Share Your Cold War Memories

[oremike]

Years later I was talking to someone that was in the Army in Germany when the Embassy was taken, he said the Army was going to rig up some JATO motors backwards on C-130 transports fire the motor at the last second 8' off the ground and drop them into the soccer stadium across the street from the Embassy. He said they were predicting a 50% casualty rate just from the landing.

 

[teflon6string]

I remember hearing weekly air raid siren tests in Portland as a child. Mine was probably the one at SW 32nd & Texas. Sorta' forgot about them until today.

Interesting info page about them here THE COLD WAR at home: Portland Air Raid Sirens

Ahh, the good ol' days...

 

[Medic!]

These be the good old days.

Just wait. Were gona get Nuked yet!

 

[Captain O]

In Corvallis, the "noon whistle" was tested every 24 hours. This was also the "Conelrad" (Emergency Broadcast System) "early warning", about 3 1/2 blocks, from my house near the corner of 29th and Grant streets.

Everyone knew what time it was when the "noon whistle" (large electric siren) sounded off.

 

[Sgt Nambu]

I was on the Korean MDL (Military Demarcation Line), 50 meters from North Korea when the USS Pueblo (AGER 2) was captured by the North Koreans! 01/23/1968, We went on "Never Blink Your Eyes" (NBYE) alert! A scary, sucky, time was had by all!

 

[WaGuy52]

Cold war?
hardly.. The new battlefield is digital. No cash, all electronic debits and credits on a global scale - trillions for the taking.
From the Russians hacking the DNC, to the Chinese stealing the personal information of every single current and past Federal employee, military member or private citizen with clearance.
Infrastructure, traffic, power, water, -everything - is controlled via SCADA systems. ( SCADA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ), The Stuxnet virus took out the Iranian infrastructure by disabling safety controls, increasing power consumption causing the systems to literally melt down. All done without a single boot on the ground or missile fired.

The NSA itself was hacked and it tools of surveillance and damage are likely in the hands of the highest paying enemy government.

Web cams are being taken over and used as massive bots, and vendors simply refuse to care about security with IoT.

"Internet of Things" security is hilariously broken and getting worse
Still want that fridge with a camera inside you can watch your milk from the store?

We are at war, make no mistake.

I have to think your worried we are headed for another one?

 

[WAYNO]

Kind've thought I was alone in remembering the Cold War. I see now, I'm not alone. As a child of the 50's and sixties, we were scared.

And it breaks my heart. So many folks, for so many decades, even centuries, doing what was right, to protect what is great and good in our country, only to see today there are so many folks trying to undo what is great and good.

Now a funny (to me) Cold War story. I was on flight line guard in the middle of the night. The airfield was a quarter-mile or more across. It was cold, and there was a constant drizzle. I was wearing my Army issue woolies, with my poncho on top. I had one of the little lighter-fluid hand warmers under my poncho, and I was convinced I was warm and comfortable. My plan was to walk, and sleep, at the same time, while crossing the airfield, dragging my NATO approved baseball bat. I was convinced I was sleeping, so I just kept walking. Life was good. Out of the clear blue, I thought I caught a mortar in the middle of my chest. I had walked all the way across the airfield, and walked straight into the tail-stinger of a parked Huey or Cobra. It just about broke my sternum. Lesson learned. I should have sacked out in one of the helicopters like the other crew chiefs.

WAYNO.

 

[CountryGent]

On the topic, this documentary may be of interest. Able Archer 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse.

A family member of mine took part in the exercise and had a few interesting stories to tell.

 

[oremike]

Used to be the lines were pretty clear them against us, now days it's them and them and them against us, and us and them against us and us against us.

 

[Oldtrader3]

I was stationed at Checkpoint Charlie as an Infantry Medic for part of the Cold War, in 1962. It was not so much of a joke looking down the barrels of 100,000 Russian tanks, there or in the Fulda Gap on the East German Border where we were for a few months? We got back from Berlin and the Cuban Missile Crisis started which took us to Florida to invade and protect Guantanamo. Fortunately that did not take place. Then Viet Nam started two years later.

 

[Captain O]

I was stationed at Checkpoint Charlie as an Infantry Medic for part of the Cold War, in 1962. It was not so much of a joke looking down the barrels of 100,000 Russian tanks, there or in the Fulda Gap on the East German Border where we were for a few months? We got back from Berlin and the Cuban Missile Crisis started which took us to Florida to invade and protect Guantanamo. Fortunately that did not take place. Then Viet Nam started two years later.

Hell, Vietnam was already in full swing. In 1962 President Kennedy had already begun intensive operations in Southeast Asia. (The "stink" had already began to rise from this krap hole in 1956). Our "Advisors" were not only training the ARVN "regulars" but as of January 15th, Kennedy had passed out 40,000 refurbished M1 Carbines to the ARVN troops as if they were bags of popcorn at the Saturday matinee at the local movie house.

 

[crstrode]

Reporting to work as a nuclear control systems engineer at the largest nuclear reactor ever constructed on planet earth.

 

[Medic!]

Reporting to work as a nuclear control systems engineer at the largest nuclear reactor ever constructed on planet earth.

Your name is not Homer Simpson is it?

 

[dude23]

Moscow Molly telling us which fire extinguishers
in our main hangar were out of date.
Though she did play better music than AFN...

Loose lips sink ships.

So, was it a mole or just REALLY good photos from a spy plane? Either way that had to have been crazy. Were you stationed around AK?

 

[Pete F]

Anybody remember Dr Strangelove?

 

[Jim Colvill]

Anybody remember Dr Strangelove?

I deny women my bodily fluids.

 

[dude23]

I too was a child of the Cold War. My parents were preparedness-minded and lived off the beaten path for a reason. Memories, well, a few come to mind ....

• When there was a flare-up somewhere in the world, the adults making dark jokes about "we might be glowing in the dark tonight."
• The film Red Dawn watched through a child's eyes when it first came out.
• Seeing a scientific presentation about nuclear winter and then trying to explain said to friend the next morning on the school bus.
• Watching the various meetings between US and Soviet leaders. The ones with Reagan and Gorbachev stick out.
• News footage of the Soviet quagmire in Afghanistan.
• We didn't have television, but memories of fellow children and at least one adult talking about the television airing of The Day After.
• My father would, at times, pickup something from the liquor store on the way out of town. The man who owned the establishment was a patriotic guy and had this big glass display showing the respective nuclear arsenals of the US and the Ruskies.
• The James Bond flicks.
• The Olympic boycott. I only remember the second one (Summer 1984) clearly.
• The Mad Max flicks.
• The US-Soviet "Space Bridge" broadcasts.
• One of the schools I attended had a fallout shelter at one point, but, iirc, it was just used for storage by that point.
• The fallout shelter signs rusting away on various buildings.

And probably a bunch more I have forgotten.

I grew up within range of Hanford around the time you did, maybe a few years later. They were still doing civil defense air raid drills into the mid 80's around there. Duck and cover in the 4th grade and watching short films from the Army Corp of Engineers about nuclear blasts and fallout.

That stuck with me until well into high school. I had nightmares about the big one dropping, sometimes it was the blast itself, other times it was the aftermath of desolation and wasteland.

Movies like Red Dawn, Madmax and Terminator helped to fuel the dystopian paranoia and nightmares. I remember having a ramshackle go back in junior high with some stuff for camping in the boy scouts and a couple cans of food.

Sometimes I think all this BS is just to keep people scared, compliant with political whims and to fall in line with the idea of fighting nameless faceless men on the other side of the world (same goes for other countries).

 

[CountryGent]

Anybody remember Dr Strangelove?

Indeed. One of my favorite flicks. For those who have not seen it, or would like to see it again, it is available on Archive.org here. Cheers.

 

[HuckleberryFun]

On September 26th 1983 the Soviets were within a minute of launching a nuclear attack. The world almost ended that day. It wasn't the only time...

False Alarms in the Nuclear Age — NOVA | PBS

 

[Captain O]

When I was in boot camp, I sat up in the middle of the night and uttered "loose lips, sink ships". (Daddy drilled that into us boys as children).