Survival Under... Attack

Reprint of a federal booklet, with added illustrations and local content. (A scan of the original booklet's text is here.)

The original's cover—

SURVIVAL UNDER ATOMIC ATTACK
THE OFFICIAL U.S. GOVERNMENT BOOKLET

Part of the front matter—

Executive Office of the President
National Security Resources Board
Civil Defense Office
NSTB Doc. 130
UNITED STATES
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON: 1950

The federal booklet has a notice that's also on the back of the Detroit version—

Permission is hereby automatically granted to any responsible organization, institution, individual or concern which wishes to republish this booklet for free distribution, legitimate promotional purposes or for sale.

In reproducing the booklet, however, advertising, promotional material, art work, and typographical styling should conform to the tenor of the text.

Other back cover detail of the Detroit booklet includes a word from the sponsor—

Here's the fine print (and only sign of the booklet's date)—

"DETROITS 250 ANNIVERSARY 1701-1951
1881-1951 HUDSONS 70-YEAR"

Front matter added in Michigan includes names of the military, police and political dignitaries on the state Civil Defense council, a forward by Governor G. Mennen Williams, and a call for CD volunteers.

This is followed by the Feds' Cold War boilerplate text, which urged readers to "KILL THE MYTHS," to learn "SIX SURVIVAL SECRETS FOR ATOMIC ATTACKS," and so on. Some samples of bland reassurance on what to expect when the big one dropped—

WHAT ARE YOUR CHANCES?

WHAT ABOUT BURNS?

Among the practical tips offered—

Take Cover in the Cellar; Upper Floors May Collapse.

Avoid Getting Wet...

Change Outer Garments After Leaving Contaminated Area.

By whatever combination of dumb luck and (eventual) diplomacy happened, we never needed to test these theories.

A few years ago I read this interesting look at post-war Civil Defense planning. The National Security Act of 1947 established institutions to enable a process of continuous civilian, economic, and military mobilization. Andrew Grossman writes that what was aimed at the public used "a sophisticated version of 'communication science' developed during World War II..."

For decades it's been easy to mock the absurdity of the CD efforts (for example, here, and at that blog's links). Grossman's book instead focuses on the seriousness of official planning for a World War III expected to be fought with nuclear weapons. But Grossman also acknowledges that planners at the highest levels—

... distrusted the very social order they were defending... These "wise men" of American foreign policy believed that postwar consumerism, combined with the kind of democracy that was practiced in the United States, would not generate the kind of citizen necessary to combat what was known as "Red Fascism."

To counteract its perceived softness the post-war public had to be made—in Grossman's words—"the consumer of the home front mobilization process." The civil defense planners' target—the growing middle-class that was relocating to suburbs—were also the consumers driving the post-war economy. Not coincidentally, suburbanites were also likely to have space for installing fallout shelters.

Grossman compares Cold War civil defense planning with the late twentieth century focus on terrorism. Of this (late 1990s?) chart—

—Grossman notes the threats to civil liberties inherent in a "hydra-headed bureaucratic planning structure."

As it happens... his book was published August 2001—just around the time of this.

The next month—Presto!—we're at "war," without end.

Oh well... after World War II we got ourselves, in Gore Vidal's words (Screening History), a "military-industrial-political combine that has locked us all up inside a National Security State and has thrown away the key."

The Reds never launched an atomic attack on Detroit, after all. Though with the 1966 accident here, Detroit and vicinity may have had a near miss.

Hudson's met its end the capitalist way: a move to the suburbs, change of ownership and eventual closing. The company's historic downtown store was leveled—not by bombs, but by implosion (1998).

The fate of the city itself is another story, currently in the re-writing. Much like the Cold War, myths are created to support the agendas of moneyed power. Not only is this the perfect opportunity to starve public pensions, there is land for the grabbing, and the big chance to get private hands on all sorts of things that have been held in public trust until now.

A different context, yet prophetic?
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