It is everywhere. All over the news. Our nation has seen more school shootings than ever before in the past decade. But these are not external terrorists barging into schools and gunning down our nation’s youth. These threats are internal. Former and current students who make the conscious choice to pick up a semi-automatic or automatic weapon to execute maximum damage on their classmates and instructors.

But before us, as students, were terrified of the presence of firearms in our schools, before we were afraid that the quiet, brooding kid in class was not just shy, our parents and grandparents were afraid of nuclear annihilation.

A nuclear fallout shelter discovered in 2017 dating to 1962, discovered in Kalorama, Washington D.C. at Oyster-Adams Intermediate School.

Two generations before us, during the JFK administration, the government shelled out $207 million in defense spending towards building fallout shelters after Khruschev threatened to cut off access to West Berlin, and nuclear engagement was a possibility. This was not actually enough for government-issued shelters to be constructed, but enough for civilians to take on the responsibility of inspection and construction. Churches, schools, basements were inspected for the possibility of being used as shelters. The primary location of those whose construction was followed through were in the D.C. area.

These shelters were mandated to be disassembled in the 1970’s, but those that were not stand as a solemn memorial, a time capsule, of a period of our nation’s history rooted in fear. Those children grew up not knowing if the world outside would be the same 24 hours from the last time they looked outside.

Now, with the end of the Cold War and America’s hegemony in the global economic system, our only concern of nuclear annihilation comes from the actions of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un, and no one can predict what he will do next.

And so, we turn our focus to the domestic terrorism and fear our country faces.

Students mourn the loss of a classmate at a memorial after the Parkland High School shooting on February 14, 2018.

57 years since JFK ordered a section of defense spending for fallout shelters, our nation’s children no longer fear an external attack on their safety, but an internal one.

Gun violence, specifically school shootings (although there are extensive discussions to be had about the evolution of police’s racial profiling and the shift in public opinion of police brutality, or crime in major US cities and those deaths resulting from gun violence, this essay would focus specifically on the shift in fears of schoolchildren), have shaken our nation’s children to their core.

Instead of being taught when to go to the bunker, as kids in the 1960’s were, we are taught Active Shooter and Code Red drills. We are taught Run Hide Fight. We are taught to shut off the lights and shut up. Text your parents and pray.

I would like to focus my paradigm shift essay on the shifting fears of schoolchildren from the end of the 20th century to now, and the shift from a fear of an external threat to an internal one. I feel that an in-depth analysis will be interesting into understanding how we are not the first generation to not feel completely safe in where we learn.