dougdoepke In 1951, my 12-year old brain knew the Chinese hordes would soon be swarming over our little mountain town. Never mind the big peaks to the west. After all, hadn't these same hordes just a year before forced our best fighting force, the Marines, into headlong retreat in Korea. Only one thing could stop them-: we had the bomb, so let's use it. Better a nuclear war than Chinese hordes.Seeing the movie now, 65-years later, is somewhat painful. I never saw the short then since we didn't have TV. But my cousins in Denver told me about getting down and covering. My surmise now is that govn't was more interested in conditioning us than in actually preparing us. After all, how much good would D&C do in an actual radioactive explosion. About that, the short says little. It does imply an effectiveness beyond just going through the motions. I'm glad I didn't see it then as it would have only added to my foolish beliefs.I wish I could laugh at the cartoon silliness now, but I can't. For younger folks, there remains the idea of what hung heavy over many of us of the time. But more importantly, the dangerous nonsense still has lessons for our own nuclear age.

mshaw61 African-Americans are not discriminated against, mom doesn't want to work, she wants to bake in the kitchen all day until she can attend to father when he gets home from work, there is no pain or suffering in the world and: Yes! You too can survive a nuclear blast just by following the instructions to "Duck and Cover"! This short little film is an incredibly insightful look into life in America in the 1950s (without setting out to do that, of course). Problems didn't exist because the government said they didn't exist. What is incredible in the 21st Century is that, for the most part, Americans really believed this. Maybe the 1950s were a product of those that survived the horrors of World War II. Maybe they invented the "perfect" 1950s to hide the pain from what they experienced in the Pacific and in Europe during WW II. In any case, if you want a short encapsulated view of the surreal life in America in the 1950s, watch this little gem. This should be required viewing for any course about life in post-WW II America.

gavin6942 "Duck and Cover" is something of a mystery to me. Looking back now, over fifty years later, the suggestions seem fairly absurd that one could protect themselves from a nuclear blast with a blanket or stop their neck from being burned by putting their hands over the back of their head.Now, some folks will say that bombs in the 1950s aren't what they are today and that the radius of a blast wasn't as far, so if you were on the outskirts of the explosion, these rules and suggestions might actually be useful. (Although, one suspects that if you have to wait for a Civil Defense worker to tell you to get up, you'll be waiting a long time.) But another thing I found interesting is that people seem to get the message backwards on this short -- they think it takes a realistic fear and makes it seem trivial or quaint. But, for me, it seems that it takes something that is rather rare and makes it one more thing to fear. Even during the Cuban Missile Crisis (and Cuba didn't even turn "communist" for another seven years after this film) the risk was small. For those of us in the Midwest, the threat is essentially nil, both then and today. There are many other threats that would be better to warn us about.Whatever the case, this film stands as a piece of history that will remain rather interesting and grow in the coming years, hopefully being beyond "surreal" or "absurd" at the 100-year mark. We live in an atomic age, but should we go about fearing it? There's little need to fear much of anything if we properly assess the risks involved.

Lee Eisenberg In the 21st century, when we know that a nuclear blast would wipe out everything, "Duck and Cover" seems laughable at best. And believe you me, it IS laughable. Made at the height of the Cold War/Red Scare/Nuclear Scare, it reminds wholesome American schoolchildren what to do if a nuclear bomb falls: cover your head. To try and attract peoples' attention, they have a turtle remind us this.As a side note, around the time of the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I asked my Russian teacher what they were taught in the Soviet Union about nuclear blasts. She said that they were taught how to help someone after a nuclear blast. In other words, they were also lied to. But that's no surprise; both the USA and USSR were both responsible.But either way, you'll get a real kick out of "Duck and Cover", just for how stupid it is.