Tag Archives | nuclear apocalyse

1966 Personal And Family Survival Guide

By on May 15, 2012 in News 5

Convert you snack bar into a fallout shelter by lowering a false ceiling. Deck out your patio area with a barrier for both fallout protection and privacy for lounging and cookouts. These and more glamorous tips in a 1966 government manual life guide that combined nuclear apocalypticism with suburban living. Via They Kept Everything:

Family Fallout

This handbook is provided to familiarize householders with the overall Civil Defense Program. Those interested in enrolling in the course, “Personal and Family Survival,” should contact their local Civil Defense Director for details.

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Millionaires’ Doomsday Shelter Being Built Below Kansas Prairie

By on April 12, 2012 in News 37

doomsdayA new standard of luxury in apocalypse survivalism? Via the Daily Mail:

These luxury flats, deep in the shaft of an abandoned missile silo, are meant to withstand everything from economic collapse and solar flares to terrorist attacks and pandemics. So far, four buyers have thrown down a total of about $7 million.

Developer Larry Hall is installing an indoor farm to feed 70 people for as long as they need to stay inside. Other floors will be for a pool, a movie theater and a library, and when in lockdown mode there will be floors for a medical center and a school.

And, of course, an elaborate security system and staff will keep marauding hordes out. The condo elevator will only operate if a person’s fingerprint matches its system, Hall said. Cameras will monitor a barbed-wire topped fence and give plenty of warning of possible intruders. Responses can range from a warning to lethal force.

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Duck And Cover: The Citizen Kane Of PSAs

By on July 21, 2011 in News 7

duckandcoverFew films, let alone ones running under ten minutes, have been as frequently referenced, reproduced and satirized as Duck and Cover, yet it is never regarded seriously. Conelrad gives this key piece of cinematic history the treatment it deserves:

We have spent the last two years thoroughly researching DUCK AND COVER’s production history as well as its initial public reception in 1952. Interviews were conducted with living participants involved in the making of the film as well as surviving family members of those key players who had passed away.

Just how did the term “Duck and Cover” become universal shorthand for the paranoid excesses of the Cold War and for every geo-political panic attack since? The film is, after all, the Citizen Kane of American civil defense motion pictures. Clips from this movie are used almost every time a news piece is produced on the 1950′s or the Cold War.

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Nuclear Apocalypse Animation That Scared Ed Sullivan Audiences Still Scares Today

By on June 27, 2011 in News 11

io9 and CONELRAD Adjacent detail a broadcast of the Ed Sullivan Show that “scared the hell out of kids” when a short animation was aired on 27 May 1956. Peter and Joan Foldes’ cartoon, A Short Vision, depicts a nuclear apocalypse, showing the faces of men and animals melting off, the audience off guard when Sullivan shared no warning but this introduction:

“Just last week you read about the H-bomb being dropped. Now two great English writers, two very imaginative writers – I’m gonna tell you if you have youngsters in the living room tell them not to be alarmed at this ‘cause it’s a fantasy, the whole thing is animated – but two English writers, Joan and Peter Foldes, wrote a thing which they called ‘A Short Vision’ in which they wondered what might happen to the animal population of the world if an H-bomb were dropped. It’s produced by George K. Arthur and I’d like you to see it. It is grim, but I think we can all stand it to realize that in war there is no winner.”

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