I don’t know that the 21st century reality is any better.
Should I print this out and add it to my grandchildren’s Richard Scarry books, or do you think it would be too scary?
It does do a good job of preparing them for what they’re getting into.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
When you were a kid, despite being told that crouching under a desk would protect you from a nuclear bomb, you were at least issued “dog tags” so that your unrecognizable form could still be identified somehow. Today’s politicians just flat out don’t care if kids live or die, and don’t care who knows it.
Sad. Oddly enough I read the name as Richard Scary.
That just made me cry.
Nothing is going to change for the better so long as the right-wing exists.
We lived near a Trident nuclear submarine base, an ICBM assembly plant, and a plutonium producing reactor complex. We got the high end package of nuclear war survival lessons.
The duck and cover drills were just the first step.
After the bombs fell, we were supposed to go home, gather up camping supplies, and wait for our parents to come home. The school even gave us a list of food, water, and supplies to stockpile.
Then everyone was going to drive up into the mountains and wait for civilization to restart.
They didn’t have any instructions in the case that our parents never came home because they had been vaporized in a nuclear bomb blast.
I like how the “good guy with a gun” who appears to be a police officer is running away.
That is basically what happened in Florida and now in Uvalde, Texas.
Our local schools have had active shooter drills in the past.
I don’t know how often they have them though or how effective they are.
I do know that in the middle schools you don’t just walk up and walk in to them.
There is a limited access point that is staffed, and you have to have a good reason or you aren’t getting in.
They can and will run background checks on people.
Once they found some guy trying to get in who had just been released from prison, after doing a long sentence for child sexual abuse. Last I heard, the police were looking for him with some questions.
All of this is making every fire drill schools often have look like house parties where everybody there dances the cha cha. This is making me a million times more glad I don’t go to school anymore.
I’m curious to know why the governor is a pig instead of the fleeing officer. Would making the cop a pig be too on the nose or is the artist making a point about greedy politicians?
It may also be a reference to Animal Farm.
I graduated from high school in ’64, which is probably before the duck-and-cover drills. At least, I don’t remember any.
But even the occasional fire drill, usually early in the school year, was disruptive enough. That kids today have to go through this crap just makes me angry, and more than a little afraid for our future.
Time to bring back that catchy “Duck and Cover” song, and let a whole new generation see how smart Burt the Turtle is. He knows just what to do!
Oh, sorry, I keep forgetting. Burt was killed in Vietnam. My bad.
My niece is due to give birth to a girl . I’m so scared for my great granddaughter, and I’m grandniece and grandnephews
Post apocalyptia is one of those nightmare scenarios guaranteeing endless suffering and loss. Duck and Cover means your kids aren’t staring out the window looking for where that bright light came from when the shock-wave hits. It’s a very small thing, but important. I don’t think anybody thought it was more than that.
I was in elementary school in the 1980s, and they had stopped the “duck and cover” drills by then. Not that nuclear war wasn’t still a serious possibility, but for one reason or another they didn’t do them anymore. At the same time, mass shootings in schools weren’t yet a serious concern, so we didn’t have drills for those either. Fire drills were the only thing we had. I guess I went through school in a sort of lucky interval.
We didn’t have duck & cover, we had go to the bomb shelter in the basement. Lots of eastern german schools had those.
“Duck and Cover” were so deeply ingrained in me that the recent renewed threat of nuclear war has evoked all the same fears and anxieties. Now we have nuclear war and mass shootings and pandemics and demagogic leaders. It’s a very scary world as an older adult. I can’t imagine how it must be affecting the minds of say a 10yo child.
I was in elementary school in the 60’s in Cali’s San Joaquin Valley. Even in the early years, we never did the duck and cover mambo. I guess the school board figured the Rooskis weren’t targeting a bunch of citrus and walnut orchards.
We were also taught to wipe radioactive particles off of food cans with a paper towel, then carefully discard the paper towel in a trash can. It was perfectly safe as long as the trash can had a replaceable cover.
I was in grade school in the 60s. We had fire drills, which seemed perfectly normal to me. I knew what fire was and what it could do. Still seems perfectly sensible to me and not at all scary for a kid. We did not have duck and cover, though. Instead, we had “bomb drills” where they would send us out into the hallways. We would line up with our face to the wall and our arms raised, protecting our heads. Our school was 11 miles from a SAC base that was loaded with B-52s and F-101s. Being in the hallway was arguably better than being in the classroom with all of the glass around, but I don’t think it would’ve made much difference if they lobbed in some megaton ICBMs to take out the base.
@ Walter Solomon, #8
The cop being a dog probably a reference to the wolf-sheepdog-sheep meme/chain email that’s super popular with law enforcement types. If you’re not familiar with that, the gist is that the sheep (most of the people) need the sheepdogs (police and/or the military) to protect them from the wolves (criminals/terrorists/brown people/anyone who has something the sheepdogs want). It usually includes (or at least implies) something to the effect that the sheep should shut their mouths, appreciate the sheepdogs, and obey them without question.
Basically, it’s fascist propaganda (the meme, not the cartoon in the OP).
That and historically in comics, the police have been drawn a dogs.
In one cartoon, a character was Deputy Dawg.
In the old Krazy Kat cartoon, an important character was…Wikipedia…”Officer Bull Pupp
A police dog who loves Krazy, and always tries (sometimes successfully) to thwart Ignatz’s desires to pelt Krazy Kat with bricks. Officer Pupp and Ignatz often try to get the better of each other even when Krazy is not directly involved, as they both enjoy seeing the other played for a fool. He appears slightly less frequently than Krazy and Ignatz. He is also the main character of his own short film series.
Before my time but the Krazy Kat comic strip was pretty strange and surreal, especially for the early 20th century.
The “police dog” seems to be a fairly common character in Scarry’s work. Sometimes the cop was a bear.
I was born in August 1956 in the UK and in in all my years in in primary, junior, secondary and senior schools we never had any sort of bomb drill. What does that say? I saw a thing in in which an American serviceman in Europe in the cold war was glad to visit his ancestral homeland ‘before it was nuked’. Homo insanire??
Please correct my grammar!
Re: submoron @ #22…
Possibly, your local powers-that-were expected to watch missiles going both ways overhead and not any of them landing locally. Either that or they concluded that following bomb drill procedures wouldn’t do any good anyway.
The Beagle Boys forgot they were supposed to support the law.
.
The Utöya camp in Norway has been brought back in use, to deny the mass murderers the satisfaction of having closed it down.
.
Laleh’s song ‘Some Die Young’ became important for the healing after the 2011 massacre.
https://youtu.be/VHX2J7MANHc
Here is another variant, performed at the Nobel Peace Price concert, Oslo, Norway
https://youtu.be/DP8j9Bx5ero
Ruben Bolling is one of my favorite cartoonists and may have just bumped Tom Tomorrow off the top of my list with this one. It’s hard to react because it isn’t funny at all, just sad and true.
Fact #1: The USA has 120 guns per 100 people
Fact #2: Only 33% of Americans own guns
Fact #3: Your average gun owner owns at least 3 guns because that’s how math works
Fact #4: Humans only have TWO hands
The ammosexuals are hoarding guns they can’t even use. You know who can use those guns? Anyone who breaks into their house. Anyone who is a family member who has access to the house. Some people own so many guns they wouldn’t miss one if it disappeared. Have you ever been to a gun show? I have. Here in Oregon they are almost completely unregulated. Anyone want to come visit and find out how easy it is to buy a gun here? I can point you in the right direction.
Oh and I can also hook you up with an, apparently, much more illegal switchblade too. Hell I can even get you a cane sword. I really need to make a list of things that are more illegal than guns some day. Sorry if I’m ranting, my psych meds ran out and they’re on back order.
Fuck me. Shooting in a hospital in Tulsa this afternoon. They’re still counting the bodies. I was being deliberately facetious in order to illustrate how easily weapons are to acquire here. How was I supposed to know ANOTHER shooting would happen so soon? Oh yeah, America land of the wounded and bleeding out.
Re: Ray Ceeya @ #30…
It’s a day ending in ‘Y’. Latest I’ve seen is 4 dead, and I don’t think that includes the shooter (who apparently suicided), so it’s a “mass shooting incident”, but “just barely”…
My family used to sing Tom Lehrer songs together. When the russians declared world war three, I started off on “so long mom”
Ray Ceeya@#29:
I really need to make a list of things that are more illegal than guns some day
In Pennsylvania, where I can buy a gun and walk out of the store with it, it is a felony to make a dagger.
Fuck that. I’ll make all the god damn daggers I can.
Akin to “Fuck that. I’ll get all the god damn guns I can.”
Honestly, you get used to the school shooting drills after a while, and you even get used to the bomb threats and the kids getting in trouble for bringing a gun to school after a while. It’s the jokes that aren’t ever quite really just jokes about which of your classmates is somewhat likely to show up with a gun that tends to stick with you a bit. That and the knowledge that some of us in the first generation to grow up with school shooter drills have kids growing up with school shooter drills because it’s been a generation and as a society we’ve managed fuck-all.
John Morales @34> WTF is even your point? do you read? do you understand that there is a vast difference twixt daggers, nunchaku, fucking throwing stars, and goddamned assault rifles?
like, “one of these things is not like the others…”
or do you simply have nothing else going on in your life that your best use of energy is to monitor and troll this blog site and nit-pick ridiculous details?
don’t you have a job, hobbies? or are you some troll farm slave that managed to evade the monitoring, but still have to be glued to the internet for every waking moment?
lochaber, I see you have some time on your hands, too:
Is there? Both are killing weapons. Sure, it’s primarily for close combat, but still.
A dagger is not a kitchen knife, or a utility knife, or something like that.
So yeah, I do understand.
It is a generic sentiment: “Fuck that. I’ll get all the god damn $WEAPON I can.”
(“Fuck that. I’ll get all the god damn Lochaber axes I can.”)
I doubt that a few seconds’ worth of typing is that much effort, and as for the ridiculousness of my perceived nitpicking, that depends on whether one understands categories or not.
Heh.
Are you aware that your either-or does not exhaust the universe of possibility?
PS oh yeah, my point. Too gnomic, apparently.
Similar sentiment, less deadly weapon.
Double standards regarding principle.
Something like that. Irony.
@5 & 13
I remember the days of “duck and cover” drills in elementary school, although they had largely stopped by the time I was ready to leave elementary school. MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) was a commonly understood acronym by that time and more and more people were coming out & making statements to the effect that any nuclear war was unwinnable. The duck and cover drills were always a waste of time, designed to make you think that the authorities had a plan to keep you safe. Duck and cover might have worked for the Hiroshima & Nagasaki bombs IF you were sufficiently far away from ground zero but by the time duck and cover drills were put into place, nuclear bombs had already become more efficient, rendering the duck and cover drills pointless. We used to mock the instructions “get under a desk, put your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye”. Because that’s basically what it was. We were within 100 miles of NYC. Anything that close would have been within the initial fireball blast. At best, we would have been shadows on concrete, instantly vaporized. Probably not even that, as any initially-resistant substance would burn in the fireball.
@35
I’m old enough to remember when the movie Heathers was a comedy. Because who would actually shoot up/blow up a school. Released in 1988. Columbine wouldn’t happen for another 11 years, in 1999.
@32 I was thinking of Tom Lehrer too. Specifically “Who’s Next”, which yes, I realize is about nuclear war but still feels relevant to school shootings and other mass shooting incidents.
Selling unpasteurized cheese is more illegal than guns.
Unwashed free range eggs are more illegal than guns.
Drinking a beer in public on the street is more illegal than guns.
Just being homeless is more illegal than guns.
Taking a dog into a restaurant is more illegal than guns.
If I walked into a convenience store store with bare feet and no shirt and an AR-15 strapped the AR wouldn’t be the illegal thing.
Selling beer to someone a day before their 21st birthday is more illegal than guns.
And you can buy an assault rifle in Idaho at 12. I looked that one up.
Most places cannabis is more illegal than guns.
Oh wait, now getting an abortion, or helping someone do so is more illegal than a gun
Akin to “Fuck that. I’ll get all the god damn guns I can.”
Fuck you. It’s my art.
@John Morales:
You’re a “correction troll” – a distaff branch of concern trolls. Your hobby/vocation appears to be to make sure there are no incorrect statements in blog comments. Nobody invited you to provide this service. I’ve noticed it for years and have not pushed back against you because, unlike you, I have noticed that it really does not matter if comments in some blog are correct, or not.
I’ve been thinking for years that you’ve got some kind of psychological problem, so I haven’t pushed back at you. Also, since I blog, I try to fact-check myself anyway, so your unasked-for contribution was tolerable. But, seriously, you need a reality check. What fucking committee established you as freerange fact-checker and language monitor for freethoughtblogs? If you have a psychological compulsion to do this, consult a mental health professional. Or, if you are under the impression that it was invited, or welcomed – let me tell you that it is not. Let me tell you also that I am not the only person in the freethoughtblogs network who feels this way.
I encourage you to find a constructive hobby, rather than boosting your ego by clawing whatever sense of superiority you can get by correcting our sentence structure or nitpicking our facts. These are blog comments, not worth it. You have picked a sad battlefield.
You might fuck off and find a useful hobby. If you want to learn dagger-making, I can give you starting points. Or maybe you could try doing a blog of your own, so you can see how unpleasant and useless you are to us bloggers and your fellow commentariat.
It would not bother me if I never see another comment from you again, and I know I’m not alone in that feeling.
Art.
Well, that’s fine, then. Never mind its legality, can’t argue with art.
(Nevermind their lethality, they’re artistic!)
[OT]
<
blockquote>@John Morales:
You’re a “correction troll” – a distaff branch of concern trolls.
<
blockquote>
Mmmhmm. A very precise taxonomical classification, there.
Most magnanimous of you. I guess that time has passed, eh?
Like making daggers, as you intimate?
(Very useful, that — one can, say, open envelopes with them — or put them up as art)
How interesting!
In return, I advise you it would not bother me if you were to cease your passive-aggressive chiding whenever you find a comment of mine less than amenable to your sensibilities.
But hey, I can cope.
Much more likely, they reckoned that bomb drills would increase anti-nuke sentiments in the population.
Marcus Ranum@42 I agree that John Morales shows some compulsive behavior, though he’s not alone in this.
E.g., often I comment because have trouble stopping myself; literally I will start to type, think “No that doesn’t need to be said.” and delete it. Then an hour later I think “Oh fuck, I’ll post it anyway.” Then if I actually get push back, or feel I’ve been misunderstood, the compulsion goes into full swing. So that’s my quirk.
Eh. I’d miss him. At least a little.
“get under a desk, put your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye”. I still have a poster I bought in the Sixties that says that lol
Baltimore is the opposite. The gun laws are strict but you can own any cutting weapon so long it isn’t concealable and even then you’ll be fine if it isnt on your person.
A samurai sword was actually used to kill a burglar here in 09. The man who killed the burglar faced no charges for the death or owning the sword. I might get myself one.
A samurai sword was actually used to kill a burglar here in 09. The man who killed the burglar faced no charges for the death or owning the sword. I might get myself one.
I remember that. It happened in the alley behind one of my college friends’ apartment. If I recall what happened the burglar was warned to hold in place but reached aggressively toward the person with the sword, who cut his wrist so badly the burglar bled out. Something like that. That’s not how you are supposed to kill with a katana but it is true that there is nothing katanas can do for defense in a situation where an idiot does not understand what they are dealing with.
My sword-making teacher was an expert witness in a similar case in Oregon, where basically he attested that the person who used the katana defensively did so incompetently, and therefore was just a non-expert defending themself. He said that if the person who was killed was killed in a way that showed expertise, then the judgement of the swordsman needed to be investigated. An expert swordsman who uses a katana to kill a burglar has something wrong with them, and they have no business having a sword.
I do not think that question maps to “most knives” because a katana was, for a long time, a state of the art military weapon. The reason I am mentioning this is because if someone uses an AR-15 to blast a burglar, again, they are wrong. AR-15 are state of the art military weapons.
An expert should not do that, and a non-expert should not have access to the tools of an expert.
Bushido logic is not normal gun nut logic or home defense logic, and I wish the courts understood that. BTW there are very few incidents of katanas being used in an expert manner to resolve street fights. I did not ever see a katana being carried by any of the proud boys or anyone like that. Perhaps in the bottom of their dim minds they knew not to.
Back at the same time as Columbine (just a few miles away too) I was training in bushido. We obviously didn’t use real blades, wood swords and nunchaku with rope instead of chain etc. Because even walking around with a bladed sword or carrying real nunchaku in your car was illegal. Any blade longer than your palm was/is illegal. We were questioned more than once when practicing with our very clearly wooden weapons. Which we were always careful to do at a significant distance from anyone else in the park. I could, and did, own swords. They never left the house as it wasn’t legal to carry them, just own.
But, at 19 when I was training, I could own and carry guns all I liked. In my car if I wanted to. Today that includes the AR-15.
The hypocrisy always made me angry. Because of the two, while you can kill with bladed weapons obviously it’s not so easy or fast or likely to result in such a large number of casulties. So why doesn’t the 2nd apply to blades? Because ammosexuals love guns. And no, I don’t want everyone walking around with big blades either. Hypocrisy is the point though.
As a last point. The first thing we were taught in all my martial arts classes, including when training with weapons, was to not get into a fight. When faced with it, you ran. You only ever fought if you had no other choice. That’s why so few trained with a sword have actually used it to resolve a fight.