The Greater Understanding

[LookinForMayberry]

Originally Posted by Grandstander

Which people are likely to have the greater comprehension of events, the people who lived through them as they unfolded, or the historian, working in the aftermath? ...

Perceptions are always imperfect, and historians have only the imperfect perceptions of those witnesses who recorded their thoughts -- a skewed version, though possibly no less skewed than the witnesses.

In truth, to fully comprehend any situation, one would need to rely on one's own view and all those of their contemporaries that also viewed the situation from some viewpoint or another. Such would be impossible. The human brain might be limitless, but our comprehension certainly is not. One could be in the moment and know much less than a historian distant into their future.

Addressing the same situation to current events, I read and listen to accounts of various events, and the increasing breadth of my research adds to the depth of my understanding, but in each reading or listening my ranking of the other's observations and comments colors my judgment of its validity.

Simply put, one has to dig in as much as one can and be open to new information. Certainly, the historian has the luxury of having more time to dig, but depending on how distant the event into the past, the extent of the observations may be fewer.

We cannot know what we don't know.

[harry chickpea]

Originally Posted by Grandstander

Thoughtful post.

From the Soviet shootdown of the Powers U-2 spyflight in May of 1960, through the end of the Cuban Missile crisis in October of '62, never did the possibility of the Cold war turning hot seem greater. This was the age of the craze for backyard fallout shelters and duck and cover practice in the classrooms. I suspect that all this seems quaint, eccentric and foolish to those born after these years who know of it only through documentation. How absurdly naive it was may be captured somewhat by watching the documentary "The Atomic Cafe" which contains many public service advisories regarding how to survive an atomic exchange. It was almost as if the government was trying to persuade us that an atomic war wouldn't be all that bad.

There was one family on my block which went for the shelter idea and had an underground bunker dug into their backyard with protruding air pipes and a periscope. As a kid I was dying to get a look inside, it sounded really cool, but alas I never did.

I cannot recall a single word ever addressed on the two most obvious drawbacks to the shelters. One was how long a family would have to stay down there in their cramped shelter before radiation levels diminished sufficiently to permit reoccupation. The other was....what was the point in surviving if you were going to emerge in a vaporized city with your means for making a living gone, everyone you knew gone, the government gone etc. You are alive but civilization is dead...you ready for that world?

The magazines of that era quite frequently featured illustrated articles about building your own fallout shelter. I especially like this one which depicts a hopeful Dad poking his head out the door to check on the post apocalypse environment. Everything looks intact and untouched.

Addressing the side issue - there is radiation, and there is fallout. The fallout would largely have been precipitated out within two weeks. The radiation half-life of the worst offenders was short, and the hydrogen bombs far less radioactive than the original bombs. The bulk of the issues known at the time were solvable by good luck to be outside of the immediate blast zone, the shelters, and a heavy dose of iodine to protect the thyroid from uptake. There are people walking around today that have been exposed to far more radiation - and they are alive because it was used medically. The world being vaporized was hyperbole. Cities might have been obliterated, but that has happened repeatedly in history - Dresden comes to mind.