To some, duck-and-cover may be amusing kitsch, but when I showed the film to my teenage daughter while researching this piece, she found it terrifying. (Welcome to my Cold War childhood).

By 1980, we’d convinced ourselves that we had enough nuclear weapons to make us invincible – or that no amount of duck-and-cover was going to save us from annihilation. Then came perestroika and the ...

LAWRENCE — In American schools of the 1950s and ‘60s, students were taught to dive under their desks, crouch with their knees near their chests and to cover their heads with their hands. These ...