MovieChat Forums > Ladybug Ladybug (1963) Discussion > Shelter In Place. Duh. (SPOILERS)

Shelter In Place. Duh. (SPOILERS)

posted 12 years ago by Chien_Noir
7 replies | jump to latest

While the message of this film is very powerful (nuclear paranoia can endanger and even kill people, even if no bombs fall) I found it flawed at its core.

Are you kidding me? First, they see the "attack imminent in 1 hour" alarm, and they fart around for half an hour trying to figure out if it is real? They don't call parents alerting them that they are sending the kids home? And they send a group of kids walking home for miles, a trip that would no doubt take up MORE than the remaining half hour, instead of keeping them inside the school building? Simply because they were "second shift" for the bus? We know that at least one child probably died. Others were probably emotionally scarred for life.

Oh, please.

I was 6 years old in 1963, but I knew for a fact there were basement fallout shelters in all the public schools in my town from the late fifties on. We had drills were we went into the basement, not "go home" drills. We had an air raid siren test in our town every month or so as I recall, and we all schlepped down to the basement and stood around among the big barrels of survival crackers until the all-clear signal sounded.

Surely people were smart enough at the height of the Cold War to know that shelter-in-place would be much better for all concerned, rather than scattering the kids to the winds, not even knowing if the attack was real or if parents were home or not.

I understand this film was based on a true incident. Hard to believe anyone could be that stupid.

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A learning experience is something that says, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

[–] Starduster 11 years ago

While I don't make excuses for the movie, I DO think we should consider the setting of the storyline. This apparently is a rural "country" setting; a "small town" community, not a big city. I know what you are saying about the older city school buildings serving as "bomb shelters" and having "air raid" drills and heading to the basement.
I believe at that time there were small town rural school buildings which were far less "secure" than ones in the inner cities. It seemed that the people who "weren't home" were mostly out in the fields or yards, working outside.
I don't think the adults were convinced that the alarm was "real". They acted in a state of 'shock" more than a sense that they actually believed there was a danger. They seemed to be blindly following a (senseless?) protocol that had been set in place, although they had never actually HAD to carry out the task during any "drills". I think the actual implementation of the plan, showed them how flawed it actually was.
There was certainly NOT the level of "communication" options that we have today which added to the state of confusion and frustration.
One question that *I* had was; were there warning alarms elsewhere in the community or surrounding area? if so, were any others getting the alarm as well, or was it just a local system malfunction. I am guessing that there WERE alarms sounding in other areas, but we don't know how widespread it was.
As with ANY Hollywood movie story, there are "liberties" taken that probably don't reflect realities or logical events. Consequently THAT is what makes the story play out the way it does. The fact is, it was and IS a very scary situation that we can never quite "prepare" for if it were to actually happen.

[–] !!!deleted!!! (49761343) 9 years ago

While I don't make excuses for the movie, I DO think we should consider the setting of the storyline. This apparently is a rural "country" setting; a "small town" community, not a big city.

The fact that this story takes place in the country doesn't mean a thing. Maybe the dirt poorest rural communities weren't set up with shelters, but this movie established that this district was up to date in terms of Civil Defense. Not only did it have an alert system installed in the schools, the principal had a direct line to Civil Defense. Many of the families had also built bomb shelters. To put it another way, this wasn't Amish county or a one hick town.

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[–] nannyjo 9 years ago

To the best of my knowledge, my elementary school had no type of shelter in the 60s. I do clearly remember, however, doing our "duck under the desk and cover" exercises.

I still wonder how guilty the teachers felt telling all of us students we would be safe under our desks.

[–] leader-7 9 years ago

I don't think they felt guilty. I think they didn't know any better, and since you didn't know where ground zero was going to be, you had a decent chance of immediate survival if you did that.

By immediate survival, I mean that if you're outside the radius of greatest destruction, you can survive the blast -- and if you don't succumb to that, then there's always the radiation that might get you.

Even in the range, there were survivors in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- so what our gov't and scientists knew, the advice of "duck and cover" was legitimate.
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[–] !!!deleted!!! (49761343) 9 years ago

I was 6 years old in 1963, but I knew for a fact there were basement fallout shelters in all the public schools in my town from the late fifties on.

Yep. Thank you! That was the first thing that popped into my head when it turned out that the school didn't have a shelter. I was like, "Oh, come on..." In 1963, at the height of Cold War tensions--when Civil Defense was already active for at least a decade--this school didn't have a shelter? Yeah, okay...

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[–] theunopeneddoor-697-442391 9 years ago

A lot of schools didn't have shelters. If you see videos from back then they taught kids to duck and cover.

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[–] LindaY 9 years ago

Our school didn't have a shelter. At first we ducked and covered under the desks, but then they noticed that one fourth of the schoolroom was all glass. Later we did it in the hallway. Oh, we lived in the suburbs, not in the country. Fallout shelters were usually in big public buildings downtown, like banks.