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I am a child of the Cold War, and I grew up on TV episodes and movies inspired by the nuclear arms race, from On the Beach (1959) to The Day After (1983). Few productions capture the hysteria of the time more eloquently than “The Shelter,” an episode of the Twilight Zone that first aired on September 29, 1961. Alerted to a possible nuclear attack, a neighborhood panics and turns on the one family who has a fallout shelter, demanding to be let in en masse. The report turns out to be a false alarm and the neighbors apologize, but the damage is done.

Artifacts of the nuclear arms race in the form of government documents and periodicals are accessible at the Library of Virginia. The earliest, issued only a few years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were propaganda aimed at the general public.

The most famous of these was Bert the Turtle Says Duck and Cover. Published by the Federal Civil Defense Administration, it was the comic book companion to the film and was intended for schoolchildren. Bert the Turtle said a lot about nuclear explosions, but nothing about radioactive fallout.

You Can Survive an Atomic Attack did mention radioactive fallout and was published by the Virginia Office of Civilian Defense.

Unfortunately, the author’s understanding of explosions and radiation was puerile.

“YOU CAN SURVIVE AN ATOMIC ATTACK, but in order that you MAY survive, both the Federal and State Offices of Civil Defense are making this effort to impart to the people, certain all-important information. Please realize that when we discuss Atomic energy we don’t want to frighten you in the least. It does not mean because we are dealing with Atomic energy that everybody is going to be killed, anymore that we should think, because we are dealing with electricity, that everybody must go to the electric chair.”

Warren L. MoodyYou Can Survive an Atomic Attack

Suffice it to say, none of the information in this 10-page pamphlet was all-important. Not much better was 27 Questions and Answers About Radiation and Radiation Protection from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.

The theme was, “Snow, rain and fallout. What’s the difference?”

“A degree of radioactivity that might be considered even moderately dangerous would be possible only near the site of an explosion and very soon afterward. And this could occur only if weather conditions were very unfavorable… Actually, all snow and rain that falls increases the natural radioactivity on the earth to some extent, since it precipitates from the air some radioactivity material that, so far as is known, exists everywhere in the world.”

United States Atomic Energy Commission27 Questions and Answers about Radiation and Radiation Protection

The publication of all three pamphlets coincided with the release of The Thing from Another World (1951), and you’ll learn more about radiation from watching Howard Hawks’ science fiction classic than from reading any of them. They were intended not to inform but to allay concerns regarding the nuclear tests at the Nevada Proving Grounds.

Nuclear testing in Nevada and the South Pacific was common in the 1950s and 1960s. The Library provides digital access to the official reports on several such tests, including “Ivy Mike,” the detonation of a nuclear weapon 500 times more powerful than “Fat Man,” the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

Operation Ivy, 1952 from the Defense Nuclear Agency may be accessed through the Library’s catalog. If you are morbidly curious as to the consequences of the detonation of a 10.4 megaton nuclear weapon like “Ivy Mike” over downtown Richmond today, you can check out the NUKEMAP website.

The government belatedly recognized the danger of radioactive fallout. LIFE published an open letter from President Kennedy in its September 15, 1961 issue announcing the construction of public fallout shelters and encouraging the construction of private fallout shelters.

Kennedy initiated the Community Fallout Shelter Program. The program established shelters in the basements of public buildings marked by yellow and black triune signs. The shelters were stocked with supplies and instructional materials such as Fallout Shelter Medical Kit Instructions.

Materials were prepared to appeal to specific groups, such as Members of Organized Labor: How Does This Affect You…?

Kennedy’s letter in LIFE was accompanied by plans for private fallout shelters which the magazine claimed would save 97 percent of the population in the event of a nuclear war. The government also distributed such plans including Fallout Shelter for Six People.

The government distributed plans for fallout shelters for cows too, including Fallout Shelter Stall Barn for 50 Cows. Why not?

Above-ground shelters provide considerably less protection from radiation than underground shelters, and cows exposed to fallout produce contaminated milk. How exactly farmers were supposed to provide fresh fodder and water for 50 cows after a nuclear war is not adequately explained.

The idea that fallout shelters could save 97 percent of the population was prima facie absurd. The number and power of nuclear weapons meant they would be lucky to save 3 percent. The government recognized this and quietly deactivated public fallout shelters in the late 1970s and early 1980s, leaving only the iconic signs in place. I have a reproduction of one on my office wall.

Efforts were made to protect strategic sites against a nuclear strike. Nike-Hercules was a surface-to-air missile designed to detonate a low-yield nuclear weapon amidst an incoming massed formation of Soviet heavy bombers.

Nike-Hercules was deployed worldwide, including Northern Virginia to protect Washington, DC, and in the Lower Tidewater to protect Naval Station Norfolk. The Library has a number of materials from the program such as Commander’s Manual: Hercules Fire Control Crewman.

The problem with Nike-Hercules was that the Soviets did not build massive numbers of heavy bombers, opting to build massive numbers of ballistic missiles instead. Nike-Hercules was a white elephant, and the government had second thoughts about deploying nuclear weapons in residential areas. The missiles were decommissioned and the radar and launch facilities were abandoned by the late 1980s.

MIM-14 Nike-Hercules

United States Government, Public Domain

The artifacts of the nuclear arms race are not only a sobering reminder of the past, but also a wake-up call to the present. Nuclear proliferation and saber-rattling are once again commonplace. Incredibly, Bert the Turtle is back in the conversation. I conclude this post as Rod Serling concluded “The Shelter”: “No moral, no message, no prophetic tract, just a simple statement of fact: for civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized. Tonight’s very small exercise in logic – from the Twilight Zone” – and the shelves of the Library of Virginia.

Header Image Citation

A B57-B American bomber flying by one of the nukes dropped during Operation Hardtack, dubbed the Poplar-1, United States Government, Public Domain

Kenneth Forest

Reference Archivist

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