This is for all you doubters out there.
You know who you are.
The ones who said Soviet Civil Defense was a "paper program."
Here's your proof. Photos of a nearly unmolested bomb shelter fresh from the heyday of Soviet civil defense. It's apparently in Moscow, although I'm not sure exactly where. From my research I believe this to be a fairly elaborate example- in fact, it looks like it's probably some kind of command post.Go here and drink it all up.
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I was a kid during the Cold War and pictures like that still can make me pause.
I remember well at the hight of the Cuban Missile Crisis on October 28, sitting in the gym in my elementary school watching the TV as the situation came to a head. The principal had lectured us all telling us that we were on the 'eve of thermonuclear doomsday.' In retrospect I think the poor man was scared spitless.
Nevertheless shortly after lunch we were told that things had settled down and we went back to class.
I couldn't sleep for weeks after that.
I was nine at the time.
What's even scarier is that the consensus among historians has been shifting in recent years towards the conclusion that nuclear war was only avoided in 1962 by dumb luck.
At the same time we really know very little about exactly what was going on in the USSR during the crisis- it's directly related to what I study, and all I can find about what either the populace or the strategic nuclear forces were doing is hearsay or rumor. And what I've heard is contradictory. It's something I hope to get to the bottom of someday.
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