What People thought was real in the 1950s here in the U.S.

People thought that the Soviet Union was evil.
People thought "We Will Bury you!" was the motto of all Soviets towards the U.S.
Similar to what we thought the Chinese thought about Americans too.
People thought we would all be dead in a worldwide nuclear war by the 1960s
Many people committed suicide in the U.S. and around the world rather than face this.
Only the toughest could live with melting and then blowing away as dust in a nuclear worldwide
holocaust that everyone said was coming.
Some people just said, "Eat, drink and be Merry for tomorrow we die."
I went to grade school and they told us to drill by jumping under our desks
for when the windows blew out and the roof fell in it might protect us from getting hurt and from going blind.
We had to cover our heads with our hands while we kneeled while putting our heads to the ground
under out desks and stay like this for a long time in preparation for the real thing.
The girls cried sometimes. The boys made jokes like soldiers like "Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye". All the boys would laugh at this and some of the girls too. And we might feel a little better knowing we weren't going to die alone. Fear was something we always lived with in regard to the Soviet Union and China and often our boys in the military died doing secret missions during the Cold War that never seemed to end until I was 42 in 1991.

IN 1991 the Soviet Union became Russia.
China was already becoming a better trading partner.
Russia elected Yeltsin as it's first democratic President.

which brings us to today.

None of us died in a nuclear holocaust. That only happened in Japan so millions more U.S. soldiers wouldn't die in the taking of Japan than had already died.

Nothing we thought would happen actually happened. Even the helicopters we were supposed to land in our driveways never happened.

Different things happened than any of us expected. Except: Now the robots like "Terminator" could actually be built within the next 10 or 20 years from 2014. Skynet is already here in the Internet worldwide. So, what is the future? It won't be anything at all what we expect it to be if the past is any indication of the future.

Descartes saying is probably the best answer: "There is nothing so good that no bad may come of it and nothing so bad that no good may come of it!"

This is basically what happens on earth. You just have to make the best of whatever happens in your life one day at a time.