I don’t remember ever having drills when I was in school in case of a bomb attack, but Claire, being a little younger remembers the old “duck and cover” drills that were popular during the Cold War. The fire alarm would go off and the students would get under their desks and curl into a fetal position. I’m not sure what great scientific minds thought that the desks would provide protection during a nuclear attack, but I’m sure a lot of thought went into those procedures.
But anyhow, back then the threat of nuclear war seemed very real and I remember seeing lots of posters than featured the mushroom cloud. I remember reading that after the first nuclear tests in the 1940s, there were various names suggested to describe the cloud produced by a nuclear blast, like cauliflower cloud or raspberry cloud — but mushroom cloud won out.
When a nuclear device is detonated, an almost incomprehensible amount of thermal energy is released and that creates a massive fireball that incinerates everything below it. As the fireball rises into the air, convection currents rush after it, sucking up debris into a column. Eventually, the fireball reaches the peak of its upward movement and expands outward, creating the mushroom-shaped head. That physical process occurs in other forms of explosions too, like volcanic eruptions.
I’m not sure if the risk of a nuclear holocaust is more or less today than it once was, but from what I’ve seen, school desks don’t seem a sturdy as they were when I went to school……
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I’d have nominated a vegetable that I don’t like for example broccoli for the cloud…I do remember an occasional drill to hide under the desk. Not as much as the tornado drill in the hall. However definitely agree school desks are not made like they used to be!