The Wallpaper of Fear

When I was about fourteen, I spent much of my time roaming my hometown in an attempt to ward off boredom. Once, I came upon a display with signage just off the city sidewalk. It was a fully functioning underground fallout shelter. The small construction company that built it was offering to build backyard shelters for anyone who wanted to hedge their bets against a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.
This was not idle paranoia. As the Cuban missile crisis a few years later would prove, atomic Armageddon was only minutes away from ruining our lovely little planet whether we ducked and covered properly or not.
This particular shelter was tiny and cramped partly because it was crammed with dried foodstuff, water and various other medical and survival supplies; everything needed for a small nuclear family to cling to existence until they could safely emerge to enjoy the nuclear winter. Do-it-yourself plans showed up in Popular Mechanics and various other science magazines. Talk and news shows discussed it ad infinitum.
The threat of nuclear holocaust loomed in the background of everyday life from morning to night as if every house and business was decorated with mushroom cloud wallpaper; you didn’t think about it continually, but it was always there.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the cold war was over. The background drone of fear suddenly clicked off. It was as if suddenly you could hear again and the muscles in your back relaxed even though you didn’t realize they were tight. It was wonderful.
I think it was only hours after the September 11, 2001 attacks that I realized our little 10-year vacation from fear was over. I knew instinctively the dread was back and, despite Bush’s predictions of “victory”, the same low hum of background fear was here to stay for decades to come.