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 ...

Duck and Cover was filmed at P.S. 152 in Astoria, Queens, using teachers and students as actors. After the film came out, Archer tried to make Bert the Turtle, ...