What philosophy do you think drove the production of these videos, if people didn't think nuclear war affecting them and their children was a real possibility?
Another possibility for the creation of films like this is to make it seem the government is doing something about a problem.
In this case, there was no evidence that 'duck and cover' saved any lives, even though some people who saw that media experienced bombs and explosions for other reasons.
Doing something ineffective is frequently better than doing nothing in the political world. The population won't accept a president saying 'We're really worried about the Soviets bombs, but we've decided the best action is to do nothing'. Saying "we're training everyone what to do if a nuke explodes" is part of a strategy to make the public think you have control of the situation.
there is a difference between the government understanding it and creating videos to teach the population and the population actually understanding it at large.
take his example of a pandemic for example. a lot of people thought that we'd be able to handle a global pandemic easily. they watch movies in which everything went to shit and think "no way it would be that bad if it actually happened". and to be honest, i think this pandemic actually enforced this mistaken believe. corona isn't that dangerous. if it killed with a 10+% chance, we still wouldn't have been handling it properly. the death toll wouldve just been higher.
In this case, there was no evidence that 'duck and cover' saved any lives, even though some people who saw that media experienced bombs and explosions for other reasons.
Doing something ineffective is frequently better than doing nothing in the political world. The population won't accept a president saying 'We're really worried about the Soviets bombs, but we've decided the best action is to do nothing'. Saying "we're training everyone what to do if a nuke explodes" is part of a strategy to make the public think you have control of the situation.