Author: Laura McEnaney Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400843553 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 238
Book Description
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: Tracy C. Davis Publisher: Duke University Press ISBN: 9780822339700 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 460
Book Description
DIVCultural history of the nuclear civil defense excercises in the US, Canada, and the UK, which emphasizes the performative aspect of the staged drills and evacuations./div
Author: Michael Scheibach Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 1476672121 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 259
Book Description
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: Michael Mabee Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform ISBN: 9781974320943 Category : Languages : en Pages : 196
Book Description
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: Thomas J. Kerr Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 0429725418 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
This book traces the endeavor in U.S. to develop a means of protecting the people from the effects of nuclear war. It shows how the policies that have emerged are as much products of the political process as of weapons technology.
Author: Marie Cronqvist Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 3030842819 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 259
Book Description
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: Edward M. Geist Publisher: UNC Press Books ISBN: 1469645262 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 339
Book Description
The dangerous, decades-long arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War begged a fundamental question: how did these superpowers actually plan to survive a nuclear strike? In Armageddon Insurance, the first historical account of Soviet civil defense and a pioneering reappraisal of its American counterpart, Edward M. Geist compares how the two superpowers tried, and mostly failed, to reinforce their societies to withstand the ultimate catastrophe. Drawing on previously unexamined documents from archives in America, Russia, and Ukraine, Geist places these civil defense programs in their political and cultural contexts, demonstrating how each country's efforts reflected its cultural preoccupations and blind spots and revealing how American and Soviet civil defense related to profound issues of nuclear strategy and national values. This work challenges prevailing historical assumptions and unearths the ways Moscow and Washington developed nuclear weapons policies based not on rational strategic or technical considerations but in power struggles between different institutions pursuing their own narrow self-interests.
Author: Melvin E. Matthews, Jr. Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 0786488506 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 232
Book Description
During the 1950s and early 1960s, school air-raid drills, bomb shelters, and unnerving civil defense films served as constant reminders of the looming threat of nuclear war. Throughout America, a widespread civil defense effort used town meetings, public school educational programs, and the mass media--television, radio, and especially, motion pictures--to mobilize every citizen for a protracted Cold War. This volume explores how American popular culture has portrayed civil defense from mid-twentieth century to the immediate post-September 11 era. With analysis of everything from early government propaganda films and 1950s science fiction films to Happy Days, the Reagan-era TV movie The Day After, and the small-screen nostalgia trend after 9/11, it shows how popular culture reflects American fears and the hope of preparedness.
Author: Michael Mabee Publisher: CreateSpace ISBN: 9781482731217 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 176
Book Description
Millions of Americans—perhaps the majority of the population—would die if the electrical grid went down for a significant period of time. And while this disturbing fact is well-known to Congress, it is also well-known to America's enemies. Little has been done to mitigate the threat. Iran, North Korea, terrorist groups, and others move forward in their capabilities to attack the power grid, and the United States today remains extremely vulnerable. Some individual Americans, known as preppers, have taken steps to prepare their families for such a disaster, but the real key to survival lies in small communities having a civil defense plan. A prepared community has a better chance of survival than a prepared individual. This book is about taking prepping 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 is different from other books on prepping and emergency preparedness. Rather than focusing on individual survival, this book takes you through the steps to create a nonprofit civil defense organization which can help 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 attack taking out the entire power grid.
Author: Laura McEnaney
Author: Tracy C. Davis
Author: Michael Scheibach
Author: Michael Mabee
Author: David Monteyne
Author: Thomas J. Kerr
Author: Marie Cronqvist
Author: Edward M. Geist
Author: Melvin E. Matthews, Jr.
Author: Michael Mabee