Civil Defense Begins At Home

Author : Laura McEnaney
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2020-10-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9781400843558

Get Book

Civil Defense Begins at Home by Laura McEnaney Pdf

Dad built a bomb shelter in the backyard, Mom stocked the survival kit in the basement, and the kids practiced ducking under their desks at school. This was family life in the new era of the A-bomb. This was civil defense. In this provocative work of social and political history, Laura McEnaney takes us into the secretive world of defense planners and the homes of ordinary citizens to explore how postwar civil defense turned the front lawn into the front line. The reliance on atomic weaponry as a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy cast a mushroom cloud over everyday life. American citizens now had to imagine a new kind of war, one in which they were both combatants and targets. It was the Federal Civil Defense Administration's job to encourage citizens to adapt to their nuclear present and future. As McEnaney demonstrates, the creation of a civil defense program produced new dilemmas about the degree to which civilian society should be militarized to defend itself against internal and external threats. Conflicts arose about the relative responsibilities of state and citizen to fund and implement a home-front security program. The defense establishment's resolution was to popularize and privatize military preparedness. The doctrine of "self-help" defense demanded that citizens become autonomous rather than rely on the federal government for protection. Families would reconstitute themselves as paramilitary units that could quash subversion from within and absorb attack from without. Because it solicited an unprecedented degree of popular involvement, the FCDA offers a unique opportunity to explore how average citizens, community leaders, and elected officials both participated in and resisted the creation of the national security state. Drawing on a wide variety of archival sources, McEnaney uncovers the broad range of responses to this militarization of daily life and reveals how government planners and ordinary people negotiated their way at the dawn of the atomic age. Her work sheds new light on the important postwar debate about what total military preparedness would actually mean for American society.

Author : Andrew Paul Burtch
Publisher : UBC Press
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : History
ISBN : 9780774822404

Get Book

Give Me Shelter by Andrew Paul Burtch Pdf

What do you do when a nuclear weapon detonates nearby? During the early Cold War years of 1945-63, Civil Defence Canada and the Emergency Measures Organization planned for just such a disaster and encouraged citizens to prepare their families and their cities for nuclear war. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil defence program was widely mocked, and the public was vastly unprepared for nuclear war. Canada’s civil defence program was born in the early Cold War, when fears of conflict between the superpowers ran high. Give Me Shelter features previously unreleased documents detailing Canada’s nuclear survival plans. Andrew Burtch reveals how the organization publicly appealed to citizens to prepare for disaster themselves -- from volunteering as air-raid wardens to building fallout shelters. This tactic ultimately failed, however, due to a skeptical populace, chronic underfunding, and repeated bureaucratic fumbling. Give Me Shelter exposes the challenges of educating the public in the face of the looming threat of nuclear annihilation. Give Me Shelter explains how governments and the public prepared for the unexpected. It is essential reading for historians, policymakers, and anybody interested in Canada’s Cold War home front.

Author : Laura McEnaney
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 494 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 1996
Category : Electronic
ISBN : WISC:89094336625

Get Book

Civil Defense Begins at Home by Laura McEnaney Pdf

Author : United States. Office of Civil Defense
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 8 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 1968
Category : Electronic
ISBN : MINN:31951D037440026

Get Book

Announcing Civil Defense U.S.A. by United States. Office of Civil Defense Pdf

Author : Marie Cronqvist,Rosanna Farbøl,Casper Sylvest
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2021-12-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9783030842819

Get Book

Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe by Marie Cronqvist,Rosanna Farbøl,Casper Sylvest Pdf

This open access edited collection brings together established and new perspectives on Cold War civil defence in Western Europe within a common analytical framework that also facilitates comparative and transnational dimensions. The current interest in creating disaster-resilient societies demands new histories of civil defence. Historical contextualization is essential in order to understand what is at stake in preparing, devising, and implementing forms of preparedness, protection, and security that are specifically targeted at societies and citizens. Applying the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to civil defence history, the chapters of this volume cover a range of new themes, from technology and materiality to media, memory, and everyday experience. The book underlines the social embeddedness of civil defence by detailing how it both prompted new forms of social interaction and reflected norms and visions of the ‘good society’ in an age where nuclear technology seemed to hold the key to both doom and salvation.

Author : Tracy C. Davis
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 457 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2007-06-27
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780822389637

Get Book

Stages of Emergency by Tracy C. Davis Pdf

In an era defined by the threat of nuclear annihilation, Western nations attempted to prepare civilian populations for atomic attack through staged drills, evacuations, and field exercises. In Stages of Emergency the distinguished performance historian Tracy C. Davis investigates the fundamentally theatrical nature of these Cold War civil defense exercises. Asking what it meant for civilians to be rehearsing nuclear war, she provides a comparative study of the civil defense maneuvers conducted by three NATO allies—the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom—during the 1950s and 1960s. Delving deep into the three countries’ archives, she analyzes public exercises involving private citizens—Boy Scouts serving as mock casualties, housewives arranging home protection, clergy training to be shelter managers—as well as covert exercises undertaken by civil servants. Stages of Emergency covers public education campaigns and school programs—such as the ubiquitous “duck and cover” drills—meant to heighten awareness of the dangers of a possible attack, the occupancy tests in which people stayed sequestered for up to two weeks to simulate post-attack living conditions as well as the effects of confinement on interpersonal dynamics, and the British first-aid training in which participants acted out psychological and physical trauma requiring immediate treatment. Davis also brings to light unpublicized government exercises aimed at anticipating the global effects of nuclear war. Her comparative analysis shows how the differing priorities, contingencies, and social policies of the three countries influenced their rehearsals of nuclear catastrophe. When the Cold War ended, so did these exercises, but, as Davis points out in her perceptive afterword, they have been revived—with strikingly similar recommendations—in response to twenty-first-century fears of terrorists, dirty bombs, and rogue states.

Author : United States. Federal Civil Defense Administration
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 28 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 1952
Category : Civil defense
ISBN : MINN:30000010556136

Get Book

Women in Civil Defense by United States. Federal Civil Defense Administration Pdf

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 36 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 1952
Category : Civil defense
ISBN : IND:30000090350137

Get Book

Women in Civil Defense by Anonim Pdf

Author : Michael Scheibach
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2017-09-25
Category : History
ISBN : 9781476630632

Get Book

Protecting the Home Front by Michael Scheibach Pdf

Formed in 1951, the Federal Civil Defense Administration said that "the importance of women in civil defense can scarcely be overstated." Comprising 70 percent or more of civil defense workers at the height of the Cold War, American women served as FCDA wardens, auxiliary police, nurses, home preparedness advisors, coordinators of mass feeding drills, rescue and emergency management personnel, and in various local, state, regional and national organizations. The author examines the diverse roles they filled to promote homeland protection and preparedness at a time when atomic war was an imminent threat.

Author : United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Operations
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2024-06-10
Category : Civil defense
ISBN : LCCN:61062407

Get Book

Civil Defense by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Operations Pdf

Author : David Monteyne
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 509 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2013-11-30
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781452925431

Get Book

Fallout Shelter by David Monteyne Pdf

In 1961, reacting to U.S. government plans to survey, design, and build fallout shelters, the president of the American Institute of Architects, Philip Will, told the organization’s members that “all practicing architects should prepare themselves to render this vital service to the nation and to their clients.” In an era of nuclear weapons, he argued, architectural expertise could “preserve us from decimation.” In Fallout Shelter, David Monteyne traces the partnership that developed between architects and civil defense authorities during the 1950s and 1960s. Officials in the federal government tasked with protecting American citizens and communities in the event of a nuclear attack relied on architects and urban planners to demonstrate the importance and efficacy of both purpose-built and ad hoc fallout shelters. For architects who participated in this federal effort, their involvement in the national security apparatus granted them expert status in the Cold War. Neither the civil defense bureaucracy nor the architectural profession was monolithic, however, and Monteyne shows that architecture for civil defense was a contested and often inconsistent project, reflecting specific assumptions about race, gender, class, and power. Despite official rhetoric, civil defense planning in the United States was, ultimately, a failure due to a lack of federal funding, contradictions and ambiguities in fallout shelter design, and growing resistance to its political and cultural implications. Yet the partnership between architecture and civil defense, Monteyne argues, helped guide professional design practice and influenced the perception and use of urban and suburban spaces. One result was a much-maligned bunker architecture, which was not so much a particular style as a philosophy of building and urbanism that shifted focus from nuclear annihilation to urban unrest.

Author : United States. Department of Defense
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 28 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 1948
Category : Civil defense
ISBN : RUTGERS:39030039857026

Get Book

A Study of Civil Defense by United States. Department of Defense Pdf

Author : United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Operations
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 1698 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 1956
Category : Civil defense
ISBN : STANFORD:36105117871009

Get Book

Civil Defense for National Survival by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Operations Pdf

Author : Michael Mabee
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2017-10-17
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1974320944

Get Book

The Civil Defense Book by Michael Mabee Pdf

According to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security in 2017, millions of Americans-perhaps the majority of the population-would die if the electrical grid went down for a significant period of time. Not only is this disturbing fact is well known to Congress, it is also well known to America's enemies. The United States today remains extremely vulnerable to a wide variety of man-made and natural threats, such as electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, cyber-attack, geomagnetic disturbance (GMD), terrorism, weather and many other threats. In November of 2017, the FEMA Administrator noted in his testimony to Congress that "we do not have a culture of preparedness in this country." The majority of Americans are unaware of the magnitude of the threats to the electric grid and our communities are completely unprepared. We have seen from recent disasters such as hurricanes Katrina, Maria, Harvey and Irma that communities can be on their own for a long period of time until help arrives - and these are regional disasters where massive outside resources are still available. Here is the fatal flaw of the emergency management system in the United States: it depends on our ability to bring outside resources into a disaster area. But what if the majority of the country was the disaster area? What if cities and towns across the country were on their own for a long period of time? Survival will be a local issue. The cavalry will not be coming. The real key to having prepared and resilient communities lies in the communities having a civil defense plan and being prepared for a worst-case scenario, such as a national-scale power outage. This book is about taking pre-disaster mitigation to the next level, so that your town can be ready for any disaster, large or small. It is possible for a town to survive if the grid goes down long term. But only if a few of its citizens act now. This book takes you through the steps to prepare your town for a worst-case national disaster. And in being prepared for a worst-case scenario, you and your town can be prepared for anything from a minor power outage to a hurricane to an electromagnetic pulse, solar flare or cyber-attack taking out the entire power grid. This is the Civil Defense Book!

Author : Rosemary B. Mariner,G. Kurt Piehler
Publisher : Univ. of Tennessee Press
Page : 482 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : History
ISBN : 9781572336483

Get Book

The Atomic Bomb and American Society by Rosemary B. Mariner,G. Kurt Piehler Pdf

Drawing on the latest research on the atomic bomb and its history, the contributors to this provocative collection of eighteen essays set out to answer two key questions: First, how did the atomic bomb, a product of unprecedented technological innovation, rapid industrial-scale manufacturing, and unparalleled military deployment shape U.S. foreign policy, the communities of workers who produced it, and society as a whole? And second, how has American society's perception that the the bomb is a means of military deterrence in the Cold War era evolve under the influence of mass media, scientists, public intellectuals, and even the entertainment industry? In answering these questions, The Atomic Bomb and American Society sheds light on the collaboration of science and the military in creating the bomb; the role of women working at Los Alamos; the transformation of nuclear physicists into public intellectuals as the reality of the bomb came into widespread consciousness; the revolutionary change in military strategy following the invention of the bomb and the development of Cold War ideology; the image of the bomb that was conveyed in the popular media; and the connection of the bomb to the commemoration of World War II. As it illuminates the cultural, social, political, environmental, and historical effects of the creation of the atomic bomb, this volume contributes to our understanding of how democratic institutions can coexist with a technology that affects everyone, even if only a few are empowered to manage it. Rosemary B. Mariner is formerly Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair and Professor of Military Studies for the National War College. She is currently a lecturer in history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. G. Kurt Piehler is associate professor of history and former director of the Center for the Study of War and Society at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, which hosted the conference that formed the basis of this volume. He is the author of Remembering War the American Way and World War II in the American Soldiers' Lives Series as well as the coeditor, with John Whiteclay Chambers II, of Major Problems in American Military History.