Monday, July 11, 2011
Survival
Here are just a few highlights from an Atomic / H-Bomb survival guide book, published in 1956 by the Walsworth Brothers of Marceline, MO (as well as the Federal Civil Defense Administration.) This 150 page+ booklet covers every aspect of a huge scale attack, and teaches you, Mr. Average Citizen, how to not only prepare and survive, but also how to help out after the Earth's been officially obliterated. So don't be a lazy bum, play it smart, check out the Critical TARGET AREAS map (below) ...because in a world where there's only two kinds of people left, do you want to be one who needs help, or one who helps?
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7 comments:
As a child of the cold war myself, I grew up with terror that any day we would be nuked. Now the fear is not of 25 megaton bombs but of subversives with "dirty bombs" devastating smaller areas but still doing a fair bit of damage.
These old books are scary and funny at the same time. The other comment is right, this type of thing still exists in our day, just in a diffent form of bomb. Thanks for posting this!
The home shelters are swank- i just want one for a quiet lounge area.
I know it would seem ironic, but having gone through the Reagan era, 9/11 and complete disillusionment with humanity, let's just go for comfort and style.
Classic, classic stuff
White flight, ladies and gentlemen! I give you the birth of the suburbs. It took barely a decade of looking at downtown neighborhoods labelled with ground zero cross-hairs for those neighborhoods to be completely abandoned to the poor.
I love stuff like this. Sure, I still don't know whether to evacuate or head to the basement. I don't know whether to dig my underground concrete bunker a foot and a half or eighteen stories underground. I do know I should get plenty of staples and put my magnesium bomb buckets up in the attic. I love how these pamphlets reinforce confusion and panic while they are supposedly being calm and informative. "If you are not instantly obliterated by the bomb that will fall right into the middle of your own happy city, you better make sure you have your hose pipe handy!" Thanks! But then again, this mixture of bland domestic practicality and hopeless fireball death is probably quite appropriate for getting us all ready for the thermonuclear apocalypse.
I know it's supposedly about vampires, but I always thought Vincent Price's The Last Man on Earth summed up the prosaic/hysterical feel of these Civil Defense Corps pamphlets perfectly. And speaking of that, I'm heading over to put The Atomic Cafe in my shopping cart right now. It's been way too long since I've seen that.
That's an amazing cover!
Nice range of thoughts and comments here, thanks! Did anyone else's city make the list of TOP 70 CRITICAL TARGET AREAS? St. Louis did! Please share your doom with us if you made the list too.
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