As future planners came to realize, individual citizens would not have fallout shelters unless they built them for themselves.īetween 19, Congress funded civil defense at a meager 10 percent of the level Truman requested. The cost of that was clearly impossible and it never got beyond the planning stage. Caldwell, spoke carelessly about providing shelters for every person in the country. The program got off to a poor start when Truman’s civil defense administrator, Millard F. However, politicians and others continued to search for a civil defense solution, their efforts reaching peak intensity in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The defense strategy that ultimately got the United States through the Cold War was deterrence: maintaining sufficient countervailing military power to forestall any temptation for the Soviet Union to attack. Once the hazards were fully understood, the bomb shelters became known as “fallout shelters.” Initially, the structures in which citizens were to take refuge were called “bomb shelters.” The danger from fallout-radioactive particles drifting back to earth-increased significantly in the 1950s with the development of hydrogen bombs, which produced much greater levels of contamination. Small triangles at 6 on the dials of AM radios marked the frequencies for CONELRAD-Control of Electromagnetic Radiation-to which listeners were to tune for civil defense information. In the event of an attack, regular radio stations would stop broadcasting so enemy pilots could not use their signals for navigation. Ground Observer Corps volunteers scanned the sky for hostile aircraft. “Bert ducks and covers, but he has his shelter on his back,” the film said. An animated turtle named Bert urged some New York schoolchildren to follow his example. The FCDA, in cooperation with the National Education Association, produced a film, “Duck and Cover,” in 1951. In December 1950, Truman created the Federal Civil Defense Administration with headquarters in Battle Creek, Mich. The National Security Resources Board called for the building of public shelters in “target areas” and private basement shelters for families and neighborhood groups. Kennedy (D) of Massachusetts fired off a letter to President Truman warning that the nation left itself open to “an atomic Pearl Harbor” by its indifference to civil defense planning. Interest in civil defense came roaring back when the Soviet Union exploded an atomic bomb in 1949.
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