "duck and cover" or McCarthy but we did have the

constant repitition of "the bombing will begin in 5 minutes" to keep us in that fear that Goebbels spoke of.

[supernova]

23. The Death Clock was unnerving

as it pulled ever closer to midnight. Only during the Cuban Missle Crisis was it closer than during the Reagan administration.

And Reagan's bellacose, Evil Empire, rhetoric was also unnerving. He just didn't seem to get the concept of "peace" at all. 'Course it could all have been the Alzheimer's talking.

[NoPasaran]

24. I was in my 20s and yes I did fear WW III

Although that lessened as the decade went on. Gorbachev was clearly not interested in a military confrontation, while Iran-Contra had limited Mr Potato Head's options.

[mrboba1]

25. Not so much but...

I was very nervous when I registered for the selective services in 1991 having just fought a war.

I was 7 - 15 during the Reagan years - I was more worried about becoming homeless during the 80's (even though that wasn't a imminent possibility).

[RBHam]

26. Yes, I was terrified

The thought of that willing sock puppet of the right with his finger on the button was very sobering.

After he was out of office, I never thought I'd worry like that again.

Until Junior came along, that is.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

28. Yeah - who's manning all those Russian nukes now?

Do we know?

[myrna minx]

31. "We begin bombing in 5 minutes..."

Hardy Har Har Har...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3780871.stm
My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.
A joke, not realising a microphone was on, 1984

[noiretextatique]

50. i remember this!

i also recall that reagan "misspoke" quite a bit. i never understood why he was considered a "great communicator."

[Alpha Wolf]

58. Actually...

Reagan used to say this before every speech during his mic check. he was famous for it. so it wasn't just that one time.

[gasperc]

30. yes, the whole two minutes to midnight was very lucid to me

and the ozone layer was dissappearing, the arms race seems to be only accelerating and deficits were soaring leading to a big fear of economic stability that might trigger war

[quinnox]

32. Not at all

I didn't pay much attention to politics, the one thing I remember is the Challenger disaster from that time.

[leftofthedial]

33. I was a young adult during the 80's

I feared WWIII

[KamaAina]

34. I did graveyard shifts on college radio in the '80s

There was one of those big old-fashioned AP wire machines in the control room: the kind with bells that would ring to announce a bulletin.

We-e-elll.... after putting on your basic seven-minute cut, and paying a brief visit to an unused production room (since :smoke: is strictly forbidden in the control room :-) )...

I was suddenly seized by a panicky fear that the bells on the AP machine were going to go off any second, and that I would have to go on the air and announce that New Haven was under nuclear attack. :scared: I was actually rehearsing, in my mind, how I was going to broadcast that. Thanks a million, Ronnie!

Now you know why I will NOT be celebrating a Reagan holiday tomorrow; it's a real holiday, Kamehameha Day, here anyway.

[robertpaulsen]

36. From ages 7 to 16, I prepared for "Red Dawn" in my backyard.

I remember that time in my life as an age of fear and paranoia. It wasn't so much the fear of nuclear annihilation, although when "The Day After", "Wargames" and "Testament" came out, I kept my eyes peeled for news on NORAD and made sure the tests for the Emergency Broadcast System really were tests.

My fear, and I was pretty politically conscious for a kid, was that events in Central America would lead to US troops getting bogged down in another Vietnam-like quagmire, which I thought we would lose like Vietnam, giving the Communists control of the territory leading up to our doorstep.

After Reagan was re-elected, I saw "Red Dawn". As a 12 year old, I recognized this was a worst case scenario, but until Gorbachev brought the possibility of peace, I thought the possibility of a worst case scenario was within Reagan's reach. So, I would practice defending my backyard from a Russian invasion.

I used to do it for fun, but after seeing "Red Dawn", my play took on an air of seriousness. There were rolling hills of acreage in the backyard and my younger sisters and I would create makeshift foxholes from the fallen leaves surrounding us. Child's play, but until the Berlin Wall came down, I feared the game would become reality.

[gatorboy]

39. I remember military reports in a Weekly Reader....

when I was in fourth grade. It had comparisons of the U.S. and Soviet muscle with pictures of tanks, subs, etc. showing the numbers built up on each side. A freakin' Weekly Reader!!!

Talk about putting the fear in children!

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

41. For those of us who were in their teens and pre-teens in the 80s

Red Dawn had a special affect on us!

[robertpaulsen]

51. There's an "Abu Ghraib" moment in Red Dawn that is chilling.

I recently watched it, having not seen it in over 10 years, wondering if it was totally dated or if it had any relevance today. There's a scene where Patrick Swayze is about to execute one of the Wolverines who tried to rat them out, as well as a beaten Russian prisoner. The rat yells out, "What about the Geneva Convention?" Swayze replies, "Never heard of it".

[Spider Jerusalem]

37. Yep...

I thought about imminent nuclear war with the Soviets all the time...my dad was in the Navy until 1986, on board P-3C Orion anti-submarine warfare planes, looking for Russian subs in the North Atlantic and Pacific, deployed for six months at a time to places like Reykjavik, Iceland and Adak, Alaska...and every fucking day, somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered if maybe Word War III wasn't going to start.

Scary fucking decade, the '80's.

[Touchdown]

38. I was in my teens/20s...it was all over pop music.

Nuclear threats went between both sides, but mainly from Reagan. The Day After, but also the songs like...

Two Tribes-Frankie GTHollywood, Wasteland-Sisters/Mercy, 99Luftballons (yes, it is a war song!), Russians-Sting, the list gets long.

But fearing WWIII was less on my list than fearing Huey Lewis and the News' eventual new album.:puke:

[crossroads]

40. It was a constant...in the back of my mind...

The 80's were horrible, the news was bad all the time... I guess like today!
God, how I miss the Clinton years!!!!
:party: :toast: :bounce:

[Taverner]

44. Yes - and I realize now

That we were much closer to launching a "first strike" then I would have imagined then.

Turns out Ollie North, Poindexter, Rummy and the gang all wanted to do a first strike against Soviet and East bloc cities as a deterrent.

[LiberalEconomist]

45. That WWIII would happen under Ronnie's watch

was a given in my mind. I beginning to have that same old feeling again with tumble-weed in the WH.

[theboss]

47. I wanted the Russians to invade so we could become the Wolverines

My buddies and I had it all mapped out. Whose Dad had the guns. Where we hide. Where we could get food.

Of course, none of us had so much as gone camping, but whatever.

[truebrit71]

48. I most certainly did...

With all of his 'B' movie lingo, and his inability to see anything in other than black and white, plus he was 69 when elected, had his bony finger on the button, called his wife 'Mommy', and thought that ICBM's could be re-called once fired, I'd say that's a huge YES....


He scared the crap outta me...and made me the screaming, left-wing, liberal I am today!!!

Thanks Ron!!!

[General Discontent]

49. Yup!

Sure as shit! I was 16 in '80, and I used to try to stay as drunk and as stoned as possible, to numb the fear. I spent many nights looking up waiting to see tracers from the impending incoming warheads. I'd look over at my friends, thinking that night would be our last. I grew up behind the Orange Curtain- Orange County, California- which during the Regan years was Military Industrial Central. Every world event, every speech, seemed to take us to the brink. After about , *ahem*, 7 years or so of the Ray-Gun presidency I rationalized that due to mutually assured destruction, maybe the Russkies were in no hurry to end the world. But shit, the 80's were really my formative years, and they were mostly spent worrying about world events, living life like, literally, there was no tomorrow. I didn't finally start to chill until Clinton came along. Life was good to me, and there was hope. Then came the 21st century, which feels a lot like the '50's and and '70's and '80's on steroids.... Wtf? A little anecdote.....

I remember finding these little cartoon pamphlets that had stories and bible passages and so on. One that I found, that I remember still, was one that was about the book of Revelations, and future events. The story was that the Anti-Christ was going to be some strait-laced Ralph Reed looking guy with his minions everywhere who were also very straight laced- suit and tie men and bouffant ladies with pearl necklaces, and they were spying on every one and questioning their "patriotism" and allegiance to the corporate state, which is what the country had become. But the corporation was all tied together by a vast computer network, which tracked everyone by a guid, and in the guid was the number of the beast. Once the Anti-Christ took over, you would not be able to participate in commerce unless you had the number of the beast. The minions of the beast spied on everyone else to make sure that they had beast's number. One way that the minions id'ed each other was that they were displaying the "have a nice day" yellow happy-face logo. While it was over the top, in many ways it was also strangely prophetic. Indeed, these neo-cons freak me out that much.

DWolfman- still recovering from Reagan-year trauma...



PS- I saw one time that the publishers of these pamphlets have a web page that has all these pamphlets on line, as well as ordering info. Does anyone have the link?

[Cat Atomic]

52. Mad Max movies, The Day After... the 80's was filled with

stories set after a nuclear apocalypse. LOTS of people were freaked out.

[RandomKoolzip]

53. Dammit, I always get to the good threads late!

Ahem.

Yes, J----, indeed, I did feel that WWIII, The Nuclear Version, was imminent all throughout my childhood, in fact up until about 1988 or so. I remember I stayed home an entire week of school in fourth grade, faking sick, just to shiver frightened under the covers about the whole thing. Sliney School!

Remember "The Day After?" I sure do. Why the fuck does the right want to go there again?

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

57. Who was your teacher at Sliney - did I know you then?

Did you have South of the Border Paul in you class?

[RandomKoolzip]

59. I can't remember their names.

No, neither Paul nor you were in any of my classes. All I can really remember of fourth grade is the aforementioned incident.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

63. Lies - there were only a few classes in the confusion that was 4th grade

Weren't you in B.O.P.?

[Alpha Wolf]

54. No, not as much as earlier...

Apparently I'm a bit older than most in this thread-- probably all of DU.

Anyway, it wasn't nearly as scary in the 80s as it was in the late 50s and during the 60s-- and I was a teen/adult during all of it (Born in 1940). The Cuban missile crisis-- that that was some scary shit. I mean, we really felt the buttons could be pressed any minute. Average people had nuclear bomb shelters built in their basements or underground. It was a weird time. I think the scariest part about it was that there was the sense that the Soviet Union was stronger and better than us. Especially after they put Sputnik up. It felt like they had the upper hand militarily and we were surviving only on their good graces-- which didn't seem to be too plentiful at that time.

By the time the 80s came around, that sense of dread had atrophied a little bit. There were some initial signs beginning that the Soviet Union was top-heavy and would come crashing down (militarily and economically) under its own weight. Much of this was exposed by what was happening in Poland under the pot-stirring of John Paul II in the late 70s.

[candy]

62. I'm with you----see my post #21

[bobbieinok]

66. I'm with you - also born 1940........my son was born in 69 - he

didn't think he'd live to be 30.

There were news articles etc about how scared young people were. I thought Reagan was doing some scary stuff but I wasn't scared like when I was a kid or during the Cuban Missle Crisis.

But I spent time talking to my son and realized that his generation wasn't exactly scared.......just resigned that their lives would be very short.

[eeyore]

56. Hell yes!

I grew up in Colorado, and our late night stoner talk always turned to...

"Dudes, what are you going to do when the bombs start falling?"

We all vowed that we would drive down to Colorado Springs, lay down on Cheyenne Mountain at NORAD, light up a fattie and wait for the fireworks.

Ahhhhh.....high school. What can I say?

-eeyore

[Snellius]

61. Not like the Cuban missile crisis

The thing the Reagan worshippers forget about the fall of the Soviet Union is that the evil empire of Reagan's day was much weakened and less menacing than just a few years before. Solidarity in Poland, Czechoslovakia in 68, Glasnost in Russia, discontent in East Germany, the deterioration of the Warsaw Pact, the U.S. boycott of the Olympics, Russia's defeat in Afghanistan and economic collapse. Gorbachev was certainly not Kruschev, and Reagan wasn't a Kennedy. Or even Nixon for that matter.

[Iris]

64. nay n/t

[davsand]

65. He scared me to death.

I was in my twenties, and I remember when we bombed Libya--sitting there wondering if THAT was gonna begin the rain of death that I'd heard about all my life.

Qaddafi had been painted to be one of the most vile men on the planet, and I really worried that Ronnie had led us down a path that was gonna be one of death for us all.

That was well before the internet was a part of our lives and news was always suspect--I never felt that we'd heard the truth. In retrospect, I have to wonder if Momar Qaddafi had been the early recipient of what was later used against Saddam and others...

I disliked Raygun with every shred of my being--and I never expected that we'd see his likes again. We still haven't--the chimp is worse.


Laura

[MrSlayer]

67. No, not one bit.

I took that the same way I take these "terrorist" threats, with indifference.

[ContinentalOp]

68. Yep,

I was born in 77 and was in elementary school during most of Reagan's reign. I saw all of those movies you mention and I remember that Sting song having a pretty big effect on me too. Plus He-Man & GI Joe.

Being in CA, we had to do duck-and-cover drills for earthquakes. I clearly remember reading the emergency preparedness sheet that was posted by the door in each classroom and there were instructions for what to do in the event of a nuclear attack (duck & cover basically). The teacher never mentioned it but I remember that freaking me out.

I also remember kids joking about AIDS which was in the media a lot at that time but of course none of us kids understood it and thought you could get it through saliva. And the Challenger disaster certainly helped contribute to the whole apocalyptic mood. It's not that I constantly thought about the possibilities of nuclear war but there was definitely a general vibe of doom and fear that I was very much aware of.