Chapter 49
With the Soviet Union possessing an atomic arsenal that it might burn into United States soil and souls like a biblical curse, the Civil Defense Administration in 1952 decided Americans needed a new way to prepare for megatons of mayhem.
Thanks in part to the industrious espionage of spies Klaus Fuchs and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who had been arrested in 1950 for passing nuclear secrets to the Russians, the Soviet Union exploded an atomic bomb code-named “First Lightning” a year before in 1949. Fearing that this particular lightning would strike twice and probably much more, the government and popular culture took up arms with a strategy of entertainment that encompassed motion pictures and traveling exhibits. Movies like “The Red Menace,” “I Married a Communist,” “I Was a Communist for the FBI,” and “Atomic City” warned us “A chain of terror spreads across a nation that knows nothing of its gathering peril!” Faced with the Department of Defense’s estimate that 70 out of every 100 enemy bombers would get through to their targets, Congress created the Federal Civil Defense Administration in 1950 and attacked the approaching Armageddon with an arsenal of anthropomorphized turtles and weaponized exhibits.
In 1951, the now-classic FCDA film “Duck and Cover” was first presented to an audience of millions of schoolchildren. Written by Raymond Mauer and directed by Anthony Rizzo, the ten-minute film served as the foundation of the duck-and-cover approach to surviving an atomic blast: Bert, the dopey turtle clad in a helmet and bowtie, ambles along peacefully when a monkey with tombstone eyes threatens the tortoise with a lit firecracker suspended from a fishing pole. Bert, more flight than fight, hunkers down and retreats into his shell to survive the discharge.
All kids had to do to survive powerful explosions that, the narrator somberly intones, can “break windows all over town,” was to drop to the floor and wrap their hands over their head. That quick and simple defensive maneuver would help children endure the unpleasant effects of a detonation whose core temperatures might reach between 20 and 150 million degrees Fahrenheit, and whose winds could reach 160 to 500 mph. Easy peasey.
Movies couldn’t do it alone, however. Accordingly, the FCDA contracted with the nonpartisan Valley Forge Foundation to develop a campaign to dramatize what Foundation president Kenneth Wells deemed “Our self-declared enemy.” “The Soviet Union,” he said, “is determined to rule the world . . . [it] is set on smashing our freedom, our ideals, our moral standards, and our religious beliefs. No one knows when its physical violence will crash down on our cities, factories and farms.”
With that Damoclean dagger of catastrophe hovering overhead like drones of a future generation, the FCDA and Valley Forge Foundation sent the Alert America Convoy Program on the road. Consisting of three motorized convoys, they traveled to the convention centers and exhibit halls of nearly all forty-eight states. Ford Motor Co., General Motors Company LLC, and International Harvester Co. donated cars and trucks to the cause. The U.S. Army lent drivers, and the Atomic Energy Commission designed marketing content. The Ad Council—the nonprofit organization that produced public service announcements like “Loose Lips Might Sink Ships” and the Smokey Bear campaign in the 1940s—devised a slogan custom-tailored for a generation of Americans primed for a “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” panic: “It’s the show that may save your life.”
Nicknamed “Paul Revere on Wheels,” the life-saving Alert America roadshow debuted in Washington, D.C., in 1952, offering a two-part presentation that began with fire but certainly did not end in ice: In the first, visitors watched pictures of a typical American town City X transform into an urban wasteland with mushroom clouds flaring overhead, while speakers played the locomotive-loud percussion of an atomic detonation. The words “This Could Be Your City” flashed over the wreckage and rubble. Adjacent exhibits depicted models of cropland and urban buildings razed by the sun-like heat of an atomic bomb. Another booth, titled “Every Bombed City Will Need Help,” was stocked with the drugs and bandages that would be needed to balm the wounded. It was a snapshot of a world turned into an open-casket funeral, where the living would not only envy the dead but also rush to join them.
In the second part, exhibits offered a kind of shelter from the nuclear storm, with information about fallout shelter preparation and radiation detection. Visitors could try out a Geiger counter or watch how a rescue truck operated. Illustrations inspired by Norman Rockwell showed a child kneeling in prayer and a classroom of students reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. While costumed Bert the Turtles roamed the floor, “Duck and Cover” played, along with other examples of nuclear cinema, including “Our Cities Must Fight,” where citizens are urged to volunteer for civil defense programs. Attendees could buy personalized dog tags sporting their name, address, blood type, and religious affiliation for 50 cents, which would be useful for identifying the charred dead. When visitors shuffled out of the exhibit, they could also fill out a card labeled Count Me In, to volunteer for civil defense training.
Courtesy of University of Southern California, on behalf of USC Libraries Special Collections
The convoys drew in more than one million Americans on their tour of eighty-two cities. But the pendulum soon swung the other way with authorities worrying Americans were too preoccupied with the threat of atomic devastation. The government-produced short film “Nuclearosis” warned of this “dread disease.” Its animated narrator (strangely resembling The Great Gazoo of “The Flintstones” cartoon series nearly a decade later) pontificated about a certain type of fixated citizen: “All he can see is a mushroom cloud. He is blinded by the fear of it, deaf from the sound of it. There is a short circuit in his brain. He can only think of the awfulness of the nuclear bomb.”
The government need not have been concerned. Hedonism won out over hysteria. In response to detonating what would be 235 above-ground nuclear devices at the Nevada Test Site, an arid 1,375-square-mile patch of land 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the gambling mecca adopted a philosophy of “When life hands you an avalanche, make sno-cones.” Calendars printed by the city’s Chamber of Commerce listed detonation times and suggested the choicest spots for viewing the radioactive fireworks, some of which could be seen as far away as San Francisco. Women vied for the titles of Miss Atomic Blast, Miss Atomic Bomb, and Miss Atomic Energy. The Desert Inn’s Sky Room granted a sweeping vista from which guests could watch the bombs bursting in air. The Flamingo and the Sands served atomic cocktails (e.g., a compound of vodka, cognac, sherry, and champagne) and hosted overnight Dawn Bomb parties, where guests caroused until the nukes lit up the sky around 4 a.m.
The mania that was the driving force behind the Alert America Convoy Program and atomic tourism decelerated to a slow crawl in 1963 when the Limited Test Ban took effect, moving detonations underground. Almost 2,200 nuclear explosions later, even traveling exhibits telling the tale of a world eternally burning, shredded by wind, and blackened by radiation, could not convince Americans that out of sight should not also be out of mind.