I was writing about reading the book "Alas, Babylon" that was written in 1959 before I was 14 and how much I was freaked out by the book. Another movie that came out in 1959 was "On the Beach".
Most horror or disturbing movies tend to be fictional so you can disregard them in one way or another. In the 1960s there was no way to run away from potential nuclear annihilation no matter where you lived on earth. So there was literally nowhere to run.
In grade school when we were told to practice "Duck and Cover" and get under our desks for a nuclear blast there were always boys who said, "Yeah. Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye!" So we tried to make light of us kids dying as we practiced what we would be doing while we were going to be incinerated when Los Angeles County got nuked for real. It was no joke in the 1960s especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Though the danger is still there from a terrorist nuke it isn't the same as expecting every big city in the U.S., Europe, the middle east, Russia and maybe even China gone for good where no one could live for 20,000 years or more (if they wanted to be genetically normal).
Later when I studied about "Nuclear Winters" I realized if over 10 cities got nuked around the same time there would then be a 50 to 100 year nuclear winter during which nothing at all could grow on earth so everyone would starve to death during that time. So then I realized that there really wasn't any life except maybe cockroaches and bacteria and a few other bugs that were likely to survive after about ten or more good size nuclear bombs or missiles went off even if the earth was still here and intact all humans would be gone for good.
So, definitely in this sense things are much better now than they were from right after World War II until the Soviet Union Collapsed.
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