Gen Xers were also raised with a staggering amount of nihilism because we were taught as children that we were GOING to die in a horrific nuclear war. The survivors were the unlucky ones. Imagine an entire generation taught that they would be lucky to die.

— Jennifer Goodland (@BigYearColo) December 8, 2019

Gen Xer here, and this is absolutely accurate. I think that’s why we feel so much in common with millennials and Gen Z — though the cause of the hopelessness is different, the base feeling is the same.

I remember being told by a teacher, after asking about the nuclear sigils I’d seen on a building, that it was pointless to evacuate to the nuclear shelter they symbolized because we’d all die anyway, being so close to important military targets. Yep, a teacher, in 3rd grade, telling students that they’d die in a nuclear conflagration — and this was not unusual at all during that time in the mid-1980s.

But I wouldn’t blame her — this was in the air everywhere during that time. It was just assumed we’d all die in nuclear fire, by nearly everyone. It’s amazing society continued at all. It really is.