![]() School-age children received the same message through comic books and a short animated film, both featuring a character named Bert the Turtle.Īny hope of sheltering urban populations in place faded in the mid-1950s, with the introduction of thermonuclear weapons (H-bombs). After President Harry Truman quietly rejected (in 1951) a five-year, $16 billion program to begin building public bomb shelters in major cities, the new Federal Civil Defense Administration shifted its focus to teaching the public to "shelter in place." Pamphlets, traveling exhibits, movies, and a five-part television series urged adult audiences to "duck and cover" at the sound of a warning siren or the sight of a nuclear bomb's flash. Structures capable of withstanding the blast of a nuclear bomb proved, however, to be prohibitively expensive. It never happened-profoundly affected American thought and culture.Įarly civil defense plans, shaped by memories of World War II, focused on building bomb shelters in urban areas. The fear and threat of nuclear devastation-although The yellow civil defense signs posted in every major building and school were a constant reminder to Americans that they were engaged in a new kind of war-the Cold War (1946– 1991). Convinced that preparations made in advance would reduce loss of life during an attack and speed recovery afterward, they made elaborate plans designed to mitigate the effects of nuclear war. Images of great American cities in ruins moved individual citizens and officials at all levels of government to action. Even before they fully understood the devastation wrought at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Americans began to imagine what nuclear attacks on their own cities would be like.
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