Download or read book Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe written by Marie Cronqvist and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-12-06 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Give Me Shelter written by Andrew Paul Burtch and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do you do when a nuclear weapon detonates nearby? During the early Cold War years of 1945-63, Civil Defence Canada and the Emergency Measures Organization planned for just such a disaster and encouraged citizens to prepare their families and their cities for nuclear war. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil defence program was widely mocked, and the public was vastly unprepared for nuclear war. Canada’s civil defence program was born in the early Cold War, when fears of conflict between the superpowers ran high. Give Me Shelter features previously unreleased documents detailing Canada’s nuclear survival plans. Andrew Burtch reveals how the organization publicly appealed to citizens to prepare for disaster themselves -- from volunteering as air-raid wardens to building fallout shelters. This tactic ultimately failed, however, due to a skeptical populace, chronic underfunding, and repeated bureaucratic fumbling. Give Me Shelter exposes the challenges of educating the public in the face of the looming threat of nuclear annihilation. Give Me Shelter explains how governments and the public prepared for the unexpected. It is essential reading for historians, policymakers, and anybody interested in Canada’s Cold War home front.
Download or read book Civil Defence from the First World War to the Cold War written by Roger J. C. Thomas and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until the 20th century, neither the capacity nor the means to inflict major damage upon the British Isles existed. This situation changed during the First World War, with naval bombardments and aerial bombing of towns and cities by Zeppelin airships and Gotha bombers. These raids demonstrated that no one was immune from attack and that by developing civil defence measures, casualties could be reduced and lives saved. The range of civil defence buildings used in the Second World War was immense, most were built 'for the duration', often utilitarian both in design and materials, but none the less, historically and technologically significant.
Download or read book Neither Dead Nor Red written by Andrew D. Grossman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Bomb shelters and air raid drills to the Cold War rhetoric that justified everything from the interstate highway system to CIA wiretaps, Neither Dead Nor Read provides a fascinating glimpse at life in Cold War America.
Download or read book The Imaginary War written by Guy Oakes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-05 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Duck and cover" are unforgettable words for a generation of Americans, who listened throughout the Cold War to the unescapable propaganda of civil defense. Yet it would have been impossible to protect Americans from a real nuclear attack, and, as Guy Oakes shows in The Imaginary War, national security officials knew it. The real purpose of 1950's civil defense programs, Oakes contends, was not to protect Americans from the bomb, but to ingrain in them the moral resolve needed to face the hazards of the Cold War. Uncovering the links between national security, civil defense, and civic ethics, Oakes reveals three sides to the civil defense program: a system of emotional management designed to control fear; the fictional construction of a manageable world of nuclear attack; and the production of a Cold War ethic rooted in the mythology of the home, the ultimate sanctuary of American values. This fascinating analysis of the culture of civil defense and the official mythmaking of the Cold War will be essential reading for all those interested in American history, politics, and culture.
Download or read book Stages of Emergency written by Tracy C. Davis and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-27 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Bracing for Armageddon written by Dee Garrison and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-30 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Bracing for Armageddon, Dee Garrison pulls back the curtain on the U.S. government's civil defense plans from World War II through the end of the Cold War. Based on government documents, peace organizations, personal papers, scientific reports, oral histories, newspapers, and popular media, her book chronicles the operations of the various federal and state civil defense programs from 1945 to contemporary issues of homeland security, as well as the origins and development of the massive public protest against civil defense from 1955 through the 1980s. At a time of increasing preoccupation over national security issues, Bracing for Armageddon sheds light on the growing distrust between the U.S. government and its subjects in postwar America.
Download or read book Cold War Civil Defense written by Scottie McCullough and published by . This book was released on 2019-07-22 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to Cold War civil defense efforts made by the U.S. federal government. This introduction does not cover what ifs, could have, or might have been of a real nuclear war. The goal of this book is to provide information on civil defense efforts, plans, and preparations made by the federal government over the course of the Cold War.
Download or read book The Imaginary War Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture written by Guy Oakes and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1995-01-05 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Duck and cover" are unforgettable words for a generation of Americans, who listened throughout the Cold War to the unescapable propaganda of civil defense. Yet it would have been impossible to protect Americans from a real nuclear attack, and, as Guy Oakes shows in The Imaginary War, national security officials knew it. The real purpose of 1950's civil defense programs, Oakes contends, was not to protect Americans from the bomb, but to ingrain in them the moral resolve needed to face the hazards of the Cold War. Uncovering the links between national security, civil defense, and civic ethics, Oakes reveals three sides to the civil defense program: a system of emotional management designed to control fear; the fictional construction of a manageable world of nuclear attack; and the production of a Cold War ethic rooted in the mythology of the home, the ultimate sanctuary of American values. This fascinating analysis of the culture of civil defense and the official mythmaking of the Cold War will be essential reading for all those interested in American history, politics, and culture.
Download or read book Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe written by Marie Cronqvist and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Stages of Emergency written by Tracy C. Davis and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-27 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an era defined by the threat of nuclear annihilation, Western nations attempted to prepare civilian populations for atomic attack through staged drills, evacuations, and field exercises. In Stages of Emergency the distinguished performance historian Tracy C. Davis investigates the fundamentally theatrical nature of these Cold War civil defense exercises. Asking what it meant for civilians to be rehearsing nuclear war, she provides a comparative study of the civil defense maneuvers conducted by three NATO allies—the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom—during the 1950s and 1960s. Delving deep into the three countries’ archives, she analyzes public exercises involving private citizens—Boy Scouts serving as mock casualties, housewives arranging home protection, clergy training to be shelter managers—as well as covert exercises undertaken by civil servants. Stages of Emergency covers public education campaigns and school programs—such as the ubiquitous “duck and cover” drills—meant to heighten awareness of the dangers of a possible attack, the occupancy tests in which people stayed sequestered for up to two weeks to simulate post-attack living conditions as well as the effects of confinement on interpersonal dynamics, and the British first-aid training in which participants acted out psychological and physical trauma requiring immediate treatment. Davis also brings to light unpublicized government exercises aimed at anticipating the global effects of nuclear war. Her comparative analysis shows how the differing priorities, contingencies, and social policies of the three countries influenced their rehearsals of nuclear catastrophe. When the Cold War ended, so did these exercises, but, as Davis points out in her perceptive afterword, they have been revived—with strikingly similar recommendations—in response to twenty-first-century fears of terrorists, dirty bombs, and rogue states.
Download or read book Civil Defense Begins at Home written by Laura McEnaney and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2000-07-09 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description
Download or read book Armageddon Insurance written by Edward M. Geist and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2019-10-30 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Civil Defense and the Public written by Ralph L. Garrett and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fallout Shelter written by David Monteyne and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2013-11-30 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1961, reacting to U.S. government plans to survey, design, and build fallout shelters, the president of the American Institute of Architects, Philip Will, told the organization’s members that “all practicing architects should prepare themselves to render this vital service to the nation and to their clients.” In an era of nuclear weapons, he argued, architectural expertise could “preserve us from decimation.” In Fallout Shelter, David Monteyne traces the partnership that developed between architects and civil defense authorities during the 1950s and 1960s. Officials in the federal government tasked with protecting American citizens and communities in the event of a nuclear attack relied on architects and urban planners to demonstrate the importance and efficacy of both purpose-built and ad hoc fallout shelters. For architects who participated in this federal effort, their involvement in the national security apparatus granted them expert status in the Cold War. Neither the civil defense bureaucracy nor the architectural profession was monolithic, however, and Monteyne shows that architecture for civil defense was a contested and often inconsistent project, reflecting specific assumptions about race, gender, class, and power. Despite official rhetoric, civil defense planning in the United States was, ultimately, a failure due to a lack of federal funding, contradictions and ambiguities in fallout shelter design, and growing resistance to its political and cultural implications. Yet the partnership between architecture and civil defense, Monteyne argues, helped guide professional design practice and influenced the perception and use of urban and suburban spaces. One result was a much-maligned bunker architecture, which was not so much a particular style as a philosophy of building and urbanism that shifted focus from nuclear annihilation to urban unrest.
Download or read book After the Bomb written by Matthew Grant and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Civil defence was an integral part of Britain's modern history. Throughout the cold war it was a central response of the British Government to the threat of war. This book is the first history of the preparations to fight a nuclear war taken in Britain between the end of the Second World War and 1968"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Protecting America written by Department of Defense and published by . This book was released on 2018-03-10 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Because the Cold War era (1945-1991) is so recent, and the universe of potentially related properties is so vast, relatively few such properties have been identified, designated as National Historic Landmarks, or listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The majority of properties are fewer than fifty years old, and many have been demolished as sites have been deactivated or have been so altered as to be lacking in sufficient integrity for designation or listing. Although a few surveys have been made and several historic contexts have been written, there is an urgent need for more because the resources are disappearing. The historic contexts section of this study is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the origins and evolution of the Cold War from World War II until the death of Josef Stalin in 1953. This section discusses the ideological differences between the two principal adversaries, the dawn of the atomic age, and the weapons systems that each side developed. The second part concentrates on the Cold War at its coldest, as the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to settle into a period of endless provocations and proxy wars and the threat of nuclear annihilation often seemed likely to become a reality. By the end of this period, both sides had come to accept that matters could not be allowed to continue in these patterns, that a new way of dealing with each other had to be found. Detente was the first step. The third part brings the history of the Cold War to its conclusion, from the end of the Vietnam War and the beginnings of a thaw in relations because of presidential diplomacy, the rise of dissent in the Soviet Union (especially in Eastern Europe), and the final collapse of the Soviet economic and political structure. This historic context should enable the researcher to understand the basic developments and the ways in which the weapons systems and defense programs of the United States were affected by international affairs and the political and military challenges of the Cold War era. Although the Cold War touched virtually every aspect of life in the United States and abroad, the principal focus of this theme study is on the types of sites and resources described in Section 7210 of H.R. 146. Other important themes outside the scope of this study could be mentioned only briefly here-the home front, the influence of consumerism, the nuclear weapons complex, the civil defense system, the antiwar movement, and the movements for civil rights and other forms of social change, to name but a few. It is suggested that they be considered for future studies related to the Cold War.
