The disparity in explosive force between that first generation of nuclear weapons and the hydrogen weapons under development, and the implications of radioactive fallout, were not fully understood and in any case not acknowledged by government officials. Was civilian protection technically and logistically feasible for this new level of weaponry, and at what cost? Was the United States government obligated to provide this protection for its citizens, whose elected officials formulated nuclear policy and whose taxes funded nuclear production? What role did civil defense have in overall nuclear strategy?Ĭivil defense proposals put forth during the Truman administration generally assumed thermonuclear weapons to be a more extreme version of conventional air warfare, comparable in power to the atomic bombs used at the end of World War II. The question of civil defense-the protection of civilian lives during a nuclear exchange-was passionately debated in the executive and legislative branches of the United States government, with scientists and academics weighing in.

Both countries were forced to confront the unprecedented prospect of sudden, massive losses to their populations. Page from the 'Bert The Turtle Says Duck and Cover' Pamphlet produced by the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) in 1951.Īs Cold War tensions escalated throughout the 1950’s, the United States’ testing of the first hydrogen bomb in 1951 was followed by the development, production, and stockpiling of increasingly powerful nuclear weapons by the US and Soviet Union.

Civil defense fallout shelter sign