If you look, even today, I believe there's still a couple of them along Sierra Highway.

And on that street, you'll see a large stack of sirens up on a pool.

And these sirens had various different tones and pulsing and wailing.

That as children in elementary school, we did have to

memorize what each one of those things meant, whether there was a nuclear attack or an earthquake

or some other disaster. So as kids, I guess we were a little bit numb, but we really never knew

if it was a drill or a real emergency.

That was the Cold War. That's when there was a great fear of world dominance or attack, nuclear war, all sorts of terrible things. I don't know that the people were highly impressionable or just that the potential for that disaster to occur was so high.

But it led people to do a lot of different things.

It led people to build bunkers in their backyard.

It led to the belief of the Russians having bare bombers.

It led to children practicing a duck and carver, get under a table, go to a shelter.

All the families had a meeting point for when the nuclear war was going to happen.

This is Eric Knutzen, director of advanced projects at the Skunkworks.

Eric grew up in a historical time, in a historical place around remarkable people.

The Antelope Valley in California, where the Skunk Works is located, is nicknamed the

Aerospace Valley for all of the groundbreaking aircraft and technologies developed here throughout history.

It's no wonder Eric pursued a degree in engineering, works at the Skunkworks, and is a pilot himself.

Yeah, I probably didn't realize it at the time that I was around all these heroes.

For example, after I became a pilot, I would just have with my dad's friends go up and do my

biannual review.

It didn't really shock me at that point that the guy that was giving my biannual review

...