I am fascinated with the cold war. I think it was growing up with the threat of nukes etc. I remember it became trendy for the lefty teachers to obsess about how much the threat of nucular war was making the kids anxious and when they asked me about it I rattled off how far we were from any strike points and how we would be ok even in a big attack unless we got a really strange change in the weather.
Yes I ended up in some counsling but I was fine it was the adults who wanted the kids to be hurt so they could have another sign at the next protest that said "nukes hurt kids".


We are finding out some interesting things now that some of that stuff is declassified. It was Nato that was way more likely to start using nukes because they thought the soviets had such a superior conventional forces. Nato strategy was to use tactical nukes against soviet armoured divisions and hope they did not retaliate in kind. The soviets had special spetznaz units who were supposed to kill the nukes 48 hours before hand. A lot of those units were made up of Olympic athletes who had been in those western cities for games and could find their way around.

That would be awfully motivating ,trying to take out a nuke before it hit your entire army wiping out everyone you know.