I was trying to convey to someone not long ago what it felt like having the family gather to decide which room in the basement would serve as a fallout shelter in case the US needed to attack the Russian missiles.

There was some reason I needed stay with my aunt *in the city* for several days and got to walk around a neighborhood in Northwest Baltimore-- almost every house had lights on in the basement, and people were schlepping home huge amounts of sugar, flour, toilet paper ... and guns. Both my older brother and I got rechecks on all the rifles and guns in the house, and on how many bullets to save out, just in case. Oh, we had a such a lovely decade, the sixties ...