Jolt Country

I was 10 years old in 1983 when the Soviet Union shot down a Korean passenger jet after it accidentally crossed over into its air space, killing all 269 passengers and crew members. I was too young to fully understand the gravity of the event, but old enough to be afraid.

In 1984, Red Dawn hit theaters. In the film, a group of high school students avoid capture when Russian soldiers invade their town and retreat to the mountains where they use the skills and weapons they've acquired to not only survive, but fight back.

In fifth grade, one of my teachers explained to our class in great detail how close we lived to an Air Force base, and that -- when World War III inevitably broke out -- we would be instantly vaporized by a blast of heat measuring more than half a million degrees Fahrenheit. He then attempted to convince us that this was preferable to weeks of suffering and ultimately dying from radiation poisoning. Then he sent us off to P.E. class, where a confused Mr. Burroughs couldn't fathom why a bunch of fifth graders had no interest in playing kickball that day.

The large, jungle-like creek behind my house ran for miles, all the way to the lake. After watching Red Dawn, I decided that the creek would where I would retreat when the Russians arrived. I owned a pellet gun, and a bow that came from a garage sale with three arrows, none of which had all their stabilizing feathers remaining on the shaft. The older kids taught us how to catch crawdads down in the creek using a plastic cup, which was pretty much my only survival skill. I didn't know how to cook a crawdad and wouldn't eat one cooked or otherwise, but when the Russians finally invaded, a kid's gotta do what a kid's gotta do.

In the summer of '85 one of my mother's friends came to visit our house and brought along her son, Bill. Bill was two or three years older than me and wasn't into computers or video games, but at that age just knowing another kid's name was reason enough to start a friendship. While our moms gossiped in our living room, Bill and I left for the creek. The west end of the creek ended under a bridge. Down there, I pointed out the holes where the snakes lived, and showed him where the big kids hid their dirty magazines and watered down bottle of everclear.

When we emerged from underneath the bridge, the sky had turned completely red. In Oklahoma we are used to seeing shades of red, orange and purple in the sky at sunrise and sunset, but this was mid-afternoon. It was as if while we had been under the bridge, someone had flipped a switch, swapping our sky with the one from Mars. Our blue sky was gone, replaced with a red one.

"It's happened," Bill said in a solemn voice. "World War III."

I believed him. The only possible explanation for this change in the sky's color was that an atomic bomb had exploded.

Bill and I compared notes. Everyone we knew was dead, obliterated by the nuclear blast. Somehow, either by being under the bridge or down in the creek, we had survived the initial attack. At some point, before the acid rain began, we would have to emerge from the creek to gather supplies. Bill said we would need wood to build a shelter and a fire. Plus, I was going to need a cup if I were going to catch any crawdads.

For quite some time -- half an hour, perhaps -- the two of us talked about how we would rebuild society. The funny thing is I don't remember crying at all, which leads me to believe that perhaps I hadn't fully bought into the reality of the situation. Even as a kid I realized that if the entire city above us had been blown to smithereens, we might have heard something. At least subconsciously we must have heard cars driving by or noticed planes and birds in the red sky. So maybe the two of us -- especially Bill, who would have been nearly old enough to drive -- didn't really believe society as we knew it had been vaporized.

When the acid rain failed to come, the two of us decided we should poke our heads up out of the creek and see the damage for ourselves, before the nuclear winter arrived and we were forced to wait things out under a bridge in a non-existent wooden fort living off a steady diet of crawdads. Who knows what I thought I'd really see -- smoke, fire, nothing at all -- but instead I found the world to be unchanged. My house was still there, as were all our trees. My dog, Toby, barked when we made eye contact.

As we emerged from the creek the source of the red sky became obvious. High winds had filled the sky with Oklahoma red dirt. Knowing what had caused the sky to change didn't make it look any more normal.

With the knowledge that we were safe -- at least for now -- Bill and I returned to the creek and resumed planning for the inevitable arrival of the Russians.

Flack's fifth-grade teacher:

Flack wrote: Thu Mar 03, 2022 9:35 amI was 10 years old in 1983 when the Soviet Union shot down a Korean passenger jet after it accidentally crossed over into its air space, killing all 269 passengers and crew members. I was too young to fully understand the gravity of the event, but old enough to be afraid.

And several years later, the United States would shoot down an Iranian civilian airliner. For essentially the same reason.

As best as it has been able to be determined, KAL007 crossed into Soviet airspace by accident when the pilot misprogrammed the flight computer and put it too far east into restricted airspace. The copilot is supposed to provide a check against the Captain making an error by setting his side separately, but (1) it was common practice - and not recommended - that they'd just load their setting from the Captain's, and (2) Korean culture frowns upon a junior or lower class employee from questioning a superior or more senior coworker. American flight crews do not have this problem; the co-pilot is expected to advise the Captain if he thinks he is in error, because it is supposed to be understood, warning of potential errors is not personal; safety is imperative.

The Iranian airliner either came too close to the war zone or the ship mistook its actions as hostile.

The trouble with military weapons is that the range of missile fire is well beyond line-of-sight. A rocket can be fired when the ship or plane firing it is as far as forty five miles away. Thus, the danger area for a ship - or plane - in a combat zone - or restricted airspace - is an area of about 1,395.28 square miles (radius of range * pi^2).

The problem in both cases was that the attack craft was not communicating on the same frequency as the civilian aircraft. The target plane was misidentified ass a military plane, and when it refused to respond to warning hails on military frequencies, it was shot down.

Flack wrote: Thu Mar 03, 2022 9:35 am In fifth grade, one of my teachers explained to our class in great detail how close we lived to an Air Force base, and that -- when World War III inevitably broke out -- we would be instantly vaporized by a blast of heat measuring more than half a million degrees Fahrenheit... He then attempted to convince us that this was preferable to weeks of suffering and ultimately dying from radiation poisoning. Then he sent us off to P.E. class, where a confused Mr. Burroughs couldn't fathom why a bunch of fifth graders had no interest in playing kickball that day.

1. In Michael Chrichton, M.D.'s The Andromeda Strain, it's said the temperature at ground zero at the instant of detonation of a nuclear weapon is 2,000,000 degrees.
2. That teacher was at best a dick, and more likely a "stupid bastard" for telling small children something like this. There's no reason they need to know this. Children should be allowed to keep their innocence, and not be made to worry about anything they have neither control over nor capacity to stop. They'll learn enough frightening things when they become teenagers and adults.