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?
)

"The World's Largest Shopping Center"

Caption—

The picture looks later that 1954, though the publisher's postal zone (instead of zipcode) would make this pre-1963—

The card is from roughly the same time as this restaurant guide; a fine old (defunct) department store that advertised its food departments and tea rooms in the guide also built this mall. The card image does seem puzzling for the period: I wouldn't have expected it was that early that everyone—even what looks looks like an old guy (left foreground)—was wearing jeans. Certainly not to a "fabulous" mall.

Shifting to the current spirit of retail, there's 2013 post-Thanksgiving good news: "Calm Black Friday: Only 1 Death, 15 Injuries..." Attributed to Big Shopping Day.

Eat Out Often

(Enlarged): logo, Michigan Restaurant Association, from the group's 1968 publication—

Along with restaurant listings and recipes, this 66-page booklet includes a guide to state-wide travel—

Here's a closer look at the cover restaurant's bounty—

On the back cover is—

—a place that's still there, and with new, improved necessities of family fun.

The company's official history is rather funny. There's all that ancestral uprightness of founders William and Emilie Zehnder, yet—

"Prohibition was a conflict... in that alcohol, primarily beer, was part of the culture of Frankenmuth. Many businesses, including Zehnder's and Fischer's (now the Bavarian Inn) sold alcohol to the "right customers". Zehnder's and Fischer's were raided by Federal agents on July 30, 1930. William and Emilie, along with Herman and Lydia Fischer, were arrested and spent the evening in the Saginaw County Jail. Bond for the Zehnder's was set at $5,000 and $8,000 for the Fischer's.

It sure was a painful "conflict," but opportunity knocked, the competition down the street was cleaning up, etc.

As to the other establishments (with or without bootlegging history), I've searched a number of names, but haven't found any that still exist. Or, they only exist in random memorabilia posted by local history buffs.

Sure, restaurants come and go, but this guide also hints at the decline of a state with a once mighty economy. And many of the establishments were in a city that had been the 4th largest city in the country, hitting (says wiki) a population of 1.9 million in 1950.

It happens that I was finishing up these scans around the time Michigan's CEO governor was making his hostile takeover of Detroit's duly elected government.

As many problems as Detroit may have, there clearly are still public assets to be picked off.

But: back to 1968, when it was generally assumed that rising prosperity would lift all—and that was considered a good thing...

Among the departed Michigan institutions are echoes of former commercial glory: a department store that once boasted of having, after Macy's, the country's second largest square footage.

The store is long defunct, along with the services listed in its full-page ads (reduced here). Ads for store eateries—

Food and wine departments—

One-time giants aside, most ads here are for much smaller enterprises, and locals no doubt regretted those closings. After all, who doesn't want to go to a friendly place—

Considering some of Detroit's history—a couple decades before events closer to 1968, the quaint name can't help but also hint at the clientele—

Tastes in entertainment do change; one is aware that the crowds may no longer clamor for a constant supply of organists—

Movies lasted a couple more years at this location; the theater's closing may well have finished off the shop's business—

Fondly remembered by the class of 1960—

This incarnation of the building—

—was in operation from 1945 to 1976. The restaurant located there now has been kind enough to provide a little history and a post card.

A tootling train brought the goods all the way from N'awlins—

—to Ecorse—

Sophisticates could have their appetites teased at—

A couple more places evocative of days gone by—

While it's sad that none of these places have survived, the guide also featured a representative from one particular family business that I am truly delighted to see gone.

Sure, the guy's descendents have no shortage of cash and power, but as of recently, the holding public office branch of the family business is over—and dead for good (or so one can hope)—

1945 Magazine Catalog

A souvenir of the era when department stores sold everything, including books and magazines.

This catalog for 1945 subscriptions would have been published in 1944. The emphasis is on red-white-and-blue, and the continued state of war.

Uncle Sam and "Mrs. Uncle Sam" stand beneath a rendering of the cast-iron entrance to Louis Sullivan's Carson Pirie Scott building.

The story of Mrs. Uncle Sam is on the inside cover.

... She was only a baby when her folks build their first rude log cabin at Jamestown. She was in pigtails when Uncle Sam first began to notice her—that cruel winter at Plymouth. He was ready to pop the question the night Cousin Paul Revere rode so furiously down the road to Lexington...

It continues in this vein, from the couple marrying after Yorktown; "a framed copy of the Bill of Rights...the first picture hung on their walls."

There's the crossing the plains and heading off Indians; then on to the 1860s, when Mrs. Sam went "on the battlefield to nurse [Uncle Sam], and his wounded brothers of the South." Next,

She bought Liberty Bonds with their savings during the first World War. She managed wonderfully all through the depression.
Today, she stands in the front line with Uncle Sam—to defend what they built togehter. She knows he needs her now, as never, never before.
...
And Mrs. Uncle Sam faces this resolutely, serenely and free!

We salute you homemakers—mothers and women of America—for you are Mrs. Uncle Sam.

One magazine on offer:


The war would actually end in the summer of 1945, and Time was already pitching post-war life


War or peace, Time was willing as ever to take "news-words," and "boil them down and point them up and connect them together for you..."

Then, as now, considerately sparing readers the work of thinking for themselves.