The New Republic

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, my small southern town had an air raid siren that was set off every Tuesday morning (it was very loud). As part of the drill, we were instructed to hide under our desks to avoid the "fall out". That proved not to work very well because the desks were too small, so we went into the hallway, sat against the wall, and tucked our heads between our legs to avoid the "fall out". For kids, this was scary stuff. When the local geniuses decided to have the air raid drill on a Monday rather than Tuesday without notifying anybody, you can imagine the chaos and wet pants all around, teachers included. To this day I can't tell you what was the "fall out" we were attempting to avoid, but at the time the image was this great cloud of dust settling over the school, killing us all.

- rayward

August 7, 2012 at 5:06pm

Time Magazine writer's book The Unthinkable is an excellent book on the social psychology of we react to crises. One of the main points she makes is that human beings have a tremendous tendency to go into denial. If faced by a threat, our natural tendency is to look for explanations that minimize or deny the threat and we perceive an explanation that comforts us. A point I will add: we focus on unexpected, unusual, and dramatic threats (such as a crazed shooter); we spend much less time and effort on threats we are much more likely to encounter (such as an automobile crash, or a person having a heart attack in front of us). From simple probability we payoff of making everyone know basic CPR and First Aid is much higher than focusing on the possibility of encountering a crazed shooter.

- skahn

August 7, 2012 at 9:45pm

Back in the 1950's, we were indeed supposed to hide from atomic bombs under our desks. The alternative being to head for the mountains, the entire city of Denver this would be, if you can imagine (before the age of the interstate). As far the much more immediate danger presented by these mass murderers I completely agree with Mr. Noah, I'm tired of living in fear. Also, of living in what's essentially a war zone - the deaths and injuries from guns, every year, are just appalling. Plus we need to get a grip on the hatred, which is manifestly no longer limited to the "fringes," since one of our major political parties isn't doing much to cool it down. That's scary.

- Sophia

August 8, 2012 at 1:29am

Another way of comparing the "Duck and Cover" era with the current shooting spree concerns is to examine how in both cases people wildly overestimated the actual risks. In short, both concerns were unjustified panics, and led to curtailment of the rights of totally innocent people. Your chances of dying in a shooting spree are considerably less than being fatally struck by lightning. Identifying and disarming obvious wackos is a worthy aim, but many Americans (myself included) are quite leery of restricting gun ownership for millions of people on the basis of an over-hyped panic.

- gwcross

August 8, 2012 at 11:05am

Two things in the video really made me stop short and go "whoa!" First, that anyone would think that being caught in a situation with random mass killer walking around would make you feel as "life were more like an action movie." As if there's going to be some super-cop to come in and save everybody? Or as if there will be hundreds of rounds of bullets exchanged and few people actually die? What part of "action movie" do they think this real-life horror is like? The second line that gave me pause is "The authorities are working hard to protect you and our public spaces." The "Authorities" ... sounds so Orwellian. Yes, they're working hard, and they sound like they are in complete control...but then they have absolutely no control over how these lunatics acquire high-powered weapons. As someone who remembers doing "duck and cover" drills at school in the 60s, I guess I should be used to the idea of taxpayer dollars going to produce this sort of thing.

- probin

August 8, 2012 at 6:32pm