“Unfortunately, I don’t think I could even find a fallout shelter”
A COLUMN By Kathryn Ross
I keep seeing these gloom and doom stories on my news feed and I am seriously looking into finding something different. I’m looking for something more reliable and something not filled with opinion and conjecture masquerading as news.
I wonder why?
I haven’t spent nearly 40 years in the news business not to be able to recognize something that has been written based on someone’s opinion or procrastination or an attempt at being an authority. Today it seems that is all you find on cable news, and I don’t particularly give the proverbial mouse’s butt for what certain so-called newspeople are trying to spread. I’m with Joe Friday, “I want just the facts Mame.”
So, I was grazing through one of my popular feeds and I was a little intrigued and began to wonder when I read the headline “The Six U.S. Cities Most Likely To Get Hit By A Nuclear Bomb.”
First of all, I don’t think any American City is going to get hit by a nuclear bomb. I don’t believe Vladimer Putin is that stupid. He knows which way the wind blows. If a nuclear bomb does fall on Wellsville, well I have an old wooden elementary school desk, so I’ll be safe. Unfortunately, I don’t think I could even find a fallout shelter.

When I grew up it was common practice to have air raid drills during the school day. We were instructed that in case of attack we should shelter under our school desks or in the case of nuclear attack we should face into our lockers and not look into the light. My, those old wooden desks and metal lockers were tough. It seems that climbing on a bus and heading to the hospital basement for a polio shot was the least of our worries.
Prominent downtown buildings had fallout shelters. You could find them by noting the signs with three yellow triangles in a black circle that were mounted on buildings or hung in hallways or stairways. Cautious homeowners built and stocked air raid shelters in their basements or backyards.
It was a time when the threat of a nuclear war was 90 miles off the coast of Florida. It was a time when dictators slammed their shoes on their desks at the United Nations and when the public was beginning to see photographs of the damage wrought on Nagasaki and Hiroshima when the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on those cities. Back then, you could trust the worried expressions of the newsmen on the black and white television. Edward R. Murrow, John Cameron Swayze, Walter Cronkite. Chet Huntley and David Brinkley were more interested in reporting what happened, then telling you why they think it happened or what they think will be the repercussions.
You don’t find that a lot today, but one place you can find impartial news coverage is on The Sun website and that is one reason why I am proud to be associated with it.
Out of curiosity I perused the article, “The Six Cities Most Likely to Be Hit By a Nuclear Bomb.” I expected to find New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco on the list. And I thought that some place in the center of the country would be listed, like Denver, Leavenworth or Houston – Denver because I think there is still a mint there and Leavenworth for the protection of our monetary system and Houston because of the space center.
I didn’t find any of those cities. Not one of them. As a matter of fact, I didn’t find any listing of likely nuclear targets. The article segued into something else entirely “Nine Best True Crime Docs”, “40 Incredible Do It Yourself Decorations”, “Sketchers Spring Collection.” I scrolled up and down the page and never found anything more about the cities likely to be hit by a nuclear bomb.
I was disappointed. Not only because now I don’t know what cities I shouldn’t visit, but because the newsfeed is virtually useless. This kind of thing really upsets me because it was obviously a ploy to try to get me onto the site and probably sell me something. It’s the kind of thing that is geared to play on someone’s fears and isn’t designed to give any real information and we have too much of that these days.
Kathryn Ross is a veteran reporter and columnist from Wellsville NY. She reports for multiple local news sources and pens a weekly column for the Sun. You can reach her anytime, kathr_2002@yahoo.com.