Sorry, your narrative timeline is simply incorrect. Perhaps b/c you did not live in the USA?
Gore-tex was invented in 1969 but was hardly necessary. Wool has always worked extremely well and still does: polyester was pretty good except in northern USA. I lived in the south and wore predominantly cotton: Levi jeans and cotton t-shirts were our uniform in the summer; winter we bought a jacket and lived with it.
In 1971 I bought a used American car with everything on it for $300. My East Indian college roommate loved to ride in it and very quickly got a license and car of his own. I later drove my $300 car from Texas to New York via the Midwest and DC to graduate school. I later drove that car to work and school around DC. I had tools but rarely needed them except for maintenance. The car was extremely reliable and needed only tuneups and tires. I gave it to a friend when I bought another car.
You didn't (and still don't) need a cell phone. It was (and is) easy to get help from strangers.
A car accident can kill you at 35 mph but they usually didn't (and usually don't). Cars are safer now and I appreciate that, but they weren't _that_ unsafe: people would not have driven them otherwise.
You complain about carrying a map and a zip code book - you should still (I do), since your phone or network could fail at any time. But you don't b/c in your heart you believe that you can rely on the kindness of strangers!
Medicine today is not much better than it was back then. Trauma care _is_ improved (the lessons of Vietnam were absorbed). But antibiotics worked better back then than today and other than antivirals and statins, the use of drugs hasn't improved much. As someone once said, doctors got no respect until antibiotics came along and, were they taken away, doctors would not get much respect now.
The remnants of the polio epidemics was still present in students of the 1950s (Salk developed his vaccine in 1952 and I was vaccinated ~1957). I too had classmates with polio braces, but polio in the USA was stopped by the vaccination campaigns before the 1970s.
People didn't die of rabies in the 1970s unless it was untreated.
People didn't die of TB in the 1970s unless it was unattended and/or advanced before treatment.
Smallpox was wiped out and routine immunization halted in 1970. The only cholera pandemics were offshore USA (e.g., the El Tor pandemic in Indonesia->Pakistan in the '70's).
I too carried punch cards (I started in the 60's) and was glad to do so: programming turned into a career. 4 years later in the mid-70's I had a terminal and multiple computers available in a network.
3 TV channels was plenty: I got the news and entertainment too, although after awhile I began to notice TV was turning into something akin to the "Bullshit Web" of today:
VCRs were about $1000 in 1975 but they were available used for only hundreds of dollars. I have a used one that runs still today! In comparison my first CD player died after 3 years.
Neither discrimination nor bigotry nor prejudice were ubiquitous but they _were_ still present. Your description of prejudice fits the southern USA of the '50's, NOT the '70's.
Indeed my grandparents were small farmers (sharecroppers) and their and their children's (my parents') lives were hard. But the opportunities my parents had during their time were enormous and their lives were rich and memorable.
It probably remains true even today that antibiotics are man's most significant improvement of the last century.
But in summary I find your description of the 70s is off by fully 20 years.
> A car accident can kill you at 35 mph but they usually didn't (and usually don't). Cars are safer now and I appreciate that, but they weren't _that_ unsafe: people would not have driven them otherwise.
Cars were a lot less safe in 1971, that is a fact. No air bags, no anti-lock brakes, no traction control. Older cars didn't have seat belts, shoulder belts were rare, cars weren't built to crumple, steering columns would impale you, etc.
Fact, not anecdote:
In 1971 there were 4.46 fatalities per million vehicle miles traveled (MVMT).
In 2015 it was 1.18 fatalities per MVMT.
So yes, in fact cars were three times as dangerous as today.
1) What I stated was not anecdote: a car accident can kill you at 35 mph but they usually didn't (and don't).
2) I simply don't agree with your use of relative statistics, which reeks of alarmism. My doctors use such arguments in attempts to convince me to take statin drugs, which would at best extend my life for only a few days if I took them for 30 years. He always tells me that I'm "X times as likely to die from a heart attack" unless I take statins. I always remind him of the nature of his statistics, the side-effects of statins, and the non-present longevity payoff of taking them.
Once the number of fatalities per MVMT is below a certain value it ceases to be likely in the overall scheme of things and becomes unimportant.
Relative statistics ignore the prior probabilities - the fact that I'm unlikely to die driving in the first place. Yes, 4.46 deaths per MVMT is about 3 X 1.18, but both are low deaths per MVMT.
I may die from falling off a ladder or get eaten by a shark but neither is likely, nor am I now nor was I likely in the 70s to die in a car accident. Some other damn thing will most likely get me (that isn't anecdotal either).
Gore-tex was invented in 1969 but was hardly necessary. Wool has always worked extremely well and still does: polyester was pretty good except in northern USA. I lived in the south and wore predominantly cotton: Levi jeans and cotton t-shirts were our uniform in the summer; winter we bought a jacket and lived with it.
In 1971 I bought a used American car with everything on it for $300. My East Indian college roommate loved to ride in it and very quickly got a license and car of his own. I later drove my $300 car from Texas to New York via the Midwest and DC to graduate school. I later drove that car to work and school around DC. I had tools but rarely needed them except for maintenance. The car was extremely reliable and needed only tuneups and tires. I gave it to a friend when I bought another car.
You didn't (and still don't) need a cell phone. It was (and is) easy to get help from strangers.
A car accident can kill you at 35 mph but they usually didn't (and usually don't). Cars are safer now and I appreciate that, but they weren't _that_ unsafe: people would not have driven them otherwise.
You complain about carrying a map and a zip code book - you should still (I do), since your phone or network could fail at any time. But you don't b/c in your heart you believe that you can rely on the kindness of strangers!
Medicine today is not much better than it was back then. Trauma care _is_ improved (the lessons of Vietnam were absorbed). But antibiotics worked better back then than today and other than antivirals and statins, the use of drugs hasn't improved much. As someone once said, doctors got no respect until antibiotics came along and, were they taken away, doctors would not get much respect now.
The remnants of the polio epidemics was still present in students of the 1950s (Salk developed his vaccine in 1952 and I was vaccinated ~1957). I too had classmates with polio braces, but polio in the USA was stopped by the vaccination campaigns before the 1970s.
People didn't die of rabies in the 1970s unless it was untreated.
People didn't die of TB in the 1970s unless it was unattended and/or advanced before treatment.
Smallpox was wiped out and routine immunization halted in 1970. The only cholera pandemics were offshore USA (e.g., the El Tor pandemic in Indonesia->Pakistan in the '70's).
I too carried punch cards (I started in the 60's) and was glad to do so: programming turned into a career. 4 years later in the mid-70's I had a terminal and multiple computers available in a network.
3 TV channels was plenty: I got the news and entertainment too, although after awhile I began to notice TV was turning into something akin to the "Bullshit Web" of today:
https://www.metafilter.com/175703/The-Bullshit-Web
VCRs were about $1000 in 1975 but they were available used for only hundreds of dollars. I have a used one that runs still today! In comparison my first CD player died after 3 years.
Neither discrimination nor bigotry nor prejudice were ubiquitous but they _were_ still present. Your description of prejudice fits the southern USA of the '50's, NOT the '70's.
Indeed my grandparents were small farmers (sharecroppers) and their and their children's (my parents') lives were hard. But the opportunities my parents had during their time were enormous and their lives were rich and memorable.
It probably remains true even today that antibiotics are man's most significant improvement of the last century.
But in summary I find your description of the 70s is off by fully 20 years.