We had regular duck and cover drills in school but we hardly “lived in fear of nuclear war”. That seemed a very remote possibility. The first worry like that didn’t happen until the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
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My experience mirrors yours. And I remember that an adult assured me during the Cuban Missile Crisis by saying that the Cubans would not nuke us because, should they invade us, they would want our prosperous country to remain intact.
Apparently Castro realllly wanted to see us get nuked. But the Russians had total control of the missiles and Khrushchev wasn’t a fool. Those missiles were as much a bargaining chip as anything else.