American History

Fear, cold unadulterated fear. The children and families of the 1950s and 1960s felt fear. It was an everyday thing. At least once a week every child in America learned how or reviewed how to get under their desks and cover their heads. That was just in case an A-bomb was dropped. World War II ended by dropping nuclear bombs on two cities in Japan. It worked, the war ended, or so everyone thought. The awesome power of a nuclear bomb then began to weigh heavily on the minds of all those who were growing up in the United States at that time. Their fathers were coming home from the war and everyone talked about the war and the power of the instruments of war.
    The technologies of World War II made it a long and awesome war. Many men died. The United States itself was attacked in Pearl Harbor. The fighting went on and on and the bombs became more and more awesome until that day that THE BOMB was dropped. The destruction was terrible. We dropped it because it was believed that it was the only thing that would stop the war.
    The Russians might have something even bigger and the arsenals got larger. Once the war was over Russia and the United States began to build huge arsenals of nuclear weapons and now we could send them across the ocean or great landscapes to kill big cities everywhere and Russia had the same ability. Everyone had to protect their own country so there was great reason to build up these reserves of awesome technology.
And so, there was fear. What would happen next Would Russia send a bomb here Will we send a bomb there
    Everywhere you looked the fear was multiplied. You heard it on the radio. You saw it on the new TVs. There were tests being held in New Mexico and Nevada. They were underground at first, then above ground. Children saw pictures on TV of the awesome power of what the bombs could do. Many families built bomb shelters in their back yards and whole families learned how to filter the aire and water that might be needed if there was fall out. Everyone stowed away canned goods and bottles of water in their shelters.
    The United States had huge shelters built and stocked with food and water for many and everyone debated as to whether or not there would be enough to save a few. The side effects of fall out were studied with an attempt to come up with treatment for radiation treatment. Everyone thought about what might happen a lot.  The fear was very real and in most cases very justified but you often wondered what the fear might do to you when you had to make a decision. Would the President press the button at the wrong time Would we retaliate or did we need to be first.
    Alas, Babylon brings all of this fear to us in the form of a story about the era. On page 2 the Sputnik has been sent up and the Americans in this small town are very fearful
that Sputnik can watch them very closely and would know what they were doing. Would this fear cause the President to push the button This was a fear that was created because of new technology. The war was ended but the people did not understand what was coming next. The technology of the time included things like Sputnik, the beginnings of space travel, the BOMB and wartime developments that everyone was afraid they did not
know about. They were not even sure that the government was being honest with them.
    Other technology that became an issue, of course was the missals. The United States and Russia both had missiles available and were testing. In fact, they were testing frequently. No one really seemed to know if those missiles were going to be used. There were always the tests and the radio was a major source of getting information. However, the invention of the television and the fact that it was often in households made news a much bigger deal than it had been before.
    Alas Babylon tries to tell us what it was like, much like the conversation at the beginning of this paper. Alas, Babylon probably ends on a positive note which, I am not sure were the way most people felt at that time. Throughout the book, there was a deterioration of how people felt as far as their safety and the influence of other governments but in the end all was well. In truth though, much of that fear lasts even into today. Today, we still wonder, even though there are many less nuclear war heads than before, whether or not they will somehow push the button and cause the war. That is because so many of our families grew up in the 1950s and 1960s and the fear that was ingrained in them by their parents have in some ways been instilled in this generation. Though we are not asking children to practice ducking under desks, we are very suspicious of our government and what they are doing. Are they telling us everything That kind of a question stems from the fears of the cold war.
    When you compare Alas, Babylon to what the people of the day expected to happen. It is probably pretty close. The technology of missiles and bombs as well as Sputnik were really great technological advances but because it was really the beginning of that kind of advancing technology and the fact that it came so soon after the end of World War II, it was viewed with great suspicion. That suspicion continues now. In some ways it is worse now because we think that we do not know what might be out there. We think that the government is keeping all those things from us.
    In conclusion, suspicion and fear were the things that ruled the 1950s and 1960s. Everyone feared that their world would disappear under the nuclear threat. The technological advances were great but would they have been greater had the Cold War not occurred. The Cold War truly was a frightening time. Did that fear prevent us from being what we might be Surely even to this day we are having great difficulty getting past the suspicion of that day.
    The book Alas, Babylon was a well written, though thank goodness, fictional, account of the times that people lived through then. In our classes, we have learned that there were good reasons to fear that technology. Maybe we should say that there were good reasons to fear, not the technology, but what the technology could do and after all a demonstration had been shown at the end of World War II. It was an interesting time that has affected not only what we do now, not only technologically and humanly, but what we will do in the future.