Growing up in the 1950s I was taught as a boy becoming a man how literally everything works

I was taught how government works (or better said) how it is supposed to work but doesn't always.

I was also taught how wars worked and the death and mayhem they caused which in some ways gave me a form of group PTSD along with everyone else in my generation when I was exposed to pictures of the dead and dying and the starved to death in internment camps during world war II also.

I was also taught how atomic bombs worked and how hydrogen bombs worked and taught how EMP (electromagnetic pulses) would stop all things electrical (from cars to computers from ever working again) once a nuke hit my area.

I was told to hide under my desk and as the male comedians in my grade school classes would say "Kiss my Ass goodbye" if a nuke actually hit anywhere near where I was hiding under my desk.

I learned that the MAIN reason freeways were constructed in Cities was so people could more easily evacuate cities during a nuclear war so more could survive. THIS IS ACTUALLY STRATEGICALLY WHY THEY STARTED BUILDING FREEWAYS IN THE 1950s by President Eisenhower after World war II!

I learned that I was likely to die either in a nuclear blast or fighting in a nuclear war when I was 17 to 21 years of age. So, this is something they prepared all the boys for. Then 50,000 of us died in Viet Nam which supposedly was a war to prevent the Domino Theory of the time from happening.

But, that really never made any sense to me at all because mostly Viet Nam was about oil more than anything else if you look at it realistically from now.

I was taught to build things, to make parts, to assemble almost anything, to design almost anything mechanical or electrical and to find ways to build it. Then I was taught how to program computers, to fix cars and trucks and my best friend learned to fix and maintain jet engines which kept him in Thailand so he didn't die in the Viet Nam War where he repaired military jets during the Viet Nam War.

Growing up in the 1950s was a completely different world than the one we live in now.

Was it better than now? If you were a white boy or man it was better but now I would say it is better for more people of all races. But, I would generally say now is much much worse than anyone in the 1950s would have believed it could ever get in regard to government and human rights in general worldwide.