Plenty of Americans in reasonably cosmopolitan areas reacted poorly to space-related uncertainty. Grover's Mill[1] is within walking distance of Princeton campus.
People didn't know what to think, and the Soviets were far more secretive of their space program than the Americans were - Their successes were announced after the fact, their failures were quiet. I would not have blamed anyone in rural Siberia for not recognizing a cosmonaut in a spacesuit/jumpsuit as "human".
People didn't know what to think, and the Soviets were far more secretive of their space program than the Americans were - Their successes were announced after the fact, their failures were quiet. I would not have blamed anyone in rural Siberia for not recognizing a cosmonaut in a spacesuit/jumpsuit as "human".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grovers_Mill,_New_Jersey