In Case of Attack, Don't Wrap It, Bag It

Baggies in the Bunk(er)

Post-Apocalyptic Hygiene—and Humor

“Don’t wrap it. Bag it . . . in Baggies.”

During the Cold War years, my classmates and I practiced duck-and-cover and evacuation drills in case of nuclear attack. Should one happen during school hours at our Jacksonville, Florida, elementary school, the plan was for us to walk to nearby railroad tracks and board trains for St. Augustine. There, we would shelter in Castillo de San Marco.

Each student had evacuation supplies to take with them on that walk. I remember only one item on the list: Baggies, which were a new product in the 1960s. The first plastic wrap bag on the market, Baggies meant brown-baggers were saved from the chore of peeling layers of wet wax paper from soggy sandwiches, pickles, fruit, and worse. All hail the baggie! We said goodbye to wilted, mushy lunches. Television commercials sang the praises of Baggies with the then-familiar jingle “Don’t wrap it. Bag it . . . in Baggies!” It became a stuck-in-your head sing-song like Frozen’s “Let It Go,” Alka-Seltzer’s “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is,” or McDonald’s “You Deserve a Break Today.”

Mrs. Steffan, our no-nonsense teacher, stood at the front of the class and reviewed the disaster-preparedness supply list. One student raised his hand. “Why Baggies?” Glenn Gay asked.

She looked over her glasses at him, and steeled her eyes toward the class. “When you have to go to the bathroom, what do you think you’ll do if there aren’t any toilets?”

Glenn missed nary a beat: “Don’t wrap it. Bag it… in Baggies!”

Hilarity ensued. Joyous laughter filled the classroom. It was such a gift in the face of the fears we felt. Today, the memory continues to offer me a lighthearted memory of that time. Once safe from the threat, our supplies were sent home. I imagine many a child was relieved to use Baggies for their intended purpose.

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If you are not worried about it getting “stuck in your head,” the original Baggies commercial can be viewed at the following YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB3t9QzwZLU

Russian Missiles Would Have Annihilated Us

Cold War Wake-Up

It might be better to not know everything—to not be afraid

—to not be very afraid.

Demanding attention, distinctive, and daunting, the frightening blare echoed toward my room. This Baby Boomer’s dormant, yet ingrained, training made me leap into action. Air-raid sirens do that. I jumped out of bed, alert, but questioning, and ran into the living room. “What was that?”

I spied my son, who had slept on the sofa, waking and pressing a button on his phone. “Sorry. That was my alarm,” he said. Alarm, indeed. Shaken, but relieved, I walked away, practicing yet another skill from those Cold War years: trying to calm myself after the all-clear. In gratitude, I noted that I did not have to move away from the windows, crouch beneath furniture, huddle in the hallway, arms protecting my head. I did not have to “Duck and cover!”

Evacuating my family was not necessary. Eating food set aside for emergencies (hurricanes in my current life) would not be necessary. An air-raid shelter would not be our next destination.

Fears calming, I nonetheless continued thinking about those Cold War years of fear and instructions on how to avoid death and destruction. I also thought about the gullibility of adults to believe anything other than death and destruction would be certain should a nuclear attack occur. Concrete bunkers and fallout shelters in basements would have done little to nothing to keep anyone safe. Duck and cover, shield your eyes from the nuclear flash, food stored in cardboard boxes—nothing more than bunk!

Prevailing pundits of the day fed bunk to children and adults. Now-declassified photos, films, and information about the aftermath of the blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (as well as other nuclear tests) have informed us that our civil defense preparations are as laughable as the final scene in Dr. Strangelove.

Not long ago, I watched Trinity and Beyond, a chilling documentary of the history of the atomic bomb, and was reminded of those years of fear—just as the early-morning air raid siren reminded me. As I discussed that era with a friend, I told him about the preparations we thought would help us survive an apocalypse. We considered the word bunker and its root: bunk. Bunk means nonsense. The bunkers we were advised to build and shelter within were bunk in the face of the total destruction of an atom bomb. Russian missiles poised in Cuba and aimed at military facilities in Jacksonville, Florida (where I lived), would have annihilated us.

These decades later, I know it’s all bunk, the shelters, the duck and cover drills, and shielding our eyes from flashes. Canned goods stored in car trunks would have fed no one: Those vehicles likely would have melted and become part of the asphalt roads on which they were parked.

As a child who was fearful about so many things, the threat of nuclear war was the worst fear tacked onto so many others. Already insecure, I felt some protection by participating in the drills and preparations for nuclear war. My family had a plan; our schools had a plan; we thought the government had a plan. That plan, like many others in society, allayed mass hysteria. Mass hysteria would have made any attack scenario unmanageable.

Perhaps It Was Better That We Did Not

Know the Depth of the Threat

On reflection, perhaps it was better that we did not know the depth of the threat and its aftermath. When I view that knowledge with today’s perspective and with the certainty that we would have suffered complete destruction, I feel a sense of relief. It is probably best that I knew so little, that my parents and other adults knew so little. In some cases, it’s best to not know everything, to not be afraid—to not be very afraid. We were afraid enough.

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Trinity and Beyond is a documentary containing declassified military documents and footage regarding the development and use of the atomic bomb. Warning: The footage and commentary are graphic and frightening at times. However, the educational value of the film is outstanding.