Selective Service · 1-A

The Draft Lottery

December 1, 1969 · Live on CBS · 366 capsules, 366 birthdays
On the night of December 1, 1969, a congressman reached into a glass jar and drew blue plastic capsules — one for every day of the year. The order they came out decided who would be sent to Vietnam. Enter your real birthday and watch the broadcast draw your capsule. Then face the choice 27 million young men faced for real.

If your birthday was drawn early — numbers 1 through 195 — you would almost certainly be called to fight. If your number was high, you were safe. Twenty-seven million Americans watched live as their futures were decided by the order of capsules drawn from a jar.

Enter your real birthday below to find out what would have happened to you.

This is the first ninety seconds of a much longer war.

Drawing your capsule is just the opening. The full Vietnam War Simulation branches across four paths and nine endings — basic training and the village sweep, the censored letter home, the Cu Chi tunnels, the medevac triage, and the Wall. Every decision is logged and auto-graded into your Google Sheet. No accounts, works in any LMS.

Get the full simulation on TPT → The Simulation Lab · Built by a real classroom teacher