I used to get sudden moments of fear that the 'flash' could happen at that particular moment when it struck. I can vividly remember these happening when I was a teenager.
Looking back it was a terrible thing to grow up with, a constant fear of immediate death without warning.
Somehow while the danger is still present the immediacy of the fear has waned as I have gotten older. Although now I worry about my children it's more of a vague worry about their future than a immediate pressing fear of a the 'flash'.
Even after 30+ years I still recall Carl Sagan from the Cosmos episode "Who Speaks for Earth":
"In a full nuclear exchange, in the paroxysm of global death, the equivalent of a million Hiroshimas would be dropped all over the world. And, in such an exchange not everyone would be killed by the blast and the fire storm and the immediate radiation. There would be other agonies. The loss of loved ones; the legions of the burned and blinded and mutilated; disease; plague; long-lived radiation poisoning the soil and the water; the threat of stillbirths and malformed children; and, the hopeless sense of a civilization destroyed for nothing. The knowledge that we could have prevented it and did nothing."
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Coupland absolutely nailed it.
I used to get sudden moments of fear that the 'flash' could happen at that particular moment when it struck. I can vividly remember these happening when I was a teenager.
Looking back it was a terrible thing to grow up with, a constant fear of immediate death without warning.
Somehow while the danger is still present the immediacy of the fear has waned as I have gotten older. Although now I worry about my children it's more of a vague worry about their future than a immediate pressing fear of a the 'flash'.
a constant fear of immediate death without warning
I wasn't afraid of dying; I was afraid of surviving.
Even after 30+ years I still recall Carl Sagan from the Cosmos episode "Who Speaks for Earth":
"In a full nuclear exchange, in the paroxysm of global death, the equivalent of a million Hiroshimas would be dropped all over the world. And, in such an exchange not everyone would be killed by the blast and the fire storm and the immediate radiation. There would be other agonies. The loss of loved ones; the legions of the burned and blinded and mutilated; disease; plague; long-lived radiation poisoning the soil and the water; the threat of stillbirths and malformed children; and, the hopeless sense of a civilization destroyed for nothing. The knowledge that we could have prevented it and did nothing."
http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/sagan-carl_who-speak...
I found the idea of being someone left around with "the hopeless sense of a civilization destroyed for nothing" particularly appalling.