Survival Under Atomic Attack

Went looking for 50s "Duck and Cover" type official films in the hope of bleak lulz, but found Survival Under Atomic Attack rather less funny than I had hoped. It's the idea that the attack could come at any instant, with little or no warning, and you have to live your life in anticipation of that possibility. That unpredictability is a crucial part of modern torture techniques, it's part of the effort to control one's spouse in domestic violence, and, on a much smaller scale, I experienced it in bullying at school. Unpredictability keeps the target in a constant state of anxiety and helplessness. It is, of course, used by both terrorists and the governments they oppose to keep us all gnawing our fingernails.

Of course, we didn't have this problem in the 80s, thanks to MAD. If some fucker pushed the button, you didn't have to worry about closing the blinds and turning off the iron and shit, the world would just end quickly and efficiently.