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Growing up in the \u201860s & \u201870s there was always the threat of nuclear annihilation. This was courtesy of the cold war and the \u201cbastard communists\u201d in the old soviet union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every day we got up, we had our cereal, kissed our moms goodbye and we went to school. We started our day with the pledge of allegiance, had fire drills (actually hoped for those to get us out of pop quizzes), and nuclear bomb drills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Little did we know that those nuclear bomb drills were almost completely pointless. We all knew what a civil defense logo looked like and where the nearest fallout shelter was. In the cases of the schools I attended, the bomb shelters were onsite. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I can remember hearing the air raid sirens and wondering if this time we were going to feel the ground rumble like we\u2019d seen in the civil defense films. It never occurred to me in elementary school, that I might not ever see my parents again if the bombs actually fell, after all mommy and daddy both were wise and they would know where the bomb shelters were. After the dust settled they\u2019d come to pick me up at school and we\u2019d go home to watch TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Later in junior high school, my knowledge and wisdom increased, I realized that the bomb shelters weren\u2019t going to be useful since by that time I\u2019d read about the survivors of Hiroshima and seen the pictures. I was also learning about things like the half life of various nuclear material and how irradiated materials could retain dangerously high levels of radiation for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mutation, horrible death, and fear of a nuclear holocaust became elements of my daily life. The possibility was always lurking in the back of my mind. The thing is, it became commonplace, eventually it was just another stupid thing in my world. I ranked It up there with a curfew, or tardiness to school, or the school project that I didn\u2019t want to do and was putting off till the last minute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nuclear destruction became ho hum, boring, just another part of living. It was like cancer or chickenpox, or the daily bully as I walked home from school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I became a young adult, I got busy with trying to make my way in the world. The threat of nuclear destruction took a back seat to the more immediate things like eating, living, loving, paying my bills, and being happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I lived through the HIV\/AIDS years, and looking back I wasn\u2019t particularly afraid of that any more than I was of nuclear bombs falling. In the case of HIV\/AIDS I was pissed off about it because that hit just as I was figuring out, and getting experience with sex. All of which came to a screeching halt just when I was getting good at it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t take that the wrong way. HIV\/AIDS was a threat, it was scary, I lost a lot of good friends, including the one who said, \u201cDude, we medical folks don\u2019t really know what this is, but looking at the spread pattern I think it\u2019s somehow sexually transmitted. So just remember, no glove, no love.\u201d He saved my life, unfortunately he didn\u2019t take his own advice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Flash forward 50 or so years from my childhood, and we\u2019re dealing with a virus that has a breathtaking mutation rate. We have misinformation and what I only think of as fear porn 24\/7. Oddly, it\u2019s reminiscent of the \u201cDirty Bastard Communist nukes,\u201d news I remember pretty clearly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe it\u2019s a fatalism that I\u2019ve carried with me all my life that leaves me somewhat less concerned about this virus, than the younger crowd. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I suppose I adopted a \u201cLive the day, you may be dead tomorrow,\u201d kind of thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there was the first SARS which was again sort of a meh moment. No-one panicked about it, hell no-one much noticed. Although I do recall the media banging the be terrified angle pretty hard. Nobody paid much attention. We didn’t shut down anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a nuclear exchange, it\u2019s gotta be over 90% that you\u2019re going to die. With the COVID-19 virus, there\u2019s a better than 90% chance you\u2019ll survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not political, it\u2019s not racist, it\u2019s just another damn thing in my life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With a better than 90% survival rate this whole virus thing doesn\u2019t come close to freaking me out like the concept of being atomized in a millisecond. This isn’t even in my top 10 worries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wonder if the \u201cUnclean\u201d vaccine hesitant folks in America are around my age? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Give or take 20 years. Those who are 40 something might still remember talk at the dinner table about the nuclear threat. They may have incorporated their parents lassie faire attitude. They\u2019re quite possibly doing the math and thinking, \u201cEh whatever. It\u2019s not like a fusion bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n (While changing a sanding pad, I had this thought\u2026<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sonofabitch! I should thank the USSR for the cold war and the lessons of mutually assured destruction (MAD)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Were it not for my growing up under that sword I would be huddled in my darkened house with a hoard of food, ammo, and guns, muttering to my favorite knife, and twitching at every single noise I heard outside. But I\u2019d be afraid of looking out the window to see what it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, I\u2019m standing here in the sun, on a beautiful autumn day, doing something that while it\u2019s work I don\u2019t really want to do, I\u2019m enjoying anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So thank you to all the comrades of the former USSR. Had it not been for your saber rattling I\u2019d be quaking in my boots, in fear of everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next thought that crossed through my mind was that people of my age don\u2019t appreciate being badgered. President Biden at one point in his life had to know that. It speaks volumes about him personally and the youth of his staff that he is badgering Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of the young probably haven\u2019t see and certainly wouldn\u2019t remember Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe like a hammer at the UN screaming, \u201cWe will bury you\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n We all know how that ended for the old USSR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am still very amused that the folks who prior to COVID were against vaccinations of their children for childhood diseases, are often the same folks screaming today loudly for mandatory vaccinations for everyone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My amusement at their hypocrisy is that they don\u2019t see it as hypocrisy. Some them have gone so far as to use the line, \u201cIts for the children\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I get that everyone has the capacity to change their mind or opinion. That\u2019s totally cool, it means folks are learning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What I don\u2019t get is some folks ability to hold diametrically opposed thoughts in their heads at the same time and claim that all are true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Call me binary<\/em><\/strong>. (Yeah, that\u2019s a no no today, isn\u2019t it?<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where ever you come down on the vaccination issue, please at least have thought it through. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Do your own research, make an informed choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But under no circumstances should you just bow to the whims of the mob. You are and should always be in inviolate control of your own body and that includes what you allow to be put into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hmm. Another weird thought is this one. How can the European Union which has so very publicly, over the past decade been against GMO foods and grains be so draconian about vaccine enforcement now? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, I know that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines aren’t technically GMO organisms. But given that the spike protein in question is a direct result of genetic modification doesn’t the EU stance seem just a bit odd?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was at this point that the second battery died on the power sander, and my knee started killing me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I came inside and other things beside random thoughts occupied my attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now you know where some of this blog comes from. Sometimes it’s just the product of me having something boring to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The following is the kind of shit I think about when I\u2019m doing boring stuff like sanding the old paint off the trim of the house and prepping to caulk, prime & paint. I was contemplating the latest news about the vaccine mandates. I was just randomly wondering what the difference between the vaccine hesitant … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/NUCLEAR-EXPLOSION-1024x798.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
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