.The first survivalist fiction I read as a boy was Earth Abides and On the Beach. The film version of On the Beach with Gregory Peck was chilling. Nothing like growing up during the height of the cold war and thinking this is our future. Sadly it is still a very real possibility.
About the time of the Cuban missle crisis, I knew a old couple named Frankie and Lola. They were Cuban refugess who came to Florida about 59. Everytime anything about Castro was on the news Frankie would throw his shoe at the tv and start yelling in Spanish. Not understanding what was really going on I asked and got my first lesson about the evils of communism.
"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
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