Duck and Cover

On Friday, they were forecasting something of an ice-pocalypse for the Boston area on Saturday morning. Heavy rains. Then a precipitous temperature drop. Ice-armaggedon. We would all be sheltering in place from mid-morning until mid-afternoon. Unless you were having a heart attack or a baby, STAY PUT!

Well, the temperature did drop precipitously.But it was no longer raining, and the wind had blown the streets and sidewalks dry, so no big deal.

That was the minor hysteria we had to put up with this past weekend.

Just imagine what it was like to be living or vacationing in Hawaii and getting the message that ICBMs were on the way, with the ominous trailer: THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

I cannot imagine the horror and desperation as people were faced with figuring out what to do. Call their loved ones to say goodbye? Get in the car and flee? Figure out where to find shelter? Congratulate yourself that you’d bought that mid-century modern house and kept the bomb shelter intact? Wonder how big a missile they were talking about? How many? Where would it strike? Where was the safe space?

I grew up in the foolish era of duck and cover.

I have a vague memory of one drill when we were marched out of school and into the schoolyard, where someone pointed out that the church basement was an air raid shelter. We did not actually go into the church basement, mind you. We were just told that, if the Commies bombed Worcester (and why wouldn’t they: we had a lot of manufacturing, plus a lot of Catholics, and it was well-known that Commies targeted Catholics), that was where we’d go.

Mostly, we just heard the “duck and cover” warning. If the siren goes off, put your head under your desk and pray.

It would, of course, have made more sense to go to the church basement, where there would have been some scrim of protection. But our flimsy little desks? Our prayers? Good luck with that.

Fortunately, the Commies never bombed Worcester, and, frankly, I was more worried about Commie infantry who, we were told, might well make their way into the Our Lady of the Angels choir loft and have their snipers shoot at us while we attended Mass.

And, as a student at a school named Our Lady of the Angels, I lived in fear of fire after Our Lady of the Angels in Chicago burned down, killing nearly 100 students. I probably wouldn’t have been quite so fearful – the Chicago OLA was an ancient building, ours was a new, one story, presumably more fireproof edifice – but the nuns had a way of enhancing our worries. In this case, they did so by telling us that God seldom made mistakes, but in this case, the wrong OLA had burned to a crisp. He had actually intended the conflagration to happen in Worcester, Massachusetts, not Chicago, Illinois.

Anyway, we had a lot of fire drills, which kids pretty much enjoyed, as it broke up the day, even if it did send us shivering into the schoolyard for a few moments until we got the all-clear.

That was then, and this is now.

And frankly, I don’t think I want any advance warning if Boston is going to be leveled. If we’re engaged in that sort of war, I’d just as soon be at Ground Zero, wearing a beanie with an arrow labeled “AIM HERE.”

I don’t want to spend my last hours on earth in a panic and despair, trying to call my loved ones on jammed phone lines. Trying to hail an Uber to go where, exactly, given that the roads would all be jammed, everyone following those ridiculous “Evacuation Route” signs, but going nowhere fast. And to do exactly what? Throw my body over the first loved one I came across, hoping to protect and save someone – hah! – from a nuke.

Maybe I’d go Zen, get off a so-long email, followed by a stroll over to the Esplanade, where I’d sit on a bench and calmly await my fate.

Anyway, what those folks in Hawaii must have been feeling for those 38 minutes on Saturday before the all-clear, especially those with children they were trying to save. How utterly horrible.

The only good to come of this will be if those who run the drills in the future will be prepared enough so that, if an erroneous warning message does go out, and everyone gets it on their smartphone, it won’t take 38 minutes to rescind it. And/or if, before another drill or, God forbid, before the real thing occurs, there’ll be some information made available to citizens telling them exactly what to do.

I supposed it doesn’t make much difference what people are told to do. They’ll just run on instinct, doing what they think is best, cool-headedly or running amok.

The more I think about it, the best advice may well be to shelter in place, to duck in cover. If you do get hit, you’ll at least die with the vague, idiotic hope that the flimsy desk lid, the comforter on your bed, the solid doorframe of an inside bathroom, may provide you some degree of safety. At least you’re doing something.

That said, if it’s going to happen, I think I’d just as soon not be forewarned.

And you?