how did the cold war affect families and what did the government do about it?

Question

i need help for an assignment and i can find nothing!

thank you so much, everyone who helped!

Answer 1

Early on, people lived in fear of atomic bombs. They built bomb shelters in their yards. The US government developed Civil Defense. CD created bomb shelters and safe zones in buildings. CD conducted drills, mock air raids.

Answer 2

I think you can find nothing because the Cold War didn't affect families. I lived through parts of it and we never really gave it much thought.

I think, during the 50s, people were maybe more afraid of it since they had just gone through a world war and it brought death to most families and they were able to see the newsreels and see the horror and destruction that occur, including in Japan on Hiroshima and Nagasaki where "the bombs" were dropped. Now they knew that it could happen here and they may have worried.

The government tried to allay fears of nuclear war by teaching the kids to "Duck and Cover" in school (If you Google that, you may be able to find something.) and to designate fallout shelters in basements of near-by buildings. (I had forgotten about that until I saw the yellow sign on a back street in the city a few weeks back.) I don't know whether or not the government at the time truly believed these measures would protect us, but the everyday person did. If you Google "fallout shelter," you might get something on that, too.

I think by the 60s, we were preoccupied with the Vietnam War and protests and society really making a major change to think about a nuclear attack threat, with the exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis. People, from what I've heard, were really scared then.

Good luck with your assignment.

Answer 3

Very good question! I was born in 1951 in Connecticut and remember the cold war well. As schoolchildren, we were taught to hide under our desks in case of nuclear attack (Duck and Cover!). We also had to remember where the nearest fallout (radiation) shelters were. There were movies (black and white) shown in classrooms reminding us of the threat, and many of them were straight up propaganda. Probably not the sort of thing young children want to think about. I remember one night when a loud thunderclap woke me from a sound sleep and I thought it must be an atomic bomb. I thought "30 seconds for the initial blast to reach us, about a minute or so for the heat to reach us, then the radiation will reach us....".
The government was spending an insane amount of money developing and building weapons of all types, especially aircraft and rockets. The threat was real, although probably overstated. The Soviets were doing pretty much the same thing (from the classroom propaganda to the rockets). The threat of nuclear war was a day to day reality. The whole thing reached a head when the Soviets tried to place medium range missiles on Cuba. The Kennedy administration put up a naval blockade and the two superpowers almost had their war. Eventually the Soviets removed the missiles. You should check out "Cuban Missile Crisis" on line for more information (or if you want to go old school, go to the library).

Answer 4

American historians had been studying the social and cultural impact of the decades delineated by the Cold War era. The results are already apparent. Our perspective on the years following World War II has been enlarged and our views and sources broadened. There is now the realization that American society, culture, science and technology, as well as national security policy, was forever changed during the Cold War era. After all, it was a period marked first by the infringement of civil liberties, usually labeled McCarthyism; followed by the movement for protection and expansion of civil rights; followed in turn by a deepening dismay with the seemingly endless Viet Nam war. This period was also marked by the manifestations of consumerism; the changing role of women within both the family and the marketplace; and the widespread growth of popular culture, particularly youth culture.

Read more: See below

http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/coldwar/nelson.html

http://www.ornl.gov/info/swords/fifties.html

http://www.english.ilstu.edu/351/hypertext98/koss/how2survive/aboutsite/about.html

http://web.uccs.edu/history/student%20presentations/heidi/cold_war.htm

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/icas/cold_war.htm

Answer 5

I could tell you a lot about that subject, but hey mate, come on! It's just impossible to reduce it to a paragraph on Yahoo! Answers. It would be innacurate and misleading.

Sorry.