Why do you think Jack has such a distaste for Russians?

[garhkal]

Perhaps he only gets hangovers from Vodka.

[StargateWatcher]

Not that ducking under their desks would've helped.

The Department of Education really underestimated schoolchildrens' intelligence, or at least I hope they did! They were maybe unrealistically attempting to reassure them that they could survive when the Russians decided to release one of their nukes.

[SF_and_Coffee]

The Department of Education really underestimated schoolchildrens' intelligence, or at least I hope they did! They were maybe unrealistically attempting to reassure them that they could survive when the Russians decided to release one of their nukes.

Exactly. I think it might have been an attempt to give kids some peace of mind, however unrealistic, so that they could get through the day without worrying so much about it as to prevent them from being able to function.

By the time I entered school, the idea of nuclear war and what it would really do to people had been around in the public consciousness for so long that I think all pretense had been abandoned. I do remember the existence of public fallout shelters at schools and other public buildings, though.

[StargateWatcher]

I was born a bit later, in 1981, and don't recall being aeare of any bomb shelters in the schools and other public buildings at that time. I guess by then no one in the US thought the Soviet Union would dare launch any nuke on the country.

[SF_and_Coffee]

Most of the fallout shelter signs were gone by then. Every now and again you still see one over an obscure door on the street somewhere, but they were far more common in the Seventies, especially the early Seventies, and even then they seemed to be largely a relic of the Fifties and Sixties.

But in the early Eighties, people still worried about a nuclear war. The thought cropped up regularly in song lyrics, in films (ever seen "War Games", for example?) and in literature and television shows. The Cold War was not yet over, and in fact seemed to gain momentum at times, especially as the Soviets pursued expansionist agendas in places like Afghanistan (where I suspect Jack O'Neill, in the Gateverse, may well have spent some time helping to train mujaheddin fighters to counter Soviet-backed troops) although as the decade progressed beyond its midpoint, there began to be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985, introduced perestroika and glasnost, which helped to open up a broader dialogue between the Soviets and the West and accelerated detente between the USA and the USSR. The Kremlin made a series of political and military concessions, including entering into a bilateral arms reduction agreement designed to scale back both nations' nuclear arsenals. From 1989 - 1991, the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of collapse and the Communist governments of the Warsaw Pact nations were losing power. Component republics of the USSR were declaring autonomy from Moscow. The Russian Republic was one of the most notable to threaten secession, and by the end of 1991 the USSR was dissolved. People breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of disaster averted.

[Onealwasoverrated]

It's very simple. The Russians were the red shirts, and were therefore a cliche. RDA and Jack HATE cliches, unless they're the one using them.