Abstract

The article discusses children’s fears and imaginings of an atomic bomb and a nuclear threat emerging in the memories of the Poles born in the second half of the 1960s and the 1970s. The sources used are ethnographic interviews conducted by the author of the study, Internet materials and memoirs. The author touches on the issue of transformations of the propaganda narratives concerning the nuclear threat in the subsequent periods of the People’s Republic of Poland, and the stages of the Cold War at the same time. Further, the article discusses the memories of this propaganda from the second half of the 1970s and the 1980s, the influence of family accounts and media reports, as well as concrete views on atomic weapons, the arms race and the disarmament process.