Watch What Happens When Childhood Fears Are Bottled Up? | The New Yorker Documentary


[birds shrieking]

[mysterious music]

[Daire] I was nine years old

and I was just getting out of my Pokemon phase,

but I had this sort of weird obsession.

It was 2001 in Dublin.

And what kept distracting me was this tiny, orange box

of pills that we kept in the kitchen drawer.

They had this label that read, For emergency use only,

in the event of a nuclear accident.

[high-pitched ringing]

[ominous booming]

I kept thinking, What if my granny is here?

See, I was the youngest and there’s only six tablets.

So was I gonna to lose out?

[nuclear bomb booming]

It obviously never came to that.

But as a kid, I remember being obsessed

with this idea that my nuclear doom was imminent.

[mysterious music continues]

[TV blaring] With the world in lockdown,

I found myself back in my childhood bedroom,

surrounded by memories.

[protesters on TV yelling]

Yet it wasn’t the pandemic that reminded me of this fear.

It was Greta, or at least a protest that she inspired.

The idea of nine and ten year olds taking to the streets,

holding signs, proclaiming that if we don’t act now,

they won’t have a future.

[kids yelling]

Just everybody would die

and then everything would be left here and get all like…

Jesus, Seanin.

It could happen though. The world would explode.

No, that’s only what happens when, no it won’t happen.

[distorted screaming]

I knew that feeling.

I’d had those apocalyptic thoughts 20 years ago.

[low ominous droning]

I used to watch the sunset from my bedroom window,

but I wasn’t watching for its beauty.

[high-pitched ringing]

I was on the lookout.

Waiting for a crack of white light, a rush of air,

and a billowing mushroom cloud

that confirmed the worst had happened.

[sinister music]

I was this nine year old kid in Dublin,

waiting for a nuclear holocaust.

[VHS tape clicks]

[mysterious music continues]

My memory is a little hazy,

but my imagined ground zero is clear.

It was called Sellafield.

A British nuclear power site on the west coast of England.

[VHS tapes clattering]

It was definitely around 2001,

because I remember 9/11 at the same time.

But 9/11 didn’t seem real to me. New York was so far away.

Something in movies and on TV.

Sellafield was different, it felt close.

While the whole world was waiting

for a Osama bin Laden’s next move,

the attention in Ireland began to shift

to a regional British nuclear power station.

Stories began to spread in the news

that it was vulnerable to attack.

That a small plane could breach the nuclear reactor,

and that the wind might blow the radioactive fallout

across the Irish Sea and right into my bedroom window.

[VHS tapes clattering]

It all began with this one radio interview,

and a government minister struggling to explain the plan

in the event of a nuclear disaster.

[Radio Host] Well it seems a bad situation.

[Minister] If it’s a bad-

[Radio Host] Say a plane crashed into Sellafield,

say the wind was blowing this way,

and it all happened eight minutes ago.

[Minister] If a plane crashed in Sellafield that,

we’re talking about a very major accident.

[Radio Host] Correct. Correct.

None of us will ever forget this day.

Yet we go forward to defend freedom.

[light static]

[Minister] where you’re to cope with that-

[Radio Host] But tell me what to do.

[Minister] I’m telling you but, but, but, but, but-

[Radio Host] You’re going to give me the fact sheet

in a couple of weeks’ time and I’ll read it.

But I’m talking now-

Looking back now, the more I uncover, the more I remember.

It feels really stupid now,

but I can feel those wandering thoughts,

the anxious glance at the flat, gray sea.

Listening in bed,

trying to distinguish between the rumble of cars outside

and the rumble of an incoming nuclear blast wave.

And no one ever knew this. I kept it all to myself.

[Lauren] I don’t know what I, kind of, made up

and what is actual memory.

[Cormac] Yeah, all the children in my school

[indistinct] be wiped out.

Nobody ever really talked about it after that.

[Daire] Yeah, I remembered, I think,

coming home from school one day and coming in the door,

and there was like this little plastic packet

of like orange pills.

It’s like, Oh, it’s in case there’s nuclear fallout.

The entire country was sent these pills

to stop us absorbing deadly radiation.

And I guess to make us feel safer,

but it had the opposite effect for me.

They were just a constant reminder of a looming danger.

[Tommy] So we got all these like postcards,

of this like irradiated landscape in Ireland.

There like, bright purple kinda hills

and all this kinda shit, and I think it was like,

Wish You Were Here, Greetings from Ireland

or something like that.

We sent them to number 10 Downing Street.

[Daire] I’ve only got a vague memory of these postcards.

I remember being scared,

but laughing along with the jokes anyway.

No one ever knew, not even my mom.

Did you know I was scared about Sellafield?

I had absolutely no idea of it. No, no idea whatsoever.

[Daire] Like, are you surprised?

Yeah definitely, ’cause I wouldn’t have realized

that it would have impacted in that way.

And I also wouldn’t have realized that if it did,

that you would have kind of it under wraps

in the way you did.

[Daire] Yeah.

It’s weird because everybody else remembers it,

but it feels like we experienced different events.

[Lauren] I don’t think we were actually scared.

I don’t think we cared at all.

We just loved like the drama of it and that-

[Cormac] Not at all. Nuclear wasteland and all that.

It was kind of, just a bit of crock,

and I’m sure we played games about it.

[Daire] I think I actually was scared. [laughs]

[Woman] Were you?

I’m the only one I’ve found.

I definitely remember for a few months,

like genuinely waiting,

or imagining it happening, like imminently.

When I wrote it all down,

it makes sense that I was scared, right?

The news, the pills, the postcards.

Everything was telling me to be terrified.

That my world was in danger. Yet obviously nothing happened.

Sellafield is still there.

Those pills expired and they were never replaced.

There was no conspiracy.

The joke just went over my head.

Maybe if I’d spoken about it, I’d have caught on.

But I never did, and then eventually I forgot.

But others weren’t pretending; they just weren’t scared.

[mysterious music continues]

I’ve been wondering what stopped me from speaking out.

And if there’s anything I can learn about myself,

or I guess human nature

from one nine-year-old’s experience 20 years ago.

[keyboard clicking]

This memory came rushing back to me one day, and I was like,

I couldn’t remember exactly where it came from

or what had happened to me.

But I do remember being terrified.

And I guess I want to know if it’s normal?

I think it’s quite a common

for children to be fearful of things.

Worried about the safety of others,

especially their family members.

In fact, I think a lot of what I’m hearing sounds

like you also empathize a lot with what was going on.

I mean, for all of us,

we’re all individuals and we don’t know when certain

experiences will really kind of stick with us.

Could have just been the dramatics of it,

of how it’s being portrayed.

You know, in many instances,

children end up being a lot more vulnerable in that sense

because they don’t have the, perhaps the cognitive maturity

yet to understand what exactly is going on.

You know, your story to me sounds completely normal.

Do you sort of see any value

in me looking back on my own past?

Yes, I was actually thinking when you were saying,

Oh, all your memories like flooding back.

That same thing happened to me when the pandemic hit,

because it was my memories of SARS when I was a teenager.

[Daire] Okay.

[Dr. Wong] And then that was flooding back.

[Daire] It’s reassuring

to learn that I wasn’t a complete freak,

but it does make me wonder how many others are out there.

Sometimes we don’t even realize

that we’ve never spoken our fears out loud.

They can seem so trivial with the passage of time.

[VHS player clicks]

[mysterious music continues]

Until he started researching this,

I didn’t think my fear was in any way weird or unusual.

I thought every child is terrified of pedophiles.

Do I start there?

[Daire] Yes, it’s great.

[TV static]

So I think I was about eight years old.

My parents drove me and my sister

to my grandparents’ house to stay

about week or two during the summer holidays.

I ended up watching the story

of a girl who’d been kidnapped.

It just unleashed something.

It was like a compulsion almost

to then consume everything I could about it.

And it upset me so much and made me absolutely terrified.

I became really homesick and my parents had to come

and pick and me my sister up.

Think I was just really aware that someone might try

to abduct me, you know, on my way home from school.

I was hyper aware that we were all in danger.

Even today, everyone remembers that they had

to come pick me up,

but I don’t think they grasped at the time

or remember that that was the reason.

[VHS player clicks]

[TV Reporter] -have been attacked.

as well as a string of other waves-

Felt like I was 12, becoming a teenager.

Where you’re still little, but not really.

It was certainly tied up with all those like hormonal angst.

Which is probably why it felt scarier

than maybe if I’d seen it when I was eight.

There was a Russian school siege,

called the Beslan School Siege.

And it completely terrified me.

After seeing all the siege stuff on the news,

then being in my own school assembly the next day.

The idea that soldiers could suddenly appear,

at our assembly school door seemed suddenly so real.

We all suddenly felt very hemmed in.

My brain suddenly went into overdrive.

Plans went from sneaking out through one of the doors

at the back to just full on pelting through a window.

This feeling of like, okay,

well I already look quite different anyway.

I don’t want to add to that,

This girl has insane fears about like gunmen, you know,

storming into the assembly hall.

She’s such a freak.

I think you have such a desire to conform and be normal

and you do not want to be seen as other.

[VHS player click]

[The Exorcist Theme]

I watched it from start to finish.

And the only reason was,

I was so scared of it that I was afraid to move.

Her going down the stairs, like a fucking spider,

that put so much fear in me.

And so that started years of nightmares.

I would just have night terrors.

I would be listening out for like creaks,

if the devil was in the attic, or the girl was in the attic.

You know, it was just pure fear.

So it was quite like embarrassing.

My mum thought I was bullied.

She kept on going to the school and wondering like,

Who’s bullying Jack?

There was like a change in my personality.

So I kept that as my secret and I never told anyone

that I’d watched this horrific movie.

[VHS player clicks]

I guess I held on to this fear for quite a long time.

Maybe even now sometimes.

I mean, each time I go to the beach,

I will have to have a thought about,

Okay, what do I do next? in case a tsunami would happen.

In 2004, I was spending Christmas

with my family in the mountains.

Found out about this catastrophic event

that happened in southeast Asia.

I remember not spending any time outdoors.

It was mainly sitting there listening to what had happened.

It was like watching a movie or real weird entertainment.

So I had a very vivid image of what would happen.

Everything filled up with water.

I would have prepared an entire escape plan.

For me it was something that could happen. It was possible.

It was possible. I can see the sea from where I live.

Maybe my parents could have protected us a little bit more,

but I guess that they had that weird obsession as well.

[VHS player clicks]

[crowd cheering]

I thought, Oh my God, maybe if I could build myself

like a bomb shelter, I might survive this thing.

The only problem was, you know,

we’d have to be in it at the time for it to happen.

And my uncle has a annual New Year’s Eve party.

So it’s New Year’s Eve, 1999.

I’m absolutely terrified that the world is gonna to end.

My brother is deeply into conspiracy theories

and he finds out that the planets are gonna collide.

And the world’s gonna to end when the clock strikes 12.

I start immediately building a bunker.

I stopped playing with my friends.

I started to take life a little too seriously.

I thought it would be like complete chaos and destruction.

So it felt like this impeding thing

that I just had to get in front of.

We started to collect bricks from all the different skips,

but because we didn’t have enough brick,

it literally was just like, you kind of have to scoot in.

It was really small. And it made absolutely no sense.

[crowd cheers]

I was a bit disappointed actually, that it didn’t happen.

This made me realize that the world is big.

The world is scary.

Sometimes you have to go through the pain

to get to know who you really are.

And it’s obviously it’s not pain,

well it is painful to at night to think you’re going to die.

I don’t want to minimize how I felt at the time.

Because I felt like everyone else would have minimized it,

which is probably why I didn’t speak about it.

[VHS player clicks]

[helicopter blades whirring] [sirens blaring]

I remember having the thought,

Like what if this building were to fall down?

And I was like,

Don’t think about that. Don’t think about that.

Because I was on the top of the building and I was like,

If you think about that, it’s gonna happen.

I had been on a fifth grade field trip to the top

of the World Trade Center in June.

I mean, even to this day, it’s like so surreal.

[sirens blaring]

It was something that had never happened in history.

And then right after I had that thought, it did.

I think people didn’t really know what they were supposed

to censor at the time.

And I remember there was a lot of stuff

that I’ve never seen since, that I’ll never forget.

It was really, really awful watching the footage

of people jumping,

because I knew what it would feel like

to be standing in the exact same spot where they were.

I felt like I willed it to happen.

Definitely at the time, that was the first thought I had.

It was like, Oh, this is my fault.

For my whole childhood I had this traumatic image

of like the building falling on this lobby,

from the field trip that I had gone on in fifth grade.

And then maybe two years ago I came out of the subway

and I was in the lobby that I had pictured in my mind.

I had the wrong lobby.

I don’t think I told anyone the exact thought

that I’m talking about right now, maybe even until now.

[mysterious music continues]

[Daire] In some strange way,

it’s like we’re back in 2001.

The world is uncertain and scary.

And we’re not sure if it will ever return to normal.

I can’t imagine being a kid right now.

[VHS player clicks]

The first day I heard about it,

I was doing a poem in the Aclare music festival.

And my mom told me I wasn’t going back to school.

I was like, What? That doesn’t make any sense.

‘Cause I thought it was just like a flu or something.

And then they were saying like,

You should stock up on food.

Don’t like go out of your house.

And I was like, What?

I remember the day when I heard

that we were going to be off school for two weeks.

And I thought, Two weeks is a really long time.

Like if we go back to stage one,

how’s my dad’s goin’ to work.

How are we going to like go with the other homeschool?

[Daire] That and illness or a constant discussion.

And we’re all told, including children,

that the safety of others is resting at our feet.

I knew it was from China and all,

but I never thought it reach here.

It’s like, I kind of wish that they would.

That all the germs would just infect a different planet

instead of ours.

It’s mostly not good news.

And I remember one day there was no deaths

and we were all really happy. [laughs]

I’m trapped, and like there’s no way of escaping.

Things are really tough.

I could spread it to Ruth, which might spread to my mom,

which might spread to my dad,

which might spread to my grandpa, which could kill him.

So like, I’m just really worried.

[mysterious music continues]

[Daire] As scared as I was back then,

I didn’t know what an R number or ICU stood for.

And I wasn’t consulting a daily death toll.

[mysterious music continues]

As much as we’d like to, we can’t hide the truth.

I’ve realized recently that no one ever asked me,

What are you scared of?

This simple question might’ve made a huge difference.

Everyone I’ve spoken to has gotten over their fears.

But the catharsis and reflection that took 20 years,

and a short documentary to make,

might’ve had a shorter pathway back in 2001.

[mysterious music continues]

Before we pack away our memories

of the twenty-first century’s first pandemic,

maybe we should take some time to stop

and talk about our fears.

[mysterious music continues]

Otherwise in 20 years,

today’s kids might find themselves like me.

In a car, driving the length of England.

To stand on the golf course.

Staring at a very unimposing, non-threatening,

decommissioning nuclear power site.

And wondering, Why was I ever so scared?

[mysterious music continues]

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