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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School

2018 Nuclear Spaces: Simulations of in Film, by the Numbers, and on the Atomic Battlefield Donald J. Kinney

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COLLEGE OF ARTS AND

NUCLEAR SPACES:

SIMULATIONS OF NUCLEAR WARFARE IN FILM,

BY THE NUMBERS, AND ON THE ATOMIC BATTLEFIELD

By

DONALD J KINNEY

A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

2018 Donald J. Kinney defended this dissertation on October 15, 2018. The members of the supervisory committee were:

Ronald E. Doel Professor Directing Dissertation

Joseph R. Hellweg University Representative

Jonathan A. Grant Committee Member

Kristine C. Harper Committee Member

Guenter Kurt Piehler Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

ii

For Morgan, Nala, Sebastian, Eliza, John, James, and Annette, who all took their turns on watch as worked.

iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the members of my committee, Kris Harper, Jonathan Grant, Kurt Piehler, and Joseph Hellweg. I would especially like to thank Ron Doel, without whom none of this would have been possible. It has been a very long road since that afternoon in Powell's City of Books, but Ron made certain that I did not despair. Thank you.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract...... vii

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2. NUCLEAR WARGAMES: 1945 TO 1962 ...... 14

Introduction: The Live Broadcast of an Atomic ...... 14 The Atomic Battlefield: Simulations of Nuclear ...... 18 Baselines: , , and ...... 18 and the Ghost Fleet...... 22 Operation Buster-Jangle and Exercise Desert Rock ...... 30 Operation Tumbler-Snapper and Desert Rock IV...... 33 Operation Upshot-Knothole and Desert Rock V...... 37 and Desert Rock VI ...... 42 and Desert Rock VII and VIII...... 44 The End of Desert Rock...... 46 Survival City: Simulations of Nuclear War ...... 47 The First Effects Tests 1951 - 1952 ...... 48 Doorstep and Cue: Simulates Disaster...... 51 Operation Alert: Rehearsals for Doomsday ...... 56 CoG: Government Rehearsals for Surviving Disaster ...... 69 The Spectacle of Continuity...... 70 Codifying Continuity...... 73 Questioning Continuity ...... 76 Conclusion: Tiny Armageddons ...... 82

3. NUCLEAR WAR ON FILM: THE END OF CIVILIZATION IN FOUR PHASES...... 85

Introduction: Dress Rehearsal for a Disastrous Performance ...... 85 Nuclear War on Film vs. Nuclear Anxiety in Film ...... 87 The Structure of ...... 89 Escalation: The Inescapable Momentum of Doom ...... 90 Preparation in the Age of Civil Defense...... 91 Without Reason or Warning: Popular Film to the 1980s...... 101 Exploring Escalation in the Films of the 1980s...... 104 Launch: Short Circuits in the Doomsday Machine...... 112 Strike: Duck, Cover, Protect, Survive...... 120 American Civil Defense: ...... 121 Facing the Facts: and Journalism...... 129 Dramatic Film at the Height of the ...... 131 Aftermath: From Hiroshima to the Erasure of History...... 134 Survivable: The Films of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...... 135 Fallout and Radiation...... 138 Social Collapse, Environmental Collapse, and ...... 141

v The Erasure of History...... 146 Conclusion: Imagining the Unimaginable...... 152

4. NUCLEAR WAR BY THE NUMBERS...... 154

A Secret Subcommittee...... 154 An Optimistic View in 1953...... 156 A Second Subcommittee in 1954 ...... 158 So Let’s Go On: The Killian Report and Seeds of Doubt ...... 161 A Human Limit: NESC at the End of the Eisenhower Years...... 166 Not Just Tragic, But Preposterous ...... 175 11 Copies Destroyed: Kennedy’s First NESC Briefing ...... 177 Stalemate: Preemption is Not Possible...... 185 Institutional : The Last Days of the NESC...... 188 Conclusions: A Window on War...... 191

5. CONCLUSION ...... 193

Three New Ideas ...... 193 Rehabilitating Civil Defense ...... 193 A Canon of Atomic Cinema...... 195 The Interplay of the Micro and Macro ...... 197 Executive Summary...... 199 Chapter Two: Live Fire and Civil Defense Drills...... 200 Chapter Three: Atomic Cinema ...... 203 Chapter Four: Analytics and Nuclear War ...... 205 Future Work ...... 208 In Closing: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Revisited...... 210

References...... 212

Biographical Sketch ...... 236

vi ABSTRACT

In one sense, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in constitute the only nuclear war ever fought. Because of this, information on the wide breadth of topics pertinent to warfare— tactics, strategies, weapons effects, etc.—remained scant. In an effort to learn how to fight and win, and later to fight and survive, a nuclear war, the military, civil defense agencies, and the public more generally, undertook a project of “virtualizing” nuclear war through , civil defense exercises, film and television representations, and the act of live-fire atmospheric nuclear testing from 1945 to 1963. In this way, many small nuclear have been fought since 1945, in pieces, in slices, and in controlled environments that have provided a window onto the possible realities of the broader catastrophe of nuclear war.

vii CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

It is a warm day in April 2010 as I stand on a paved river walkway at lunchtime, watching a gaggle of meticulously uniformed Japanese schoolgirls pass by in an ordered single file, tittering and exuberant. Benches are placed at intervals at the edge of the concrete and stone embankment which constrains the tidal ebb and flow of the Motoyasu River. On these benches, a few salarymen sit eating lunches, tourists rest and photograph themselves, and a few Westerners consult unfurled brochures and gesture uncertainly to various points around them. Over the course of my week-long stay, the cherry trees would blossom, the home-team Toyo Carp would win six runs to five against the Yakult Swallows, and life would proceed peacefully and normally for this bustling city of 1.2 million. Also on the bank of this river, beyond the walking path, past a row of hedges and over a low black iron fence, a solitary ruin of the world’s first nuclear war slumps behind the backs of those lunchtime idlers and seems to go wholly unnoticed by the schoolgirls and others passing by. This is Hiroshima of the 21st century. In stone and twisted , the skeletal remnant of the Genbaku Domu—the Atomic Bomb Dome—stands silent watch over the city which grew out of the ashes of the Hiroshima before. All around this somber riverside memorial are cafes and busy downtown streets that betray nothing of the legacy of that morning of 6 August 1945 when the world’s second nuclear detonation incinerated the largely wood and paper structures of the city and took the lives of many tens of thousands in a single pulse of intense destructive force. This dome is not the only physical reminder of the atomic bombing that still exists in Hiroshima, but it is surely the most iconic. Scattered around the city are a handful of other buildings that survived, almost all of them returned to uses other than memorials. Today their sturdy granite structures are nested among concrete, steel and glass and only the style of their architecture and the occasional small memorial plaque marks them as witnesses. Throughout the center of the city can be found the occasional Hibakujumoku—trees that survived the atomic bomb. Despite the blast and , these survivors, burned and broken, lived to bloom again. In the photographs of the post-atomic wasteland, some of these trees can be seen, standing starkly and bare against the wreckage that reaches to the distant

1 horizon. Today, small placards identify these living memorials that have remained unmoved as the city rebuilt around them. Look a little closer and there are still more small reminders and remainders. The Motoyasu River itself remained unchanged by the bomb. It flows as it did in 1945 and seems to hold the lingering memory of the injured who made their way to its brackish waters to sooth the pain of their and then, weak and dying, drowned as the tide rose and carried the bodies into the delta. The river yields physical reminders as well. Fractured granite chunks of façade and scorched roof tiles from the Atomic Bomb Dome are regularly recovered from the mud at low tide. In recent years, a group from Hiroshima University undertook the project of recovering debris from the riverbed and dispersing it to Universities and organizations around the world to encourage understanding of nuclear issues.1 Visitors with a sharp eye and less high minded motives can easily find shards of tile on the riverbank to spirit away as souvenirs. Also in Hiroshima are those of a certain age who survived and endured and then remained, though always fewer. In 2015, the year of the 70th anniversary of the bombings, the average age of the 183,000 survivors rose to just over 80.2 The powerful testimonials of these —a term which refers to people exposed to the bomb and has often been used in a derogatory sense over the last seven decades—provide vivid and horrifying details about the results of the bombing on the ground, the injured, the dead, the suffering as they struggled to escape the consuming firestorm. Their legacy can be found in the histories they have recorded, the rare medical information they have provided to researchers as unwilling atomic test subjects, and as an enduring voice speaking out poignantly and forcefully against any future use of nuclear weapons. A short walk away from the river, beyond the shaded paths of the Atomic Bomb Dome Memorial, a narrow side street leads to an intersection situated among multistory concrete buildings, as innocuous in appearance now as the was before the bomb fell. There is not very much traffic here, as it sits two blocks south of the Aioi Dori, a main thoroughfare that crosses the t-shaped Aioi Bridge. It was that bridge that was the designated aiming point for the ’s bombardier, a

1 “Hiroshima River Still Yields Debris on 100th Anniversary of A-Bomb Dome’s Completion,” Kyodo News, The Times, 6 April 2015. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/04/06/national/history/hiroshima- river-still-yields-debris-100th-anniversary-bomb-domes-completion/#.WLSA-1XyvDc 2 Justin McCurry, “Hiroshima Survivors Remember,” The Lancet, volume 386, issue 9992, 417-418.

2 landmark clearly visible from altitude that formed the better part of a crosshair. The Aioi Bridge, however, is not where the bomb ended up. Crosswinds carried the 9,700 pound (4,400kg) “” bomb nearly 900 feet (275 meters) to the east where it detonated 1,900 feet above the Shima Hospital, there in that narrow side street where I now find myself. The hospital was completely destroyed in the blast, but the steadfast founder, Dr. Kaoru Shima, who had been away for the day, was spared. He returned immediately to Hiroshima to treat the wounded and eventually rebuilt the hospital on the same spot in 1948. Today that hospital is run by his grandson. The building is modern and blue. Against a high and windowless concrete wall is a waist- high block of granite with an affixed plaque. It draws no attention to itself and several people hurry past on the sidewalk without taking any note. Etched on the plaque is a photograph attributed to the U.S. Army. Below, text is provided in Japanese and English. It is coldly factual:

Hypocenter. Carried to Hiroshima from Island by the Enola Gay, a US Army B-29 , the first atomic bomb used in the history of humankind exploded approximately 600 meters above this spot. The city below was hit by heat rays of approximately 3,000 to 4,000C along with blast wind and radiation. Most people in the area lost their lives instantly. The time was 8:15 a.m., August 6 1945.

The photograph depicts the scene looking north from the hypocenter. A piece of a stone doorway is twisted amid rubble. In the distance, the large torii gate at Hiroshima’s Gokoku Shrine still stands miraculously among the ruins. It is a scene of near total devastation, and save for these few recognizable forms in black and white, there is no shape or hint of habitation in the photograph. I look up the street to orient myself, standing the way the Army photographer would have at the leveled hospital. Where the shrine gate stood is now the site of the First Hiroshima Municipal Stadium, home of the Toyo Carp baseball team. Built in 1957 on the old shrine grounds, it has recently been demolished in favor of the new and improved Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium two away. To my left, 30 feet from the hypocenter, is another medical office and an electronics store. Behind me, 100 feet from the hypocenter, is a Pilates and yoga studio called “Studio Beehive.” On the corner is a 7-Eleven. The memory of the bomb is everywhere in Hiroshima, and yet it is nowhere. The city is vibrant and alive. It survived and endured. It thrives. And so what good does the city serve—beyond

3 its silent memorials, the horrifying relics collected in museums, the photographic evidence of utter catastrophe—when one warm day in April, a tourist needs a map to locate evidence that this was once the site of a nuclear war? Certainly there is good in the reminder it serves, as a cautionary tale, as the story of a dark day in the long history of warfare and violence, as a story of survival. Absolutely it is these things. Hiroshima, and its partner in atomic annihilation, Nagasaki—two cities now forever bound by their suffering—are essential to the collective human story. In their silent memorials and their museum collections, they maintain artifacts that tie the present to the past and evoke a common humanity—clocks stopped at 8:15, tattered clothing, scorched personal effects, and most gruesomely, the preserved keloid scars of victims. This, however, only serves to remind and caution. This is insufficient. The flaw in using Hiroshima as an example of nuclear war is that it is a story of survival, recovery, and renewal in the face of ultimate devastation. And today, the city thrives. Hiroshima is too often used as a metric for destruction. In the earliest years of the Cold War, when the U.S. stockpile of weapons largely resembled the Mark 3 “” bomb used on Nagasaki (21 kilotons) and, through an effective program of , the Soviet bomb would be a near exact duplicate of the Fat Man, it made sense to speak of the destructive force of atomic weaponry as multiples of “Hiroshimas.” The name not only became a proxy for yield, but held the implication, at least in the public eye, that the yield equated to destructive power which could somehow be understood through those images of devastation, horrifying as they were, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. —conducted by the U.S. at Eniwetok Atoll in 1951—tested new weapon designs and produced shot “Easy” which yielded three Hiroshimas, shot “Dog” at five Hiroshimas, and shot “George” at a massive 15 Hiroshimas. At which point, already in mid-1951, the comparison began to diverge from the human capacity to cognize destructive force. What would 15 Hiroshimas really look like? A linear scale of devastation? Logarithmic? Would the damage be distributed at the same relative gradient as a single Hiroshima but multiplied? What are we to make of a further comparison, in October 1952 when the United States detonated the first thermonuclear device, yielding 693 Hiroshimas, or in 1954 when an accident of physics resulted in the 1000 Hiroshimas of “.” The largest of all nuclear weapons ever tested was a Soviet device in October 1961 that reached a total yield of 3,800 Hiroshimas. The concept continues to be employed even in non-nuclear contexts to the point of absurdity, as illustrated by a 2017 BBC News story in which the K-Pg —the that ended the reign of the dinosaurs—is described as

4 yielding 10 billion Hiroshimas.3 (If one struggles to appreciate the magnitude of the destruction at Hiroshima, it is certainly a greater struggle to appreciate the magnitude of the number ten billion). Perhaps there is value in the sheer absurdity of the comparison, or the impossibility of comprehending what thousands (or indeed, billions) of Hiroshimas would mean, but here the usefulness of these multiples ends. When the destruction of the bomb reached such a scale as to be unimaginable, it could be argued that rational minds might conclude that the use of the bomb would become unimaginable in turn. As this work will show, that line of reasoning was true at least for leaders such as Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Churchill, and eventually for the public generally. A calculation of raw destructive power in terms of “Hiroshimas” becomes a single, largely useless dimension of the broader understanding of what is really meant by nuclear war. So how can one fully comprehend the impact of such a war, with the collapse of economies, the ruin of nation states, the poisoning of the environment, and the potential inability to recover from the conflict, when our sole examples of nuclear war are two Japanese cities that have, since their destruction, through planning, aid, and a general culture of resilience, become bustling metropoli? The answer to that question is the thesis of this work: it is necessary to create a new species of virtual wars that can explore each terrifying turn of events without ever actually pushing the proverbial button. * * * Throughout the Cold War, near countless nuclear conflicts were fought in this way to try to answer these essential questions. They were fought on paper, through careful analysis of intelligence and technical capabilities, in think tanks, in the Pentagon and in the White House. They were fought on land and by the world’s in wargames that sought to understand how a nuclear war might really be conducted, utilizing real military hardware exposed to very real nuclear weapons. They were fought in cities and towns throughout the United States in meticulously orchestrated civil defense exercises designed to acclimate populations to the possibilities of nuclear attack, survival, destruction, and reconstruction. And they were fought in literature and on film, produced by governments to calm, educate, and prepare, and in popular culture to act as seeds of thought and protest. For decades, these virtual nuclear wars raged to help populations and their leaders move beyond the limiting scope of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki paradigm and more fully comprehend what nuclear war would mean as the Cold War raged on.

3 Jonathan Amos, “Dinosaur Asteroid Hit ‘Worst Possible Place,’” and Environment, BBC News, 15 May 2017. 5 With the Trinity test, the world was ushered into the nuclear age. With the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world was dragged into the age of nuclear warfare. It was with that revelation that humankind began to ask exactly what that might mean. It was a question nearly impossible to answer with only three datasets in 1945—and just two of those really having anything at all to do with the truly destructive power of nuclear weapons of war. What power did these weapons have to destroy life and property, infrastructure and economies, and whole nation states? Moreover, what might it mean that this destruction could be wrought not in a matter of years, as had been the case in II, but in weeks or days, and as stockpiles grew and delivery expanded, perhaps only a few frantic hours in some hypothetical pre- nuclear scenario. The destruction of entire nations and populations—what had been the business of years of wartime struggle—could now be perpetrated quickly and efficiently and many times over in a single blow. World War II saw the near total mobilization of belligerent nations—both in military mobilization and the engagement of civilian human resources in wartime production. This “” (as had been articulated by German General Erich von Ludendorff in his memoir of , Der Totale Krieg [The Total War]), blurred the lines between military and civilian targets and brought non- into the line of fire. With the advent of the Cold War, General Curtis LeMay, commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, embraced the concept in a nuclear-armed world. In 1949, LeMay laid out his plan for a nuclear war against the in which “there must be no ceiling, no boundaries, no limits to our air power.”4 This concept of a total nuclear war in which military and civilian targets would be obliterated in equal measure became a defining aspect of the threat. The ever-condensing timelines for destruction and the increasing magnitude of catastrophe applied to everyone in equal measure—generals and , politicians and policy makers, and sitting idly on a bench in the shade of a Kansas City park. Every strand of society was threatened by the dawn of the age of nuclear war. In the documentary film, Fog of War, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara recalls, “24 hours a day, 365 days a year for 7 years as Secretary of Defense, I lived the Cold War....Cold War? Hell, it was a hot war!”5 As surely as McNamara lived and fought the Cold War as Secretary of Defense under two presidents through his actions and policy positions, so did everyone else, either

4 Gerard J. DeGroot, The Bomb: A Life (Harvard University Press, 2005), 153. 5 The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, film, directed by Errol Morris, distributed by Columbia TriStar Home Video, 2003. 6 through occasional air raid drills, through making a choice to build a family , or even in passivity, by simply being a potential target in a hypothetical nuclear war. The threat was enormous and pervasive and touched nearly every aspect of American life. With such a threat came a drive to understand. With datasets so limited and the stakes so monumental, not only presidents and advisors, generals and admirals, but all of society set out on a project to recognize, and then fully comprehend, the potential realities of nuclear war.6 Most broadly, this is a work on nuclear issues and shifts in nuclear planning, policy, and international diplomacy. Many works have addressed this realm of thought, particularly with regard to nuclear strategy and foreign policy in the first half of the Cold War. Without the underlying question—what do we do with these things now that we have them?—the issues raised in this work would not exist. The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb by Gar Alparovitz establishes the fundamental policy dilemma in the earliest days of the nuclear age—a complex moral and military issue that would never go away and would not only possess military planners, but the public generally. Henry Kissinger’s Does America Need a Foreign Policy?: Towards a Diplomacy for the 21st Century, exists at the opposite end of the conflict and offers a retrospective on international diplomacy a decade after the end of the Cold War and a view for the future of nuclear weapons and their use as a tool of policy. John Lewis Gaddis provides a broader overview of the interplay of international diplomacy and nuclear arms in Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy, as well as We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Gaddis’ The Cold War: A New History, published in 2006, offers a fresher retrospective on international diplomacy during this period. Specific to the application of nuclear weapons in diplomacy, particularly in the earliest years of the Cold War, is

6 Many works have addressed these issues, more than can be detailed here. Prior works on fallout shelters have focused on local practices rather than highest-level planning; see for instance JoAnne Brown, “A Is for Atom, B Is for Bomb: Civil Defense in American Public Education, 1948-1963,” The Journal of American History 75, no. 1 (1988): 68-90; Laura McEnaney, Civil defense begins at home: meets everyday life in the fifties (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Andrew D. Grossman, Neither dead nor red: Civil defense and American political development during the early Cold War (: Routledge, 2002); Kenneth D. Rose, One Nation Underground: The fallout Shelter in American Culture (New : NYU Press, 2004); for larger perspectives, see scholarship discussed in footnote 9 as well as Nina Tannenwald, “Stigmatizing the Bomb: Origins of the Nuclear Taboo,” International Security 29, 4 (2005): 5-49; and Odd Arne Westad, “The New International History of the Cold War: Three (Possible) Paradigms,” Diplomatic History 24, 4 (2000): 551-565. Nuclear war is touched on explicitly only lightly in just a few contributions to the classic introduction to US foreign policy, even if nuclear anxieties loom large; see Robert Jervis, “Theories of International Relations,” 9-24; Fredrik Logevall, “Domestic Politics,” 151-167; and Penny M. Von Eschen, “Memory and the Study of US Foreign Relations,” 304-316; all in Frank Costigliola and Michael J. Hogan, eds., Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, third edition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). A helpful recent overview is Melvyn P. Leffler, “9/11 and the Future of American Foreign Policy,” International Affairs 79, 5 (2003): 1045- 1063. 7 Gregg Herken’s The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb and the Cold War, 1945 to 1950, in which he explores the decisions surrounding the use of the first atomic as political bargaining chips. Policy and diplomacy were also determined by the shifting sands of science and engineering during the Cold War. To that end, Norman Friedman’s The Fifty Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War presents a view of strategy and diplomacy that is essential for understanding many of the shifts in reasoning by policy-makers that had cascading effects throughout society. Dietrich Schroeer also provides a discussion of the political and policy issues of the Cold War integrated with scientific and technical issues in Science, , and the .7 This work is also a cultural history of the Cold War, and as such will examine a range of interrelated (and sometimes seemingly unrelated) topics. Among these are the era of atmospheric nuclear testing and the cultural representations and interpretations thereof, representations of film and literature and the dialogue between nuclear realities and those interpretations, and the attempt to virtualize nuclear war through data analysis and the way this analysis became influential. An important study of Cold War culture in the United States can be found in Paul Boyer’s By the Bomb’s Early : American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the , a sweeping account of American culture at the beginning of the Cold War which incorporates a wide range of cultural artifacts in its analysis, describing a kind of “boom and bust” cycle of concern and apathy over nuclear weapons in American society, though not offering a cause-and-effect relationship between these cultural artifacts and political engagement. A similarly far-reaching study is Stephen J. Whitfield’s The Culture of the Cold War, which surveys the Cold War landscape, covering the politicization of culture, the integration of religion into the political discourse, and—important to this work—the interrelationship of Cold War politics with film and television, though it is only one piece of a much broader view. A particularly relevant work is Allan M. Winkler’s Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom. In it, Winkler argues that the creation of concerned organizations such as the Federation of Atomic Scientists and the publication of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists inspired artistic representations of the threat of nuclear war in film, television and literature, which

7 Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (New York: Vintage, 1996); Henry Kissinger, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002); John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: University Press, 1986); John Lewis Gaddis, Now We Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: , 1997); John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Press, 2006); Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb and the Cold War, 1945-1950 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Norman Friedman, The Fifty Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007); Dietrich Schroeer, Science, Technology, and the Arms Race (New York: Wiley, 1984). 8 informed the public and in turn redirected the public discourse against nuclear weapons. This, in turn, eventually altered government policy.8 Winkler’s assertion certainly represents a valid vector for change, and the arts were essential in moving public opinion (and one of the pillars of this work), but the hands-on participation of the public began to move opinion as well—away from trust in the government and civil defense and toward a more politicized antinuclear stance. By “hands-on” I mean both in the active sense, such as being a party to military exercise, air raid drills, and other civil defense exercises, and in the passive sense, such as witnessing atmospheric nuclear testing or being exposed to the fallout from that testing. Stages of Emergency: Cold War Nuclear Civil Defense by Tracy C. Davis explores the participatory aspect of Cold War defense, describing the ways in which three countries—the United States, , and the —envisioned and enacted civil defense measures, all the while positing that the exercises were little more than a show. Dee Garrison, in Bracing for Armageddon: Why Civil Defense Never Worked, takes this idea further, concluding that civil defense was an outright sham perpetrated on the American people, as their government knew that the civil defense plans had little or no efficacy. Garrison outlines the resistance to civil defense exercises and how that resistance was the seed of the various antinuclear movements of the Cold War that would eventually influence government policy—a vector for change that compliments that put forth by Winkler.9 Throughout this work, I will refer to the process of “virtualization” of nuclear war. This term is used apart from “simulation,” “rehearsal,” or “wargame,” and reflects a more complete attempt to simulate, not only as an act of mimicry for practice or performance, but as a genuine attempt to construct the circumstances and conditions of a nuclear war in each of the three areas of my discussion. These include 1) replicating the effects of a nuclear strike with real nuclear weapons during the era of atmospheric nuclear testing (1945 to 1963, or through civil defense exercises and operations, 2) depicting nuclear war in film and literature throughout the Cold War, and 3) analyzing the effects of a nuclear war as represented in a variety of studies undertaken by governmental agencies and committees during this period. On the surface, these three areas of study represent very different projects—and to be sure, they are very different approaches—but they represent three means

8 Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon, 1985), Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Allan M. Winkler, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999). 9 Tracy C. Davis, Stages of Emergency: Cold War Nuclear Civil Defense (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007); Dee Garrison, Bracing for Armageddon: Why Civil Defense Never Worked (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 9 of addressing the same topic: virtualizing nuclear war. These “virtual wars,” whether small or large, on paper, celluloid, or on the desert floor, represented honest reflections of the potential threat, evolving based on facts or assumptions over time. Taken as a whole they represent a genuine attempt to understand the implications of a nuclear-armed conflict. In to analyze this process of virtualization and the attempt to fully understand the fundamental threat of the Cold War, it is my goal to integrate these three seemingly disparate areas of study, contextualize each, and demonstrate their interrelationship. Taken together, each of these subjects informs the others and allows for a richer understanding of the massive project of comprehending what a nuclear war might mean for society, the individual, the nation, and the wider world. A multidisciplinary approach to the subject of virtualizing nuclear war allows us to see the broader trends in the perceived risks of engaging in such a conflict as the Cold War evolved. Integrating the three subjects of this project illuminate the political, military, scientific, and technical continuities over time and offer a more complete picture of the Cold War. While historians and American Studies scholars have in the past examined these individual components, no historical study until now has integrated all of them into a coherent whole.10 I approach the project of comparing and integrating these topics as a question of systems of knowledge production—that is, what motivations, methods, and outcomes are common across the range of topics investigated? What drove institutions such as the military and civil defense organizations, individuals such as filmmakers and authors, and the public generally, to attempt to virtualize nuclear war and come face to face with unthinkable destruction and, in some cases, the very real possibility of total annihilation? Common to the interrelationship of each of these topics are a set of reinforcing dynamics that allow seemingly unrelated methods of viewing nuclear war to inform and strengthen one another. The motivations of each of the three pillars of this discussion were varied. In Barton C. Hacker’s Elements of Controversy: The Atomic Energy Commission and Radiation Safety in 1947-1974—what is arguably the authoritative history of the Atomic Energy Commission— the author describes the confrontational relationship between the AEC and the Department of Defense that resulted in dual-use atmospheric nuclear tests for both weapons development and analysis of effects on military hardware, materials, structures, and, during seven military exercises at the Test Site between 1951 and 1957 (dubbed Exercise Desert Rock), the psychological and

10 See sources noted in footnotes 6, 7 and 9. 10 physical effects on troops as well.11 The motivation for the federal government to engage in its various civil defense campaigns and exercises was, depending on perspective, for training, preparation, and education, or, as Dee Garrison asserts in Bracing for Armageddon, a blatant attempt to dupe the public in the face of an insurmountable threat. The motivation for creating representations of nuclear war in the popular culture, especially film, evolved over time from a means of creating a visual space to ponder the possibilities and dangers of a nuclear war, as suggested in part by Winkler, to a means of fomenting antinuclear sentiment in the 1980s with films such as The Day After (1983) and Threads (1984). Finally, the statistical models and numerical analysis undertaken by the U.S. government were designed to provide a foundation for planning and strategy in the event of a nuclear conflict—or demonstrate how impossibly devastating that conflict might be. In terms of the methods used in each of these areas, there is a much greater degree of agreement. Each collated the ever-growing body of data on the effects of nuclear weapons in order to create a viable simulacrum of war pertinent to their own motivations. In Nevada, the military exposed vehicles, aircraft, ordinance, and all manner of other matériel to atmospheric nuclear tests in order to understand what might happen in a real-world attack. Film and literature exposed fictional characters rather than military hardware to the bomb, and explored hypothetical scenarios using publicly available data (and a few informed guesses) to visualize the effects of a nuclear war on individuals and communities. Government sponsored studies utilized all available data on population, industry, infrastructure, and intelligence on Soviet technical and military prowess to construct models that would offer a summary of what a nuclear war might mean. The results of each of these three projects were even more similar—in both their successes and failures. All succeeded in depicting nuclear war with a degree of realism sufficient to accomplish their varied tasks, but each fell victim to the limitations of knowledge that often left the project of accurately depicting nuclear war necessarily incomplete. The atmospheric testing program was limited to single, controlled devices and strict controls on radiation exposure, leading to a gap in understanding what might befall a city exposed to multiple weapons or weapons of a scale that surpassed the strictures placed on the continental testing program. Film and literature were victims of controls on classified data and, while late in the Cold War the body of information in the public domain had greatly increased, that gap in knowledge left room for doubt as to the veracity of the assertions made about nuclear war. Government studies, while privy to all available data, in the early years failed to fully account for

11 Barton C. Hacker, Elements of Controversy: The Atomic Energy Commission and Radiation Safety in Nuclear Weapons Testing 1947-1974 (Berkeley: University of Press, 1994). 11 deaths and incapacitation due to radiation and often over-estimated the Soviet capacity to wage a nuclear war. However flawed each of these methodologies may have been, they served to produce windows onto war that would not otherwise have been possible, and would certainly not have been realistic or useful if only the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were taken into account. The project of virtualizing nuclear war, undertaken throughout the Cold War and in many different quarters, offered an opportunity to move the general understanding of what such a conflict might mean beyond the paradigm of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As understanding of the scientific underpinnings of the bomb and its threefold threat of heat, blast, and radiation expanded, and technical capacity grew in order to make larger bombs and more capable delivery systems, moving past the existing paradigm became essential to war planning, defensive preparation, and a rational, useful civil defense guidance. By analyzing the project of virtualization, as undertaken in these three areas, a more complete picture emerges of this extended thought experiment, revealing the similarities and links between these seemingly disparate areas of knowledge production, and the common thread that was an attempt to understand what nuclear war would look like, apart from the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki allows one to walk the streets and gain a real, tactile understanding of the destruction on that day. It is invaluable not only to those interested in the subject, but in those interested in the human experience—and perhaps the continued survival of humanity. It is a pilgrimage for those who endeavor to promote peace and oppose nuclear weapons. When Hiroshima is invoked as a metric of destruction, however, how could the calculation truly carry the full depth of meaning without walking the streets to sense the size of the city and feel the radii of devastation pass underfoot? But Hiroshima is only a beginning. It stands forever at the dawn of the nuclear age, forever as a memorial and a reminder, even as it grows and prospers in the 21st century. It is only one way of understanding what nuclear destruction means, and does little to educate on the consequences of other scales of multilateral nuclear war. That project was undertaken many times and many ways throughout the Cold War and is the subject of this work. Hiroshima and Nagasaki must never be ignored in trying to understand the horrors and devastation of a nuclear-armed conflict. The tragedy must certainly never be forgotten. Nevertheless, these cities are not representative of the probable effects of modern nuclear warfare. Their experience is not useful in constructing a complete and nuanced understanding of the likely situation in which survivors would find themselves. It is necessary to move beyond the model of “multiple

12 Hiroshimas” and expand our understanding of the true implications of nuclear conflict by exploring the means by which scientists, politicians, and populations attempted to virtualize and visualize the real consequences of modern nuclear war.

13 CHAPTER 2

NUCLEAR WARGAMES: 1945 TO 1962

Introduction: The Live Broadcast of an Atomic Bomb

On the morning of 22 April 1952, reporters, civil defense officials, and assorted VIPs filled the space around a large mound of volcanic tuff and scree at the edge of , the dry lake bed in the eastern half of what is today known as the Nevada National Security Site.12 This mound, dubbed “News Nob,” was a bustling hub of journalistic activity, with camera operators and writers “perched like monkeys” on its outcroppings, according to one colorful characterization in Popular Science magazine. They were waiting for the 9:30 a.m. test of “Charlie,” a 31 kiloton device and the third nuclear detonation in the Tumbler-Snapper testing series.13 Reporters busily prepared stories on tapping and ratcheting typewriters. Waiting among them were such significant national news personalities such as Walter Cronkite of CBS, journalist and author Robert Considine, and veteran radio broadcaster Lowell Thomas.14 As News Nob bustled, three television crews from the -based KTLA prepared the equipment necessary to make the first live video broadcast of a nuclear test to the rest of the country.15 When the moment came, the flash filled the frame of the distant camera and images of the first public nuclear test traveled through a series of microwave transmitters, across the desert, to Los Angeles, and then out to the world.

12 Terrence R. Fehner and F.G. Gosling, Battlefield of the Cold War: The , Volume I, Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing: 1951-1963 (Office of History and Heritage Resources, Executive Secretariat, Office of Management, Department of Energy, September 2006). 13 The colorful characterization of reporters as monkeys can be found in the captions for illustrations of the test site in Popular Science magazine. Volta Torrey, “How New A-Bombs are Tested Safely,” Popular Science 160, no. 6 (June 1952):103; “Operation Tumbler-Snapper, 1952,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests. Nuclear Test Personnel Review, DNA 6019F (Washington, D.C.: Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense), Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2-Hist_Rpt_Atm/1952_DNA_6019F.. 14 “News Nob,” Nevada National Security Site History (Las Vegas: National Nuclear Security Administration, Nevada Field Office. US Department of Energy, August 2013): NV. DOE/NV—774, http://nnss.gov/docs/fact_sheets/DOENV_774.pdf 15 John Silva, interview by Karen Herman, Archive of American Television, A Program of the Television Academy Foundation, 22 October 2002, http://emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/john-silva; KTLA had successfully broadcast a view of the flash of one of the tests in early February 1951 from a camera position on Mount Wilson in California. Stan Chambers, KTLA’s News at 10: Sixty Years with Stan Chambers (Lake Forest, California: Behler Publications, 15 February 2008): 44. 14 Viewers in Los Angeles received satisfactory images of the test, with its brilliant flash and rising , captured from the peak of Mount Charleston, 40 miles away. Despite this, as the video signal was relayed across an ever expanding web of transmitters, it seemed to degrade into something abstract and impossible to decipher. In the aftermath of the test, some viewers found the coverage to be “anticlimactic.”16 The New York Herald Tribune reported that the broadcast had created an “odd result: a revolutionary method of mass communication had blurred, rather than clarified, the impression of a revolutionary weapon of warfare.”17 In an attempt to disseminate the images of an organized, controlled test of a , the efforts had been hampered by the very technology the planners intended to use. What the faded, abstract Kinescope copy of the original broadcast does offer, however, is a live nuclear detonation with all of the subtleties so often lost in subsequent films—the sudden violence of the bomb in total silence, what Jack Gould of called the “eerie wait” between the flash and the shockwave, and then the actual sound of an exploding nuclear device. There is something raw and real about this early film that almost no other record of an atomic detonation retains. For those who have seen films of nuclear testing (and particularly those films produced by government agencies for archival or briefing purposes at the end of a testing series), it is clear that certain license has been taken in the production process. Notably, the sound of the detonation and the itself sync up (in cases when sound other than narration is used)— a situation impossible in nature because of the different speeds of light and the advancing shockwave. The sound of the themselves are also suspect and probably represent stock explosion sounds added in post-production.18 Certainly they sound nothing like the actual sound recordings of tests or the eye-witness accounts. A year later, another public test was broadcast from News Nob. Even more than the “Charlie” test, the film of “Annie” (testing series Upshot-Knothole) from the morning of 17 March 1953, affords a truly rare perspective of the experience of a nuclear detonation. “Annie” was a 16

16 Jack Gould, “Radio and Television,” New York Times, Apr 23, 1952. 17 New York Herald Tribune. 23 April 1952. 18 Historian of Science Alex Wellerstein has written about this issue in his blog, Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog, http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/07/13/the-sound-of-the-bomb-1953/. His post was subsequently reported on by the in 2012. Eddie Wrenn, “Every Heard the Sound of a Nuclear Bomb Going Off?...” Mailonline, Daily Mail, 16 July 2012. 15 kiloton device perched on a on Yucca Flat.19 In the film from News Nob, reporters can be heard in the background engaging in small talk and idle chatter. The camera settles on a single distant light when a voice on the loudspeaker (what Walter Cronkite had dubbed “the Voice of Doom”) begins a countdown from five.20 At zero, the screen goes white and a low ripple of electromagnetic interference replaces the audio track. Other than this, there is no sound. There is no godlike or deafening roar. There is only the silence and the light.21 Even more clearly than the KTLA film of “Charlie,” the “Annie” film reproduces the character of the explosion’s sound and the dramatic reaction of onlookers to the experience. The light fades, and through the glare, the roiling mushroom cloud emerges amidst excited commentary from the surrounding reporters. Thirty-one seconds later, the shockwave arrives with the sound of the bomb. It comes as a crack, not as a low, rumbling cannon, but a high and immediate report, followed by a swelling roar. The reaction of the crowd is instant. There are whistles of amazement and dazed cries of “wow!” and “ooh boy.” And then, as the sound continues and the mushroom cloud rises, one stunned viewer exclaims: holy shit. This unseen observer watches a little while longer and says again, with emphasis, “holy shit! Wow! Jesus!” Beyond the novelty of a profanity-laced commentary of a reporter recently -shocked by his first nuclear bomb, this film stands as a unique artifact for those seeking to understand the realities of nuclear detonations and testing in the atmospheric testing era. What these early films provide is a window onto a small piece of the real experience of a . The commentary captured in the background offers a dimension of frankness and reality to a nuclear detonation that very rarely comes through in the highly edited and curated government-produced nuclear test films. These rare audio tracks represent only a small piece of the elaborate story of demonstration and experimentation that offered various levels of realistic reenactment of nuclear war. “Annie” and “Charlie” were just two very public spectacles that brought the reality of a nuclear detonation to a public that would be required to take on this and so many more realities associated with the nuclear threats of the Cold War.

19 “Operation Upshot-Knothole,” Fact Sheet, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, US Strategic Command Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/1-Fact_Sheets/14_UPSHOT-KNOTHOLE.pdf. 20 “News Nob,” 2013. 21 “Atom Blast, Yucca Flat, Nevada, 3/17/1953.” National Archives Catalog, Record Group 111: Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, 1860 - 1985 Series: Motion Picture Films from the Army Library Copy Collection, 1964 - 1980. Local Identifier: 111-LC-31863, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/25979. 16 For whatever else atmospheric nuclear testing may have been—a media spectacle, propaganda set piece, or nuclear saber rattling—it also served a very real and arguably useful purpose. These tests allowed for a “live fire” crucible through which civil defense, military, and a variety of engineering technologies could be put. They provided a means for materials experimentation, biological testing, and a greater understanding of weapons effects more generally. Perhaps the least public-facing benefit of the testing program were actual weapon design improvements, but alongside the ability to make these technological advancements and refinements was the possibility of fighting a nuclear war with real nuclear weapons—one bomb at a time. In the same way that these nuclear tests allowed the American Southwest and the distant to become laboratories for the survivability of everything from deployed military units to modest suburban homes, other means of “virtualizing” nuclear war were developed to test the survivability of individuals and institutions. These civil defense schemes ranged from the infamous “Duck and Cover” drills during which a nuclear attack was initiated by an elementary school teacher at the head of the class, to the elaborately planned and orchestrated evacuation and sheltering of whole cities during the “Operation Alert” exercises that took place annually from 1954 to 1961. These rehearsals for nuclear war, like public atmospheric testing, contained elements that were less than sincere—a serious strain of the performative and propagandistic. Those aspects of Cold War civil defense are analyzed meticulously by Tracy Davis in Stages of Emergency and Dee Garrison in Bracing for Armageddon: Why Civil Defense Never Worked.22 What is useful for further exploring the theme of the virtualization of nuclear war, however, is what might have actually been learned through these exercises, beyond the easily derisible theatrics. This chapter explores the ways in which nuclear testing, civil defense exercises, and wargames allowed policy and military planners to create spaces in which virtual nuclear wars could be fought and individual facets of that war could be understood, analyzed, and learned from. Beyond the purely performative elements of these exercises and the ways in which they were used to manipulate public perception and quell fears, this chapter will explain these testing, planning, and drilling endeavors as an attempt to create spaces in which to truly simulate pieces of a nuclear war and, in whatever small measure, prepare technologies, systems, institutions, and individuals to fight and survive.

22 Tracy C. Davis, Stages of Emergency: Cold War Nuclear Civil Defense (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007); Dee Garrison, Bracing for Armageddon: Why Civil Defense Never Worked (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 17 The Atomic Battlefield: Military Simulations of Nuclear War

The period of atmospheric nuclear testing in the United States, between 1945 and the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, saw 210 atmospheric nuclear tests and a range of other experiments in Nevada and Proving Grounds.23 While many of these might be perceived as acts of saber rattling and overt tit-for-tat competition with the Soviet Union, most included legitimate scientific and engineering tests designed to expand understanding of the use of, and defense against, nuclear weapons. Each nuclear detonation offered a test bed for a variety of inquiries that might only otherwise be made in the anarchy and turmoil of a real nuclear war—too little and too late, to be sure. These atmospheric nuclear tests, along with weapons development and experimentation, offered a way to fight nuclear wars in a controlled environment. These tests explored everything from the psychological impact of close proximity on soldiers to the fire hazards of an unkempt front yard. The films of “Charlie” and “Annie” previously discussed, as well as further coverage of public demonstrations, offer significant insight into this years-long experiment in Nevada and the islands of the Pacific Proving Ground which endeavored to make something real of the abstract. The many tests done alongside those nuclear detonations sought to do for civil defense planners and engineers what the early live broadcasts succeeded in doing for the general public—offering a glimpse of the reality of a nuclear weapon and make real and immediate what might otherwise have been abstract numerical analysis or guesswork. The era of atmospheric nuclear testing provided the unrivalled opportunity to conduct nuclear war in a petri dish.

Baselines: Trinity, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki

Before Trinity, the first atomic explosion that ushered in the nuclear age on the morning of 16 July 1945, there was another detonation at the Trinity Test Site. The “first Trinity test,” as it was dubbed by Richard Tolman, scientific advisor to during the Project, was a simulated nuclear test. The experiment was comprised of a heavily instrumented 100-ton pile of high explosives stacked on a platform. This “100-ton test” was designed as an experiment to calibrate measuring equipment under actual explosive conditions. In addition to the conventional explosive, a

23 United States Nuclear Tests: July 1945 through September 1992, US Department of Energy, Nevada Operations Office (December 2000): DOE/NV-209-REV 15. While there were 210 US atmospheric tests during this period, there were as many as 337 US nuclear tests of all kinds (including failures and safety experiments) and two uses in wartime over Japan in 1945. 18 radioactive fuel slug from a reactor at the Hanford manufacturing facility was dissolved and the solution poured into a tube at the center of the assembly. The experiment would scatter the radioactive material so that various dispersion characteristics could be measured. The pile was detonated successfully on 7 May 1945, 800 yards south of the site selected for the first atomic test.24 This simulation of the first atomic bomb was only the beginning of a project of scientific measurement and analysis that might prove useful in anticipating the future effects of atomic weapons and determining the effectiveness of the weapons that would be dropped over Japan.25 The first atomic test was both a scientific experiment and an engineering proof-of-concept. The well- known narrative is that it was the culmination of the work of the scientists, and a proof of the plutonium implosion weapon design. Beyond this, however, it is clear that this first atomic detonation was also a live-fire radiological event, a means of instrument calibration, and a baseline for future weapons tests and wartime deployment of the atomic bomb. This is apparent in the outline of measurements deemed essential by the Los Alamos scientists and listed in a 1976 report by the director of the Trinity project, Kenneth T. Bainbridge.26 The team under Bainbridge was tasked with three types of experimental observation: measurement of the success of the implosion device mechanism, determining a means of measuring yield from a study of radiochemistry, and a comprehensive measurement of the energy of the blast wave.27 For this task, beryllium-copper diaphragm microphones were employed to record peak , this being the only metric that could be measured from 20 miles away—the distance assumed during combat use over Japan.28 Measuring the energy and efficiency of the explosion was accomplished with an array of both simple and highly technical devices placed around the site. Radiation measurement and monitoring was accomplished with B-29 planes equipped with air filters, ionization chambers, Geiger counters, and two Sherman M4 tanks lined with two inches of lead and self-contained air, deployed to ground zero to recover samples for analysis. Residual radioactivity, photographic

24 K.T. Bainbridge, “Trinity,” (Los Alamos, New : Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory of the University of California, May 1976): LA-6300-H. 25 John Malik, “The Yields of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Nuclear Explosions,” (Los Alamos, New Mexico: Los Alamos National Laboratory, September 1985), LA-8819. 26 L. Hoddeson, et al., Critical Assembly: A Technical History of Los Alamos During the Oppenheimer Years, 1943-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993): 359. 27 Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986): 654. 28 Thomas Widner, et. al., Draft Final Report of the Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment (LAHDRA) Project (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, June 2009). 19 analysis of the developing fireball, and blast measurements all allowed later estimation of the height of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki mushroom clouds.29 In this way, the wartime use of the devices on Japan was a continuation of these earliest experiments and measurements. The pressure-sensing device invented by Los Alamos physicist Luis Alvarez and used during the Trinity test was packaged in parachute-retarded canisters and dropped from the B-29 Great Artiste, which acted as the instrument aircraft for both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.30 Telemetry data from the canisters were radioed back to the instrument aircraft where information was recorded from oscilloscopes while visual data for analysis of the bombings’ fireball development was accomplished with high-speed Fastax cameras. Despite these efforts at technical measurement, they would be dwarfed by the extensive research done on the ground in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the Japanese . * * * The United States Survey (USSBS) began as an effort to analyze the effects of strategic bombing in World War II on .31 Initiated by U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson on 3 , the mission of the USSBS was expanded by President Truman on 15 August 1945 to include reports on bombing of Japan—including the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With its complement of 300 civilians, 350 officers, and 500 enlisted men, the USSBS began its technical survey of the effects of the atomic bomb in . The summary report on these effects is explicit in its purpose—to understanding the specific effects of the atomic bomb in order to prepare for its use. The introduction states that “The available facts about the power of the atomic bomb as a military weapon lie in the story of what it did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” To that end, the USSBS began its work. When news of the atomic bombing reached the USSBS, it was already planning a study of strategic “conventional” aerial of Japan. The use of atomic bombs and the intensity of their reported effects changed the analytical framework already established by the USSBS in Germany and, it was felt, had the potential to completely “change the conclusions and recommendations of the Survey as to the effectiveness of air power.”32 This possibility led to a new

29 Bainbridge, “Trinity.” 30 Malik, “Yields,” 2. 31 The United States Strategic Bombing Survey: The Effect of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Truman Library, President’s Secretary’s File, Truman Papers, 19 June 1946, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/index.php?action=pdf&docume ntid=65 32 Strategic Bombing Survey, 1. 20 sense of urgency on the part of the USSBS to undertake an even more exhaustive investigation of the effects of the atomic bombs. In the enumeration of the points of investigative emphasis, the unique status of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as investigative test beds is clear. While “physical damage,” “civilian defense,” “utilities and transportation,” and even “various industries” might be investigated later in test detonations in the American Southwest, “morale,” “casualties,” and “community life” required a human dimension. Over the course of ten weeks, beginning October 1945, the USSBS deployed “engineers, architects, fire experts, economists, doctors, photographers, [and] draftsmen” in the service of analyzing the quantitative and qualitative differences between conventional bombing and the effects of the atomic bomb. In terms of casualties, the difference was readily apparent. “The most striking result of the atomic bombs was the great number of casualties,” the report reads. Though at first glance, immediate casualties “did not differ from those caused by incendiary or high explosive raids,” the effects of radiation created a fundamentally different threat that became “unmistakable about a week after the bombing.”33 The report breaks down the causes of death and relative importance and makes note of the fact that each—flash burns, “other” injuries, and radiation sickness—each had familiar and unfamiliar effects. Flash burns, for instances, occurred instantaneously and, quite unlike more familiar modes of burn injury, could be prevented by light colored clothing covering the skin. The report provides a lengthy description of the effects of radiation on the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, largely due to the fact that it was the first time that radiation sickness and death extended beyond an individual subject. The nature of those effects was a major component of the USSBS research and had a rightfully powerful impact. The report states that in the absence of specific details on the lethality of radiation, “the awesome lethal effects of the atomic bomb and the insidious additional peril of the gamma rays speak for themselves.”34 The findings of the USSBS in Hiroshima and Nagasaki went on to form the foundation for understanding the bomb’s efficacy against the enemy as well as how civil defense measures might be devised to protect against its use on the United States. They became baseline case studies for the effects of nuclear weapons. In a government film documenting a later testing series known as Tumbler-Snapper in 1952, the narrator is explicit about this fact: “Hiroshima and Nagasaki became the

33 Strategic Bombing Survey, 16. 34 Strategic Bombing Survey, 19. 21 norm—the bases for curves on blast effects and damage.”35 It was against these first cases that the weapons effects of later tests would be compared and judged. While the decision to use atomic weapons on the Japanese has left a 70 year legacy of impassioned moral, ethical, and historical debate, it did offer a window onto the effects and costs of nuclear war that would continue to be used by military planners and antinuclear activists for decades. The research done and data gathered at the expense of human life and despite extraordinary suffering, provided an elementary primer on the use of nuclear weapons as well as two living memorials, then as today, standing as warnings against that use.36

Operation Crossroads and the Ghost Fleet

The first nuclear war fought by the United States was against the flesh-and-blood enemy of the of Japan—the second was against a fleet of ghost ships. A series of postwar atomic tests was first proposed by on 16 August 1945 as a means of quelling a growing fear that naval fleets would become obsolete in the face of the atomic bomb.37 This vision of a naval atomic test would serve to graphically demonstrate the survivability of a modern naval fleet (and

35 “Military Participation on Tumbler/Snapper.” United States . (Hollywood, California: Lookout Mountain Laboratory, 1952): Project 10-7-52. 36 That history of debate is multifaceted. One school of thought is that the use of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unnecessary to end with Japan and were, instead, used as a strategic warning to the Soviet Union. This idea has been championed by historians such as Gar Alperovitz, Jay Lifton, Greg Mitchell, and Barton Bernstein, who also contend that surrender was at hand due to general deprivation and mass starvation. [Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (New York: Vintage, 1996); Robert Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: A Half a Century of Denial (New York: Avon Books, 1995); Barton Bernstein, “Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender: Missed Opportunities, Little-known Near Disasters, and Modern Memory,” Diplomatic History 19, Spring 1995: 227-273]. Another historical camp contends that the dropping of the atomic bombs were essential military tools, necessary to break an intransigent Japanese military establishment and bring an end to the war. Richard Frank promotes this idea in his book Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, as does Robert Newman in Truman and the Hiroshima , Samuel Walker in Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan, and Thomas Zeiler in Unconditional Defeat: Japan, America, and the End of World War II. [Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (New York: Penguin Books, 1999); Robert P. Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1995); Samuel J. Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan (Chapel Hill: University of Press, 2004); Thomas W. Zeiler, Unconditional Defeat: Japan, America, and the End of World War II (Wilmington, DE: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003)]. Behind each of these arguments, the question of whether Japan would have surrendered and what part the bombs actually played in influencing that surrender, historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa argues that while the imminent Soviet of Japanese territory was the primary reason for surrender, the atomic bombings were a part of the final decision. A similar argument is put forward by Andrew Rotter in Hiroshima: The World’s Bomb. [Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2005); Andrew J. Rotter, Hiroshima: The World’s Bomb (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).] 37 Lewis Strauss, Men and Decisions (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1962): 84, 276. 22 thereby guarantee post-war appropriations for the maintenance of that fleet).38 On 25 August 1945, Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut brought the matter up in a speech, calling for an atomic bomb to be used on captured Japanese vessels to prove how effective an atomic bomb could be against a naval fleet. “I can think of no better use for these ships,” the Senator said.39 Within months, planning for the test was underway. “Joint Task Force 1” began its life by act of President Truman on 10 January 1946 and was constituted to carry out the first nuclear weapons tests since Trinity. The task force was a combined Army and Navy mission under the command of Admiral William Henry Purnell Blandy, an ordinance specialist and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Special Weapons. Under Blandy, planning went ahead for the test series which he christened Operation Crossroads, becoming larger and more complex at each stage. What had been conceived as a public demonstration of the survivability of the Navy, quickly became a massive experimental undertaking with the Army requesting the inclusion of experiments to test Army equipment and installations.40 By the time of the operation in July 1946, the scientific project had expanded to collect data on radiation intensity, blast, heat, electromagnetic phenomena, and ways to conduct long-range detection of nuclear detonations. The atomic demonstration on a ghost fleet had expanded to an armada consisting of what William Shurcliff, the official historian of Joint Task Force 1, enumerates as “42,000 men, 242 ships, 156 airplanes, 4 television transmitters, 750 cameras, 5000 pressure gauges, 25,000 radiation recorders, 204 goats, 200 pigs, 5000 rats,” and “Numbers 4 and 5 of the atomic bomb family.”41 In the preface to Shurcliff’s official report, he writes that tests A (Able) and B (Baker), the two atomic events of Operation Crossroads, were “perhaps the most elaborate scientific tests ever conducted” as well as the “most observed, most photographed, most talked-of scientific test.” Indeed, extensive scientific questions were formulated for Crossroads, and in that way it was an experimental extension of Trinity. Continued quantification of the heat, blast, and radiation resulting from an atomic bomb remained an essential component of testing, as well as determining what fission products would remain in the water and how that might change levels of contamination— questions that could not have been answered with the previous three land-based detonations.

38 Jonathan Weisgall, Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1994): 91. 39 William A. Shurcliff, Bombs at Bikini: The Official Report of Operation Crossroads (New York: William H. Wise and Co, 1947). 40 “Operation Crossroads,” Nuclear Test Personnel Review Program (NTPR), Defense Threat Reduction Agency (May 2015). 41 Shurcliff, Bombs at Bikini, 2. 23 Nevertheless, Crossroads was also a decidedly practical military test. It was a full-scale simulation of a nuclear attack at sea—or at least in the safe harbor of Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific. It should be noted that the official stance on the nature of the test denied this aspect of Crossroads, rejecting its relevance to naval combat effectiveness and focusing instead on the scientific dimensions. A joint Army-Navy press release from 13 May 1946 stated that there was “no intent to ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ any present-day theories concerning military, air and navel strategy and tactics” and that no series of tests could simultaneously simulate war conditions and provide the needed scientific data.42 The press release also assured the public that there was “no thought of simulating an attack by atom-bomb-loaded airplanes....” and cites the density of the closely anchored ships in the target array as evidence that no realistic fleet disposition was intended. Nevertheless, the same press release described the tests as being planned “to determine and measure with precision what happens at various distances when an atomic bomb is used against ships and other items of military equipment such as tanks, airplanes, radio sets, etc.” and that the ships would be loaded with combat supplies, fuel, and ammunition to simulate “typical conditions” of ships at sea. Another press release, issued on 30 July 1946 after the second test, described the radiological effects of both “Able” and “Baker” in terms of crew casualties.43 After Able, measurements of the initial radiation burst indicated that radiation would have “killed almost all personnel” on the ships nearest the bomb and “many others at greater distances.” These initial findings made clear that any ship within a of the detonation would “eventually become inoperative due to crew casualties.” The Baker test saw even more intense radiation due to the dispersal of irradiated seawater. Exposure to this would have “incapacitated human beings and have resulted in their death within days or weeks.” The press release asserted that research must continue in order to “develop procedures for protecting not only ships’ crews but also the populations of cities” and that the tests at Bikini allowed for changes in “military and naval design [and] also in strategy and tactics....”44

42 “Press Release re: Operation Crossroads, 13 May 1946,” Ayers Papers, Subject File, Army U.S., Press releases, the Atomic Bomb and Atomic Energy, Truman Presidential Library, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/index.php?action=pdf&docume ntid=53 43 “Press Release. 2 August 1946,” Truman Papers, President’s Secretary’s File, Atomic Bomb-1945, Truman Presidential Library, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/index.php?action=pdf&docume ntid=54 44 “Press Release. 2 August 1946,” Truman Papers, 24 In Shurcliff’s official report, in answer to the question, “Why Operation Crossroads?” he wrote: “We want ships which are tough, even when threatened by atomic bombs; we want to keep the ships afloat, propellers turning, guns firing; we want to protect the crews so that, if fighting is necessary, they can fight well today and return home unharmed tomorrow.” In addition, the report outlined the practical questions posed by naval architects (what are the ship’s weakest links?), medical personnel (would men working below decks escape the radiation?), and naval tacticians (how far must a ship be from an atomic bomb to survive?). These are not abstract questions, but are instead the questions that must be asked and answered in order to maintain a naval fleet in a nuclear- capable world. The fact that this was not merely a demonstration is born out by the decision to leave the ghost fleet nearly fully equipped at the cost of items of value, such as guns, range finders, and equipment.45 Despite the public assertion that the tests were formulated for scientific inquiry and the repeated denial that the operation was in any way a simulation of atomic naval combat, it seems clear that the Crossroads was very much a military effects test with real operational implications. Operation Crossroads was carried out in July 1946 at Bikini Atoll, a ring of islands wrested from the Japanese in 1944 and stripped of its few inhabitants in 1946 in advance of the nuclear testing series. Crossroads consisted of two nuclear devices, both identical to the Mark-3 “Fat Man” plutonium device dropped on Nagasaki and each yielding 21 kilotons.46 The first of these (the Able test, affectionately christened “Gilda”), was air-dropped from the B-29 bomber, “Dave’s Dream,” detonating at 520 feet over the ghost fleet, but missing the target by between 1500 and 2000 feet.47 Damage in this test proved relatively light, with five sunken vessels, six seriously damaged, and an assortment of other damage corresponding to the distance from surface zero. The radiation hazard quickly dissipated and preparations were made for the second test. Baker was a subsurface detonation of a Mark-3 device suspended 90 feet underwater from a modified , the USS LSM-60. In all, 8 ships were sunk due to the Baker explosion, including the USS , a dreadnought and veteran of two world wars, the

45 Shurcliff, Bombs at Bikini, 75. The few items that were removed in the operation included those of historical interest and anything needed for the active fleet of Joint Taskforce One in support of Operation Crossroads. 46 United States Nuclear Tests, vii. 47 Operation Crossroads—1946, United States Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, DNA 6032F (1 May 1984). http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2- Hist_Rpt_Atm/1946_DNA_6032F.pdf. The name “Gilda” derives from actress Rita Hayworth’s character in the film of the same name. See the extensive investigative work to corroborate this atomic legend, done by the authors of the blog “CONELRAD,” http://conelrad.blogspot.com/2011/07/atomic-goddess-rita- hayworth-and-legend.html 25 super-dreadnought Japanese battleship Nagato, and the USS Saratoga, the oldest U.S. afloat. These ships had survived the Able test with only superficial damage, but during the subsurface detonation, each was raised out of the water, their hulls battered and breached by the shock. Arkansas sank immediately, its hull crumpled by the transmitted shockwave, capsized, and then driven into the sediment at the bottom of the lagoon by the collapsing column of uplifted water.48 Saratoga faired somewhat better, succumbing to its wounded hull seven and a half hours after the detonation and coming to rest upright on the bottom.49 Nagato began to list immediately but survived for four more days, disappearing beneath the waves unnoticed in the night.50 While Able had caused fires and heavily damaged superstructures, Baker caused far greater damage to the exposed hulls of ships, resulting in the sinking of larger ships, as well as three , the Pilotfish, Skipjack, and Apogon.51 The real difference between the two tests, however, was not immediately apparent to those observing the destruction from afar. After Able, work crews were able to board the surviving ships by the next day to retrieve instrumentation and animal test subjects. After Baker, the radiation proved so intense that the future of the operation and the viability of a planned third test was in doubt. On 2 August 1946, a week after the Baker test, Colonel Austin Wortham “Cy” Betts, a Manhattan Project observer, wrote a memo to General Kenneth D. Nichols, his Manhattan Project superior. In it he offered some much-needed detail to the well-reported radiation situation. “We are moving out of the inner anchorage again today,” he wrote. “We have been slowly accumulating radioactivity in our plumbing, and the green slime on the ship’s side at the water line has been gathering radioactivity enough to make itself felt in the crews quarters.”52 If the radiological conditions on the observation ships had become questionable, the target ships were posing a greater problem for the continuance of the operation. “It appears now they

48 “U.S.S. Arkansas (BB33): Test Baker.” Bureau of Ships Group, Technical Inspection Report, Operation Crossroads, Director of Ship Material. Joint Task Force One, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, AD366764, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/366764.pdf. 49 “U.S.S. Saratoga (CV-3): Test Baker.” Bureau of Ships Group. Technical Inspection Report. Operation Crossroads. Director of Ship Material. Joint Task Force One. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, AD376833 http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/376833.pdf 50 “Nagato (Ex Jap BB): Test Baker.” Bureau of Ships Group. Technical Inspection Report. Operation Crossroads. Director of Ship Material. Joint Task Force One. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, AD367455 http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/367455.pdf 51 Shurcliff, Bombs at Bikini, 165. 52 “Memorandum from Colonel. A. W. Betts to Brigadier General K.D. Nichols, 2 August 1946, Confidential.” RG 77, Operation Crossroads Records, 12/1945 - 9/1946, box 26, J-2-1 Manhattan Project Observers, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc=2995401-Document-23-Col-A-W-Betts- memorandum-to 26 hope to have enough information in a day or two on the subject of decontamination of vessels that perhaps they can make some good guesses on what our future plans will be....most of us are now merely sitting on our hands waiting for the ships to cool down to where they can be safely boarded.” By 6 August, Betts had managed to board several target vessels that had been more distant from the detonation, but access to the more radioactive ships was limited to salvage parties in spans of 5 to 30 minutes. Betts indicated that very little progress was being made in decontaminating the radioactive ships and that some experimentation with “boiler compound” and other cleaning agents was underway, but little could be done to reduce the radiation below 50% of the original contamination level.53 In addition to the difficulties in examining the irradiated but surviving ships, efforts to explore the wrecks on the bottom of the lagoon proved difficult, as the same exposure limits imposed on crews on the surface affected divers as well. “The bottom of the lagoon seems to have absorbed a heavy dosage of radiation,” Betts wrote to Nichols, “and it does not seem to be decreasing.” Surely compounded by the added task of descent and ascent, the divers were getting their daily allowable doses of radiation “before they have had a chance to accomplish much.” The problem of radiation, far worse than had been anticipated by the planners of Joint Task Force 1, persisted and threatened the third test, Charlie, which would be detonated deep underwater. Though advised to discontinue all activity in Bikini Lagoon, Admiral Blandy, commander of the task force, insisted that planning continue for the third test, including the decontamination of five capital ships and five submarines. In the 9 August memo from Betts to Nichols, Betts was frank about how unexpected the radiation hazard had been and just how grim the prospects for continued operations seemed to be. “The [security] classification of this memo can only be explained by the fact that the Navy considers this contamination business the toughest part of test Baker. They had no idea it would be such a problem and they are breaking their necks out here to find some solution.” In the end, the third test was canceled. The radiation hazard proved to be a persistent hindrance to further operations, delaying the schedule until General Leslie Groves, military head of the Manhattan Project, wrote a memo requesting that his scientists be returned, lest delays in the Manhattan Project laboratories create a national security issue.54 It was also determined by the Joint Chiefs of that the first two tests had demonstrated what military planners needed to know, and

53 Betts to Nichols, 2 August 1946. 54 “Bikini A-Bomb Tests July 1946.” Nuclear Vault, National Security Archive, George Washington University (22 July 2016), https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/environmental-diplomacy-nuclear- vault/2016-07-22/bikini-bomb-tests-july-1946 27 in light of a recent presidential directive on post-war cost savings, the expense of the test would not be worth the data collected.55 In this “atomic Pearl Harbor,” which pitted a single plane carrying a single atomic bomb against a ghost fleet, the newfound power of nuclear weapons won out against military hardware. With an assessment found in the final pages of the official report—“The atomic bomb dropped at Bikini damaged more ships than have ever before been damaged by a single explosion”—it would seem that the U.S. Navy had lost this first virtual nuclear war. But simultaneously, the tests had planted seeds of doubt in the truly apocalyptic nature of the new atomic bomb and offered a fresh hope that a nuclear attack might be survivable. Prior to Crossroads, there had been a slew of catastrophic prophesies about what an underwater nuclear test might do. Shurcliff’s official account makes mention of some of these fears, including tidal waves, chain reactions in sea water, and catastrophic quantities of steam released from fissures in the ’s crust. Admiral Blandy himself, in what historian Alex Wellerstein has called “one of the more memorable official denials in modern history,” mounted a defense of the tests against the mounting criticism and fear: “The bomb will not start a chain reaction in the water, converting it all to gas, and letting the ships on all the oceans drop down to the bottom. It will not blow out the bottom of the sea and let all the water run down the hole. It will not destroy gravity. I am not an atomic playboy, as one of my critics labeled me, exploding these bombs to satisfy my personal whim.”56 As Operation Crossroads came to a close, none of these hypothetical catastrophes had manifested themselves, and neither had the bombs impressed on the viewing public a sense of atomic power. Observers of the Able test were largely unimpressed by the level of destruction and even the detonation itself. Major Orlando Rangel, one of the Brazilian observers (someone referred to in a secret intelligence memo as “very confused about the scientific details of the project”), assessed his feelings after the test as “so so.”57 One of the two Soviet observers, Simon Alexandrov, shrugged his shoulders as the mushroom cloud was still rising and said, “Not so much.” Dean M. Gillespie,

55 “Decision Amending J.C.S. 1552/74 Test ‘C’ Operation ‘Crossroads’,” Joint Chiefs of Staff, JCS 1901/10, 24 August 1946, Top Secret. RG 218, Central Decimal Files, 1948-1950, box 231, CCS 476.1 (10-16-1945), Section 9, Part 1, https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2995408/Document-30-Joint-Chiefs-of- Staff-Decision.pdf 56 Alex Wellerstein, “America at the Atomic Crossroads,” , 25 July 2016. 57 “Impressions of Observers at Bikini,” Unattributed memorandum, Record Group 59, Records of the Department of State, Records of the Special Assistant to the Secretary for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, General Records Relating to Atomic Energy Matters, 1948-1962, box 77, 18. Weapons: 12. Testing: g. Proving Grounds-Bikini-General. Circa July 1946. 28 Republican Congressman from , was deflated, telling a reporter that he had “expected much more brilliance.”58 If the U.S. military had intended a striking demonstration of atomic force against a naval fleet (an assertion made by the Soviet observer delegation and at least part of the genesis of the operation), then it had failed in that purpose. Alexandrov claimed not only that the test was an undertaking simply to frighten the Soviets, but that it was a “flop.”59 Though Alexandrov’s assessment of the tests may have been bravado, he was not the only one who acknowledged that the survival of the majority of the fleet, and the failure of some apocalyptic prophecies, left the world after Able and Baker in a somewhat more ambivalent situation than it had been after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. William L. Laurence, science writer for the New York Times and “dean” of atomic reporters (having witnessed the Trinity test, the bombing of Nagasaki, and both Crossroads tests) wrote a piece that appeared in the New York Times on 4 August 1946 and decried the tests at Bikini for their effect on public sentiments surrounding the atomic bomb. Laurence called the tests “a tragedy of errors for which the world may pay a heavy price” and noted that on his return from Bikini, “one is amazed to find the profound change in the public attitude toward the problem of the atomic bomb.” This change, he noted, is a shift from a feeling of “awe in this new cosmic force” to one of relief after observing that the Crossroads tests did not bring about a cataclysm and that perhaps the atomic bomb should be understood as “just another weapon.”60 In this way, Crossroads created an impression of nuclear weapons as something almost mundane, existing in the background noise of the culture. Crossroads had pulled the fangs out of the collective fear that had permeated society in the year after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and obscured the threat. In many ways, the effects of Crossroads were the same as the clouded television signal of that first broadcast of a nuclear weapon six years later when the New York Herald Tribune reported that the coverage had “blurred, rather than clarified, the impression of a revolutionary weapon of warfare.”61

58 “Observers of U.N. Little Impressed,” New York Times, 1 July 1946, 3. 59 “Interview with Paul S. Galatsoff, 21 August 1946,” RG 59, Records of the Department of State, Records of the Special Assistant to the Secretary for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, General Records Relating to Atomic Energy Matters, 1948-1962, box 77, 18. Weapons: 12. Testing: g. Proving Grounds-Bikini-General. 60 William Laurence, “Atom Bomb—The Five Blasts: Atom Bomb—One Year Later,” New York Times, 4 August 1946, 90. 61 New York Herald Tribune, 23 April 1952. 29 Operation Buster-Jangle and Exercise Desert Rock

While Operation Crossroads had been designed to test nuclear weapons at sea, the 1951 Operation Buster-Jangle gave the world its first look at the atomic battlefield. Buster-Jangle consisted of seven tests, codenamed “Able,” “Baker,” “Charlie,” “Dog,” “Easy,” “,” and “Uncle.” The yield of the tests ranged from zero for the “fizzled” Able test to the 31 kiloton Easy. Carried out at the Nevada Proving Grounds (renamed the Nevada Test Site in 1955 and today known as the Nevada National Security Site), from 22 October to 29 November, the seven nuclear detonations of Buster- Jangle provided the backdrop for Exercise Desert Rock I, II, and III—a series of military maneuvers in atomic environments that would continue through 1957.62 These exercises included damage effects testing on military equipment and field fortifications and the tactical maneuvers of thousands of soldiers near ground zero immediately after the detonation. The official description of the exercise was “a simulated atomic warfare maneuver,” and these combined elements certainly created the most realistic simulation of a nuclear weapon on an active battlefield that the U.S. Army was likely to get.63 Specifically, the proposal for Desert Rock called for an exercise that would “provide indoctrination and training in the tactical employment of atomic weapons and essential physical protection measures” as well as to make a first attempt at evaluating the psychological impact on soldiers viewing a nuclear detonation and its immediate aftermath.64 Unlike the general and repeated denial that Crossroads represented any kind of realistic battle scenario, the Desert Rock exercises embraced it. In an official Department of Defense film documenting the exercises, the scenario is made clear. The commander of the exercise is pictured in the “war tent” at Camp Desert Rock (a large Army encampment at the Nevada Proving Grounds) as the narrator explains that “the operations plan assumes that a strong aggressor force, estimated at two armies in strength, has landed on the northwest coast of the United States and is moving southeast with the intent of driving the U.S. forces ahead of them.”65 Plans for the exercises included maps with hypothetical troop movements and battlefronts to justify the eventual use of a

62 “Operation Buster-Jangle 1951,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, DNA 6023F (21 June 1982), Defense Technical Information Center, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a123441.pdf 63 Gladwin Hill, “Practice Run Held on New Atom Test,” New York Times, 25 October 1951, 6. 64 “Exercise Desert Rock I,” Defense Nuclear Agency, 1952, ADA078556, Defense Technical Information Center, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a078556.pdf 65 “Exercise Desert Rock,” Staff Film Reports, No. 177, US Department of Defense, 1951, Department of Defense Special Weapons Agency, DASIAC Media Collection, Kirtland Air Force Base. Film released by US Department of Energy, Albuquerque Operations Office, https://archive.org/details/ExerciseDesertRock1951. 30 nuclear weapon on the advancing troops.66 In the scenario, the U.S. 6th Army, consisting of three , is pushed back from the to a defensive line running from the West Coast, through southern Nevada and then north. The atomic bomb would then be used over the enemy line and allow a northward push, into the area of heaviest damage and residual radiation. As for the psychological aspect of Desert Rock, extensive briefings were given to the soldiers involved for the apparent dual purpose of preparing them for what they would see, hear, and feel, and to allay their fears of radiation—the former endeavor accomplished with facts and the latter largely with wishful fantasy. In the film official film report, troops are shown receiving briefings prior to the test because, as the narrator explains, “it is believed that they will experience less fear during the blast because they have learned that radioactive elements from air bursts are carried into the stratosphere in a cloud where they mix rapidly with the upper air currents.” In a series of filmed interviews done immediately after the test, one soldier (identified as Sergeant Brewster), agreed that the orientation prepared him for the blast. Asked whether the briefings helped with the fear, the sergeant said, “Yes, sir, they did. They told us enough so that...we hardly had any fear at all.”67 Exercise Desert Rock was not a secret and was widely discussed in the media, though a press ban existed surrounding Buster-Jangle more generally and the whole affair was only covered by a small team from the Army Signal Corps.68 Nevertheless, the group of more than 6,500 soldiers was free to—and even encouraged to—discuss the fact that they had seen and survived the atomic battlefield.69 It was hoped that some elements of the educational briefings would find their way to other soldiers through word of mouth and perhaps allay the often unwarranted fears of radiation that had become pervasive in both military and civilian life. The Desert Rock film’s narrator explains that “Though only 10% of all injuries from high atomic airbursts are from X and Gamma rays, reports indicate that these are the greatest concern of the average citizen and soldier. This test, in

66 “Exercise Desert Rock I,” 11-12. 67 “Exercise Desert Rock,” Staff Film Reports, No. 177. 68 Gladwin Hill, “Rumors on Atom Test Irk A.E.C., But Security Rules Yield Little Else,” New York Times, 26 October 1951, 12. 69 Benjamin W. White, “Desert Rock V: Reactions of Troop Participants and Forward Volunteer Officer Groups to Atomic Exercises,” Army Field Forces Human Research Unit No. 2., Fort Ord, California, 1 August 1953, AD0478053, 20, Defense Technical Information Center, http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/AD0478053. Observers were free to discuss what they had seen and learned at the exercise, but were expressly forbidden to discuss what they had seen in the forward operating area and any damage done to the test displays. This mixed message resulted in a general lack of communication between the participating soldier and his home unit which defeated a major part of the purpose of the Desert Rock exercises—the dissemination of information on the atomic bomb and various survival strategies. 31 which combat troops are participating, is designed to dispel much of the fear and uncertainty surrounding atomic radiation and the effects of these rays.” To that end, only an hour after the mushroom cloud had dissipated, participating soldiers moved toward ground zero to inspect foxholes, gun emplacements, and weapons left in the field in advance of the test as the narrator assures us that the soldiers have realized that “the danger of radiation sickness from an is slight.” The fact that troops had not been with their equipment or in their foxholes during the test was due to the fact that the Atomic Energy Commission retained control of the testing series and all personnel and let it be known that no observer would be allowed closer than 7 miles.70 To create some kind of useful simulation, the soldiers entrenched themselves in positions much closer to ground zero, tagged their equipment with film badges to measure the radiation they would have received, and upon withdrawing left sheep, dogs, and rats in their place. In a particularly obvious piece of (at least in retrospect), after moving out from their tour of ground zero, the film shows soldiers being “decontaminated” with vigorous sweeping by a household broom, as the narrator asserts that “It is possible to utilize an atomic weapon in close support of ground troops.” After the Dog test and Desert Rock I, variations of this exercise were repeated during the Sugar and Uncle tests. These two tests were the “Jangle” portion of Buster-Jangle and had been requested by the military after the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project took an interest in the effects of the Crossroads “Baker” underwater test and wondered what might happen if a device were to be detonated underground.71 Both devices were small at 1.2 kilotons in order to reduce the highly radioactive that would result from ground-level and below-ground explosions. “Jangle” explored whether there were any militarily useful effects of such an explosion and like “Buster” before, involved effects tests on equipment and emplacements. Even with such relatively small nuclear detonations, “Sugar” and “Uncle” produced an extremely radioactive environment, resulting in reduced engagement by the Desert Rock observers.72 Instead of the forward march of Desert Rock I, Desert Rock II and III surveyed the damage through the closed windows of a bus and received descriptions on the effects of the detonation from the instructors of the Advisory Group. After the underground Uncle test, the bus convoy was even prevented from approaching some of

70 Fehner and Gosling, Battlefield of the Cold War, 70-71. 71 Fehner and Gosling, Battlefield of the Cold War, 68. 72 “Shots Sugar and Uncle: The Final Tests of the Buster-Jangle Series 19 November - 29 November 1951,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Test, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, DNA 6025F (23 June 1982), Defense Threat Reduction Agency http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2-Hist_Rpt_Atm/1951_DNA_6025F.pdf 32 the test emplacements and was forced to turn back. Those positions could not be approached and examined until 23 January 1952, 55 days after the detonation. Despite the limitations on proximity imposed by the AEC and the limited activity as a result of high radiation, the Desert Rock exercises were deemed a success by the Department of Defense and set the stage for further exercises. The Desert Rock nuclear battlefield simulations would continue into 1957 with Desert Rock IV through VIII, which would create even more hypothetical invasion forces on which to drop very real atomic bombs, beginning the following year with Operation Tumbler-Snapper.

Operation Tumbler-Snapper and Desert Rock IV

The official film report on Operation Tumbler-Snapper makes the point that, “No one can ever fully make you realize what you’ll see and feel when you experience an atomic weapon detonated for the first time. It’s quite an experience, no matter where you are to watch it.”73 This was especially true for the 2,200 men of Exercise Desert Rock IV who witnessed the “Charlie” test of the series on 22 April 1952 from the unprecedentedly close proximity of four miles.74 The Tumbler-Snapper series was born of an international and domestic military situation that left policy makers and military professionals ever more interested in the use of nuclear weapons in a limited, tactical role. While the defense policy after the first Soviet nuclear weapons test in 1949 had moved farther toward deterrence of major aggressors by threatening a large nuclear strike, it became increasingly necessary to address smaller, localized, and limited conflicts—a realization brought about by the commitment of ground troops to the in 1951 and the apparent inability of European allies to develop military forces capable of resisting the Soviet threat.75 It seemed that the development of a tactical nuclear force, rather than a strategic deterrent, would be necessary to meet the military threats of the 1950s. This was made all the more clear by the “Project Vista” report, a top secret study undertaken by the California Institute of Technology in 1951 that made the point that could be held against the Soviets with relatively small ground forces and tactical nuclear

73 “Military Participation on Tumbler/Snapper,” (Hollywood, California: Lookout Mountain Laboratory, 1952): Project 10-7-52 74 “Operation Tumbler-Snapper Fact Sheet,” Defense Threat Reduction Agency, May 2015, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/1-Fact_Sheets/12_TUMBLER-SNAPPER.pdf 75 “Operation Tumbler-Snapper, 1952,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6019F (14 June 1982): 24, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2- Hist_Rpt_Atm/1952_DNA_6019F.pdf. 33 weapons.76 What this tactical nuclear force would look like was already being formulated by the Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission. During a 1952 appropriations hearing, Congressman George Andrews of Alabama asked the Chairman of the AEC, Gordon Dean, about the practicality of using nuclear weapons in a tactical, battlefield setting “for the purpose of doing damage to our enemies without doing damage to our troops.” Dean responded in the affirmative and stated that these tactical nuclear weapons would take all shapes and be deployed in all areas of armed combat. Dean suggested that atomic weapons would be developed into “almost as complete a variety as conventional ones,” and that this variety would include “ shells, guided missiles, torpedoes, rockets and bombs for ground support....” 77 Tumbler-Snapper was formulated to meet the dual goals laid out in this new military stance— to create and prove new weapons designs and to develop practices and tactics in the delivery of weapons and on the battlefield. To that end, Exercise Desert Rock IV was designed to continue the Desert Rock exercises and push the limits of those exercises in a way that the first set, I through III, had not. Desert Rock IV would go even further in simulating a tactical nuclear exchange and the maneuvers that might be necessary on the atomic battlefield. The stated purpose of Desert Rock IV was to “provide training in tactical operations featuring tactical employment of atomic devices, to provide training in essential protective measures, [and] to observe psychological effects of atomic explosions on individuals.”78 To accomplish this mission, each of the tactical maneuvers came with an attack scenario—a sort of scaled-down wargame to provide a degree of realism. The first of these operations took place during the “Charlie” test on 22 April 1952 when a 31 kiloton bomb was air dropped and detonated at 9:30 a.m. over Yucca Flat. The scenario for the exercise imagined an aggressor with overwhelming force invading the western United States and driving U.S. forces eastward until it established a strong defensive line that resisted attempts to break through.79 While friendly forces entrenched themselves, a company of

76 Lawrence , The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (London: Palgrave, 2004), 68. 77 “Second Supplemental Appropriations Bill, 1952,” Hearings Published, HRG-1951-HAP-0036 (3 October 1951): 3, https://congressional-proquest-com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/congressional/docview/t29.d30.hrg-1951- hap-0036?accountid=4840 78 “Reactions of Troops in Atomic Maneuvers, Exercise Desert Rock IV,” Operations Research Office, Johns Hopkins University (15 July 1953), Defense Technical Information Center http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/026280.pdf 79 “Shots Able, Baker, Charlie, and Dog, the First Tests of the Tumbler-Snapper Series, 1 April - 1 May 1952,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6020F (15 June 1982): 88, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2-Hist_Rpt_Atm/1952_DNA_6020F.pdf 34 would be dropped behind enemy lines to sever communication. As these events began to play out, troops moved into trenches 4 miles away from ground zero (the AEC had waived its previous minimum safe distance of 7 miles after continued pressure from the military).80 After the detonation, and the dimming of the initial flash, troops were instructed to stand and observe the rising fireball before climbing out of the trenches and advancing toward ground zero. The exercises that took place during this test were also the first to include paratroopers, though the effort met with a few complications. Several of the group jumped early and missed the drop zone by 8 miles, five of whom suffered minor injuries.81 Additional maneuvers were conducted on later tests in the series as part of Desert Rock IV. After the fourth detonation, dubbed “Dog,” 1,950 took part in maneuvers similar to those undertaken by the army in the previous test, sheltering in trenches, observing, and then moving forward toward ground zero.82 It was the first maneuver involving the Marine Corps during continental nuclear testing.83 The Commandant of the Marine Corps was more explicit in his directives for realism than the Army had been, stating that the objectives of the maneuver were to “provide realistic training for ground units when supported by tactical atomic weapons,” and to “provide realistic training in protective measures.”84 To this end, the Marine Corps developed a tactical scenario that transformed Yucca Flat into a virtual island (called “Yucca,” creatively enough), that had been invaded with overwhelming force and established a strong defensive line. Marines would then land at the southern end of the “island” and advance to an entrenched position four miles from the planned ground zero. After the detonation of the test weapon, the marines would advance toward ground zero and take control of the enemy territory. The maneuver was carried out by the Marine Corps Provisional Atomic Exercise Unit and began with a briefing and instructions. The marines sheltered in the same trenches that had been used for the “Charlie” maneuvers and once the signal was given after the detonation, they were able to observe the fireball and cloud from their positions. Radiological monitoring teams discovered that the area near ground zero was too radioactive for the planned attack and so after a truncated tour of the damage to military equipment, they were transported back to Camp Desert Rock.85

80 Fehner and Gosling, Battlefield of the Cold War, 75. 81 “Operation Tumbler-Snapper Fact Sheet,” Defense Threat Reduction Agency (May 2015), http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/1-Fact_Sheets/12_TUMBLER-SNAPPER.pdf 82 “Operation Tumbler-Snapper, 1952,” 5. 83 “Shots Able, Baker, Charlie, and Dog,” 148. 84 “Shots Able, Baker, Charlie, and Dog,” 148. 85 “Shots Able, Baker, Charlie, and Dog,” 151. 35 The last maneuvers of Desert Rock IV occurred after the “George” test and involved 1,300 troops who, after sheltering in trenches at the 4-mile minimum safe distance, advanced toward ground zero in a simulated ground assault. This exercise assumed a scenario in which an enemy with overwhelming forces had invaded the Pacific Northwest and began an offensive to conquer the whole of the United States.86 The enemy had advanced to Yucca Flat and formed a strong defensive position while plans were made to launch another attack. U.S. forces found themselves entrenched to the south and prepared to fire on the enemy line with a 280mm atomic cannon shell. After the counterattack, would advance alongside tanks of the 1st Armored (five tanks of the 1st Armored Division participated in this simulated attack). In the end, the tactical maneuvers of Desert Rock IV provided little in the way of real-world battlefield training for the use of tactical nuclear weapons. The Human Resources Research Office (HumRRO), a military contractor studying the psychological aspects of the Desert Rock exercises, wrote that “the conditions in Nevada did not conform to ordinary maneuvers, much less to truly realistic training methods...” and that the maneuvers of Exercise Desert Rock should not be called “maneuvers” at all, but “demonstrations of phenomena, protective measures, and effects of atomic weapons.”87 While true that the maneuvers were limited in scope, and so perhaps the overall realism of the battle simulations was muted, the true benefit of these operations—and the majority of their real intention—was not to train troops in operations under atomic attack, but to steel them psychologically. The official film report for Desert Rock I emphasized this fact: “Since the biggest value of the operation is for us to prove to ourselves that it can be done, and find any weak points in the training, psychiatrists are with us to study our reactions before, during, and after the experience.”88 This was no less true on Desert Rock IV when two military contractors, HumRRO and the Operations Research Organization (ORO) conducted extensive psychological evaluations of troops

86 “Shots Easy, Fox, George, and How, the Final Tests of the Tumbler-Snapper Series, 7 May - 5 June 1952,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, DNA 6021F (Washington, D.C., Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense): 96, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2-Hist_Rpt_Atm/1952_DNA_6021F.pdf 87 “What HumRRO is Doing,” Human Resources Research Office, The George Washington University, Research Bulletin 1 (March 1954): 18. 88 “Exercise Desert Rock,” Staff Film Reports, No. 177, US Department of Defense, 1951, Department of Defense Special Weapons Agency, DASIAC Media Collection, Kirtland Air Force Base. Film released by US Department of Energy, Albuquerque Operations Office, https://archive.org/details/ExerciseDesertRock1951. 36 before and after witnessing the tests.89 These evaluations included interviews, questionnaires, and even polygraph measurements to determine the ability of soldiers and marines to witness a nuclear detonation and then perform effectively on the battlefield.90 This was found to be useful data from a research perspective and, as the war in continued and speculation about the use of tactical nuclear weapons in that theater increased, it was found to be potentially practical as well. The Desert Rock exercises continued the following year during the Upshot-Knothole testing series.

Operation Upshot-Knothole and Desert Rock V

In terms of realism and radiological safety standards, the 1953 Desert Rock V exercise would be materially different. Desert Rock V was held in conjunction with Operation Upshot-Knothole, a combined weapons effects and development testing series during which eleven devices would be detonated in the Nevada Proving Grounds between 17 March and 20 June 1953.91 Though military officials had convinced the AEC to allow troops to entrench closer to ground zero for Desert Rock IV, they remained unsatisfied and petitioned the AEC not only to allow troops as close as 1,500 yards (.85 miles) to a 20 kiloton detonation, but to double the allowable radiation dose from 3 roentgens for the entire testing series to 6 (this actually represented more than a doubling, as the previous limit of .3 roentgens per week was increased to 6.0 roentgens for a single event).92 The military planners were granted this concession and as a result, even more realistic battle exercises were carried out. The final report on Desert Rock V states that because some of these previous restrictions had been “entirely removed” by the AEC, several “advances” were made. These included the placement of a group of volunteer officers only 2,000 yards from ground zero (in an especially deep foxhole), the placement of two Combat Teams closer than any large group of soldiers had ever been placed before (3,500 yards), and the ability to maneuver around ground zero without restriction, so long as AEC instruments were left untouched.93 During Desert Rock V, the military was also given complete responsibility for radiological monitoring and safety—a fact that the military report touts as an “advance” but a responsibility the AEC was glad to

89 “Final Report,” Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (October 1995): Ch. 10. 90 “Reactions of Troops in Atomic Maneuvers, Exercise Desert Rock IV,” Operations Research Office, Johns Hopkins University (15 July 1953): 2, Defense Technical Information Center, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/026280.pdf 91 “Operation Upshot-Knothole Fact Sheet,” Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/1-Fact_Sheets/14_UPSHOT-KNOTHOLE.pdf 92 Fehner and Gosling, Battlefield of the Cold War, 93. 93 “Exercise Desert Rock V: January - June 1953. Volume I: Operations,” Defense Technical Information Center, ADA078559 (June 1953): 7, http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA078559. 37 surrender, given that the new, reduced safety standards were deemed to render the Desert Rock V operation “a hazardous one.”94 Desert Rock V tactical maneuvers were held during six of the 11 tests, making the series substantially bigger than the previous Desert Rock exercises.95 The first test, dubbed “Annie,” was a 16 kiloton detonation on 17 March. The Desert Rock V maneuvers during this test were similar to previous exercises in that troops were sent toward ground zero after the detonation to attack a hypothetical target. The scenario imagined for the maneuvers was based on the idea that enemy airborne troops had successfully invaded southern Nevada and advanced, pushing the U.S. 3rd Army to Barstow, California.96 There, after regrouping, friendly forces were able to push back and put the invasion force on the defensive where it established a fortified position in the Yucca Valley. As in previous scenarios, an atomic device would be used to break the enemy lines—with the exception that in Desert Rock V, the actual test device was one of 5 to 7 simulated weapons that would be detonated up and down the enemy line. The tactical maneuvers during Annie involved 1,181 troops from Camp Desert Rock and were designed to test Army tactical doctrine and battlefield procedures for battlefield use of nuclear weapons.97 The maneuvers were performed without injury or incident. The next test, “Nancy,” was carried out on 24 March and included even larger tactical maneuvers, incorporating 2,349 soldiers entrenched at 4,000 yards.98 Due to their closer proximity to the bomb, the trenches were blasted with sand and debris, though no injuries were reported.99 An unanticipated shift in the wind brought heightened levels of dust and fallout over the trenches, though the radiation dose levels remained under the safety limits and the troops advanced in two columns in a mock attack on two separate objectives to the west of ground zero.100 The advancing troops were presented with another radiological hazard when the radiation safety monitors attached to the column nearer to ground zero began to encounter levels of 2.0 roentgens per hour.101 In an

94 Fehner and Gosling, Battlefield of the Cold War, 93. 95 “Exercise Desert Rock V,” 8. 96 “Exercise Desert Rock V,” 81 97“Shots Annie to Ray: the First Five Tests of the Upshot-Knothole Series, 17 March - 11 April 1953,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6017F (14 January 1982), http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2-Hist_Rpt_Atm/1953_DNA_6017F.pdf 98 “Shots Annie to Ray,” 61. 99 “Exercise Desert Rock V,” 105. 100 “Exercise Desert Rock V,” 105. 101 “Shots Annie to Ray,” 69. 38 effort to avoid the fallout, the unit shifted its advance to the west and came within 460 to 640 meters to the planned attack objective before encountering radiation levels of up to 14.0 roentgens per hour and were forced to turn back.102 An additional experiment in troop proximity was undertaken in which nine volunteer officers (4 from the Army, 4 from the Navy, and 1 from the Air Force) were positioned in a trench 2,500 yards from ground zero.103 The officers had been given special training in nuclear weapons effects and were entrusted with their own safety, having been given the task of calculating their own minimum safe distance. This was part of a program to determine whether trained officers would be capable of sensibly and safely positioning troops in a tactical nuclear situation.104 The nine officers were relatively unscathed, taking the initiative to evacuate the trench and move to the rear when the radioactive dust cloud shifted and threatened their position. The men eventually received a relatively modest accumulated radiation dose of .4 roentgens.105 The next test in the series was “Badger” on 18 April. The Desert Rock V exercises surrounding the test primarily involved the Marine Corps, with 2,167 Marines executing the tactical maneuvers.106 In the same way that the Army had seen an opportunity for combining traditional ground tactics with tactical nuclear weapons, the Marine Corps saw a means of exploiting the gap in the enemy lines made by a nuclear weapon with its own tactic of “vertical envelopment”—the practice of landing combat teams behind enemy lines with .107 The Marine maneuvers were destined to meet with a shift in the wind and another unanticipated increase in radiation, this one much worse than had been experienced by the soldiers during “Nancy.” As the fireball and cloud of the 23 kiloton blast rose, Marines exited their entrenchments and marched forward to their objectives in the mock battle through exceptionally thick dust. A north-westerly wind began to blow from the direction of ground zero and advancing troops were exposed to what the Marine Corps final report on the exercise called “an unprecedented

102 “Exercise Desert Rock V,” 107. 103 “Exercise Desert Rock V,” 13. 104 “Shots Annie to Ray,” 66. 105 “Exercise Desert Rock V,” 110. 106 “Shot Badger: A Test of the Upshot Knothole Series, 18 April 1953,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6015F (17 January 1982):17, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2-Hist_Rpt_Atm/1953_DNA_6015F.pdf 107 “Shot Badger,” 22. 39 and unanticipated radiation fallout” that increased radiation doses to 7.5 roentgens per hour.”108 This exceeded the AEC’s more generous revised total dose of 6.0, and the Marines were immediately evacuated. Operations involving helicopters and landing teams also suffered from radiological hazards, though the Marine Corps report saw these as an obstacle to operational speed and effectiveness. “E Company was on its objective by H+50 minutes. This time would have been cut down considerably had it not been for rigid safety precautions....” The problem of radiation could be solved, in the report’s recommendations, by increasing the allowable dose. “The battalion had received an almost immediate radiation reading of 3.5 roentgens after it had proceeded less than 500 yards, at which time, if a greater tolerance had been permitted, the battalion could have been committed to an alternate zone of action and been able to view the display.”109 The recommended remedy to this situation was to petition the AEC to raise the total allowable dose to 12 roentgens, a dose “estimated to be a safe and reasonable tolerance.” The recommendation asserted that “it is believed experience will show that that limit can be safely exceeded.” That limit was significantly exceeded in the Badger incarnation of the volunteer observer program in which six Army officers and six Marine officers occupied a forward trench—this time at an even closer distance of 2000 yards (trenches had been prepared at 1500 yards and 2500 yards as well, but the officers’ calculations indicated that 2000 yards was the minimum reasonable safe distance).110 Despite the calculations and preparations, an extremely high reading of 500 roentgens per hour was recorded for 15 to 20 seconds in the trench. Radiation levels in this range are more than enough to cause illness and death if exposure is prolonged (more than a few minutes to an hour), and so the twelve officers evacuated over heavily contaminated ground (30 to 50 roentgens per hour) and were taken by truck to the main trench area for debriefing and then to decontamination.111 On 25 April, the “Simon” test of a 43 kiloton device was the backdrop for still larger Desert Rock exercises, involving 2,450 Army personnel in tactical battlefield maneuvers designed to realistically simulate an atomic battlefield.112 The maneuvers were similar to those held previously

108 “Desert Rock V,” Marine Corps Report, 2nd Marine Corps Provisional, ADA078567 (19 May 1953): 9, Defense Technical Information Center http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a078567.pdf 109 “Desert Rock V,” Marine Corps, 9. 110 “Shot Badger,” 20. 111 “Shot Badger,” 23. 112 “Operation Upshot-Knothole Fact Sheet.” 40 and involved two columns advancing on an objective near ground zero. Like prior maneuvers, the advance was halted before contact with the objective because of radiation intensity.113 In the last instance of the close-proximity volunteer observer program, seven Army officers and one Naval officer took up positions in the 2000 yard trench and, due to an unusual set of circumstances, directly experienced an . At the moment of detonation, one of the forward observers was in communication with the rear trenches by telephone utilizing a direct line. The electromagnetic pulse induced an electrical surge in the 2000 yard cable (the rear trenches were positioned at 4000 yards from ground zero) and electrocuted the men on both ends of the line. The officer in the forward trench reported a “distinct electric shock and a tingling sensation about the neck” while the observer in the rear trench reported “a shock equivalent to that received when holding a bare 110 volt electric wire.”114 The final two tests during which Desert Rock maneuvers were held were the “Encore” test of 8 May and “Grable” on 25 May.115 Encore was a 27 kiloton air-dropped weapon that was uniquely colorful and described by observers who had seen other tests as “the most picturesque ever seen at the Nevada Proving Grounds.”116 Other than this, the Desert Rock maneuvers were virtually identical to previous simulated tactical assaults on objectives near ground zero and were carried out without further incident. Grable on 25 May was unique in that it was a test of the “atomic cannon”—a 280mm artillery piece that delivered a Mark 9 nuclear shell.117 What proved to be of the most interest to the military participants—and what is reflected in the final report of the Marine Corps on the test—was the extraordinary amount of damage done to equipment during the Grable test, rendering the area out to a radius of 800 yards from ground zero “comparable to an area over which a battle had raged for days.”118

113 “Shot Simon: A Test of the Upshot Knothole Series, 25 April 1953,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6016F, “13 January 1982):26, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2-Hist_Rpt_Atm/1953_DNA_6016F.pdf 114 “Desert Rock V,” Marine Corps, 210. 115 “Operation Upshot-Knothole Fact Sheet.” 116 “Desert Rock V,” Marine Corps, 253. 117 “Operation Upshot-Knothole Fact Sheet.” 118 “Desert Rock V,” Marine Corps, 333. This unusual amount of damage was due to an as-yet unknown effect that would come to be called a “precursor wave.” 41 Operation Teapot and Exercise Desert Rock VI

In February 1955, a little more than a year and a half after the conclusion of Desert Rock V, Operation Teapot, the most extensive testing series up to that time, commenced at the newly rechristened Nevada Test Site.119 As part of the numerous activities that surrounded Teapot, the Army and Marine Corps developed plans for Exercise Desert Rock VI. Though the exercise would be smaller in terms of troop numbers and scope than Desert Rock V, the operations would prove to be more visible to the public. In what Fehner and Gosling’s history of the Nevada Test Site calls “its own Desert Rock extravaganza” the Army formed Task Force “Razor,” which was a reinforced armored battalion with 800 soldiers and 55 Patton tanks that marched cross-country from Camp Irwin in California.120 Once in position at the test site, the soldiers and tanks were backed up by 24 armored personnel carriers and four self-propelled 105mm . While the Desert Rock observer program took place on 8 of the 14 nuclear detonations during Teapot, with educational and indoctrination programs for soldiers and marines followed by observation of the detonation, the tactical troop maneuvers and battle simulations were only undertaken on two of the shots.121 The first of these was “Bee” on 22 March 1955 with a yield of 8 kilotons. During this test, 2,271 marines sheltered in trenches 3,500 yards from ground zero and then participated in tactical maneuvers, assaulting a simulated enemy.122 The maneuvers also involved the first use of tactical air support at the Nevada Test Site. In the case of these Marine Corps exercises, the stated objectives were to offer realistic training on the tactical nuclear battlefield and to “develop new tactics and techniques to exploit the effects of a nuclear explosion when nuclear weapons are employed in support of air-ground task forces.”123 On the morning of 22 March, three hours before the Bee detonation, two rifle companies, a 75mm battery, a mortar platoon, 75mm gun platoon, and a battalion command post were moved from Camp Desert

119 The Nevada Test Site reverted to that name after a period as the Nevada Proving Grounds. 120 Fehner and Gosling, Battlefield of the Cold War, 137. 121 “Operation Teapot: Fact Sheet.” Defense Thread Reduction Agency, US Strategic Command Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction, Standing Joint Force Headquarters for Elimination, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/1-Fact_Sheets/16_TEAPOT.pdf 122 “Bee: A Test of the Teapot Series, 22 March 1955.” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA6011F (24 November 1981):17, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2-Hist_Rpt_Atm/1955_DNA_6011F.pdf 123 “Report of Exercise Desert Rock VI - Marine Corps,” Marine Corps Report, 3d Marine Corps Provisional Atomic Exercise Brigade, ADA078568 (March 1955): I-1, Defense Technical Information Center http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a078568.pdf 42 Rock to the forward trenches.124 After the detonation, Marine helicopters approached predetermined landing zones in attack formation. The troops sheltered in trenches advanced on the loading zones, embarked on the helicopters, and a combat airlift commenced. The Marine Corps took an interest in publicizing the maneuvers and prepared and disseminated news stories and photographs prior to the test and immediately following it. Before noon on the day of the test, photographs were already on the news wires. By the next day, the Marine Corps had made agreements with the NBC and CBS television networks to broadcast color films of the maneuvers.125 A special note was made in the final report of the possibility of a future Life Magazine story and a Time Magazine interview. The Marine Corps maneuvers during Desert Rock VI were considered to be “executed with greater success than was anticipated” and the recommendation was made to participate in any future Desert Rock exercises.126 The Corps would have its chance in 1957 with Desert Rock VII and VIII. The second test that saw tactical troop maneuvers was “Apple 2” on 5 May. It was during this test that Task Force Razor saw action. The task force had participated in an over-land tactical march across open desert terrain from Camp Irwin, California that started on 18 April, lasted four days, and covered more than 150 miles.127 In the scenario for this elaborate exercise, a strategic nuclear attack had crippled communication and industrial complexes and enemy forces had landed in and gone on to occupy California and western Nevada.128 Like the Marine Corps, the Army was interested in publicizing its activities during Desert Rock VI. The Army-sponsored television documentary series, The Big Picture, devoted a half hour episode to Task Force Razor, asking, “would the ground soldier become obsolete?” in a world of nuclear weapons.129 Task Force Razor was the answer to this concern, offering a resounding “no” and visual proof of the ways in which a conventional military could utilize tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. The night before the Apple-2 test, the tanks and armored personnel carriers of Task Force Razor were positioned as close as 3,000 yards to ground zero.130 Crews occupying the vehicles were

124 “Exercise Desert Rock VI,” VI-2 125 “Exercise Desert Rock VI,” VI-6 126 “Exercise Desert Rock VI,” VI-7 127 “Operation Teapot: Fact Sheet.” 128 “Armored Task Force, Desert Rock VI: Detailed Plan of Test,” Headquarters, Armored School, Fort Knox, Kentucky (March 1955):24, Defense Technical Information Center http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a080237.pdf 129 “The Atom Soldier,” The Big Picture, Army Signal Corps, TV-308, 1955. 130 “Shot Apple 2: A Test of the Teapot Series, 5 May 1955,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA6012F (25 43 instructed to rotate the tank turrets to the rear to minimize potential blast damage, to remove the sight periscopes, and to seal all of the sight apertures with opaque tape.131 The vehicles weathered the blast without damage and, with the mushroom cloud still rising, Task Force Razor began its attack. More than in previous Desert Rock exercises, the Razor maneuvers valued realism and tanks fired blank shells from their main guns and machine guns as they pushed toward the “enemy” northwest of ground zero. Eight fighter- flew in to assist the advancing armored task force immediately after the blast and remained for the duration of the maneuver, simulating bombing and strafing attacks.132 Simulated casualties were evacuated from the battle by two H-23 helicopters that had been dispatched from Yucca Lake airstrip to the south. An aviation company was also used to airlift an infantry platoon forward of the objective in order to delay enemy reinforcements and to resupply Task Force Razor once the battle was won.133 Though this brought the Desert Rock activities to a close, Task Force Razor continued to engage in the simulated war, marching back to Camp Irwin where it engaged in a mock battle utilizing chemical weapons.134

Operation Plumbbob and Desert Rock VII and VIII

During Operation Plumbbob, an extensive testing series held between 28 May and 22 October 1957, the final Desert Rock exercises were carried out. Exercise Desert Rock VII and VIII included the usual educational and observational programs as well as tactical maneuvers on the atomic battlefield.135 The testing series itself was the biggest yet held at the Nevada Test Site, with 6 safety tests and 24 nuclear detonations ranging in size from mere tons to the massive 74 kiloton “Hood” test which would prove to be the largest atmospheric test ever to be held at the site. Though personnel had participated in Desert Rock educational and observer programs, Hood provided the opportunity for the first tactical troop maneuvers of the Plumbbob series.

November 1981):13, Defense Threat Reduction Agency http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2-Hist_Rpt_Atm/1955_DNA_6012F.pdf 131 “Shot Apple 2,” 34. 132 “Armored Task Force, Desert Rock VI,” 56. 133 “Armored Task Force, Desert Rock VI,” 58. 134 “Armored Task Force, Desert Rock VI,” 50. 135 “Plumbbob Series 1957,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6005F (15 September 1981):1, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2- Hist_Rpt_Atm/1957_DNA_6005F.pdf. 44 The device was detonated on 5 July 1957 while 2,025 members of the 4th Marine Corps Provisional Atomic Exercise Brigade crouched in trenches positioned 3 miles from ground zero.136 This Marine Brigade exercise would be the largest single exercise to be carried out at the Nevada Test Site and involved an elaborate set of interwoven plans for the coordinated air-ground assault on the planned objectives. Fifteen minutes after the detonation, ground forces were instructed to advance to positions where helicopters would transport them to landing zones for the final attack. Support was provided by 24 F9F Panther fighter jets and artillery. In a separate maneuver, a different company advanced on ground zero until the area of maximum allowable radiation was reached and then retreated to waiting helicopters that transported the troops to the ongoing battle, all while another company made its way to the front in tracked landing vehicles. Yet another planned component of the maneuvers was a “command post” exercise that had already taken place during the postponed “Diablo” test on 28 June. On 31 August 1957, “” was detonated and yielded 44 kilotons. Two weeks before the test, a reinforced Infantry Company designated Task Force “Warrior” prepared defensive positions near ground zero. This was the first phase of a simulated attack and resupply maneuver to be carried out against a “mythical aggressive enemy who [had] landed on the coast of California.”137 Warrior was designed to test infantry airlanded tactics and techniques and to provide real-world atomic battlefield experience to a newly formed type of fighting unit.138 The Reorganization of Current Infantry Divisions (ROCID) was born of the shifting understanding of the ways that future wars would be fought—namely that tactical atomic weapons would be used in limited ways on the battlefield. Under this reorganization, the three-way division of forces that had been the rule during the Second World War was further divided in five, semiautonomous groups dubbed “pentomic” units.139 This new arrangement was designed to disperse men and resources and increase mobility and effectiveness on an atomic battlefield. More than ever, the maneuvers taking place during the

136 “Shot Hood: A Test of the Plumbbob Series,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6002F ( 13 May 1983): 18, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2- Hist_Rpt_Atm/1957_DNA_6002F.pdf. 137 This phrase is taken from “Atomic Battlefield,” The Big Picture, Army Signal Corps, TV-396, 1957. 138 “Shot Smoky: A Test of the Plumbbob Series, 31 August 1957,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6004F (31 May 1981): 26, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2-Hist_Rpt_Atm/1957_DNA_6004F.pdf. 139 A.J. Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: The US Army Between Korea and (Washington, D.C., National Defense University Press, 1986): 54, Defense Technical Information Center, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a956178.pdf 45 Nevada tests were simulations of battles and conditions that were increasingly assumed to be an inevitable feature of the next war. In a documentary film of the exercise broadcast as part of The Big Picture television series, the introduction states that “The battlefield of the future...may well be an atomic battlefield. That brutal fact has forced upon the Army the absolute necessity of testing both men and tactical concepts under atomic conditions.”140 A new feature of the pentomic structure of the army were “Pathfinder” units tasked with marking out radiologically safe landing zones and signaling the helicopters for airlift to the front. These units preceded the main invading force on the morning of the test and initiated the airlift by fourteen H-34 helicopters and eight H-21s.141 A second airlift transported the remaining platoons immediately after with seventeen H-34s and 11 H- 21s. The final Desert Rock exercise was conducted during “Galileo” on 2 September 1957. Occurring just two days after the maneuvers of Task Force Warrior, the Galileo exercises involved a provisional company from the designated Task Force “Big Bang.”142 This group of approximately 160 soldiers participated in a psychological experiment run by the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) to determine troop effectiveness after witnessing a nuclear detonation. Immediately following Galileo, soldiers were asked to disassemble and reassemble their rifles and clear a simulated minefield. At one hour after the detonation, radiological monitors determined that it was safe to proceed with a combat infiltration obstacle course on which troops crawled, sprinted, climbed a wall and threw hand .143

The End of Desert Rock

Though Desert Rock VII and VIII had not been intended as the last maneuvers on the atomic battlefield, they would prove to be the final series of exercises. With a looming testing moratorium and a move toward underground testing at the Nevada Test Site, opportunities for Desert Rock

140 “Atomic Battlefield,” The Big Picture. 141 “Shot Smoky,” 33. 142 “Analysis of Radiation Exposure for Task Force Big Bang, Shot Galileo: Exercise Desert Rock VII - VIII Operation Plumbbob,” Defense Nuclear Agency, DNA 4772F (9 April 1980):5, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/4-Rad_Exp_Rpts/21_DNA- 4772F_Analysis_of_Rad_Exposure_for_Shot_GALILEO_Op_PLUMBBOB.pdf. 143 “Analysis of Radiation Exposure,” 8. 46 exercises were greatly reduced. The camp itself was decommissioned and returned to the Department of the Interior in 1965.144 The purpose of the Desert Rock exercises can be summarized by the well-known quote from the legendary military theorist : “It is of first importance that the soldier, high or low, should not have to encounter in war things which, seen for the first time, set him in terror or perplexity.” Or, more plainly put in the final report on the Desert Rock VII and VIII exercises: “Of greatest value to all observers was banishment of fear of the unknown.”145 Through the Desert Rock exercises, a generation of military men were exposed to the most extraordinary new destructive force and came away having demonstrated neither terror nor perplexity. Like the underwhelmed observers during Operation Crossroads in 1946, or the national television audience for test “Charlie” in 1952, with their obscured, blurred perception of the magnitude of the bomb, the Desert Rock exercises had created a feeling that the atomic bomb could be used like any conventional ordinance on the battlefield. The psychological analysis made after the tests demonstrated a restrained appreciation of the new weapon, but almost nothing in the way of fear. When asked by an Army Signal Corps filmmaker after the first Desert Rock exercise, “Would you like to be any closer to it than you were?” A soldier identified as Sergeant Gutierrez replied with a smile, “If I did, sir, I think I’d dig the hole a little deeper.”146

Survival City: Civilian Simulations of Nuclear War

Presiding over the dry scrub and sagebrush of the wide desert floor of the Nevada National Security Site is a vacant and gutted house. Its wooden siding is stripped of paint and its brick chimney sits askew, broken midway up its height. It is a truly unique dwelling in that it survived a nuclear bomb. The house was built as part of a civil defense experiment in 1955 carried out during the Operation Teapot testing series and dubbed “Operation Cue” by the Federal Civil Defense Agency. In the predawn hours of 5 May 1955, the house stood 7,800 feet away from the Apple-2 device, a 29 kiloton bomb perched on a 500-foot tower.147 The house had been painted white in the hope of guarding against thermal radiation and was populated by a family of smartly dressed J.C. Penny

144 “Findings for the Former Camp Desert Rock,” Defense Environmental Restoration Program, US Army Corps of Engineers, Project Number J09NV027601 (June 1996):7. 145 “Exercise Desert Rock VII and VIII: Final Report of Operations.” Defense Technical Information Center, ADA077515 (9 January 1958), http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a077515.pdf 146 “The Atom Soldier,” The Big Picture. 147 “Shot Apple 2,” 9. 47 mannequins—an image that has since become iconic of the atmospheric testing era in Nevada.148 The house was one of ten built of different materials and in different styles at varying distances from ground zero, and among other structures including an electrical substation, a propane gas facility, a weigh station, and mobile homes.149 The majority of this “Survival Town” did not survive the brief and single-sided nuclear war, though this wooden house, heavily damaged, was deemed to be sufficiently intact to “be made available for emergency shelter from the elements by shoring and not too extensive repairs.”150 This assessment proved to be correct, as the house still stands (with minimal bracing) more than six decades later and is a popular stop on the monthly public tours of the Nevada National Security Site. Operation Cue was the most extensive civil defense effects test ever held and would prove to be the closest approximation of a nuclear war on the elements of everyday civilian life ever attempted, but it was only one such simulation of many, as civil defense planners attempted to address the unknown elements of survival unique to a nuclear environment and to develop techniques for mitigating the unprecedented destruction that could be expected in the event of a nuclear war. The effects tests in Nevada were the closest thing to nuclear war available to these planners and each of the tests helped in creating something like a viable plan for emergency response to a nuclear attack—even as the growing estimates of the destruction of such a war consistently outpaced the best efforts of civil defense.

The First Effects Tests, 1951-1952

In the beginning of atmospheric testing era, a significant emphasis was placed on military effects and weapons development. Operation Crossroads in 1946 tested the effects of nuclear weapons on ships and assorted other military hardware. The second testing series, in 1948, was run by the AEC and so the experimental program was central to the operation, dictating the form of the tests and placing weapons development at the forefront.151 With that said, some effects

148 “Civil Effects Test,” Nevada National Security Site History, National Nuclear Security Administration, DOE/NV 714 (August 2013), https://www.nnss.gov/docs/fact_sheets/DOENV_714.pdf. 149 “Cue for Survival: Operation Cue, A.E.C. Nevada Test Site,” A Report by the Federal Civil Defense Administration, FCDA, ADA395954 (May 5, 1955), Defense Technical Information Center http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a395954.pdf. 150 “Cue for Survival,” 8. 151 “Operation Sandstone 1948,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6033F (19 December 1983), Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2- Hist_Rpt_Atm/1948_DNA_6033F.pdf. 48 tests were requested by the military and carried out in conjunction with the three detonations of Sandstone. Some blast effects experiments were carried out for the Navy’s Bureau of Yards and Docks on small, preformed concrete structures of various shapes as well as materials tests, but the scope of these experiments was relatively minimal.152 The first testing series at the Nevada Test Site—Operation Ranger in 1951—included additional experiments on materials effects that were similar to those during Sandstone but far more extensive, with 48 panels fitted with 100 material swatches each, placed at various distances from ground zero, in foxholes and on the surface.153 These swatches included textiles, plastics, and wood and were conducted primarily by the Army’s Quartermaster General on military materials such as uniform materials, construction materials, and paints. In a significant civil effects test—the first experiment geared toward civilian life and civil defense rather than military hardware, the Division of Biology and Medicine of the AEC tested the effects of the bomb on automobiles. In an almost gleeful pun, the test was named “Operation Hot Rod” and involved five 1936 to 1939 sedans from Buick, Oldsmobile, Chevrolet, Lafayette, and spaced at half-mile intervals from ground zero.154 The test was designed to determine the ability of cars to act as shelters in the event of an attack. The vehicles placed beyond two miles seemed to show that there would be a chance for survival, though this conjecture created some consternation within the civil defense community and another more extensive test would be carried out during Operation Upshot-Knothole in 1953. 1951 also saw the Operation Greenhouse testing series in the Pacific. Though the majority of the experiments conducted were abstract scientific inquiries, Greenhouse was also the venue for the first serious investigation into the effects of nuclear weapons on civilian structures.155 The structural test was sponsored by the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project and was carried out during the 47 kiloton “Easy” detonation. It included 27 full and partial-scale mockups of a variety of buildings in order to “gain offensive and defensive knowledge of structural reactions to an atomic blast,” as the

152 “The Navy’s Part in Operation Sandstone,” Atomic Energy Commission, United States Air Force, Lookout Mountain Laboratory Project 19-14, 1948. 153 “Operation Ranger: Shots Able, Baker, Easy, Baker-2, Fox, 25 January - 6 February 1951.” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6022F (26 February 1982):47, Defense Threat Reduction Agency http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2-Hist_Rpt_Atm/1951_DNA_6022F.pdf. 154 Fehner and Gosling, Battlefield of the Cold War, 56. 155 “Operation Greenhouse 1951,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6034F (15 June 1983):157, Defense Threat Reduction Agency http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2- Hist_Rpt_Atm/1951_DNA_6034F.pdf. 49 official film report of Operation Greenhouse puts it.156 “Important information for the protection of our cities, important information for the destruction of enemy cities.” The buildings included a two- story house and an industrial building with long steel spans representative of an aircraft assembly hangar or other similar industry and a short-span industrial building representative of a light manufacturing plant, all constructed by the Air Force. The Army concerned itself with the construction of a “composite building” and contained seven sections designed to fail or survive in seven different ways.157 Greenhouse also provided some additional non-military tests in the realm of animal-based medical experiments. These were general tests and had a planned role in future civil defense policy. A film of the testing series released by the AEC states that the animal tests were necessary because “a nation gearing up to an effective civilian defense program must have all the answers.” Operation Buster (the first phase of what would become the combined Buster-Jangle) had been in the works since summer of 1950 and as planning went on, stakeholders demanded more and more of it.158 The Atomic Energy Commission required weapons development tests and a proof- firing of a device already in the stockpile while the military began to make demands for the inclusion of massive live-fire troop maneuvers that would become the first Desert Rock exercises. Civil Defense officials at the FCDA also introduced the idea of a large civil defense effects test to be carried out in conjunction with the operation. The AEC resisted the idea of adding a nuclear detonation solely for the benefit of FCDA and so eventually the plan was scaled back. The civil defense effects tests that were eventually implemented were carried out on individual family shelters and larger shelter models.159 The family shelters were assembled 400 yards from ground zero and were made of metal, wood, and brick. The larger, proposed communal shelters were buried 300 yards from ground zero and instrumented to detect radiation. The FCDA continued to request a nuclear test for their own purposes, as opposed to simply tacking on their civil defense tests to the AEC’s weapons development program. Nevertheless, 1952’s Operation Tumbler-Snapper had an even more limited roster of effects tests of the kind FCDA had been requesting, with only the Forest Service and the Department of Agriculture testing nuclear

156 “Operation Greenhouse,” Department of Energy Film no. 0800088, 1951. 157 An interesting note about this particular effects test is that the film of the destruction of these buildings can be found in nearly every montage of nuclear destruction in Cold War cinema. 158 Fehner and Gosling, Battlefield of the Cold War, 68. 159 “Operation Buster-Jangle 1951,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6023F (21 June 1982):74, Defense Technical Information Center, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a123441.pdf. 50 effects on isolated pine trees set in concrete as part of a larger effort to understand the effects on forests.160 The rest of the effects tests were carried out on military equipment. Also in 1952, brought the world into the thermonuclear age with the “Mike” test—a 10.4 megaton explosion vastly more powerful than anything seen before. With the advent of thermonuclear weapons, civil defense efforts found a new momentum and the FCDA would finally get the opportunity for a large-scale effects test and demonstration.

Doorstep and Cue: Civil Defense Simulates Disaster

“Operation Doorstep” was carried out in March 1953 in conjunction with the Upshot-Knothole testing series in Nevada. It was an ambitious venture on the part of FCDA to bring greater public awareness to civil defense efforts—something that had long been a goal of the Chairman of the FCDA, Val Person.161 Operation Doorstep was slated to be an exceedingly public endeavor with more than 600 Civil Defense observers and news media.162 A film of Operation Doorstep was made for public consumption as well as a 30-page booklet with extensive pictures of the test structures and the aftermath.163 This was a major step in the evolving process of simulating nuclear disaster on civilian materials and structures. In the introduction to the Operation Doorstep booklet, the head of the FCDA, , wrote that the purpose of the program was to “show the people of America what might be expected if an atomic burst took place over the doorsteps of our major cities”— hence the name of the exercise. At the of the tests during Doorstep were three project categories: the exposure of personal shelter designs, the exposure of vehicles, and the exposure of typical American houses. There were eight shelter designs at varying distances from ground zero- from 1,250 feet to 3,500 feet. Along with experimental instrumentation, all of the shelters were occupied by the department store mannequins that would become the stars of the media coverage. Fifty passenger cars and three U.S. Post Office trucks were scattered at various ranges as well. This

160 “Operation Tumbler-Snapper, 1952,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6019F (14 June 1982):89, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2- Hist_Rpt_Atm/1952_DNA_6019F.pdf. 161 Harry B. Yoshpe, Our Missing Shield: The US Civil Defense Program in Historical Perspective,” (Washington, D.C., Federal Agency, April 1981):211, Defense Technical Information Center http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a099634.pdf. 162 “Operation Doorstep,” (print) 1953-O-25742 (Washington, D.C., US Government Printing Office, 1953). The film of the operation suggests that there were more than 1000 participants. 163 “Operation Doorstep.” (film) Produced by Byron, Inc. and Federal Civil Defense Administration, 1953. 51 was a major sequel to the Operation Hot Rod test and was designed to settle the question left open by Hot Rod as to whether vehicles provided adequate protection from atomic attack. Finally, two houses were build at 3,500 feet and 7,500 feet from ground zero. These were identical two story houses with and minimal furnishing. They were occupied by families of mannequins in a variety of positions, including in the shelters. The structures and equipment were exposed to the 16 kiloton “Annie” detonation on 17 March. The shelter designs performed as expected and allowed the FCDA to revise its recommendations for design, placement, and construction. The Doorstep film indicates that “nearly every car driven into the area could be driven out again under its own power, in spite of damage.” The houses, however, provided the most dramatic depictions of destruction. The nearer house, at 3,500 feet, was almost entirely destroyed by the blast. The description of damage in the published booklet places the house at 90-95% destroyed with a bramble of wreckage trapping the mannequin family. Film of the destruction was widely circulated as well as a six-photograph sequence published in newspapers around the country. The second house was also severely damaged, though much of it was only apparent inside. The blast had knocked out all of the doors and windows and the mannequins had been thrown around violently and cut by flying debris. The FCDA did not shy away from publicizing the images of the damaged mannequins, nor did the agency try to soften the impact of the public imagining itself in the place of those mannequins (there was an order form in the back of the Operation Doorstep booklet so that the public could purchase 8x10 prints of every image of destruction reproduced in the publication). Instead, it used the test as a means of promoting its agenda and the necessity of personal shelter. At the end of the film, the narrator reiterates that there is an urgent need to prepare for atomic warfare and poses the question, “or will you, like a mannequin, just sit and wait?” Though there was no actual civil defense rescue and recovery effort attempted in association with Operation Doorstep, the film does show scenes of the concurrent Exercise Desert Rock IV maneuvers and asserts that Civil Defense personnel could move into the zone of destruction as easily and safely as the soldiers. In 1955, FCDA would stage its own version of the Desert Rock exercises—“Operation Cue.” Operation Cue was the pinnacle of live-fire civil defense tests and was by far the most extensive operation of its kind. Like Doorstep, Cue was designed to be a public display but instead of simple effects tests, it would be a complete dress rehearsal for war, from the initial attack through recovery efforts. In conjunction with Exercise Desert Rock VI and the spectacle of the cross-country

52 march of Task Force Razor—the Army’s reinforced armored battalion—from California into ground zero, the events of Operation Teapot were undoubtedly the most elaborate simulation of these facets of a nuclear war ever undertaken by the United States with real nuclear weapons. Operation Cue had two distinct purposes. The first, materials and techniques tests for effective civil defense in the event of an attack, and the second, “To give the American public some conception of the tremendous destructive energy of an atomic explosion.”164 At the heart of the exercise, and focal point of much of the publicity, was the construction of a representative sample of a small American town dubbed “Survival City” by the New York Times (though the somewhat more sinister monikers “Doom Town” and “Terror Town” were used by the ).165 The model village was composed of eight houses of different designs and six industrial facilities, including a 250-watt radio station with four radio masts, a 3,000 kilowatt power transformer substation at the 6,800 foot line and a second substation at 15,000 feet from ground zero, a and liquid station, and a weighing and delivery facility.166 Four of the houses—a one- story, precast concrete structure, a reinforced masonry single story, a one-story rambler frame house, and a two story brick and cinderblock house, were situated 4,700 feet from the test tower on either side of an unpaved road dubbed “Doomsday Drive.”167 Beyond the structures, at 10,500 and 15,000 feet, cars and house trailers to represent lighter-weight dwellings were scattered amongst emergency vehicles. As with Operation Doorstep, the houses and cars were populated by families of mannequins and the houses were filled with appliances and furnished with donations from industry. The fortitude of the structures was tested on 5 May in conjunction with the 29 kiloton “Apple-2” test. The results were dramatic and film of some of the subsequent destruction was included in the official FCDA film of Operation Cue and is common in montages of nuclear weapons testing. In the initial flash and heat pulse, paint on structures roils up in black plumes and utility and wires briefly ignite before the blast demolishes most things along Doomsday Drive. Despite this, the New York Times reported that Survival City had generally held up well against the blast, reporting that two houses and two industrial buildings had been destroyed, that vehicles were

164 “Annual Report for 1955,” Federal Civil Defense Administration (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1956), 44, Homeland Security Digital Library, https://www-hsdl- org.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/?view&did=34705 165 “Area Stands Up Well,” New York Times, May 06, 12; “As A-Blast Spread Fiery Fury in Skies.” 1955. Los Angeles Times. May 06, 3. 166 “Operation Cue,” Federal Civil Defense Administration, 1956, film. 167 Fehner and Gosling, Battlefield of the Cold War, 135; “Area Stands Up Well,” New York Times, 06 May 1955, 12. 53 overturned, and that the model electrical grid set up to supply the structures had been disrupted when four of the fifteen utility poles were broken in the blast. On the other hand, the radio station had survived (though it had ceased broadcasting), the natural gas infrastructure remained intact, and the telephone system still worked. As an initial report, this is all true, but it does discount the fact that the surviving structures had all lost their windows, the glass having turned into flying projectiles in the blast. On the same day that the New York Times published this assessment under the headline “Area Stands Up Well,” the Los Angeles Times published “Atom City Shows Few Could Have Survived.”168 This article stated that “it is doubtful that many occupants in the dwellings would have escaped critical injury or death.” In a colorful piece of journalism, the article acknowledged that a structure undamaged save for missing windows could just as easily prove lethal: “In virtually every structure razor-sharp chunks of window glass, like translucent guillotine knives, had been hurled across the room with terrific force.” In a detail missing from other accounts, the article also reported that “small lances of glass [were] driven deep into cans of food.” The inclusion of cans of food was another major aspect of the FCDA test plans. Most types of food, including canned goods, dry goods, meats, eggs, butter and other dairy, and most conceivable foodstuffs were exposed to the blast at different ranges and in different storage states, including in cabinets and on cupboards in test houses, in boxes at ground level, and buried three inches underground.169 (No mention is made of the state of the fresh food and raw meats after more than a week passed between their placement and the delayed Apple-2 detonation). In all, the FCDA conducted 40 different experiments during Operation Cue.170 What is unique about Operation Cue is really what came after the nuclear detonation and initial tours of the damaged homes and mutilated mannequins. The exercise was designed to simulate every aspect of the role that civil defense officials would play following a nuclear attack. This began with a program of mass-feeding, a task that could be assumed necessary after an attack. On the morning of the detonation, civil defense volunteers prepared a breakfast for those observers in attendance.171 They repeated this exercise at lunch the following day amidst the ruins of Doomsday Drive to provide a more realistic backdrop. This event is documented in the film of

168 Marvin Miles, “Atom City Shows Few Could Have Survived,” Los Angeles Times, 07 May 1955, 1. 169 “Operation Cue,” Federal Civil Defense Administration, 1955. 170 “Shot Apple 2,” 52. 171 “Operation Teapot: Report of the Test Manager, Joint Test Organization - Nevada Test Site 1955,” A995154 (Washington, D.C., Defense Nuclear Agency, 1 November 1981), 100, Defense Technical Information Center, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a995154.pdf. 54 Operation Cue and shows civil defense workers cooking roast beef in 5-gallon cans on open . Both meals are reported to have been “excellent” in the test director’s official report. To add to the realism, rescue workers began extracting the injured (or dead) mannequins from the ruined houses that morning. Civil Air Patrol also supported the disaster relief effort, conducting “food lifts” from Las Vegas to the test site and providing a back-up communications network through its own VHF radio system and through courier services.172 Ambulance planes were also made available for real casualties, though none occurred. As seen from the divergent newspaper accounts, there were many interpretations that were taken back to communities across the country. As the threat of ever larger thermonuclear weapons loomed through the end of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s, the possibilities for survival demonstrated in Operation Cue began to wither and the effectiveness of civil defense measures seemed ever more in doubt. Despite this, the film of Operation Cue was re-released by the Office of Civil Defense in 1964 as “Operation Cue – 1964 Revision.”173 Many of the changes were aesthetic— a significant change in the symphonic score and removal of some of the more quaint and conversational narration such as “I was especially interested in the food test program...as a mother and housewife, this appealed to me”—all changes which largely reflected cultural shifts between 1955 and 1964. But in looking at the more technical alterations, often far more subtle, Operation Cue offers one last insight into its value as a simulation of nuclear war. The first major change is what amounts to a disclaimer in the opening title sequence. While the 1955 version included introductory titles explaining the difference between kilotons and megatons and the respective differences in destructive potential, the 1964 introductory titles are more insistent that the current threat challenges faced by civil defense in a nuclear war were not reflected in the Operation Cue film:

In this test, many of the structures damaged by the 30 kiloton bomb were approximately one mile from ground zero. With a 20 megaton blast, they probably would be obliterated, and comparable damage would occur out to a distance of at least eight and a half or nine miles. Therefore, while Operation Cue was valuable for research and test purposes, it does not reflect the full severity of today’s larger thermonuclear weapons with their associated fallout hazard.

172 “Operation Teapot,” 103. 173 “Operation Cue – 1964 Revision,” Office of Civil Defense, Department of Defense, 1964. 55 It is notable that this introduction makes specific mention of fallout, when it is never addressed in the 1955 film. Other changes appear to illuminate a shift in the attitude of the federal civil defense program—now under the banner of the Office of Civil Defense (OCD), having superseded the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (OCDM) which in tern had superseded the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA). Most of the changes between the 1955 film and the 1964 revision take the form of omissions. On inspection of a basement shelter, the 1955 narrator says, “This type [of shelter] would give more room for a family, especially if it were necessary to remain there for several days.” This line is omitted in 1964. Also omitted are two references to the possible loss of utilities and communications infrastructure. In 1964 there is silence over images of a utility pole and radio towers. A reference to a pair of test mannequins as “Mr. and Mrs. America” is also removed. After the explosion sequence in the film, the final change is the omission of a characteristically honest assessment in the 1955 version. “Although basement shelters offered some degree of protection, they cannot be depended upon completely in potential blast areas” becomes the more subdued, “The basement shelter had offered some degree of protection.” While it is possible that each of these changes and omissions are purely editorial license, the conspire to soften the message of the film and strategically distance the viewer from the real questions of survivability. The image of Mr. and Mrs. America remaining for several days or longer in a basement shelter that might have been damaged, without electricity or communication, is systematically expunged from the 1964 revision. A task seemingly at odds with the much more dire scenario outlined in the opening narration, of much larger bombs and the threat of fallout.

Operation Alert: Rehearsals For Doomsday

After World War II, President Truman dismantled the Office of Civilian Defense and the United States was left without a civil defense policy.174 With the success of the first Soviet atomic bomb on 29 August 1949 and the Soviet weapons program years ahead of schedule, agitation began to reconstitute some form of civil defense program.175 Truman created the Federal Civil Defense Administration on 1 December 1950 to promote civil defense and to facilitate state-level

174 Harry S. Truman, “Executive Order 9562—Termination of the Office of Civilian Defense,” The American Presidency Project, 4 June 1945, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=77891. 175 “Annual Report for 1952,” Federal Civil Defense Administration (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1952), 3, Homeland Security Digital Library https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=34717. 56 coordination of civil defense efforts.176 The new administration moved quickly in its first year from a “skeleton blueprint” largely derived from the simple directives in Truman’s Executive Order, to facilitating actual exercises.177 Almost exactly a year after the genesis of the FCDA, the country saw “the most dramatic single event of civil defense in 1951,” according the administration’s first annual report. This was a mass air raid drill held in on 28 November during which traffic was stopped and the busy streets were emptied of pedestrians who sheltered for ten minutes in the nearest basement or shop front. The New York drill was significant for its scale, but it was not alone. By late in 1951, the nascent civil defense organizations of 38 states and territories held what the FCDA called “major test exercises.” This was only the start of what would come to be ever more elaborate and expansive rehearsals for nuclear disaster in the years to come. In 1952 alone, 2,000 civil defense exercises were conducted by cities and states involving 2 million civil defense workers and 42 million citizens.178 The types of exercises and drills were widely varied and organized at the city and state level. Mass drills were held in Boston, New York, , and San Francisco as well as many smaller cities. State-wide exercises involving millions of participants were held in , Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands held island- wide exercises while civil defense in and participated in atomic wargames with the military, dubbed “Exercise Eversharp” and “Exercise Warm Wind,” respectively.179 In a notable bit of theater (perhaps more than an effort to truly simulate an attack), newspapers in Buffalo, Syracuse, and New York, New York published emergency editions of their newspapers on the day of the drills with headlines like “A-Bomb Destroys Downtown Buffalo, 40,000 Killed,” and “203,000 Killed as A-Bomb Hits Bronx.”180 The following year, the FCDA began to actively encourage newspapers to conduct these emergency printing exercises as part of its emergency information operations.181 If a newspaper’s printing facilities were in a target area—and therefore assumed to have been destroyed—that newspaper would print at another facility outside of the assumed area of devastation, re-enter the bombed zone, and then distribute

176 Harry S. Truman, “Executive Order 10186—Establishing the Federal Civil Defense Administration in the Office for Emergency Management of the Executive Office of the President,” The American Presidency Project, 1 December 1950, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=78352. 177 “Annual Report for 1951,” Federal Civil Defense Administration (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1952), 69, Homeland Security Digital Library https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=34718. 178 “Annual Report for 1952,” 1. 179 “Annual Report for 1952,” 23 - 29 180 “Annual Report for 1952,” 50 181 “Annual Report for 1953,” Federal Civil Defense Administration (Washington, D.C., US Government Printing Office, 1953), 77, Homeland Security Digital Library, https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=34712. 57 edition to the target city. This served the dual purpose of getting newspapers involved in the planning for printing under atomic attack, and also offered a layer of realism to city-wide civil defense drills. Every state, territory, and province of Canada participated in multiple drills and exercises during 1953, dubbed with such names as “Operation Fireball” (emergency firefighting), “Operation Wake-Up” (an 11-state joint command post exercise that integrated the Army, Navy, and Air Force), and “Operation Beware,” (a full-scale, multi-state, multi-national, rehearsal).182 Operation Beware is important in the evolution of civil defense exercises because it was the most extensive civil defense wargame that had been attempted up to that time and provided a blueprint for the inter-agency, interstate, and international cooperation that would be required in the ever-expanding rehearsals of later years.183 Though not the largest in terms of participants (the exercise involved 5,000 civil defense volunteers and 500,000 members of the public), it was the most wide-ranging, with involvement from California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, , Utah, Nevada, the , and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta.184 The exercise planners—the Far Western Association of State Civil Defense Directors—devised a wargame scenario in which the geopolitical situation had deteriorated due to ongoing conflict in Korea, Indo-, , Pakistan, India, and , and a war with an unnamed aggressor nation was an immediate possibility.185 Leading up to 20 June 1953, the day of the exercise, the scenario assumed that there had been overflights of Alaska, Japan, Greenland, and Iceland by the potential aggressor. Suspicious activity was also observed in the form of an increased number of fishing trawlers off the coast of California that seem to be doing something other than fishing. After Communist terrorists (CTs) begin to show increased activity, police detain known communists and discover a massive plot to bomb utilities and assassinate politicians. Finally, at 6:00 a.m. on the day of the exercise, civil defense officials received word from Alaska that 75 enemy bombers were flying toward Seattle and the war had begun. This was the scenario at the heart of Operation Beware and each participating state was

182 “Annual Report for 1953,” 45. 183 “Letter from George B. Owen to Civil Defense Directors,” History and Archives Division, Archives and Public Records, Arizona State Library, Record Group 23 - Arizona Civil Defense Agency. 22 May 1953, http://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/cdm/ref/collection/archgov/id/463. 184 “ Air Rain Exercise,” Item LEG543.4.1. Reference Code COV-S491—-: LEG543.4.1. Box 707- B-02. City of Vancouver Archives, 1953, audio recording, http://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/vancouver-air- raid-exercise. 185 “Bulletin Describing General Situation for Operation Beware,” History and Archives Division, Archives and Public Records, Arizona State Library, Record Group 23 - Arizona Civil Defense Agency, 20 June 1953, http://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/cdm/singleitem/collection/archgov/id/466/rec/4. 58 then tasked with developing sub-scenarios down to the county that envisioned what might play out on the state, county, and city level.186 Sealed envelopes with specific local incidents were placed in civil defense command posts to be opened on a timeline and provide simulated emergencies to which civil defense officials, firefighters, police, and in some instances the general public, would respond.187 Operation Beware laid the groundwork for what would come in 1954—the first “Operation Alert.” The following year, the FCDA began an extensive series of exercises that the media called “the most realistic air raid defense test of the Atomic Age.”188 If not the most realistic, it was certainly the largest. “Operation Alert 1954” began on 14 June at 11:00 a.m. and lasted for 24 hours, during which 2,471 communities in all 48 U.S. states, the territories of Alaska and Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, as well as the ten provinces of Canada, undertook tests of civil defense warning systems, evacuations, and shelter systems.189 In the scenario devised for the exercise, 42 U.S. cities and 8 Canadian cities were attacked with nuclear weapons ranging from 20 kilotons to 160 kilotons with 19 cities attacked with high explosives, incendiaries, , biological, chemical, and psychological warfare.190 Sixty-two million Americans were expected to participate on some level during the exercise, the minimum participation being a 10-minute shelter-in-place exercise when the air raid sirens were sounded. Elements of the government and military also participated in simulating disaster. Eisenhower took shelter in the bunker under the White House along with his naval aide, Commander Edward L. Beach, his press secretary, James Hagerty, and the assistant press secretary Murray Snyder.191 According to an article published in the New York Times after the exercise, Eisenhower then made a call using the emergency communications network to Arthur S. Flemming, the Director of Defense Mobilization, and encouraged him to make sure that all of the participants entered into the spirit of the exercise “so that they could become fully familiar with the operation should we ever be required, in an emergency, to use it.” It is likely that Flemming and those working with him did not need additional encouragement to engage in a spirit of realism, as he, along with the Acting Defense Secretary and several other Cabinet members had been evacuated from

186 “Letter from George B. Owen to County Civil Defense Directors.” 187 “County Will Participate in CD Test,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, vol. 98, no. 144, 1, 18 June 1953, California Digital Newspaper Collection, https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SCS19530618.1.1. 188 “Eisenhower to Take Cover in Atomic Bomb Raid Test,” Los Angeles Times, 14 June 1954, 2. 189 “Continent to Test Its Civil Defenses,” New York Times, 24 March 1954, 55. 190 “Annual Report for 1954,” Federal Civil Defense Administration (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1955), 34, Homeland Security Digital Library, https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=34708. 191 “President in Leads Drill for Atom Raid,” New York Times, 21 November 1954, 1. 59 Washington in the night to the highly secret “High Point” facility (while news reports at the time were ignorant of the actual location of “High Point” it has since been revealed that it was the Mount Weather facility in Virginia). The New York Times also reported that other officials had been evacuated to the “underground Pentagon,” a far less well-kept secret facility at Raven Rock Mountain in Pennsylvania on the Maryland border (sometimes designated Site R). The alert was sounded and disseminated to civil defense control centers. More than 400 hypothetical Soviet bombers were inbound over the North Pole. The yellow alert was sounded at 11:00 a.m. with the red alert (attack imminent) sounded at various times throughout the country. estimates were then reported to the national command center through civil defense communication channels and the command center provided coordination for civil defense efforts in the aftermath.192 Casualty reports were then sent back to the central FCDA command post for analysis. The numbers reported were 9 million killed, 4.5 million injured, and 7 million homeless. The exercise ended the following day. One way in which Operation Alert 1954 succeeded can actually be found in later criticism of the exercises. There was certainly a degree of pageantry involved in the Operation Alert series, with officials flitting off to underground bunkers and newsreels of Times Square being emptied of thousands of people. But this spectacle was exactly what the FCDA had wanted. In the discussion of Operation Alert in the Annual Report of the FCDA for 1954, it is posited that Operation Alert was the “most effective training device which the Federal Government has yet sponsored” and that “as a news story, more column inches were devoted to Operation Alert than any previous civil defense story.”193 As a rehearsal for nuclear warfare, the first national exercise also proved a success from an organizational and administrative standpoint, but the FCDA pointed out Operation Alert’s fundamental weakness in simulating a real war: “Because it was hypothetical, the public impact of Operation Alert was brief. There were no casualty lists; no survivors suffered hunger, thirst, cold, or bereavement.”194 Despite this, the exercise would be repeated annually with ever loftier goals for participation, communication, and realism. 1955 brought a new enthusiasm to Operation Alert and civil defense efforts generally. It would prove to be the biggest exercise yet, with 60 cities hit with nuclear weapons, millions of participants in evacuation drills in all states, and the president and 15,000 government officials and

192 “1954 Annual Report,” 34. 193 “1954 Annual Report,” 90. 194 “1954 Annual Report,” 45. 60 employees evacuating Washington for secret bunkers for three days.195 FCDA had planned “Operation Alert 1955” with five primary goals.196 These were to (1) promote civil defense training and public awareness, (2) test technical and logistical planning and operational readiness, (3) test evacuation plans, (4) test the changes made to plans in light of the findings of the previous year’s Operation Alert, and (5) determine additional requirements. The scenario imagined the bombing of 60 cities with weapons ranging from 20 kilotons to 5 megatons. The resulting deaths were determined to be more than 8 million with another 8 million dying in the six weeks that followed. Of the 12 million injured in the attack, nearly 4 million were expected to recover. Significantly, 14 megaton-range bombs were dropped at ground level in the scenario, creating lethal fallout patterns over 63,000 square miles. These fallout patterns were determined based on actual wind conditions on the day of the exercise.197 Even with the limited scope of the simulated attack, the FCDA report for 1955 states that Operation Alert “showed the nation unprepared to cope with a thermonuclear attack.” This was largely due to the frank acknowledgement of the fallout problem in a way that the FCDA and other government agencies had not done until the Operation Alert exercises. The New York Times pointed out that “Until Operation Alert, federal officials treated the problem of fallout with a great lack of candor,” and that the government had “created the impressions that people might begin moving back to their homes four or five days after an attack.”198 In fact, the Operation Alert planners and post-attack analysis showed that 11.3 million homes would have been affected by the bombing, with 3.9 million left uninhabitable because of fallout.199 During the alert, Eisenhower issued a mock declaration of from his secret location, stirring up some later controversy, though contributing to the overall feeling of realism.200 In one apparently failed emergency experiment, a gaggle of 110 reporters were instructed to converge on an undisclosed location about 100 miles from Washington D.C. to become an emergency press corps in order to “channel news of the mock disaster to the simulated remnants of the population.”201 An apparent lack of planning for the exercise with technical failures of communications infrastructure left the reporters ignorant of the destruction of New York and until two hours after the event.

195 “Operation Alert Biggest Test Yet,” New York Times, 12 June 1955, 77. 196 “1954 Annual Report.” 32. 197 “1954 Annual Report,” 33. 198 Anthony Leviero, “Lessons from ‘Operation Alert,’” New York Times, 19 June 1955, E7. 199 “1954 Annual Report,” 33. 200 Arthur Krock, “Place of Martial Law in Case of Atomic War,” New York Times, 10 July 1955, E3. 201 Russell Baker, “All is Confusion, Newsmen Report,” New York Times, 16 June 1955, 19. 61 Unlike the year before, when Operation Alert had been the primary focus of civil defense planning during the year, 1955 saw a greatly expanded program of exercises undertaken at the community level throughout the year. Approximately fifty community-level evacuation exercises were carried out, along with eight mass feeding exercises and eleven miscellaneous exercises.202 While some were carried out in conjunction with Operation Alert 1955, others were independently planned and executed. Many of these were small exercises involving tens or hundreds of participants and do not rise to the level of an effective simulation of nuclear attack, though some much larger exercises are worthy of note. “Operation Know-How” was carried out on 25 February 1955 by civil defense authorities in Jacksonville, Florida. The exercise evacuated more than 4,000 from 60 industrial facilities and every school in the city. On 15 March, Mobile, Alabama evacuated every school within city limits to reception areas 12 or more miles away. The exercise involved 37,000 participants. More than 18,400 participants in Savannah, practiced evacuating the city by train in “Operation Box Car” on 29 May. Five days after Operation Alert, South Bend, Indiana successfully evacuated 35,000 people from 400 city blocks. One particularly notable evacuation exercise took place in Portland, Oregon on 27 September and was dubbed “Operation Green Light.”203 The previous year, “Operation Scat” had paved the way for Green Light when downtown Mobile, Alabama became the first successful movement of a downtown population by car.204 That exercise was small in comparison to the ambitious Operation Green Light, however. In this exercise, the traffic pattern of a thousand city blocks in downtown Portland was altered by switching to green traffic signals on main exit routes and red traffic signals to prevent cars from crossing those exit routes. Cars were only permitted to proceed with evacuating traffic and in 54 minutes, 29,423 vehicles and 101,074 people had left the city (the FCDA report cites 200,000 participants). This exercise was immortalized in a 1957 CBS television called A Day Called X, in which Portland comes under nuclear attack. The film itself is notable in that the city’s mayor, chief of police, and other officials all play themselves and it features the city’s subterranean emergency center at Kelly Butte.205

202 “Annual Report for 1955,” Federal Civil Defense Administration (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1956), 27 – 30, Homeland Security Digital Library https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=34705. 203 Brian K. Johnson, “Portland Civil Defense,” The Oregon Encyclopedia, Oregon Historical Society, 2018, https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/portland_civil_defense/pdf/. 204 “1954 Annual Report,” 184. 205 Johnson, “Portland Civil Defense.” 62 1956 saw even bigger changes in the national-scale simulations. “Operation Alert 1956” expanded to a 7-day period with 10,000 federal employees engaging in a combined mobilization, civil defense, and military exercise.206 The magnitude of the imagined scenario—the attack and casualties—was increased 30% over the 1955 scenario. There were 21 operational activities undertaken that included an air defense warning, civil defense response, the activation of relocation sites for government officials and agency staffs, military support of civil defense activities, a damage assessment of the virtual attack, allotment of resources based on that assessment, the eventual implementation of wartime controls on resources, and the coordination of the civil defense regions by the national organization. The exercise was also the first to do a thorough investigation into the issue of fallout. A post-attack analysis determined that one relocation site would have been destroyed or lethally contaminated with fallout and that eighteen percent of the total estimated casualties would have been from fallout. This began a new phase in civil defense in which the fallout problem would need to be taken into account in all civil defense planning. What was more useful for further exercises and simulations were the several conclusions that were reached at the end of Operation Alert 1956. In addition to the relocation site that would have been destroyed, two others would have been severely sickened by fallout based on wind patterns that day, raising the question of the survival of the administrative apparatus. In a speech given by the Deputy Assistant director of the Office of Defense Mobilization, Innis D. Harris, in 1958 (before that office’s merger with the FCDA), he phrased the problem simply: “We have to survive in order to work and fight.”207 Also in the list of sobering discoveries, as the nation’s top civil defense officials moved into the first night of the exercise—and exercise that postulated a full scale nuclear war—some localized and small tornadoes were all it took to temporarily collapse the communications infrastructure. Questions remained about resilience in nearly all matters as plans went ahead for another year of simulating catastrophe. Like Operation Alert 1956, it still involved the three branches of mobilization, civil defense, and military at all levels. In fact, 13,000 federal employees participated and more than half a million members of the military, state and local governments, and private citizens.208 Where “Operation Alert 1957” really differed was that it dealt with two different versions of war. The first phase had a period of rising international tensions, strategic warning, and the outbreak of limited war—essentially time to plan and make ready. The

206 Innis D. Harris, “Lessons Learned from Operation Alert 1955 – 1957,” Industrial College of the Armed Forces, 30 April 1958, 7, Homeland Security Digital Library, https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=458671. 207 Harris, “Lessons Learned,” 7. 208 Harris, “Lessons Learned,” 9. 63 second phase gave no warning and a surprise nuclear attack was carried out on the United States. The third phase was post-attack emergency resource management to allow the war to be fought and the United States to survive. More even than in 1956, the effects of fallout and radiation were seriously considered. Casualties as a result of the surprise attack were twice of the number of the 1956 exercise and half of those where due to radiation and fallout. In the aforementioned speech by Innis Harris, he related that the growing implications of fallout required an “almost complete reappraisal of policies and the means for carrying them out.”209 One thing that the 1958 exercise was not, was a dramatic show or publicity machine. While its three-part, multi-week structure always guaranteed there would be less focused publicity, the New York Times reported that the unfolding crisis in the Middle East had influenced Eisenhower to tone down the Operation Alert exercises so they could avoid being interpreted as warlike actions or preparations. The New York Times also stated that the exercise failed to lend itself to the type of coverage that had come before. “There are no imaginary bombs falling. The president is not issuing any imaginary orders to freeze prices, wages, and everything else.” 210 Though the imaginary bombs may not have fallen on the unsuspecting public, a scenario had been devised to drop them on the federal government. The scenario saw a sudden and direct nuclear attack was launched on the United States with only inbound planes as warning. The first phase of the exercise, the “Attack Phase,” played out between 6 and 7 May and included state and local estimates of the simulated aftermath and an assessment of what resources would be left and what would be needed. Those estimates were then relayed to federal civil defense entities for analysis. The third phase, “Evaluation,” took place between 15 and 17 September in the Mount Weather, “High Point” facility (notable because the facility would have still been under construction) during which small groups from each federal agency did a post-exercise analysis of the successes and failures of civil defense policy and programs.211 The stated purpose of “Operation Alert 1958” was to improve readiness by offering local and state governments the opportunity to evaluate their own capabilities and then determine what help and resources it might require from the federal level.212 The exercise

209 Harris, “Lessons Learned,” 15. 210 “Operation Alert Starts Quietly,” New York Times, 17 July 1958, 13. 211 “Discussion of Operation Alert 1958 Scheduled for Cabinet Meeting on October 10 1958,” Memo to the Director, CIA, 7 October 1958, CREST CIA-RDP78-04718A002500410007-4, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP78-04718A002500410007-4.pdf. 212 “Operation Alert 1958,” Memo to Deputy Director, Support, CIA, 28 January 1958, CREST CIA-RDP78-04718A002500410058-8, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP78- 04718A002500410058-8.pdf. 64 was also geared toward understanding what preventative and pre-attack measures could be taken at the local level to make recovery easier. Finally, Operation Alert 1958 served as a civil defense training exercise. Unlike previous years, the theatrics of all levels of government and civil society responding to the simulated attack were abandoned for a more segmented approach. The “Federal Action Phase,” took place more than two months later from 14 to 18 July. As in previous years, the federal relocation sites were activated and officials scattered out of Washington and took to the various locations of the Federal Arc. The business of the exercise was taken up again as officials analyzed the reports and requests from the local agencies. “Operation Alert 1959” again divided its activities into multiple periods. The first was undertaken on 17 April and consisted of nation-wide air raid drills and civil defense alerts.213 The second took place in May for local-level civil defense officials to train in resource management and undertake operational readiness exercises, followed by state-level exercises in June, regional-level exercises in July, and the federal government in August. In most regards, Operation Alert was the same as the previous year, but it was unique in that it exposed local planners to the resource control and management exercises while also being the first Operation Alert to be based on the new “National Plan.” This plan provided a new hierarchy and structure for civil defense policy making, laid out by President Eisenhower in October 1958, in which all civil defense organization, even those plans developed within agencies of the federal government, would be under the oversight of the Director of the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization.214 Part of this new comprehensive plan formalized the use of the national emergency broadcasting and alert system known as CONELRAD (Control of Electromagnetic Radiation) under the new OCDM regime. CONELRAD had originally been formulated by the Air Force as a way to prevent Soviet bombers from using domestic radio stations as radio beacons while not requiring a complete radio .215 The system worked by handing off broadcasting responsibilities from one station to the next so that the same signal would seem to “hop” around the target area. While trials of a full shut-down of broadcasting for CONELRAD tests had been undertaken previously, most tests had been in the early morning hours, between 1:30 and 4:30 a.m.

213 “1959 Annual Report,” Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1960), 51, Homeland Security Digital Library [https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=34680] 214 “The National Plan for Civil Defense and Defense Mobilization,” Executive Office of the President. Office of Defense and Civilian Mobilization [changed to OCDM], October 1958, ii, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015036641226 215 North American Newspaper , “System Devised to Curb Use of Radio Beam by Foe,” New York Times, 14 March 1952, 5. 65 and at a local level.216 During Operation Alert 1959, and as a large-scale demonstration of the new nationally-organized civil defense structure, the CONELRAD system was tested nationally for the first time, ceasing all commercial broadcasting in the United States for 30 minutes, and resuming broadcasting emergency information on the CONELRAD frequencies of 640 and 1240 AM.217 After several years of flagging realism, “Operation Alert 1960” returned as a full scale national simulation of nuclear war.218 The previous years had seen the targeted local, state, regional, and national civil defense command levels trained individually, with weeks and months between, allowing for detailed analysis of procedures, but not testing the robustness of the system as a whole. Operation Alert 1960 condensed these multi-month command exercises into what the annual report of the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization called “more realistic than any of its six predecessors.” The exercise was compressed into a three day period from 3 May to 5 May 1960 and tested the immediate and short term response of the public and civil defense infrastructure to a simulated nuclear attack. There were five focal points of the exercise, each geared toward heightened realism. The first was the warning phase and the subsequent action taken by the public and governments at all levels, whether shelter, evacuation, or a population dispersal. The second was the collection of information on the attack, including weapons yields and effects. The third involved communications control by civil defense officials. The fourth involved the first decisions made immediately after the attack, based on the simulated data collected in the aftermath. The fifth element, which was developed to ensure maximum realism, took place outside of the bounds of the simulation. This was the use of non-participating monitors who evaluated participation and performance and insured that all officials played by the rules of the wargame. Operation Alert 1960 opened with a CONELRAD drill, during which every radio and television station in the United States ceased operation and those designated as CONELRAD stations began broadcasting on the 640 and 1240 frequencies. Eisenhower broadcast a message on the emergency system from the High Point facility at Mount Weather in which he said, “Survival cannot be guaranteed merely with a capacity for reprisal. If, despite our efforts toward keeping peace, we should be faced with nuclear attack, a strong civil defense, supported by all Americans,

216 United Press, “Radio Test Slated to Foil Bombers,” New York Times, 13 September 1953, 3; “CONELRAD Exercise is on the Air Here,” New York Times, 17 November 1954, 64. 217 “1959 Annual Report,” 12. 218 “1960 Annual Report,” Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, Executive Office of the President, 1960, 60, Homeland Security Digital Library, https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=34679. 66 offers the best program for the saving of lives.”219 Defense Secretary Thomas Gates and Leo Hoegh, the Director of Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, also spoke during the emergency broadcast.220 To augment realism, Operation Alert 1960 opted to simulate failing and fragmentary communications, delivering federal reports to local organizations piecemeal so as to force the local civil defense officials to deduce sizes and locations of nuclear detonations prior to determining evacuation and recovery routes.221 In newspapers from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times and many in-between, the calamitous virtual war played out across headlines the next day. New York City found itself with millions dead and the civil defense organization forced out of town by impending fallout. Throughout New York State, civil defense workers estimated 9 million virtual dead and injured. On the West Coast, the exercise scenario saw Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, northwest of Santa Barbara, and March Air Force Base near Riverside, attacked with thermonuclear weapons.222 Due to prevailing winds, the fallout from Riverside began to drift toward Los Angeles. The 10- megaton bomb at Vandenberg resulted in fallout that would kill 11% of the San Fernando Valley and sicken 70% if they remained in place. Other circumstances within the city of Los Angeles meant that the only option would be mass evacuation of approximately 150,000 people, though when this was undertaken (only in the simulation), it resulted in what the senior police representative in the exercise called, “the greatest traffic jam ever created on the face of the earth.”223 As presidential administrations changed, 1961 brought the final Operation Alert. The exercise was generally uneventful and proceeded in much the same way as previous years. The nationwide alert was sounded and civil defense officials went into action. As part of the exercise, radio and television stations again went off the air as part of the CONELRAD system and an address by President Kennedy was broadcast on the emergency frequencies prior to the simulated attack.224 In the speech, Kennedy called for renewed and increased civil defense preparedness, though it soon became clear that Operation Alert would not play a role in that policy. The annual rehearsals were cancelled without fanfare—victims of the change in the political atmosphere regarding civil defense. The structure of the controlling agency was changed again with the incoming

219 “Nation Tests Response to Enemy Air Attack,” Los Angeles Times, 4 May 1960, 2. 220 “President and Defense Aides on Conelrad,” Los Angeles Times, 1 May 1960, E6. 221 Peter Kihss. “ Thanks Workers in Alert,” New York Times, 5 May 1960, 14. 222 “Monumental Auto Jam Seen in CD Evacuation,” Los Angeles Times, 5 May 1960, B2. 223 “Monumental Auto Jam,” 1960. 224 “Kennedy Tells CD to Keep Public Aware,” Los Angeles Times, 29 April 1961, 1. 67 Kennedy administration and the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization was replaced with the Office of Civil Defense under the control of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. The Operation Alert exercises had been intentionally big and bold public spectacles, incorporating the sheltering of thousands, the evacuation of tens of thousands—including the president to an undisclosed underground location—and wargame-like simulations from the local to the federal level. This was exactly what Kennedy believed was at the heart of the failure of U.S. civil defense. In a speech to Congress on 25 May 1961, he said that, “In the past decade we have intermittently considered a variety of programs, but we have never adopted a consistent policy. Public considerations have been largely characterized by apathy, indifference and skepticism; while, at the same time, many of the civil defense plans have been so far-reaching and unrealistic that they have not gained essential support.”225 Operation Alert embodied that far-reaching and possibly unrealistic vision for a nationally coordinated civil defense program. In retrospect, the purpose that the Operation Alert exercises and other disaster simulations served during the period is summarized in that previously mentioned speech by Innis Harris, the Deputy Assistant Director of the ODM. In the speech, Harris recalls that there had been people in government at the start of the exercises who said that “[the exercises] were a lot of nonsense, boy scout business, school play. They said that we don’t need any of this mobilization planning, that a few strong men can meet together after the attack takes place and decide the critical questions.”226 Harris points out in the speech that the various exercises, carried out with as much realism as possible, had done away with that belief and had shown the need for advanced planning. This, it would seem, is the purpose for any simulation, indeed virtualization, of disaster—to demonstrate in peacetime what might be required in a time of crisis. The Operation Alert exercises have since been branded as political and civil defense theater, and have the dubious of catalyzing the anti- civil defense movement and antinuclear movement more generally by providing an annual lightning rod for those sentiments. Nevertheless, they demonstrated a need for some kind of civil defense cooperation, communication, and planning, however impotent those efforts might prove to be in an all-out nuclear war. While the efforts may have been ultimately futile, the Operation Alert exercises of 1954 through 1961 represent a sincere attempt—at least on the part of civil defense planners—to provide some level of useful training in the context of a virtual nuclear war.

225 “President Kennedy’s Special Message to Congress on Urgent National Needs,” JFK Library, JFK Speeches, 25 May 1961, https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/United-States- Congress-Special-Message_19610525.aspx. 226 Harris, “Lessons Learned,” 30. 68 CoG: Government Rehearsals for Surviving Disaster

In the early morning hours of 5 May 1960, members of the National Security Council began to receive phone calls alerting them to a sudden change in venue for the day’s meeting. The new location would be underground, in the emergency relocation site inside Mount Weather, called “High Point.”227 This sudden change was made in conjunction with the Operation Alert 1960 national civil defense exercise and seems to have been initiated by President Eisenhower. The previous week, Eisenhower was presented with the annual Net Evaluation Subcommittee report on the Soviet ability to attack and destroy the United States. As part of the assumptions made by the report’s authors, a 48 hour “strategic warning” was given despite the fact that the Soviets initiated a surprise attack in the scenario. This 48-hour period, during which intelligence analysts would presumably see Soviet troop movement and the preparation of bomber fleets and missiles, would allow the federal government to relocate safely to emergency sites and succeed in preserving almost all of the state governments.228 Eisenhower was suspicious of this assumption and questioned whether such a relocation could be undertaken without raising public awareness of an impending war. The president suggested that “insofar as possible the preparations might be made to appear part of a four-day exercise.”229 On the morning of 5 May, Eisenhower was presented with just such an exercise, in the form of Operation Alert 1960—another in the series of previously discussed annual national civil defense drills—and an opportunity to test the ability of key officials to evacuate Washington. The results of this curious exercise cast serious doubt on the survivability of the federal government. Disoriented and confused by the change in venue, a minor comedy of chaos ensued. National Security Advisor reported that General Twining, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been “left in Washington.” Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates and Acting Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon had been so surprised by the call that they had been unable to obtain official government transportation to the site of the evacuation helicopters. Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA, was able to obtain official transportation at the last minute but it “broke down in the first hundred yards.” Secretary of Defense Gates arrived at the evacuation site after

227 National Security Council, Memorandum of Discussion at the 443rd Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, 5 May 1960. 228 “Summary and Conclusions,” 1959 Report of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, National Security Council, Top Secret, excised copy. (Washington, D.C., National Security Archive, George Washington University, 1959). 229 National Security Council, Memorandum of Discussion at the 442nd Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, 5 May 1960. 69 presumably using a taxi or personal vehicle only to discover that he had forgotten his identification. The Marines guarding the location refused to let him through to board the . Despite all of this, Gordon Gray, Eisenhower’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs and former director of the Office of Defense Mobilization, declared that the morning’s events had proven that a meeting of the NSC could be organized on short notice, and Eisenhower voiced his approval of the exercise.230 Whether or not the relocation of the NSC was entirely successful, the events of that day represent an unrehearsed simulation of the evacuation that would have to be carried out on a grander scale, should a nuclear war break out. High on the list of essential plans for the federal government in the event of war was, and remains, its own survival. The all encompassing term for this set of survival plans is “continuity of government,” and it was tested on several occasions during the Cold War.

The Spectacle of Continuity

The push for government survivability in the atomic age really began in early 1950 with the urging of Representative Chet Holifield of California, member of the Senate-House Joint Atomic Committee.231 During his time on the committee, he had acquired a body of knowledge on the effects of nuclear weapons—including the fact that the whole of the federal government could be wiped out by the new thermonuclear weapons in development—that pushed him to call for the creation of a commission to study the issue of shelter and evacuation. In October of the following year, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn announced the approval of a civil defense plan for members of the federal government that attempted to provide for increased survivability in a nuclear attack by distributing first aid and firefighting supplies to federal buildings, shoring up shelter areas, and stockpiling blood plasma.232 The plan also provided for the emergency relocation of Congress, and while the predetermined locations remained secret, suggestions ranged from large school auditoriums on the outskirts of the city to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky (the legislative branch

230 National Security Council, Memorandum of Discussion at the 443rd Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, 5 May 1960. 231 “Second Capital Urged in Atom Era; Underground Plan to be Broached,” New York Times, 20 February 1950, 1. 232 “Washington Maps A Plan for Atomic-Bomb Defense,” New York Times, 28 October 1951, 133. 70 relocation site was eventually built at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia and completed in 1962).233 During the first national Operation Alert in 1954, the White House was sure to be seen taking the drill seriously when Eisenhower and his staff left the Oval Office to take shelter in the Emergency Operations Center under the East Wing of the White House.234 The president was hurried from his office by his appointments secretary, Thomas Stephens, and the head of the Secret Service, Thomas Rowley, who spirited him away to the bunker where he was joined by the First Lady.235 Despite this and the participation of thousands of other federal employees in building evacuations (including the whole of the Pentagon), exploration of continuity of government were limited in 1954. Operation Alert 1955 was the first real simulation of an emergency that might constitute a threat to the continuity of government, and Eisenhower used the opportunity to make a public show of his administration’s commitment to survival.236 Eisenhower, the Cabinet, and officials from 30 federal agencies were evacuated from Washington D.C. to an emergency tent city relocation camp for three days.237 Each government agency occupied its own large military-style tent, identified by stenciled wooden placards on posts by the entrances.238 Eisenhower presided over the mock nuclear war, directing the counterattack and at one point issuing a declaration of martial law, causing some consternation among the public and congress. The initial mock martial law order was made by Eisenhower because the action would be “essential to the national interest [in the event of an attack] until Congress could come into session and normal channels of governmental control and action [could be] reestablished.”239 Arthur Krock, famed writer for the New York Times, immediately raised questions about both the legality and the logistical realities of such an order in the event of disaster. Citing Charles Fairman, professor at Washington University in Saint Louis, Krock wrote that not only would the Army become the sole conduit for information from the field to the center of

233 Ted Gup, “The Ultimate Congressional Hideaway,” Washington Post, 31 May 1992, W11. 234 “President, Staff Seek Shelter in Defense Test,” Los Angeles Times, 15 June 1954, 7. 235 “President Visits Shelter in Raid,” New York Times, 15 June 1954, 33. 236 “H-Bombs Test US Civil Defense,” New York Times, 16 June 1955, 1. 237 “Annual Report for 1955,” Federal Civil Defense Administration (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1956), 26, Homeland Security Digital Library, https://www-hsdl- org.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/?view&did=34705. 238 “U.S. Takes Cover: Operation Alert,” British Pathe, 1955, Film ID: 2684.39, Canister UN 2745G, newsreel, https://www.britishpathe.com/video/usa-operation-alert-nation-wide-air-raid-drill- aka/query/”operation+alert”. 239 Anthony Leviero, “Mock Martial Law is Invoked in Aftermath of Bombing Test,” Special to the New York Times, 17 June 1955, 1. 71 government in time of emergency, but it would also become the administrator of policies passed back down the chain of command from the government to the field, creating a bottleneck— “congestion, almost beyond belief.” 240 As a result of the questions raised about the constitutionality of a nation-wide state of martial law, Eisenhower announced a study on the legality of martial law in such a situation to be lead by Attorney General Herbert Brownell.241 The 1955 annual report of the FCDA makes the point that the administration had begun research activities in the area of federal continuity of government, but in keeping with its policy of delegating the primary responsibility for civil defense to the cities and states, continuity of state and local governments would be a matter for those jurisdictions to research and implement. In all, 24 exercises were held during Operation Alert 1955, the vast majority at the state and local level. Of these, however, only , New Hampshire is listed as testing its plans for maintaining a continuity of government in a nuclear emergency by evacuating city and county governments to relocation sites. Operation Alert 1956 saw the evacuation of 10,000 federal workers from more than 30 agencies from Washington D.C. to 65 relocation centers in the Federal Arc.242 Top military officials were dramatically evacuated by helicopter from the Pentagon lawn, though the president remained at the White House during the exercise.243 The problem of the poor public reception of the idea of martial law was avoided in Operation Alert 1956 by an executive order delegating massive authority to the Federal Civil Defense Administrator, Val Peterson, allowing the FCDA to directly control all aspects of recovery (including the ability for the FCDA to declare martial law in “military areas,” neatly avoiding the problem of a presidential decree. The wording of this “unlimited state of national emergency” was such that Val Peterson and the Secretary of Defense, Charles Wilson, could call on the military to provide “assistance to civil Government limited to sixty days.” 244 The 1956 exercise was planned to be the most extensive up to that time, with the federal evacuees in hiding for a week, but with shifts in the president’s schedule and concerns over a slightly extended congressional legislative session, Operation Alert 1956 was shortened to, “a long weekend.”245

240 Arthur Krock, “In the Nation: Case Against Nation-Wide Martial Law,” New York Times, 28 June 1955, 26. 241 “U.S. Starts Study of Martial Law,” New York Times, 7 July 1955. 242 “Mock Attack Hits 75 Areas in Nation,” New York Times, 21 July 1968, 1. 243 “U.S. Civil Defense Operation Alert U.S.A 1956,” British Pathe, 1956, Film ID: 2828.04, Canister UN 2869 A, newsreel, https://www.britishpathe.com/video/u-s-civil-defence-operation-alert-u-s-a-various/. 244 “Mock Attack Hits 75 Areas in Nation,” New York Times, 21 July 1956, 1. 245 “H-Bomb Exercise to be Shortened,” New York Times, 16 July 1956, 23. 72 The public spectacle of government evacuation was stepped up for Operation Alert 1957, with Eisenhower, White House staff, and reporters being evacuated in helicopters from the White House lawn in front of reporters and newsreel cameras.246 The use of a presidential helicopter for evacuation brought a certain level of media attention, as it would prove to be an advancement in the infrastructure for maintaining continuity of government in a nuclear emergency—not to mention the fact that Eisenhower became the first president to fly in a helicopter while in office.247 The White House lawn evacuation took place two days before the start of Operation Alert, with Eisenhower in a Bell H-13J with a pilot and a Secret Service agent, trailed by another helicopter with his personal physician and a second Secret Service agent.248 Also leaving the White House lawn that day were twenty staffers and pool reporters in much larger Air Force, Army, and Marine helicopters. Eisenhower initiated the Operation Alert exercise on 14 July by evacuating from his farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (again by helicopter) to a relocation site where he received a briefing on the potential state of the nation 15 days after a nuclear attack.249 After the briefing at the relocation site, Eisenhower issued a theoretical declaration of “unlimited and threat of invasion” and returned to the White House by helicopter.250

Codifying Continuity

Though the preservation of the federal government had been a feature of previous exercises, 1958 saw this endeavor move to the forefront of FCDA planning. The term “continuity of government” was officially employed by the FCDA as a title for one of its top programs in late 1957 and became a centerpiece of planning in 1958.251 This marked the codification of the preservation of civilian governance as a goal of U.S. civil defense. The plan would go far beyond providing for the execution of the provisions of the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (which codified the line of succession in the event of presidential incapacitation), and also actively pursued a campaign to

246 “Eisenhower in Civil Defense Exercise 1957,” British Pathe, 1957, Film ID: 2882.23, Canister: UN 2987 A, newsreel, https://www.britishpathe.com/video/eisenhower-in-civil-defence-exercise/. 247 “President to Use Copter in Test,” New York Times, 12 July 1957, 2 248 Roger Connor, “Ike and the First Presidential Helicopters,” Aeronautics Department, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 12 July 2010, https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/ike-and-first- presidential-helicopters. 249 “President Lands at White House,” New York Times, 16 July 1957, 3. 250 Will Lissner, “Streets Cleared Swiftly: Millions Over Nation Take Cover in Vast Attack Exercise,” New York Times, 13 July 1957, 1. 251 “Annual Report of the Federal Civil Defense Administration for Fiscal Year 1958,” Executive Office of the President, Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, 1959, 4, Homeland Security Digital Library https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=34698. 73 support the efforts of state and local governments to make their own succession plans more robust.252 The plan was developed in consultation with hundreds of state and local officials with the goals of (1) establishing lines of succession for executive, legislators, and judiciary personnel, (2) preserving records, (3) establishing emergency relocation facilities, and (4) utilizing all government personnel, facilities, and equipment in the event of an emergency. The Continuity of Government program had been announced on 5 September the previous year at the United States Civil Defense Council in Detroit with the stated goals of 1) establishing emergency lines of succession for the three branches of government, 2) preserving essential records, 3) establishing emergency relocation sites for government operations, and 4) determining the best course of action for maintaining operations in a national emergency. These objectives were not just for the federal level, but were intended to be applied to the state and local governments as well, based on the concept that “civil defense is an inherent responsibility of government at all levels.”253 The Office of Continuity of Government was established within the FCDA on 1 November 1957.254 1958 became an essential year for the development of elaborate plans for governmental survival. After surveying the States, the FCDA found that many had no legal infrastructure to handle the line of succession issues that might arise in a nuclear war and these States would be required to pass new laws and in some cases amend their constitutions to handle the issue.255 The FCDA wrote simple legislation for the state governments to smooth the path to a comprehensive continuity of government policy. As a step toward the second goal of preserving essential records, the FCDA worked with the National Archives to produce a manual for state and local governments on preservation of records in a disaster. The third goal, planning for emergency relocation of officials, met with some difficulty at the state level. As of the publication of the 1958 Fiscal Year Report, California, Massachusetts, and Illinois had created emergency operations centers by utilizing the $2.5 million in federal matching funds allocated for such projects. The report stated that relatively few other state and local governments had constructed emergency operations centers capable of withstanding a nuclear attack, and so to encourage these governments to begin these projects, the FCDA revised the criteria required to receive matching funds, allowing the cost to be spread over

252 Annual Report, 1958,” 5. 253 “Annual Report of the Federal Civil Defense Administration for Fiscal Year 1957,” Executive Office of the President, Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, 1958, 30, https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=34699. 254 “Annual Report of the Federal Civil Defense Administration for Fiscal Year 1958,” Executive Office of the President, Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, 1959, 4, https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=34698. 255 “Annual Report for 1959,” 5. 74 several years, and lowered the standards required for protective shelters. Finally, as part of the fourth goal of maximizing functionality of governments in an emergency, the FCDA called for state and local governments to “make full use of government personnel, facilities, and equipment in emergency operations.”256 Despite this stated focus on continuity of government by the FCDA, the federal-level participation in Operation Alert 1958 was far more subdued than in previous years, beginning its second phase on 16 July 1958 in what the New York Times described as “official silence.”257 The extent of presidential involvement in evacuation exercises was a 7 minute evacuation to a “secret shelter” (likely the East Wing basement shelter, considering he walked there) on 7 May 1958—the first phase of the three-phase exercise.258 On 16 to 18 July, the “relocation phase,” Eisenhower did not participate as had been the practice in previous years. This was due to two factors. First, in the scenario of the exercise, the July phase was meant to take place 14 days after the attack, meaning that the presidential evacuation and subsequent emergency decrees would have already happened.259 Second, the outbreak of the 1958 crisis on 15 July, which involved the United States and Soviet-backed proxies, compelled the administration to downplay the exercise so as to not rouse suspicion that it was a prelude to war. By 1959, 34 states had passed laws that facilitated continuity of government plans in the event of a national emergency.260 In addition to that, which had been one of the key goals of civil defense in 1958, the plan for preservation of essential records at the federal level was nearing completion and while the state and local plans still lagged behind, completion of a preservation plan was expected by July 1962. The process of creating hardened evacuation sites was also well underway at the federal level with the further development of locations in the Federal Arc. The Office of Civil and Defense Management, the newly reorganized national civil defense agency, had begun construction of the first of several underground operations centers at Denton, . Despite the ever evolving plans for continuity of government, Eisenhower sat out the national drill in 1959, preferring a golf holiday in Augusta, Georgia.261

256 “Annual Report for 1959,” 6. 257 “Operation Alert Starts Quietly,” New York Times, 17 July 1958, 13. 258 Philip Benjamin, “46 States Respond to Alert in Mock Attack,” New York Times, 7 May 1958. 259 “Operation Alert Starts Quietly,” New York Times, 17 July 1958, 13. 260 “Annual Report for 1958,” 4. 261 “The Nation: Operation Alert,” New York Times, 19 April 1959, E2. 75 The high-level evacuation exercises conducted during Operation Alert 1960 were outlined at the beginning of this chapter. Eisenhower’s last-minute change of venue for the National Security Council meeting on the morning of the last day of Operation Alert revealed some failings in the methods and means for evacuation of top-level officials. But beyond the highest echelons of government ensconced at the High Point relocation facility, the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization stated that 3.5 million federal, state, and local government employees took part in the exercise, simulating various governmental survival measures.262 48 of the 50 state governments took part in the exercise, many of which involved the national guard in support of command and control of the post-attack environment.263

Questioning Continuity

John F. Kennedy came into office in January 1961 and was met with the harsh realities of nuclear survivability. As we have seen, the initial year of the Kennedy administration saw some continuity with previous years in terms of Operation Alert and the planning for continuity of government, though Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara oversaw the initiation of significant changes. Operation Alert 1960 proceeded much it had in previous years, as planning had already been underway prior to Kennedy’s . Kennedy did not participate in the final Operation Alert exercise, and there were no continuity of government exercises at the presidential level that year. Early in the administration, on 6 February 1961, Robert Finley, a member of the Office of Civil and Defense Management group, wrote a proposal for a report on resource management and continuity of government going forward.264 In this report, Finley made specific recommendations for a heliport on the new State Department building that would be able to support the larger helicopters that might be used in a future evacuation and also the development of definitive plans for relocation to and communication from emergency sites. Even more specifically, Finley recommended that a careful review be made of the staff that would accompany the Secretary of State to the High Point relocation facility. The report also requested that more comprehensive be

262 Peter Kihss, “Governor thanks Workers in Alert,” New York Times, 5 May 1960, 14. 263 “Annual Report of the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization for Fiscal Year 1960,” Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, Executive Office of the President, 1961, 60, Homeland Security Digital Library https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=34679. 264 Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, National Security Files, Meetings and Memoranda, National Security Action Memoranda [NSAM]: NSAM 127, Emergency Planning for Continuity of Government, February 1961-January 1962, JFKNSF-333-019. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKNSF-333-019.aspx. 76 implemented at other facilities in the Federal Arc. On 22 May 1961, William Y. Elliott, State Department Advisor, offered up a memo titled, “Action Steps Which the Department can Take at Once to Improve its Plans and Progress for Emergency Relocation.”265 Despite the construction of “Site R” at Raven Rock and “High Point” at Mount Weather, the memo makes clear that facilities for continuity of government had not kept up with the threat of nuclear attack during the Eisenhower administration. The first recommendation was to negotiate a federal lease for a small cave on federal land near the Front Royal site. Front Royal was the location of the Department of State language school and the emergency relocation site for 700 members of the Department of State.266 On 14 February 1962, National Security Action Memorandum 127 established a high-level committee to investigate some of the recommendations of the memo the previous year and to reassess the existing federal policies pertaining to continuity of government in the event of a nuclear attack.267 This directive requested that the committee should look at the existing relocation plan for the federal government, including selection of personnel and the state of the existing sites in the Federal Arc. NSAM 127 also extended the inquiry to state and local government plans for continuity of government. The results of this committee were presented on 22 June 1962 in a memorandum titled, “On a Re-examination of Federal Policy with Respect to Emergency Plans and Continuity of Government in the event of Nuclear Attack on the United States.”268 The recommendations found in the report would go on to be implemented in the continuity of government programs in the Kennedy administration. The first of these called into question the existing plan to build and provision 16 sites in the Federal Relocation Arc and stated that “the usefulness of this arrangement depends on the possibility of evacuating essential personnel to these centers [from Washington]” due to the fact that the use of missiles—and particularly those that might be launched from lurking submarines, would

265 John F. Kennedy, NSAM 127, 4. 266 “History of the SCBI Complex,” Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, Smithsonian Institution, https://siarchives.si.edu/history/smithsonian-conservation-biology-institute-scbi. 267 John F. Kennedy, NSAM 127, 1. 268 “On a Re-examination of Federal Policy with Respect to Emergency Plans and Continuity of Government in the event of Nuclear Attack on the United States,” Report to the President, Emergency Planning Committee, 11 June 1962, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, National Security Files, Meetings and Memoranda, National Security Action Memoranda [NSAM]: NSAM 127, Emergency Planning for Continuity of Government, June 1962, JFKNSF-333-021, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKNSF-333-021.aspx. 77 reduce the effective warning time “toward zero.”269 The recommendation also alludes to the increasingly obvious fact that the scale of multi-megaton weapons and the proliferation of missiles that might carry them would allow the attacker to simply “dig up the location sites if he wishes to make a large enough expenditure of weapons.” In another nod to the changing realities of shelter and continuity of government at the beginning of the 1960s, Recommendation 4 of the report advises against further funding of the program to build hardened shelters for the regional offices of the civil defense agencies.270 The recommendation states that such centers should have some fallout protection and a minimum degree of blast protection, “rather than hardened against heavy blast.” The rationale for this is that it “no longer appears economical to harden a target to make it proof against direct attack,” owing to the ever growing (and theoretically unlimited) size of nuclear weapons. It is worth noting here the last gasp of truly bomb-proofed shelter building in the service of the continuity of the federal government, and the eventual fate of the project as representative of the shape of things to come. Underground Command Center (DUCC) was a 1963 proposal for a capsule shelter that would be placed 3,500 feet under the Pentagon and be accessible by high speed elevators and rail lines from the Department of State and the White House.271 This elaborate construction project came in two flavors—an “austere” version capable of housing 50 people, and the “moderate,” capable of housing 300. Initially, the idea met with approval, particularly as the existing continuity of government plan involved either evacuation to the hardened facilities outside of Washington, which were no longer considered hardened enough for Soviet weapons developments, or evacuation to the Emergency Airborne Command Post or the Emergency Command Post Afloat, both of which operated at distances that would exceed the expected 15 minute tactical warning.272 The Joint Chiefs of Staff expressed some reservation about the functionality of the smaller size DUCC early in the project and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, in his memo to President Kennedy on the subject, suggested that one argument against the DUCC was that if an enemy attacks Washington, “he is irrevocably committed to full scale destruction and as long as there is a doctrine to insure U.S. retaliation is provided there is no real

269 “On a Re-examination of Federal Policy,” 2. 270 “On a Re-examination of Federal Policy,” 3. 271 “National Deep Underground Command Center as a Key FY 1965 Budget Consideration,” Memorandum, Robert McNamara to the President, 7 November 1963, 3, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 272 McNamara, “National Deep Underground Command Center,” 1 78 point in providing a survivable control mechanism at the national level.” Nevertheless, McNamara, along with Secretary of State Dean Rusk, supported the idea and recommended construction. Despite this, resistance by the Joint Chiefs of Staff continued into 1964, especially when it was recommended that the DUCC be included in the National Military Command System (NMCS).273 Resistance to the DUCC was both financial and technical. If it were to be included in the NMCS with a budget of $860 million for fiscal years 1965 through 1969, the construction of the DUCC would represent more than 36% of the total budget. Furthermore, if the shelter were to be a part of the larger command system, the austere 50-person size would be “totally inadequate to accommodate the decision element of the National Command Authorities together with minimum essential staff support and house-keeping support.” This would, of course, require a larger and vastly more expensive facility. Technical resistance to the DUCC may have only served as further rationale to support the financial opposition of the Joint Chiefs, but the criticisms were certainly valid. The question of hardened antennas was raised and whether the technology existed to ensure communications after a direct attack and, of particular concern, whether those ensconced in the DUCC would be able to escape. As the Joint Chiefs summarized the issue, operating from the DUCC would mean “operating without adequate staff or support in a ‘buttoned up’ environment from which communications and egress would be uncertain following a nuclear attack.” The last gasp of the DUCC was an agreement by Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance that he would ask Congress to authorize funds in Fiscal Year 1967 to begin construction on the facility, though it seems no such request was made and it is there that any reference to the DUCC in archival documents ends.274 In the end, the idea for the DUCC was scrapped, as were the annual drills that had played such an important role in creating a visual spectacle of the federal government fleeing to shelter. Advanced missiles with increasing accuracy, greater yields, and the advent of launched ballistic missiles, left the idea of real presidential evacuation uncertain, and any surviving functional portion of the government unlikely. The previously discussed 1962 report (“On a Re-examination of Federal Policy...”) lays out the gravest challenge to continuity of government in this environment, and it is a geographical one. The report states that “there is a defect in the existing [line of] succession statute. There is no provision for the selection of a president in the event none of the

273 “Memorandum from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense McNamara,” 10 January 1964, Foreign Relations of the United States: 1964-1968, Volume 10, National Security Policy, 7. 274 “110. Editorial Note,” Foreign Relations of the United States: 1964-1968, Volume 10, National Security Policy, 335. 79 eligible successors survive.”275 This possibility is exacerbated by the fact that all 12 designated successors lived and worked in the target area, centered on the White House. The report put great emphasis on this problem and failed to resolve it. Nevertheless, there remained a series of exercises in the works, and they would be carried out with uncanny timing in late 1962, two weeks before the . Near the end of Eisenhower’s tenure as president, two plans for dealing with emergency wartime mobilization and survival were developed—“Plan C” and “Plan D-Minus.”276 Plan C was designed to deal with the period of buildup to a nuclear war and the civil defense and planning challenges that the U.S. might face during that period of prolonged strategic warning. Plan D-Minus was designed to deal with all that might come after afterward. In 1962, three concurrent and interrelated exercises simulated a global war and tested both of these plans. These were High Heels II, a U.S. military exercise, Spade Fork, a U.S. national exercise involving the federal government and the military, and FALLEX 62, a joint NATO exercise.277 FALLEX 62 was the first NATO exercise that was planned with the assumption that a global nuclear war would begin with a Soviet attack on Europe.278 Its lasting significance would not come from its simulation of nuclear war but from the massive political scandal it generated when Der Spiegel, a West German weekly political magazine, published unflattering details of the wargame that painted the West German forces as wholly unready to defend the country from invasion. Exercise Spade Fork imagined a first strike on Quonset Point Naval Air Station, conveniently also offering a decapitation strike on President Kennedy’s simulated position across Narragansett Bay at the Hammersmith Farm residence in Newport, Rhode Island.279 This exercise also maintains a legacy outside of the realm of nuclear wargaming, as it was modified to provide cover for the mobilization of Army units and the massive requisition of supplies to support them in order to deploy them to

275 “On a Re-examination of Federal Policy,” 29. 276 Tracy Davis, “Continuity of Government Measures during the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Rosemary B. Mariner and G. Kurt Piehler, eds., The Atomic Bomb and American Society: New Perspectives (Knoxville: University of Press, 2009). 277 “Joint Chiefs of Staff Sponsored Exercise HIGH HEELS II (U),” Memorandum for the President, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, National Security Files, Departments and Agencies, Department of Defense (B): Subjects: Military exercises, HIGH HEELS, JFKNSF-279-002, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKNSF-279-002.aspx. 278 “Bedingt Abwehrbereit (Partially Ready to Defend),” Der Spiegel, volume 41, 10 October 1962. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-25673830.html. 279 Tracy Davis, Stages of Emergency (Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press, 2007), 233. 80 Mississippi to aid in the enforcement of court ordered desegregation.280 Exercise High Heels II was a world-wide military exercise designed to test the ability of the military to implement the Single Integrated Operating Plan (SIOP, the general plan for nuclear war) in the event of a general, global war.281 It was undertaken between 6 and 28 September 1962 and was to take place in four phases: 1) a 12-day period of intelligence buildup, 2) an increase in geopolitical tensions and the activation of battle staffs, 3) “D-Day,” the beginning of the war and the initial run of SIOP 63, and 4) a drawdown of overall participation from 2 to 28 September. Unlike similar exercises in previous years, High Heels II intentionally avoided any publicity because of the risk of inflaming tense political and military situations if the detailed wargame scenario were to be made public. The outline of the exercise states: “Because of the possible political implications, and the sensitivity of JCS General War Plans, it is recommended that no publicity be given to the Exercise High Heels II.” Throughout these exercises, both the preparation and execution of war plans (Plan C) were practiced in conjunction with the post-attack efforts (Plan D-minus). Only two weeks later, the structure of the Spade Fork exercise and its lessons would be tested as the Cuban Missile Crisis raised the national state of readiness and Spade Fork threatened to become a reality.282 In the scenario, Kennedy had survived the virtual attack on his “Summer White House,” but, quite unlike his predecessor Eisenhower, his participation in reality was minimal. While command and control elements of the High Heels wargame were going on at the Raven Rock complex, General Chester Clifton, Senior Military Aide, sent an invitation to Kennedy to take a helicopter to the facility (only about 45 minutes) and observe the work of the Joint Staff.283 The president declined the offer.

280 Paul J. Scheips, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1945 – 1992 (Washington, D.C., Center of Military History, , 2004), CMH 30–20–1.84. 281 “Joint Chiefs of Staff, Outline of Significant Exercise,” Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, National Security Files, Departments and Agencies, Department of Defense (B): Subjects: Military exercises, HIGH HEELS, JFKNSF-279-002, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKNSF-279-002.aspx. 282 See Davis, Stages of Emergency, Chapter 8, “The Cuban Missile Crisis: Covert Preparedness” for a detailed discussion of the interplay of the Spade Fork exercise and preparations for nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. 283 “Memorandum, Chester Clifton to Kenny O’Donnell,” Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, National Security Files, Departments and Agencies, Department of Defense (B): Subjects: Military exercises, HIGH HEELS, JFKNSF-279-002, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKNSF-279-002.aspx. 81 Conclusion: Tiny Armageddons

During this period of the Cold War, these staged events, exercises, and operations offered participants and viewers the ability to witness an unfolding nuclear war. Whether for genuine practice, preparation, or performance, that much can be said of the many examples described in this chapter. Like many of the government-sponsored films of the era, these public displays and contained forays into were often designed to reduce public anxiety or enlist public participation in the national civil defense project. Even so, many of these windows on disaster were certainly more than mere propaganda and provided much needed real-world experience and experimentation in order to improve everything from building materials to the logistics of evacuating Times Square. For whatever other purposes these simulations of nuclear war may have served, they offered the opportunity for government and military planners, as well as the general public, to experience, if even in a miniscule and contrived way, what could otherwise only be experienced in the throes of unthinkable catastrophe. Operation Crossroads in 1945 offered both a public display of the fourth and fifth atomic bombs, as well as a demonstration of the viability of naval power in a nuclear armed world. These were not the only reasons for the testing series, or even the primary reasons. Crossroads offered real- world, live-fire experience in a maritime setting that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not been able to provide. Though the Navy denied that the operation was an accurate representation of an atomic attack on a naval fleet (the ships were too tightly spaced in the atoll), Crossroads was a practical military effects test and a massive experimental undertaking, taking advantage of real, deliverable weapons on real military hardware. The differences in the destructive character of the bombs between the Able (atmospheric) and Baker (sub-surface) tests also provided an early glimpse into nuclear tactics. Six years later, on the dry lake beds of the Nevada Test Site, the tactical troop maneuvers of the Desert Rock exercises from 1951 to 1957 were certainly tinged with the theatrical, bringing public attention to both the Army and Marine Corps’ ability to operate in the expected atomic environment of the future battlefield. The exercises served as publicity pieces for both public and military consumption. But this was not the sole intent of the Desert Rock exercises, which were much more serious endeavors than propaganda or posturing. The primary mission of the exercises was “troop indoctrination” and the propagation of personal accounts of survival of a real atomic bomb among home units, allaying fears of radiation and other dangers. This could only have been accomplished with maximum realism in the simulation—a simulation so real that it called for the use of real 82 nuclear weapons in the display. In a few instances, the Desert Rock exercises also tested real nuclear battlefield tactics, such as in the case of the “Operation Razor” armored assault and Desert Rock VII’s test of the new atomic battlefield-ready “pentomic” unit structure. In these ways, the Desert Rock exercises were highly successful simulations of nuclear war and created precedents for a variety of tactics that were expected to be used on the atomic battlefields of the future. Similar to the live-fire military exercises taking place at the test site, there can be no doubt that the construction of miniature towns, complete with J.C. Penny mannequin residents, full furnishings and fully stocked pantries, offered a flair of the dramatic to the civilian tests. The production of the “Operation Cue” which detailed the construction (and destruction) of the civil defense test town with the full narrative artifice of a roving “female reporter” can be nothing other than a publicity spectacle. But far more than the military’s documentation of its operations in Nevada, this spectacle was, in fact, one of the technical ends of the project. It was the stated purpose of the Federal Civil Defense Administration “To give the American public some conception of the tremendous destructive energy of an atomic explosion.” Neither to deceive or frighten, but to spur to action in the realm of household preparation and volunteerism. Moreover, Operation Cue, and to a similar extent the previous, Operation Doorstep, involved serious technical tests of materials, building techniques, the effects of radiation on surviving foodstuffs, and other essential experiments that would provide solid data for future civil defense planning. All the while, the Operation Alert series visited nuclear devastation on the nation at large on an annual basis, bringing down derision as the public became more skeptical of the survivability of a nuclear war in the face of growing stockpiles and shrinking warning times, and even fomenting a general antinuclear sentiment, as in the case of growing activist resistance to the air raid drills in New York City. But under the larger umbrella of Operation Alert, civil defense officials at the local and state level were gaining invaluable experience in disaster management and the relationships and lines of communication between the local, state, regional, and national governments that would be essential in a disaster—whether nuclear or natural—for survival and recovery. While the idea of sheltering in a Manhattan subway station as a defensive measure against multi-megaton weapons detonating overhead became increasingly absurd to the populace, the lessons learned by professional and volunteer civil defense officials continued to inform the ever changing policies surrounding nuclear preparedness. As the exercises continued into the 1960s and realistic responses to an attack were outpaced by the technology and tactics of an enemy nuclear strike, Operation Alert also

83 offered a brief look at the sobering realities of nuclear war to everyone from the public to the Presidency. In the federal government, continued wargaming and adaptation to the changing threat allowed military and civilian participants to continually see the shortcomings of their best-laid plans. From the first Operation Alert, when Eisenhower hurriedly took shelter in the wholly insufficient bunker under the East Wing of the White House, to the increasingly fraught plans to permanently position skeleton staffs at Federal Arc locations due to the unlikelihood of evacuating top officials from Washington in time, to the eventual abandonment of the Deep Underground Command Center, running through simulations of attack and the difficulties of time and proximity that would be encountered, by the first years of the Kennedy administration, that avenue of nuclear preparedness seemed closed to planners. These exercises forced presidents and planners to confront the awful realities—and the impossibility—of fighting a nuclear war. Nevertheless, exercises such as Spade Fork in 1962 proved not only useful, but an effective blueprint for preparation for nuclear war, as was evidenced by the employment of that wargame’s structure and assumptions during the Cuban Missile Crisis just two weeks after that simulation’s conclusion. Whether wargames, operations, simulations, or virtualizations of nuclear war, between 1945 and the end of the era of atmospheric nuclear testing, serious and meaningful attempts were undertaken to create realistic conditions in which to conduct experiments that might yield results that could reduce damage and save lives in the event of the ultimate failure of deterrence. These exercises created controlled spaces in which policy makers, military planners, government officials, scientists, engineers, or the broader public could interact with various components of the unthinkable tragedy of nuclear war and draw conclusions about the most effective way of addressing the threat. From the best design for a family fallout shelter to the birth of an anti-nuclear protest movement, each of these “tiny armageddons” inflicted on the United States in those years contributed meaningfully and materially to the science, engineering, tactics, strategy, policy, politics, and social fabric of the Cold War.

84 CHAPTER 3

NUCLEAR WAR ON FILM: THE END OF CIVILIZATION IN FOUR PHASES

Introduction: Dress Rehearsal for a Disastrous Performance

In the mercurial ether that is Cold War mythology, there exists an often repeated story involving Nicholas Meyer, a Hollywood director best known for his entries in the Star Trek franchise, , a Hollywood actor best known for being the 40th president of the United States, and the 1987 signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). In this story, which is told in Will Bunch’s 2009 book Tear Down This Myth (though it also appears wherever anyone might reasonably expect to find it), Reagan takes a moment to send a personal telegram to Meyer after the signing of the INF treaty.284 In 1983, Meyer had also directed the politically conscious nuclear disaster movie-of-the-week The Day After for ABC. That film had been screened for the president at Camp David and, according to Reagan’s own diaries, it had a powerful impact, leaving him “greatly depressed.”285 Four years later, after the final conclusion of the INF Treaty with the Soviet Union, Reagan wrote to Meyer, “Don’t think your movie didn’t have any part of this, because it did.”286 A moving and concise example of the power of art to influence policy. It’s a shame that it isn’t true. In a 2010 interview with the film magazine Empire, Meyer stated that the telegram was a myth and the sentiment linking the film with the treaty came not from Reagan, but a friend.287 He traces the origin of this anecdote to the fact that the production team received editing notes on the script from the White House, possibly as a joke and possibly in earnest, because of Reagan’s background in the film industry. Despite the clarification, the story continues to proliferate. And why? Because it is a story that seems as if it should be true. It is the story of “speaking truth to power,” and of the final culmination of the nuclear madness of the Cold War in which a simple film depicted the aftermath

284 Will Bunch, Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future (New York: Free Press, a Division of Simon and Schuster, Inc., 2009), 75. 285 Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 585. 286 Bunch, Tear Down This Myth, 75. 287 Simon Braund, “How Ronald Reagan Learned to Start Worrying and Stop Loving the Bomb,” Empire, no. 257, 1 November 2010, 134-138. 85 of a nuclear war so graphically that it shook the president to his core and set him off on a path of and peace with the Soviet Union. Certainly Nicholas Meyer believes as much. Though the telegram may be apocryphal, Meyer asserts that the film did contribute to Reagan’s more aggressive antinuclear stance. Edmund Morris, Reagan’s official biographer and author of Dutch, relates that the only time that he ever saw Reagan depressed was after the Camp David screening of The Day After.288 In the 2010 Empire interview, Meyer asserts that he knows “the movie had a great deal to do with [Reagan] going to Reykjavik” and that Edmund Morris “amplified that very point” in personal exchanges with Meyer.289 Whatever effect The Day After may have had on Reagan or international diplomacy, it certainly did have an impact on Americans’ perception of nuclear war and the leanings of domestic opinion. This effect is the result of the filmmakers’ concerted effort to create an environment in which the horrors of war could be acted out in as literal and realistic way as might be possible for a network television movie in 1983. The Day After became a powerful vision of nuclear war that sparked national debate and may have changed the trajectory of the antinuclear political effort in American society. Writing ahead of the release of the film, Sally Bedell Smith, culture reporter for the New York Times, wrote that The Day After “is not scheduled to appear for seven weeks, but already it is generating emotional controversy on both sides of the nuclear-arms issue.”290On the day of the film’s release, culture reporter John Corry said of The Day After that “it has become an event, a rally and a controversy....”291 This point is reiterated in William J. Palmer’s The Films of the Eighties: A Social History, in which the author states that “The impact of that single ‘media event’ so catalyzed public opinion that it influenced the Reagan government to pursue more serious nuclear arms control negotiations with Russia.”292 The Day After is only one example of the use of media to replicate facets of nuclear war for propaganda, education, or protest. This section will explore a range of films, from early government- sponsored propaganda pieces to politically motivated films of the late Cold War embraced by the Nuclear Freeze movement. Nuclear war on film has played an essential role in exploring the possible

288 Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Modern Library, 1999), 498. 289 Braund, Empire. 290 Sally Bedell Smith, “ABC Film Depicting Consequences of Nuclear Attack Stirring Debate,” New York Times, 6 October 1983. 291 John Corry, “TV View; ‘The Day After’: TV As a Rallying Cry,” New York Times, 20 November 1983. 292 William J Palmer, The Films of the Eighties: A Social History (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995), 186. 86 outcomes and potential realities of a conflict that could be fought only once. These filmic representations are really a type of wargame—dress rehearsals for a single, disastrous performance.

Nuclear War on Film vs. Nuclear Anxiety in Film

From the beginning of the Cold War, film and other forms of media have explored fears of the unknown facets of the nuclear threat. These anxieties have ranged from radiation and mutation to environmental devastation, to the far-fetched fear that the advent of the nuclear age had drawn the attention of malevolent space aliens. Much excellent research has focused on this aspect of the cultural trends and social anxieties of Cold War-era cinema, literature, and art and should be discussed briefly here to provide context and give credit to the scholarship which has done so much to illustrate the essential role that media has played in understanding the Cold War. The analysis of nuclear imagery in American culture has been undertaken by a variety of scholars over the last thirty years and offered some important insights. Paul Boyer’s By the Bomb’s Early Light (1985) examines intellectual trends at the dawn of nuclear age through an analysis of a variety of cultural artifacts.293 Paul Brians’s Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction 1895-1984 (1987) looks specifically at the treatment of nuclear war in popular fiction.294 The excellent Film and the Nuclear Age: Representing Cultural Anxiety by Toni Perrine explores the chronology of the Cold War and the themes in nuclear war films that evolved in response.295 Other works have dealt with the interplay of various facets of nuclear war and popular media to varying degrees of success. The Way to Ground Zero: The Atomic Bomb in American (Martha Bartter, 1988); War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination (H. Bruce Franklin, 1988); In a Dark Time: The Apocalyptic Temper in the American Novel of the Nuclear Age (Joseph Dewey, 1990); Nuclear Movies: A Critical Analysis and Filmography of International Feature Length Films Dealing with Experimentation, Aliens, , Holocaust and Other Disaster Scenarios, 1914-1989 (Mick Broderick, 1991); and The Nightmare Considered: Critical Essays on Nuclear War Literature (Nancy Anisfield, 1991)—

293 Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). 294 Paul Brians, Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1895-1984 (, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1987). 295 Toni A. Perrine, Film and the Nuclear Age: Representing Cultural Anxiety (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). 87 all of these works consider representations of the nuclear threat in popular culture and most of them describe a common failing in those representations, namely, the lack of realism.296 In Paul Boyer’s own review of Brians’s Nuclear Holocausts, he notes that almost none of the eight hundred pieces of fiction surveyed for the book deal realistically with the medical effects of radiation. “Instead, radiation has been employed as a gimmick to produce bizarre monsters, mind- reading clairvoyants, or races of quasi-fascist supermen.” Brians does identify a very short list of fiction that deals effectively with certain pieces of the larger issue, but it is miniscule in comparison to the broader body of work. In fact, when attempting to identify useful and successful representations of what nuclear war might really look like, the list is smaller still. This chapter is not an exploration of themes, motifs, or cultural trends in depictions of nuclear war, nor is it an analysis of steadily increasing social anxiety in the face of nuclear threat. Instead, it is an attempt to analyze Cold War media depictions that set out to most sincerely and accurately explore specific elements of warfare or survival. Whether for education or entertainment, the discussion will necessarily be limited to those works that serve as useful virtualizations of potential nuclear conflict. While sensational science fiction films and novels certainly produced an overabundance of “bizarre monsters,” as Boyer puts it, many serious efforts—such as Neville Shute’s On the Beach (1957), Pat Frank’s Alas Babylon (1959), and Helen McCloy’s The Last Day (1959)—grappled with the question of potential human from fallout and provide several serious discussions of the known and unknown biological effects of radiation.297 Late in the Cold War, films such as the BBC’s docudrama Threads (1984) presented graphic depictions of “nuclear winter,” a climatological catastrophe predicted in 1983 by Carl Sagan and the “TTAPS” team (a name derived from the last

296 Martha Bartter, The Way to Ground Zero: The Atomic Bomb in American Science Fiction (New York: Greenwood, 1988); H. Bruce Franklin, War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008); Joseph Dewey, In a Dark Time: The Apocalyptic Temper in the American Novel of the Nuclear Age (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1991); Mick Broderick, Nuclear Movies: A Critical Analysis and Filmography of International Feature Length Films Dealing with Experimentation, Aliens, Terrorism, Holocaust and Other Disaster Scenarios, 1914-1989 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 1991); Nancy Ainsfeld, The Nightmare Considered: Critical Essays on Nuclear War Literature (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1991). 297 Nevil Shute, On the Beach (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1957); Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon (New York: Harper Perennial, 1959); Helen McCloy, The Last Day: A Novel of the Day After Tomorrow (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1959) 88 names of each of the paper’s authors), using new techniques for computer modeling of the climate.298 Such successful virtualizations of the effects of nuclear war allow viewers and readers to survive vicariously something which they might very well not survive in reality. Creators of this media had many varied ends—from education and reassurance to incitement to antinuclear protest—but what all have in common is an attempt to reconstruct the likely or potential events of an unthinkably destructive nuclear conflict in order to determine likely or potential outcomes. Film scholar Toni Perrine has laid out the fundamental problem with finding realism in nuclear media: “It is important to remember that the event of wholesale nuclear war has never occurred, so that the relative realism of its depiction is more or less speculative.”299 Nevertheless, it is a project worth undertaking in order to more fully understand the relationship between simulations of nuclear war and the unthinkable reality.

The Structure of Armageddon

Though there is a correlation between the timeline of the production of the films and literature of the Cold War and the changing focus of those representations (for example, early films might focus on the new threat of radiation, while later films might focus on total environmental destruction), this topic is best understood through categorical analysis. That is to say, the earliest depictions of the nuclear threat were concerned with the initial effects of the bombs, the destruction of cities, and the process of rebuilding, all informed by the World War II experience of the generalized bombing of cities and due in large part to the limited scale and number of bombs as well as the persistent unknowns surrounding radiation and fallout. As the Cold War went on and the technologies involved in the nuclear apparatus became more complex, anxieties over possible causes of war came to the forefront, including human error or technological failure. By the end of the Cold War, when a full scale nuclear exchange would be so large as to potentially end modern civilization, broader existential questions permeated the discourse. But there are no neat lines between these concerns and their chronological appearance. Anxieties, curiosities, and cross over one another enough that a nonlinear approach involving individual categories will be used to explore this

298 R. P. Turco, O. B. Toon, T. P. Ackerman, J. B. Pollack, Carl Sagan, “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions,” Science 222 (4630): 1283–92. 299 Perrine, Film and the Nuclear Age, 167. 89 topic. Those categories will represent each phase of an evolving nuclear crisis and outbreak of nuclear war through time. These phases are common in nuclear war analysis and planning, and so it makes sense that they became a fixed part of the “nuclear war ” or “atomic cinema,” and appear as facets of the plot in many of the best known media representations. In a 1980 wargame exercise in Britain named (an exercise which provided source material for the 1984 BBC film Threads), the phases are defined as: “Before the war” (the transition-to-war phase), “Survival” (the strike phase), and “Recovery” (the post-war phase).300 For the purposes of this analysis, the scope of these phases will be slightly expanded and include: 1) Escalation, a period of escalation during which potential international crises increase tensions to the breaking point and governments and populations prepare for the inevitable war, 2) Launch, during which a nuclear war is initiated (intentionally or through malfunction) and the people and governments brace and take shelter, 3) Strike, which explores assumptions about the immediate impact of the weapons and the overall effectiveness of civil defense and shelter systems, and 4) Aftermath, which observes the days and weeks immediately following a nuclear strike and explores assumptions about recovery and rebuilding. Each of these topics shifted in focus at different times and in different ways over the course of the Cold War. By tracing each through representations in media, one can more fully understand the ways in which these virtualized conflicts helped people amid the Cold War to mentally process what a nuclear war might look like and what that war might mean for themselves, the nation, and civilization.

Escalation: The Inescapable Momentum of Doom

This phase of the filmic nuclear narrative took on different characteristics as the Cold War developed and was more than usually dependent on who was producing the narrative. In the beginning of the Cold War, when the nuclear genre was dominated by media produced by the Federal Civil Defense Administration (or its co-agencies or predecessors), the period prior to the nuclear strike was depicted as a time for orderly, thoughtful preparation. In some scenarios, this might be a few hours—in a world before the intercontinental , fleets of Soviet bombers provided ample warning and lead time. In less optimistic scenarios, the flash of the bomb would be the only warning, leaving only a few seconds to take shelter.

300 Duncan Campbell, War Plan UK (London: Paladin Books, Publishing, 1982), 31. 90 As the message of civil defense grew stale and a general lack of faith in civil defense measures began to permeate society, this phase of the narrative largely vanished from popular depictions of nuclear war. Beginning in the 1980s, the escalation phase became a device to both ratchet up narrative tension and to explore the much wider ranging threat that would be presented by nuclear war. Some of the more realistic portrayals of the run-up phase delve into human reaction to impending doom and the societal stresses experienced at the brink of war. During this period, escalation in the narrative was used to explore possible causes of a nuclear conflict, the failure (or folly) of a policy of deterrence, and the ultimate futility of civil defense preparations no matter how meticulously government instruction might be followed.

Preparation in the Age of Civil Defense

From July 1945 to August 1949, the United States had an atomic monopoly, though it was a certainty among strategists and planners that the Soviet Union would acquire the technology eventually. Estimates of the time required varied in these predictions from a few years to decades. When the Soviets succeeded in their test of 29 August 1949 it sent a shock through the U.S. establishment. Perhaps only Stalin and his scientists had maintained such an optimistic view. Thanks to successful espionage and the brute force of the Soviet industrial endeavor, the RDS-1 (РДС-1), a device which closely matched the U.S. “Fat Man” dropped over Nagasaki, brought the Soviet Union into the atomic age and left the U.S. and its allies reeling.301 In the years prior to this Soviet atomic surprise, a series of reports had come out of the U.S. government agencies that had urged, in various ways, the shaping of a new plan for civil defense that would take into account the nature of the new threat. The actual wartime Office of Civilian Defense had been abolished by Truman as part of a series of postwar reorganizations.302 Nevertheless, evidence for the necessity of such a program began to mount. In 1946, The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey released its assessment of wartime strategic bombing campaigns in Europe and Japan and found that civil defense preparedness would have had a significant influence on the effectiveness of strategic bombing. The evacuation of cities and provision of shelter for those who could not leave

301 David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939 – 1956 (New Haven and London: Press, 1994). 302 Harry S. Truman, “Executive Order 9562—Termination of the Office of Civilian Defense,” June 4, 1945, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=77891. 91 would have saved lives and increased the resilience of the enemy.303 The War Department Civil Defense Board was established on 25 November 1946 to investigate matters of civil defense organization. Headed by Major General Harold Roe Bull, this “Bull Board” was tasked with determining what new or existing agencies might take control of civil defense, what the War Department’s role might be, how to organize the structural hierarchy of such an undertaking, and what the War Department might be able to accomplish given the postwar budget cuts.304 A Study of Civil Defense (known as the “Bull Report”) offered six conclusions: (1) that civil defense would be essential to national defense, (2) that a World War II-style civil defense was inadequate for the future, (3) that a single agency should take responsibility for planning, operating, coordinating, and directing civil defense matters, (4) that regional civil defense organizations should be established, (5) that federal and state legislation is required to establish civil defense, and (6) that the president should be urged to establish a civil defense agency at once. Just a year later, the Office of Civil Defense Planning was established to follow through with elements of the prior report. This group produced Civil Defense for National Security or the “Hopley Report.”305 This report was a massive and detailed manual for the creation of a national civil defense apparatus. The Hopley Report garnered criticism for the expense of such a program and for the potential for military overreach if the functions of civil defense were put into the hands of the Department of Defense.306 Truman addressed this by placing civil defense planning under the civilian National Security Resources Board.307 In September 1950 this group produced the civil defense “Blue Book” (so named for the color of its cover), which was a 162-page manual for the organization of civil defense in the United States.308 Calls for an effective civil defense plan came from many quarters, but nothing spurred action like a nuclear-armed Soviet Union. In December 1950, Truman moved civil defense planning

303 “Atomic Bomb Physical Damage, Blast Effect, Hiroshima 03/13/1946 - 04/08/1946,” United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), US Air Force, Records of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Record Group 243, 1928-1947 (bulk 1944-1946), National Archives. 304 A Study of Civil Defense, US National Military Establishment, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1947. 305 Civil Defense for National Security, Russell J. Hopley, director, US Office of Civil Defense Planning, National Military Establishment, 1 October 1948, Federation of Atomic Scientists, https://fas.org/irp/agency/dhs/fema/civildef-1948.pdf. 306 Horatio Bond, “Military and Civil Confusion About Civil Defense,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol 5, no 11, November 1949, 295-296. 307 Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945-1954 (Cambridge University, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 210–211. 308 United States Civil Defense, National Security Resources Board, NSRB Document 128 (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1950), LCCN 51060552, http://www.governmentattic.org/21docs/USCivilDefense_NSRB_Doc.128_1950.pdf. 92 functions from the NSRB to the newly created Office of Defense Mobilization (Executive Order 10193).309 Also in December, Executive Order 10186 created the Federal Civil Defense Administration in the Office for Emergency Management. The FCDA was designed to “promote and facilitate the civil defense of the United States in cooperation with the several States” by preparing plans, producing standardized civil defense related equipment, guaranteeing communications in emergencies, promoting interstate cooperation, and producing educational and training materials. It is these educational and training materials that form the body of material depicting nuclear war in the earliest days of the atomic age. While Hollywood films struggled to move beyond the nuclear threat as a plot contrivance for mutations and monsters, propagandistic government- sponsored films (and several corporate-sponsored films) dealt directly with the threat, even if founded on optimistic assumptions or agreed-upon lies. One of the earliest entries in the genre of educational civil defense film is Pattern for Survival (1950).310 The material covered is the same that would become standard fare in future films of the kind. A philosophical discussion of the advent of ever more deadly weapons systems throughout history gives way to an exhortation by journalist and official Manhattan Project historian William Lawrence to listen to the important information in the film. “Does this mean that we are helpless against an atomic attack? Most certainly not. There is definitely a defense against the atomic bomb, provided we faithfully carry out a planned method of defense. Note very carefully what is to follow, for what you are about to see and hear is your pattern for survival.” A summary of the basic effects of the bomb (with a downplayed discussion of radiation) follows, narrated by famed American journalist Chet Huntley who asks stoically, “At this point, you’re going to ask, ‘what chance does that leave us?’” The film goes on to answer that question with a qualified “pretty good chance” if the proper preparatory measures are followed, including the construction of shelters, the painting of houses white in order to reflect heat, and the development of a constant nervous vigilance so that one knows the best place to shelter at all points throughout the day, whether given a warning or not. This persistent state of alert is reiterated in the 1951 film Atomic Alert, produced by Encyclopedia

309 Harry S. Truman: “Executive Order 10193—Providing for the Conduct of the Mobilization Effort of the Government,” 16 December 1950, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=60783. 310 Pattern for Survival, film, starring William Lawrence, narrated by Chet Huntley, directed by George Carillon, Cornell Film Company, Factual Films, Inc., 1950. 93 Britannica for elementary school students. “In this early and troubled stage of the atomic age, our very lives may depend on always being alert.”311 Staying alert and being prepared were the main messages of the earliest civil defense films. These films are consistently good at providing practical survival tips, whether particularly efficacious or not, but never stray into the realm of hypothetical causes of war or explore any kind of geopolitical escalation that might lead to an attack. In each of these early films, there appears to be no cause and the enemy is almost never named. It is a surprise attack providing short periods of time to prepare, ranging from minutes to a few hours. This is not surprising, as assuming anything more than this would serve to undermine one of the basic tenets of early atomic-era civil defense— that constant vigilance was necessary and life in an enduring state of preparation was the new normal in the atomic age. (As we will see, this state of alertness swiftly contributed to a weariness with civil defense that manifested in a prolonged tug of war between federal agencies committed to the value of preparedness and a growing sense of public apathy.) If one assumed that an attack would be prompted by something like escalating political or military tensions, then one might be tempted to wait to take action until the newspaper headlines grew sufficiently grim. Any discussion of real world scenarios that might give some head start to a survival-conscious citizen beyond the wailing of air raid sirens or the very last-minute warning of a brilliant atomic flash, would fly in the face of the idea that cities must stand and fight. Urban evacuation was eschewed in favor of a doctrine of sheltering in place. Though this would change in only a few years—and change back again a few years after that—nowhere is this view of pre-strike civil defense preparedness more clear than in the 1952 Office of Civil Defense film, Our Cities Must Fight.312 In this film, a question is raised about those who would leave their homes in cities in order to seek shelter in the countryside. Taking the form of a dialogue between two newspaper men struggling to respond to public cynicism, this group of self- preservationists is dubbed the “Take to the Hills Fraternity” and accused of planning “something pretty close to ” by leaving the cities. Stock footage of World War II refugees clogging European roads in their mass movement away from likely bombing targets is interspersed with staged traffic jams and U.S. civil defense exercises. At first the argument against evacuation is that it cannot and will not work because transportation infrastructure would not be able to handle the load. Eventually, the argument changes to something that more accurately approximates the real

311 Atomic Alert: Elementary Version, film, Encyclopedia Britannica Films, 1951. 312 Our Cities Must Fight, film, Archer Productions, Inc, US Federal Civil Defense Administration, 1951. 94 motivation for the OCD’s recommendation to shelter in place. The narrator states: “We know that mass evacuation can never be permitted if only for one reason—an all important one. The fact that every able-bodied person is needed in the city, before as well as after an attack....We must realize that in modern warfare, city dwellers find themselves right in the front lines.” This is consistent with other assumptions of government war planning, namely that such a war would not be over in a single atomic attack, but would signal the beginning of an extended campaign that would require the recovery of the nation’s industrial capacity. This is explicitly described by the narrator: “Our biggest job will be to continue putting out equipment and fighting gear our nation depends on. To desert would be to throw away our most feared weapon—America’s power to produce.” Our Cities Must Fight pulls no punches in fear-shaming those who would shirk their civic duties in a post-attack environment. In the closing lines of the film, one of our two narrators ponders whether courage will prevail. “The question is, have Americans got the guts?” Then, breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the camera he asks, “Have you got the guts?” Convincing urban denizens to shelter in place was one problem that the early civil defense apparatus tackled, but another, more pressing issue quickly presented itself. Preparation for an enemy attack required both familial actions such as caching canned foods and building interior shelters, and also the development of a wide-ranging civil defense infrastructure utilizing large numbers of volunteers. The 1950 film You Can Beat the A-Bomb, as well as the previously mentioned Pattern for Survival and Atomic Alert, all emphasize the necessity of such an infrastructure for both survival and rebuilding.313 “Much can be done,” Chet Huntley assures the audience in Pattern for Survival, “but most will fall in the hands of civilian defense groups, disaster squads, and Red Cross units. They will be there to help you.” Unfortunately, that infrastructure was not yet in place due in large part to a lack of volunteers. This problem spawned a sub-genre of preparedness films which demonstrated the necessity of well trained civil defense volunteers and encouraged viewers to join up. The Waking Point (1951) was a British take on the subject of civil defense volunteerism and was a reaction to the war weariness that was pervasive in Britain in 1951.314 With World War II over, public perception of atomic civil defense preparedness was that it was either useless because of the nature of the bombs, or at the very least conjured unwanted memories of civil defense during German air raids. The Waking Point was a relative success for British civil defense planners and was

313 You Can Beat the A-Bomb, film, directed by Walter Colmes, produced by Emerson Film Corporation, RKO Radio Pictures, 1950. 314 The Waking Point, film, produced by C.O.I., Crown Film Unit, 1951. 95 promoted and distributed in the United States by the FCDA. Modern Minute Men, produced by the Ohio Bell Telephone Company in 1952, likens civil defense volunteers to the patriots of the Revolutionary War and encourages increased participation, warning “Civil defense is everybody’s business, and it’s everybody’s business to get into civil defense.”315 Unlike the horseback and word- of-mouth warning disseminated through the countryside by Paul Revere, a modern minuteman would spread the warning through interconnected air raid sirens and telephone lines—the likely source of the telephone company’s sudden interest in film production. While Modern Minute Men was focused on Ohio, the 1952 film The Price of Liberty depicts an enemy attack on New York City and describes the essential value of civil defense volunteers.316 “These are the faces of your neighbors, trained to protect their neighbors. Trained to protect you.” At the end of this film, the narrator admits that there would not be enough trained civil defense personnel to conduct normal operations after the attack, reinforcing the call for additional volunteers. One Plane, One Bomb, produced in 1953 by CBS News in conjunction with the U.S. Air Force, documents a civil defense “experiment” in which a U.S. bomber wing makes a nuclear bombing run on New York City disguised as Soviets.317 After launching from , the planes enter U.S. airspace over Maine and slowly make their way to New York in an effort to test the ability of the Civilian Ground Observer Corps to identify and track them. A string of failures result in an on-again-off-again chase of the planes down the eastern seaboard until they are virtually “shot down” moments away from New York City. The film is unique in that it depicts frankly a failure of civil defense. The message is that more volunteers are needed for the Observer Corps. The final scene is a call from General Hoyt Vandenberg for several hundred thousand more volunteers. Only a few years after the shelter-in-place doctrine of Our Cities Must Fight, civil defense began to take an interest in evacuation. “Advisory Bulletin No. 158” was released by the FCDA in January 1954 and was the first time that the FCDA defined basic considerations for evacuation planning, citing “weapons of greater destructiveness” and an increased threat to the American people.318 In 1955, the National Civil Defense Advisory Council determined that the development of

315 Modern Minute Men, film, produced by Wilding, Ohio Bell Telephone Company, Ohio Civil Defense Organization, 1952. 316 The Price of Liberty, film, WNYC, Federal Civil Defense Administration, 1952. 317 One Plane, One Bomb, film, produced by US Air Force in cooperation with See It Now, CBS News, CBS Television Network, 1953. 318 “Annual Report for 1955,” Federal Civil Defense Administration (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1956), 31, Homeland Security Digital Library, https://www-hsdl- org.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/?view&did=34705. 96 new weapons rendered the old concept of shelter ineffective and explained the shift in the 1955 Annual Report: “Development of new weapons introduced the problem of fallout and evacuation. The duck and cover concept would be ineffective as a life saving device with these weapons. The members [of the National Civil Defense Advisory Council] agreed that the air warning network had kept pace with the increased speeds of aircraft, and would give adequate warning for evacuation to most of the people.”319 In keeping with this shift in policy, “Operation Alert” (the series of nation- wide civil defense drills discussed in the previous chapter), began in 1954 and tested various aspects of civil defense planning, including evacuation. Aspects of the Operation Alert exercises that were committed to film are excellent examples of an attempt to simulate nuclear war, as they exist at an intersection of dramatization, performance, and wargaming.320 Often these films used real civil defense participants and volunteers and depicted actual exercises which, in turn, attempted to depict actual nuclear attacks. Operation Scramble, a short film released in 1957, documents the evacuation of the St. Louis County Hospital during Operation Alert 1955.321 The scenario selected for the St. Louis area saw the detonation of a thermonuclear device over the center of the city which immediately killed 95,000. Eight miles to the east, the County Hospital has already evacuated in a meticulously planned convoy to a school in Ellisville, Missouri. As a simulation of the realities of evacuation in advance of a nuclear strike, Operation Scramble falls short in a couple of ways. The film begins with the admission that fallout was not taken into consideration in planning for the evacuation. A later assessment found that for this very reason the evacuations throughout St. Louis were less successful than they had first appeared. In an oral presentation in 1958, a Deputy Assistant Director of the Office of Defense Mobilization, Innis Harris, recalled: “Out in the St. Louis region a simulated evacuation of a great city had taken place. On first blush it looked as though quite a good job had been done. But on examination it was found that the greater part of the people had been evacuated into the most intense fallout area.”322 Another question as to the usefulness of the simulation pertains to the timing of the advanced warning. While Operation Alert 1955 assumed a tactical warning of a few hours,

319 “Annual Report for 1955,” 55. 320 See Stages of Emergency by Tracy C. Davis for a full analysis of civil defense as a “performance.” 321 Operation Scramble, film, Federal Civil Defense Administration, 1957; "Annual Statistical Report, Fiscal Year 1957," Federal Civil Defense Administration, 30 June 1957, 124. Homeland Security Digital Library https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=34699 322 “Lessons Learned from Operations Alert 1955-1957,” (Washington, D.C.: Industrial College of the Armed Forces, 30 April 1958), Publication No. L58-141, 6, Homeland Security Digital Library, https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=458671 97 participants in “Operation Scramble” were inexplicably given additional warning and the convoy began evacuation 90 minutes ahead of other evacuation exercises. Operation Alert 1955 generally played fast and loose with the realities of warning time. Participants in the combined Civil Defense and government relocation in the St. Louis area were allowed a period of “strategic warning” to prepare. According to Innis Harris, “We wanted to make sure that we didn’t fall flat on our faces, so 45 days prior to the exercise, alert cadres from all of the participating agencies activated their relocation sites, checked records, tested communications, and performed functions under conditions of a sustained alert as though we may have had a strategic warning. We wanted to have a few people set up shop in advance.”323 Another 1957 film utilizing a 1955 exercise was the CBS television docudrama, A Day Called X.324 In terms of visualizing preparation for simulated nuclear war, few films of the era go so far as this civil defense gem. By 1957, Portland, Oregon had become a national model for civil defense planning. The mayor of Portland, Dorothy McCullough Lee, appointed former Superintendent of the State Police Charles Pray to the position of Director of Civil Defense where he became a zealous proponent of civil defense planning. In 1956, Portland established a government operations center in Kelly Butte, a small mountain away from the city center. This subterranean civil defense bunker became the first such facility in the country below the federal level to be hardened against thermonuclear detonations. In 1957, CBS filmed A Day Called X in Portland using real citizens and city officials and the underground operations center as a location. The film is a dramatized documentary of an impending Soviet nuclear attack and demonstrates the successful application of civil defense preparedness. Notably, it uses footage from the 1955 “Operation Green Light” during which Portland successfully evacuated 1000 city blocks in the downtown area, including 29,423 vehicles and 101,074 people in 54 minutes.325 1959 saw a shift in the policies of civil defense in the United States. The Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization published a pamphlet in that year titled “The Family Fallout Shelter” which asked the public to create private fallout shelters. Several plans were offered ranging from a do-it- yourself concrete basement shelter to an elaborate underground shelter requiring earth moving

323 “Lessons Learned from Operation Alert,” 4. 324 A Day Called X, film, Dr. Harry Rasky, CBS Television, 1957. 325 “Portland Civil Defense,” The Oregon Encyclopedia, Oregon Historical Society, https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/portland_civil_defense/. 98 equipment and $1000 to $1500 1960 dollars (approximately $8,000 to $12,000 in 2017).326 The following year, two films were produced which illustrated the shelter building techniques laid out in the pamphlet. The first film, Walt Builds a Family Fallout Shelter: a Do-It-Yourself Project, follows the construction of the inexpensive shelter by an elderly man named Walt.327 Sponsored by the National Concrete Masonry Association with technical assistance from the OCDM, the film exhorts the public to build a fallout shelter. Leo Hoegh, then Director of the OCDM, speaks to the camera and states that “No home in America is modern without a family fallout shelter. This is the nuclear age.” Reminding the audience of the necessity of a shelter, Walt himself reminds us in his folksy drawl that “If we should ever to have a nuclear war, we could get a heavy fallout even though we were not anywheres near the target area.” Following the advice of the pamphlet, Walt furnishes his modest concrete block shelter and stocks it with provisions. The second film depicts the construction of the most elaborate and expensive shelter suggested by the OCDM, a subterranean concrete bunker constructed by Douglas Brown of Topeka, Kansas for his wife and eight children.328 Though not stated in the film, Douglas Brown was a professional fallout shelter contractor, a fact he stated during an appearance on “Retrospect,” a television series sponsored by the OCDM. The family went on to spend seven days in their shelter under survival conditions and described the experience on “Retrospect.”329 Civil defense films continued in this vein throughout the rest of the 1960s, explaining the necessity of fallout shelters and other individual preparedness measures, but one film that deserves special mention is the final entry in the catalog of civil defense films on nuclear preparedness. By 1972, the project of civil defense education was in the hands of the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency. As part of an effort to demonstrate the diversity of applications of civil defense, the agency started the “Your Chance to Live” campaign in 1972.330 This was similar to other civil defense

326 “The Family Fallout Shelter,” (Battle Creek, Michigan: Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, June 1959). 327 Walt Builds a Family Fallout Shelter, film, Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, The National Concrete Masonry Association, 1960. 328 The Family Fallout Shelter, film, Monumental Films Incorporated, Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, 1960. 329 Guy Oakes, The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture (Oxford University: Oxford University Press, 1994), 123. A video of the program episode is hosted on YouTube as of this writing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1ne-SST6os&t=644s 330 “Foresight: Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1973,” Deference Civil Preparedness Agency, 1973, 23, Homeland Security Digital Library, https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=34734. 99 campaigns, with print publications and films. The film series included entries on manmade and preparedness, each focusing on a specific area and hosted by the well known voice actor Peter Thomas. The films were well made and accessible, harboring little of the kitsch value of earlier civil defense films. Strangely, Your Chance to Live: Nuclear Disaster was an entirely different proposition.331 This 1972 film is arguably the most bizarre film ever created by a civil defense agency and perfectly embodies the apathy that had come over most of the American public in the realm of nuclear preparedness. Taken as an artifact of a specific time in the American discussion of nuclear civil defense, Nuclear Disaster acts as a kind of impotent final plea to take the threat seriously. At least, as the final lines of the film say, “think about it.” On the surface, it is a meta-film—it is a film about making the film Nuclear Disaster. The director and crew are the subjects. Some scenes show the director working with extras, at one point instructing a young girl to “look scared as if the bomb just went off. Can you do that?” She replies, “But I’m not really scared.” This is an encapsulation of the attitude that confronted civil defense efforts at the time. The film goes on to show the editing room and the host, Peter Thomas, in a sound booth asking for instruction on how best to deliver lines from the script, unsure because “the words are so frightening.” The film closes on the National Mall as a light snow starts to fall. Peter Thomas begins, “The thought of a nuclear attack and its aftermath is so terrible that most people have put it out of their minds. But not thinking about it, and not really thinking seriously about it will not make a danger disappear. It only makes preparation impossible. And this can be fatal, for preparation, which can save your life, can only be done in advance of an emergency situation.” He attempts to go on, but air raid sirens begin to wail across the capitol. At first, the interruption is met with humor, but as the warning goes on, serious glances are exchanged among the crew. The attack is real, and they have done nothing to prepare. The film ends on this haunting note. Nuclear Disaster does not explain how to prepare—perhaps that message would have fallen on the deaf ears of a public long suspicious of their chances of survival. The film does not describe the threat—that was well known and, if possible, assumed to be worse than the government could ever admit. Instead, Nuclear Disaster shows that concern over civil defense measures had regressed so completely, that the message now must simply be to bring the concept of nuclear civil defense back

331 Your Chance to Live: Nuclear Disaster, film, Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, 1972m film; “Mandate for Readiness, Annual Report 1974,” Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, Department of Defense, 1974, 34, Homeland Security Digital Library, https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=34726. 100 to mind and into the public discourse, and that “not really thinking seriously about it will not make a danger disappear.” Less than a decade later, the threat would once again place itself front and center in the public conversation and squarely in the zeitgeist. In the 1980s, the message would not be delivered by educational civil defense films, but would nevertheless permeate political discourse and popular culture. The message was that the only way to prepare for a nuclear war was to bring an end to the threat.

Without Reason or Warning: Popular Film to the 1980s

Discussion of the period of geopolitical escalation prior to war throughout films of the 1950s is notably constrained and usually entirely absent. This betrays a sense of the inevitability of a nuclear conflict that had become pervasive in society. No explanation was required for audiences to accept a nuclear conflict as part of the plot. This leads to a body of material that fails to lend itself to analysis of the “escalation” phase that is the subject of this section, but the lack of such reflection on the subject in films of the period also speaks to the nature of the threat. If war came, it would be with the Soviet Union, it would be atomic, and it would be catastrophic. A brief survey of the genre in the 1950s and 1960s shows that in place of a period of escalation, there is a sense of inevitability—that the situation was already, permanently at the brink and war could come at any moment, without reason or warning. Day the World Ended (1955), though not at all a serious look at nuclear war, is perhaps the best example of the way that the period before war was treated by most films.332 A caption at the start of the film states that “Our story begins with...THE END” followed by a clip of the detonation of shot “Baker” during Operation Crossroads in 1946, acting as a stand-in for a general nuclear war. Most other films follow suit and offer no explanation for the occurrence of global other than its general inevitability. The film On the Beach (1959) conspicuously omits the cause of the war that is very specific in the 1955 novel on which the film is based. Instead it suggests that it was either human error or a technical fault attributable to “vacuum tubes.”333 The novel describes a period of growing international tensions which result in a nuclear attack by on and an attack on the United States and United Kingdom by using Soviet-made bombers that are

332 The Day the World Ended, film, directed by Roger Corman, distributed by American Releasing Corporation, December 1955. 333 On the Beach, film, directed by Stanley Kramer, produced by United Artists, 17 December 1959. 101 mistakenly identified, resulting in a nuclear strike by NATO on the Soviet Union. With this amount of detail of the pre-attack situation present in the source material, it is notable that the film omits specific discussion of the aggressor in the war. One early exception to this trend is the 1952 film, Invasion U.S.A. in which war comes after a period of heightened international tensions in the form of a surprise invasion by an unknown, but thoroughly Communist, enemy.334 A news bulletin at the start of the film states: “Washington officially denies rumors of enemy planes over northern Alaska. Meanwhile there’s been no lessening of international tension and informed sources refuse to discount the possibility of all-out war.” The invasion is sudden and intense. After learning of the loss of the , a U.S. General ponders, “the question is now, is he going to use his A-Bomb?” The answer is a prompt “yes” as the unnamed enemy strikes several military installations. The theme of an unmotivated surprise attack is also present in the 1959 film, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil in which an unnamed nation has launched weaponized radioactive isotopes on the United States that eventually results in global depopulation leaving Harry Belafonte to search for survivors.335 In all of the films and novels of the “nuclear war genre,” only a handful between the start of the Cold War and the 1980s do anything to explore the period of escalating tensions prior to a nuclear war and what effects those tensions have on individuals and societies involved.336 There are two notable exceptions to this, both non-U.S. films, and both ahead of their time in terms of representation of escalation and war. These are the 1961 Japanese film The Last War (Sekai Daisensō) and the 1964 British film . The Last War was directed by Shūe Matsubayashi, well known for his work in the war genre over four decades.337 The film tells the story of escalating international tensions that lead to nuclear war. The film substitutes NATO and the Pact with the competing “Federation” and “Alliance.” A small incident at sea escalates tension between the two and war resumes briefly in the Korean Peninsula. Japan urges restraint and negotiations but dogfights between the Alliance and Federation with nuclear tipped air-to-air missiles initiate nuclear escalation. ICBMs from both sides

334 Invasion, U.S.A., film, directed by Alfred E. Green, distributed by Columbia Pictures, 10 December 1952. 335 The World, the Flesh and the Devil, film, directed by Ranald MacDougal, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 20 May 1959. 336 Other films in this period show the hours leading up to war, such as Dr. Strangelove (1964) and Fail-Safe (1964), but this is different than examining geopolitical escalation to the tipping point toward war. Those films will be examined in later sections. 337 The Last War (世界大戦争 Sekai Daisensō), film, Toho Co. Ltd., 1961, DVD 2004. 102 are launched and in a dramatic sequence of relatively impressive 1961 special effects, Tokyo is reduced to flowing rivers of lava. Unlike most other films of the period, The Last War not only deals with geopolitical escalation, but the entirety of the film is the story of that escalation. It attempts to show, earnestly and realistically, the way in which systems of alliance could lead to global nuclear war and how nations with loose or no affiliation to the would likely also find themselves under a mushroom cloud. As the narrator explains: “Far off in the Mediterranean, a military plane was shot down. Well meaning men, educated men, met in a room to consider the repercussions of a shooting across the world. One that had nothing to do with Japan or the . But as the world had grown very small and was split up into alliances...it did have to do with us.”338 The 1964 film The War Game was written, directed, and produced by Peter Watkins for the BBC.339 The film is a docudrama, showing actors and scenarios in a documentary style and is a genuine attempt to simulate a nuclear attack on film. That effort was so successful that the BBC declined to broadcast it once it was finished, having determined it to be “too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting.”340 Watkins’ original treatment for The War Game did not include an explanation for rising international tensions, but he later included it in the final script. The film describes a deteriorating geopolitical situation that begins in Vietnam, leads to Soviet intervention in , tactical nuclear exchanges, and an eventual nuclear attack on Britain. This is a carefully crafted scenario that reflects the real-world flashpoints of the 1960s, creating a realistic and possible path to nuclear war. The film begins with a radio announcer describing the state of international affairs: “London, Friday the sixteenth of September. It’s just been confirmed that late last night, in order to show support for the collective communist Chinese invasion of , the Russian and East German authorities have sealed off all access to the city of Berlin.” All of this is just a backdrop for scenes of civil defense preparation throughout Britain. The narration goes on to say that evacuations from urban centers have begun but the success of the endeavor is very much in doubt. Riots have broken out in Berlin and general scenes of disorder are shown as tension mounts.

338 The quote is taken from the English dubbed version. 339 The War Game, film, directed by Peter Watkins, Distributed by BBC, 1965. 340 James Chapman, “The BBC and the Censorship of The War Game (1965),” Journal of Contemporary History 41, no. 1, 2006, 75-94. Debate has long gone on about whether there existed government interference in limiting the film’s release because it reflected poorly on civil defense preparations. The debate remains inconclusive. 103 Though one complaint about the film was that it did not offer a balanced view of the value of deterrence or the efficacy of civil defense measures, it cannot be said that Peter Watkins failed to accurately portray official government emergency plans. Watkins undertook significant research in advance of the project, consulting with Civil Defense planners as well as reading civil defense manuals.341 The result is a critique of those measures when implemented in actual time of emergency. Ahead of the impending war, mandatory evacuees are involuntarily billeted with unwilling hosts who complain of not having food enough to feed them. Ration books are distributed along with a booklet entitled “Your Protection Against Nuclear Attack” which, the dialogue reveals, failed to get into the hands of the public sooner because it “didn’t sell too well.” This publication and civil defense officials instruct civilians to build shelters but a run on construction supplies results in price gouging with most of the population without the funds—or time—to complete a functional refuge. As tactical nuclear war breaks out over West Berlin, the Soviet Union launches its fleet of missiles on Europe and the film moves on to scenes of the attack and aftermath. The War Game seems ahead of its time in its blunt and sometimes clinical portrayal of the period of escalation and nuclear war more generally. The breadth of its scope and concern with scientific accuracy would come to dominate filmic portrayals of nuclear war in the 1980s. Eventually The War Game was aired on the BBC—in 1985, twenty years after its completion—as part of a series of programs shown in conjunction with the fortieth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan. The War Game was shown one day after a rebroadcast of its 1984 counterpart Threads, a film with which The War Game has a great deal in common, despite two decades of Cold War tensions between.

Exploring Escalation in the Films of the 1980s

The period leading up to the war plays little role in film and literature prior to the 1980s, despite its obvious value in ratcheting up dramatic tension. Often this period acts only as an element of back story, or in the case of films depicting surprise attack, is wholly absent. This fundamentally changed in the 1980s, a decade that saw the production of several comprehensive films that explored each of the phases of a nuclear catastrophe. So why, after decades of ignoring geopolitical escalation or civil defense measures in the final days, did the genre suddenly take an interest? The reason appears to be that the resurgent forces of antinuclear activism began to be mirrored in media.

341 Chapman, “Censorship of The War Game.” 104 In 1984, journalist William Prochnau suggested that the vigorous antinuclear protests of the 1950s, which coincided with the formation of organizations such as the Campaign for (CND), were weakened in the 1960s by a series of events. The first of these was the adoption of the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which required all tests to be conducted underground. This had the dual effect of removing the threat of from public concern and muting the stream of graphic images which gave visual reference to the nuclear threat. Furthermore, the escalation of the war in Vietnam siphoned off many of the political activists formerly affiliated with organizations such as the CND. Third, the continuation of the and the growing Civil Rights movement in the United States distracted Americans generally, and particularly those on the political Left.342 The result was a period of approximately a decade during which public concern for the nuclear threat was seemingly muffled. This changed at the close of the 1970s for a variety of reasons. In March 1979, the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island brought worldwide attention to the efforts of antinuclear groups, some of whom had warned of just such an accident and sparked protests around the world.343 Less than two weeks earlier, the film The China Syndrome had been released, starring major Hollywood personalities Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and Michael Douglas. The film depicts a similar civilian nuclear power accident and the coincidence of these events further promoted the cause of the antinuclear movement.344 On 12 December 1979, NATO issued the “Double-Track Decision” which was a response to the “Euromissiles crisis”—the perceived threat posed by the deployment of the Soviet SS-20 intermediate range ballistic missiles and the corresponding commitment to deploy 572 American Pershing II and Gryphon cruise missiles to restore a state of mutual assured destruction in Europe. Two weeks later, the Soviet invasion of put further strain on U.S.-Soviet relations, escalating global tensions and putting an end to the period of detente that had lasted through the 1970s. In 1980, Presidential Directive 59 was signed by Jimmy Carter, shifting the U.S. nuclear force posture away from an all-out nuclear conflict to one that envisioned a prolonged, tactical, and

342 “Interview with William Prochnau: Media’s Coverage of Nuclear War,” C-Span, 14 November 1983. The classic work on developments leading to the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty remains Robert A. Divine’s, Blowing on the Wind: The Nuclear Test Ban Debate, 1954-1960, 1978. See also Lawrence Badash’s, Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons: From Fission to the Limited Test Ban Treaty, 1939-1963, 1999. 343 Luther J. Carter, “Political Fallout from Three Mile Island,” Science, 204, April 13, 1979, 154. 344 The China Syndrome, film, directed by James Bridges, produced by Michael Douglas, distributed by Columbia Pictures, 16 March 1979. 105 ultimately winnable nuclear war. Portions of the document were leaked to the press in the weeks that followed, igniting fierce debate about the implications that planning for a “winnable” war might have.345 Opponents argued that a smaller, protracted nuclear war that did not immediately escalate to total global nuclear war might lower the threshold for using tactical theater nuclear weapons which, in turn, could create uncertainty about the use of strategic nuclear weapons. The perception of PD 59 was that a shift was underway in the government toward a willingness to actually fight a war with nuclear weapons and away from the idea of mutual assured destruction that had maintained the balance of power—and the peace—for most of the Cold War. These fears were exacerbated with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 with his bellicose rhetoric and intention to re-militarize the Cold War, believing that an arms race, rather than arms reduction, would bring about the end of the conflict and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. It is in this environment that the antinuclear forces—described by journalist and author William Prochnau as “distracted” for the prior fifteen years—refocused their attention and set the stage for the final, dramatic decade of the Cold War. It is in the first half of the 1980s that some of the most iconic media representations of nuclear war were produced in film, television, and literature.346 Armed with forty years of information about nuclear weapons and war and the cynicism brought about by forty years of disinformation from those in power, public opinion transformed into antinuclear activism. For these reasons, representations of nuclear war in film in the 1980s bare little resemblance to what came before and are striking in their clear attempt to confront the threat of nuclear war, provoke debate, and effect change. The 1983 television film The Day After is arguably the most important American depiction of nuclear war on film.347 It was directed by Nicholas Meyer, written by Edward Hume, and originally conceived by ABC Motion Pictures president Brandon Stoddard as an exploration of the effects of nuclear war on the United States. As with many other scenarios envisioned in the Cold War, trouble begins in the film with a divided Germany. Extensive and detailed updates are given through television and radio broadcasts. The first spoken lines of the film are those of a television news

345 “Jimmy Carter’s Controversial Nuclear Targeting Directive PD-59 Declassified,” The National Security Archive, The George Washington University, 14 September 2012, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb390/. 346 See: FILM: Whoops (ITV, 1982), The Day After (ABC, 1983), Testament (PBS, Paramount 1983), Threads (BBC, 1984), Z for Zachariah (BBC, 1984), PRINT: Riddley Walker (Russel Hoban, 1980), The “Zone” novels (James Rouche, 1980-1990), Trinity’s Child (William Prochnau, 1983), Doomsday Plus Twelve (James Foreman, 1984), Emergence (David Palmer, 1984), Warday ( and James Kunetka, 1984). 347 The Day After, television film, directed by Nicholas Meyer, produced by ABC Circle Films, distributed by ABC Motion Pictures, 20 November 1983. 106 anchor overheard in the background of the bustling Kansas Board of Trade. “The West has been unanimous in condemning Soviet action and applying . Which has not stopped the growing Soviet military presence along the West German frontier.” Scenes of military operations and the heightening readiness of the Strategic Air Command are taken from the 1979 documentary First Strike and are comprised of real Air Force officers and simulated operations in the SAC command plane and in an ICBM installation.348 As escalation progresses, the Soviets begin a military buildup that eventually leads to a . The United States escalates the conflict by invading to free Berlin, followed by heightened tensions when the Soviets bomb NATO facilities in . Soviet forces advancing to the Rhine are stopped by tactical nuclear weapons which begins the tit-for-tat nuclear escalation that quickly becomes a full strategic exchange. A notable feature of the film is that it avoids directly assigning blame for beginning the war and ends the war with a cease fire, the United States and the Soviet Union having endured roughly equivalent levels of destruction. Very few examples of civil defense preparation can be found in The Day After. Though scenes of increased military readiness are plentiful—missile crews and strategic bombers are put on alert—the most apparent mode of civilian preparation is personal evacuation. Rumors suggesting that a few University of Kansas students have left with backpacks give way to scenes of traffic jams on the interstate leaving Kansas City. As tensions escalate, a radio broadcast reports that is being evacuated. On the day of the nuclear strike, one character does finally begin to stock his basement with supplies and cover basement windows with dirt. A sense of hopeless inevitability surrounds the period of escalation in The Day After, as characters listen to radio and television broadcasts pensively and do nothing to prepare, reflecting the tenor of the time and the general rejection of nuclear civil defense. The following year, Threads aired on the BBC. This is an extraordinary example of nuclear war on film and may very well stand as the epitome of nuclear realism in both technical and sociological terms. Carl Sagan said of it, “Threads is everything The Day After promised but didn’t deliver.”349 Without delving too deeply into the discipline of film studies, Threads is a forceful,

348 First Strike, film, created by KRON-TV and Chronicle Publishing Company, produced by United States Air Force, distributed by NBC Television, 1979. 349 Perrine, Film and the Nuclear Age, 167. 107 unrelentingly dark docudrama that pulls no punches and the viewer shell-shocked and utterly hopeless.350 The film was commissioned after the Director-General of the BBC viewed The War Game which was, at that time, still unavailable to the public. Written by Barry Hines and directed by Mick Jackson, Threads was created to be the most accurate and technically precise depiction of nuclear war that had ever been put to film. Barry Hines said of the film’s purpose, “Our intention in making Threads was to....show the actual effects on either side should our best endeavors to prevent nuclear war fail.”351 Threads will be examined extensively in further sections, as its source material includes statistical and political analysis of nuclear war, as well as scientific studies such as that of Carl Sagan and TTAPS that lead to the theory of “nuclear winter” (indeed, Threads is the first film to directly depict nuclear winter). What is at issue in the moment, however, is its portrayal of the period of geopolitical escalation. Unlike The Day After or The War Game—with which Threads has much in common—the spark of the conflict in this instance is Iran. After a coup backed by the United States to overthrow the Iranian government, the Soviet Union invades to prevent the return of the Shah. The U.S. sends troops into western Iran to deter the Soviet takeover of the oil fields and the Soviets introduce nuclear weapons into their position in the north. When the U.S. bombs the newly established Soviet base, the Soviets respond with nuclear-tipped surface-to-air missiles. The U.S. destroys the base with a tactical nuclear weapon. The mechanics of escalation become even more intricate when the next day the conflict spreads to the Persian Gulf and naval engagements. The Soviets blockade West Berlin, and when the USS Kitty Hawk is sunk with a nuclear , the U.S. . Two days later, general global nuclear war breaks out. Taking place over the course of three weeks, these details are transmitted to the viewer through radio and television broadcasts, but are also spelled out in title cards which interject, pausing the dramatic action for factual, documentary-like downloads of technical information. It would seem that the filmmakers’ desire to create the most accurate depiction of nuclear war also

350 Threads, film, written by Barry Hines, directed by Mic Jackson, Distributed by BBC, 23 September 1984. 351 Paul Binnion, “Threads: A review by Paul Binnion, University of Nottingham, UK.” Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies, University of Nottingham, U.K., May 2003. [From an interview with Hines]. 108 extends to the period of escalation, as it is by far the most intricately designed and explicitly described road to war of any film in the genre. The tension builds for the first 45 minutes of the film, depicting characters who began the film entirely disengaged from the crisis eventually reprimanding a pub’s landlord for changing the television channel away from reports of the events in Iran. The landlord switches back and the population of the pub watches the news in stunned silence. The pacing of the escalation and transition to wartime is slow and deliberate, shifting the focus of the audience from the specific to the general, the individual to societal, as characters become aware of the inescapable momentum of international events. This phase of the film also presents an opportunity to examine civil defense and emergency measures in a way that had not previously been possible. Unlike The Day After, there are extensive representations of civil defense measures to be found in Threads—on the part of the government and civilian population. While the 1980s saw no unified nuclear civil defense message in the United States, the British government had embarked on a pervasive multimedia campaign known as .352 This print and television campaign provided advice for constructing fallout shelters or “inner refuges” as well as suggestions for actions to take in the post-attack period. Journalist Duncan Campbell’s 1982 exposé War Plan UK: The Secret Truth about Britain’s “Civil Defense” provided previously classified material on which to base depictions of government preparedness.353 The filmmakers of Threads precisely recreated the advised civil defense measures for both the civilian population and government and then “tested” those measures in the thought experiment of the film. The results were bleak. The plot of the film is simple, familiar, and intentionally melodramatic. A middle class woman and her working class boyfriend plan to marry due to an unexpected pregnancy. The story revolves around the two families—the Kemps and the Becketts—as the story transitions slowly from a domestic to a nuclear war. A voiceover introduces the first hint of preparations in the escalating crisis. “Britain has emergency plans for war. If central government should ever fail, power can be transferred instead to a system of local officials dispersed across the country. In an urban district like , there is already a designated wartime controller. He is the city’s peacetime chief executive.” This chief

352 “Protect and Survive,” 1980, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Prepared for the Home Office by the Central Office of Information, 1980. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110193 353 Campbell, War Plan UK. 109 executive is the city’s mayor, “C.J. Sutton” and soon receives a memo initiating the transition to war. It reads: “As a result of decisions taken in Cabinet last night [...] you are requested to undertake an initial review of the emergency arrangements listed in your County War Book Volume I.” The memo goes on to state that Sutton should, “take care that any such review is carried out with discretion and does not cause undue public alarm or concern.”354 Sutton then begins to assemble the team of emergency managers. The first hint of civilian preparation is increased buying at a supermarket. “It’s busy for a Wednesday, isn’t it?” Mrs. Kemp asks as she waits in line. “You’d think it were Christmas.” Simultaneously Sutton begins to catalog emergency supplies. Two days later, as children play on the grounds of a primary school, bundles of blankets are delivered as the government begins to stock emergency shelters. The official transition to war is illustrated with a change in the “BIKINI” state. This was a system for indicating threat level similar to the DEFCON system in the United States. The entrance to station Finningley is shown and the base’s security alert status is indicated by a “Bikini State” indicator—a black board with white letters which reads: “black.” This sign is changed by hand to a similar board which says “amber.”355 This threat level represents a scenario in which: “Specific information has been received and it is assessed that there is a substantial threat to government targets within a specified period of time.”356 The transition-to-war would include the suspension of normal, peacetime services of the civil authority, the closure of motorways and invocation of Emergency Service Routes, and the internment of subversives without or trial.357 General civil unrest erupts as fighting breaks out between the United States and Soviet Union. Neighbors of the Kemps pack their station wagon and attempt to evacuate Sheffield only to be stuck in an intractable traffic jam of other families with the same idea. Hospitals are cleared for casualties and vehicles are sent to safer distances from the city as potential subversives are arrested

354 The secret memo is delivered by a police motorcycle courier, perhaps in reference to Peter Watkins’ 1965 The War Game in which the first scene follows a motorcycle courier delivering a similar secret memo. 355 Machinery of Government in War (planning assumptions and general guidance), Home Office, ES 7/1973 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1973). This publication presents the continuity-of-government plans which were to be deployed in the event of national emergency. Elected officials are excluded in favor of civil servants. 356 Christopher Thompson, “Bikini Alert.” , 7 February 2005. 357 Police Manual of Home Defence, Home Office (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1974), 26. The Urgent Additional Tasks list identifies item a. as: “Maintain internal security, with particular reference to the detention or restriction of movement of subversive or potentially subversive people.” 110 under emergency powers. Sutton and the emergency management team take up residence in a makeshift shelter under City Hall. Threads is meticulous in depicting every phase of the planned transition to war as described in War Plan UK, alternating between dramatizations and increasingly frequent on-screen text describing the phases of the transition and escalation. The film is equally precise in its portrayal of civil defense measures laid out in the Protect and Survive literature. We first hear an excerpt of Part 3, “What To Do When the Warnings Sound” on the radio the day before the attack. “when you hear the attack warning, you and your family must take cover at once.” This is followed on the day of the attack with Part 20, “Casualties,” which advises “if anyone dies while you are kept in your fallout room, move the body to another room in the house.” One of the last things heard on the radio prior to the attack is Part 9, “What to Put in your Fall-Out Room” as Mr. Kemp struggles to unhinge a door. This scene is another depiction of Protect and Survive, as Mr. Kemp appears to be following the instructions for constructing an “inner refuge” from Part 6, “Refuges,” as well as from the printed pamphlet which advises families to: “Make a ‘lean-to’ with sloping doors taken from rooms above or strong boards rested against an inner wall.” Threads expertly weaved published civil defense preparations with previously classified government war plans to create the most realistic depiction of preparation and escalation in the genre. From government and military preparations to the impotent efforts of individuals, it was wide-ranging in its scope and remains arguably the most realistic depiction of nuclear war on film. * * * The period of geopolitical tension and military escalation in depictions of nuclear war can serve two roles. First, to illustrate the nature of the potential threat. This can range from a surprise attack with no warning, as was the assumption in U.S. civil defense films and early representations, to the elaborate mechanisms of escalation of the 1980s that portrayed the run-up to war as an inevitable momentum that mirrored the perceived inevitability of nuclear war in that decade. In the next phase of “simulated” nuclear war on film, we will see how concerns over nuclear security, reliability, and mutual assured destruction manifested themselves over the decades and how, more often than not, the decision to launch a nuclear war was represented as accidental or the act of a madman rather than a calculated attempt to rationally deploy nuclear weapons in the service of military victory.

111 Launch: Short Circuits in the Doomsday Machine

In the genre, there are very few causes for nuclear war and almost all can be distilled into five cases: no known cause, surprise attack, rising tensions, , and error. Throughout the history of depictions of nuclear war, these have each been used in various ways and to various ends. In the first case, there is no cause. That is, humanity is a species with collective amnesia. A war occurred, usually in the distant past and has become the stuff of legend. A reader or viewer will most likely find this case used in works that will not be examined in this chapter. It is more a feature of fantasy and science fiction than real and scientifically conscientious visions of nuclear war. In the second case, it is a surprise attack. A great deal of film utilizing the surprise attack scenario has been covered in the previous section. The whole body of civil defense film relied on it to create a sense of perpetual preparedness. In the third case, the initiation of hostilities is the almost inevitable result of escalating geopolitical tension. Films with this feature were discussed in the previous section, but the moment of launch, the actual trigger of war, is worth discussion. The simplistic view of a nuclear war as a Rube Goldberg machine, cocked and ready to perform its single task, certainly had value in wargaming and balance of force calculations, but as the Cold War went on, it became increasingly clear that there existed multiple ways a war might start in a period of heightened tensions, as well as multiple ways to turn it off. These variables are examined in several films of the genre. In the fourth, and rarest case, the missiles fly as a result of an act of terrorism. This case has little bearing on the body of media that treats nuclear war seriously during the Cold War, but it has appeared in multiple scenarios in the decades since. Though beyond the scope of this work, understanding this fifth case—in both media and 21st century war planning—is an essential endeavor. In previous sections, I have discussed surprise attack and the culmination of escalating geopolitical tensions. The first being a feature of Civil Defense film and literature and a few scattered Hollywood films, and the second a feature of films like The Day After and Threads that looked at the issue of nuclear war holistically. In this section, the focus will be on accidental nuclear war—the fifth case. In the fifth case, the war is a result of error—usually technological, but sometimes human. Error as a cause is present in films spanning the breadth of the Cold War and is usually a reflection of general anxiety over advancing technology (of which nuclear weapons themselves are an 112 example), but also specifically over technologies designed to make nuclear war less likely that in turn cause the war. As David Denby of The New Yorker phrased the paradox, “Each element makes some sort of sense in itself as strategy, but, in the aggregate, they produce an insane system of interlocking absolutes.”358 When error, human or technological, is explored in film, it is usually portrayed as a single faulty link in a wider command and control apparatus. These elements of command and control are not “fail safe”—having the effect of preferring to prevent a nuclear war. They are usually—in reality and in film—“fail deadly” systems. The reason for this is simple: a miscommunication or failure that fails safe might prevent an accidental nuclear war, but if fail safes are in place, they may too easily prevent the intentional retaliatory strike that is necessary for a viable deterrent. Strategic Air Command (SAC) planners chose more often than not to fail deadly, and in doing so constructed the elaborate machinery of war that seemed guaranteed, given time, to do just that—and start World War III. The “accidental” nuclear war is a theme that recurs in the genre and reflects anxieties about the layers of complexity and often paradoxical measures designed to prevent nuclear war. In the Afterward to Robert Kennedy’s 1968 memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Richard Neustadt and Graham Allison summarize this in a section titled The Nuclear Paradox. “In a world of mutual superiority, neither nation can win a nuclear war, but each must be willing to risk losing.[...]In order to be able to preserve certain values, the leaders must be willing not to choose destruction, but nonetheless to choose the risk of destruction.”359 In 1954, U.S. Secretary of State laid the groundwork for what would become the policy of mutual assured destruction with his introduction of the concept of “.” Dulles stated in a speech that: “Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power. A potential aggressor must know that he cannot always prescribe battle conditions that suit him.”360 With advances in missile technology—and particularly the submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM)—the credibility of a massive retaliatory response on the part of the United States and Soviet Union was greatly increased by the end of the 1950s, leading to a state of (if not a stated policy of) Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). In 1960, Herman Kahn’s

358 David Denby, “The Half-Century Anniversary of Dr. Strangelove,” New Yorker, 13 May 2014. 359 Robert F Kennedy, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1968, 115. 360 John Foster Dulles, “The Evolution of Foreign Policy,” Speech before the Council of Foreign Relations, New York, Department of State Press Release No. 81, 12 January 1954. 113 famed strategic treatise challenged the viability of the policy.361 Kahn, a Cold War strategist at the RAND Corporation, illustrated the potential danger of MAD as an actual operational deterrent with the hypothetical “Doomsday Machine,” the “Doomsday-in-a-Hurry Machine,” and the “ Pact Machine.” Kahn wrote: “Discussing these idealized (almost caricaturized) devices will both focus attention on the most spectacular and ominous possibilities and clarify a good deal of current strategic thinking.” These hypothetical machines were designed to be the perfect deterrent, allowing a world-destroying volley of weapons or a global radioactive cloud to be released in the event that certain conditions are met, such as an attack on the United States. The Doomsday Machines would be run by a computer, allowing for an automatic response that “eliminates the human element, including any possibility of a loss of resolve as a result of either humanitarian consideration or threats by the enemy.” Though obviously a facetious thought experiment, the Doomsday Machine illustrates the pervasive fear of a mechanized response to nuclear war and the automation of matters of life and death. Another piece of policy that increased these anxieties was the movement toward a “launch- on-warning” retaliatory stance. Jerome Wiesner of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (and later Science Advisor to President Kennedy) suggested this possibility in a report to Eisenhower in mid-1959.362 Wiesner felt that the new Ballistic Missile Early (BMEWS) could give reliable early warning of incoming ICBMs and allow for U.S. missiles to be launched, thereby escaping the two equally unappealing options of preemption or “retaliate after ride-out.” As sensing technologies improved, eventually including observational satellites that could spot an ICBM launch in its earliest stages, the hair trigger of the launch-on-warning option became ever more evident. Though specifics about a stated policy of launch-on-warning are sparse and remain largely classified, the perception that the military had such a policy along with all of its intrinsic vulnerabilities to false alarms can be found in representations of nuclear war from the end of the 1950s.363 A list of nuclear close calls and false warnings also shook the public’s faith in nuclear safeguards and mechanisms of command and control. During the Suez Crisis in November 1956, a series of misinterpretations of events led to NORAD briefly wrestling with the implications of

361 Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton University Press, 1960). 362 Jerome Wiesner, “Warning and Defense in the Missile Age,” President’s Science Advisory Committee, 3 June 1959, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Anne Whitman File, Dwight D. Eisenhower Diaries, box 42, Staff Notes June 1-15 1959. 363 “Launch on Warning: The Development of US Capabilities, 1959-1979,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 23. Ed. William Burr, National Security Archive, The George Washington University, April 2001. 114 Soviet intervention in the conflict. Analysis later revealed that unidentified aircraft over were instead a flock of birds and 100 MiG-15s over Syria were actually an air force escort for the president of that country returning from a visit to Moscow.364 A BMEWS radar installation at Thule, Greenland issued a report of a massive Soviet attack on 5 October 1960. NORAD went on maximum alert but eventually determined that the missiles were an illusion. Later analysis revealed that the BMEWS had been fooled by the moon rising over Norway.365 A stunningly dangerous incident occurred in the final hours of the Cuban Missile Crisis when a computer test tape simulating a missile launch from Cuba indicated that Tampa, Florida was minutes from annihilation. Coincidentally, a satellite appeared over the horizon at the appointed time, supporting the test tape data. Crisis was averted when Tampa failed to vaporize.366 On 23 May 1967 another failure of the BMEWS system put U.S. nuclear forces on alert. This time was at fault as solar flares had disabled several radar installations, looking eerily like the first step of a Soviet attack.367 By 1971, there existed a formal acknowledgement of the dangers. The U.S.-Soviet Accident Measures Agreement states: “Despite the most elaborate precautions, it is conceivable that technical malfunction or human failure, a misinterpreted incident or unauthorized action, could trigger a nuclear disaster or nuclear war.”368 In 1974 there seemed a possibility of a very “human failure.” Journalist Eric Schlosser reported that in ’s final days in office, the president was “clinically depressed, emotionally unstable, and drinking heavily.” As his situation worsened, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger told the head of the Joint Chiefs to ask for his approval before acting on “any emergency order coming from the president.”369 Over a nine month period in 1979 and 1980, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) computer and radar systems caused no fewer than five false indications of inbound Soviet missiles. October saw the false

364 Alan F. Phillips, “20 Mishaps That Might Have Started Accidental Nuclear War,” NuclearFiles.org, Project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, [http://nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear- weapons/issues/accidents/20-mishaps-maybe-caused-nuclear-war.htm] This incident is widely reported in various lists of nuclear mishaps and close calls, but as of this writing, I have not found any primary source documentation for the stated events. 365 Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (New York: Penguin Books, 2014). 366 Scott D. Sagan, Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1995), 6. 367 D.J. Knipp, et. al. “The May 1967 Great Storm and Radio Disruption Event: Extreme Space Weather and Extraordinary Responses,” Space Weather: An AGU Journal, volume 14, issue 9, September 2016, 614-633 368 “Agreement on measures to reduce the risk of outbreak of nuclear war between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” Treaty, US Department of State, 1971, Entered into force 30 September 1971. 369 Schlosser, Command and Control, 360. 115 identification of a spent orbiting rocket by SLBM missile radar at Mount Hebo in Oregon. November saw a now famous near-disaster when a computer simulation was inadvertently inserted into a NORAD computer and promptly indicated an inbound flight of 2,200 Soviet missiles. On 15 March 1980, a Soviet test launch of four SLBMs triggered an alert when an early warning sensor falsely indicated that one of the missiles was aimed at the United States. Finally, the same faulty computer component caused false attack indications on 3 and 6 June 1980.370 1983 was perhaps the most dangerous year for misinterpretations and accidents—even more so than the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. On 26 September 1983, a Soviet satellite detected the launch of five minuteman missiles from the United States. The error was the result of reflected on high altitude clouds. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, the officer in charge of the satellite monitoring station, determined that the missile launch was a false alarm and did not report the incident up the chain of command. Coming only three weeks after the downing of South Korean passenger jet, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, the level of U.S.-Soviet tension might easily have led to a Soviet retaliatory launch-on-warning. The NATO command post exercise “Able Archer 83” was carried out between 2 November and 11 November and had been designed to be particularly realistic. The U.S. military went to a simulated DEFCON 1 and issued a report that a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union had begun. Unknown to the other NATO participants, this report had been intercepted by the Soviet Union and the whole affair was seen as a cover for a real attack.371 This environment of close calls and near-disasters was reflected in culture throughout the Cold War, usually portrayed as a failure of technology, human error, or some combination of the two. The 1959 film On the Beach ignored the geopolitical road to war laid out in the 1955 source material of the same name by Neville Shute and attributes the nuclear war to a technological accident. Scientist Julian Osborn explains: “It wasn’t an accident. I didn’t say that. It was carefully planned, down to the tiniest mechanical and emotional detail. But it was a mistake, it was a beaut. In the end, somehow granted the time for examination, we shall find that our so-called civilization was gloriously destroyed by a handful of vacuum tubes and transistors. Probably faulty.”372

370 “NORAD’s Missile Warning System: What Went Wrong?” Report to the Chairman, Committee on Government Operations, House of Representatives, Comptroller General of the United States, 1981, MASAD-81-30 (Washington, DC: US General Accounting Office. May 15 1981) http://www.gao.gov/assets/140/133240.pdf 371 Schlosser, Command and Control, 448. 372 On the Beach, 1959. 116 The 1963 film Ladybug, Ladybug leaves the viewer unsure of whether a nuclear war has really started or if the film’s action takes place in a state of technologically induced paranoia.373 Ladybug, Ladybug deals with a civil defense warning at an elementary school and plays out as a psychological drama as teachers attempt to walk their students home in the hour before an impending attack. In the first minutes of the film, the school’s light warning box (sometimes called a bell and light box) sounds the “yellow” alert, indicating a nuclear attack within one hour.374 Initially, the staff is skeptical. One teacher remarks, “Darn mechanism, probably something’s gone haywire somewhere.” The school’s principal contacts the phone company but is told that the equipment is in working order. “They say seven things would have to go wrong before that alert would sound,” he tells the school secretary. She replies, “Then seven things must have gone wrong!” The film’s title comes from the traditional nursery rhyme (with “ladybird” substituted in British English): Ladybird, ladybird fly away home /Your house is on fire and your children are gone /All except one /And her name is Ann / And she hid under the baking pan. The film ends with one of the children hiding in a scrapped refrigerator, potentially to suffocate. The audience is left uncertain as to whether the attack warning was real or the result of a technical fault, as no bombs are ever shown. If the attack is meant to be real, perhaps the other widespread version of the nursery rhyme is applicable: Ladybird, ladybird / fly away home / Your house is on fire / Your children shall burn 375 The following year saw the release of two films that explored the collusion of technological fault and human error in the sparking of a nuclear disaster. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, based loosely on the 1958 novel Red Alert by Peter George, and Fail Safe, based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler.376 The books and subsequent films are similar enough in plot that author Peter George sued Burdick and Wheeler for plagiarism and during the concurrent production of the film versions, Stanley Kubrick and Columbia Pictures sued to halt the production of Fail Safe.377 In both films, fears are raised about the

373 Ladybug, Ladybug, film, Francis Productions Inc., distributed by United Artists, 1963. 374 Civil Defense in Schools, film, Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, Norwood Studios, 1958. This system of alerts in schools is demonstrated in this civil defense film and is also described in the 1952 pamphlet of the same name. 375 I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951). 376 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, film, directed by Stanley Kubrick, distributed by Columbia Pictures, 29 January 1964; Peter George, Red Alert (United Kingdom: T.V. Boardman, 1958); Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, Fail Safe (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962); Fail Safe, film, directed by Sidney Lumet, distributed by Columbia Pictures, 7 October 1964. 377 David E. Scherman, “Everybody Blows Up!/The Doomsday Lawsuit,” Life Magazine, vol. 54, no. 10, 8 March 1963, 49. 117 ability to maintain control of nuclear weapons when simple pieces of the command and control apparatus fail. The events of Dr. Strangelove are triggered by the paranoid delusions of a SAC general who uses “Wing Attack Plan R” to unilaterally attack the Soviet Union. In Fail Safe, a misidentified civilian airliner causes a SAC alert and the bombers proceed to their “fail safe” points—positions near the Soviet border where the planes would wait for orders. When the mistake is discovered, a recall order is issued but due to Soviet radar jamming, some planes proceed on their bombing missions, lending irony to the title. Technological failure plays a role in the unfolding disaster of Dr. Strangelove when a surface-to-air missile damages the radio equipment in one of the bombers, making it impossible to recall even when SAC issues the command. In Fail Safe, when the Soviet radio jamming stops and recall orders are finally given, the crews of the advancing bombers follow their training precisely and ignore the signal, making human rigidity—and not human error—the source of the problem. Both Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe interweave the human and technological to explore the anxieties surrounding the complex mechanisms of command and control and the many ways that a single fault piece of that system could put a nuclear war in motion. Two additional films express similar anxieties about technological failure of command and control systems—particularly computer failure—though not all are necessarily serious looks at elements of nuclear war. Nevertheless, they should be mentioned for the fact that each makes its own cultural statement about faith in ever advancing technology. The first, Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) deals with a defense computer given control of the U.S. nuclear stockpile.378 Based on the 1966 novel Colossus by D.F. Jones, the computer eventually attains sentience, links with its Soviet counterpart, and conspires to control the world through nuclear blackmail.379 WarGames, released in 1983, poses questions about overreliance on technology in war planning and illustrates the danger of mutual assured destruction in the Reagan era.380 Like Colossus, it questions the role of technology and automation in the effort to remove human variables from nuclear command and control. In the film, Air Force missileers at ICBM installations are replaced by a supercomputer that is given control of the U.S. nuclear force. A teenage hacker (Mathew Broderick) accidentally hacks the computer and begins a series of misinterpreted simulations that might lead to nuclear war. Through quick thinking and Hollywood , that war is narrowly averted when the computer is tricked into simulating every conceivable nuclear exchange and learns the concept of MAD. It says, “A strange game. The

378 Colossus: The Forbin Project, film, directed by Joseph Sargent, Universal Pictures, 1970. 379 D.F. Jones, Colossus (London, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1966). 380 WarGames, film, United Artists, UAA Films, Sherwood Productions. 1983. 118 only winning move is not to play.” The film is certainly a Reagan-era parable, but also an expression of anxieties about technological failure in command and control updated for the 1980s age of personal computing. It stands as the first example of a computer hacker potentially initiating a nuclear war. In a rare Soviet entry into the genre, Dead Man’s Letters (PПисьма мёртвого человека, 1986) is an exceptionally serious and gritty film that shows the immediate aftermath in gruesome detail.381 Nevertheless, the means by which global nuclear war is initiated are farcical. A defense computer error that will initiate a missile launch is spotted by the computer’s operator. He chokes on his coffee, rendering him unable to give commands that would have prevented the launch. Despondent over the mistake, he hangs himself in the bathroom. One of the last serious nuclear war films of the Cold War is By Dawn’s Early Light, adapted from the novel Trinity’s Child by William Prochnau.382 The novel and film differ in their explanations for the outbreak of hostilities (the film blames a nuclear detonation by terrorists, while the book describes a small Soviet first strike). By Dawn’s Early Light is the story of the collapse of the continuity of government and the march toward a wider, global war. When the president of the United States is lost (though not killed) in the initial attack, the Secretary of the Interior becomes his successor and is advised by his hawkish generals to launch a massive retaliatory attack. The film deals with the failure of communications technology and the way that it compounds the difficulties with the nuclear command and control apparatus, already strained in the difficult post-attack environment. It also explores the impact that personalities could have in determining the fate of the planet in a nuclear conflict. In another example of the fail-safe/fail-deadly paradox described earlier, the climax of the novel (though somewhat diluted in the film) deals with the impending launch of U.S. submarine-launched ballistic missiles which will escalate the exchange to a global nuclear war. If the two presidents issue conflicting orders, the submarine captains will assume that communications have been compromised and follow their previous orders. These “fail safe” orders are to surface and listen for a “no-go” message. If no message is forthcoming, they are ordered to launch. Further destruction is only averted when the crew of the airborne command post known as “Looking Glass” mutiny and ram Air Force One. In so many films of the genre, nuclear war comes about not as a failure of deterrence, but as an accident. Failure in the many safety protocols and technologies result in an inadvertent launch of

381 Dead Man’s Letters [Письма мёртвого человека], film, directed by Konstantin Lopushansky, Lenfilm, 1986. 382 By Dawn’s Early Light, film, Paravision International. Dist, HBO Pictures, 1990; William Prochnau, Trinity’s Child (New York: Putnam Publishing Group, 1983) 119 nuclear weapons. This topic remains an important part of fully understanding the nuclear threat today, and as time goes by and layers of safety are applied to the command and control apparatus, the threat of an accident becomes event greater. This seemingly paradoxical state of affairs is called the “Titanic Effect.” This is a term used in engineering and a variety of other fields to describe a similar dilemma. Journalist Eric Schlosser summarizes it as “the safer you assume your system to be, the more dangerous it is becoming.”383 Essentially, the more layers of complexity that are added to a system contribute to the likelihood of a failure of one or more of those layers. The longer the world goes without an accidental nuclear event, the more “safe” the system is assumed to be and the greater the likelihood that a disaster will eventually occur.

Strike: Duck, Cover, Protect, Survive

As we have seen, governments themselves were the earliest pioneers of depicting the course of virtual war on film. Training films for internal consumption and educational (or propagandistic) films for public consumption both undertook to describe the course of a nuclear war, usually in its earliest phases and allay fears of the unknown through education, planning, and training. In this way, the earliest films are exemplary of the “virtualization” of nuclear war as a tool for living through the unthinkable. Through the first decades of the Cold War, there are almost no examples of the realities of the immediate effects of a nuclear strike on people or the effectiveness of civil defense measures. In the vanishingly few instances that did attempt to demonstrate these facts, the results are bizarrely mixed. In a 1955 episode of theUS Army’s weekly television series The Big Picture, the immediate effects of the bomb are described in a briefing to Army personnel participating in Exercise Desert Rock VI—a live fire “atomic maneuver” in which soldiers sheltered in foxholes and then marched toward ground zero after detonation (the exercises were discussed extensively in chapter 2).384 The officer giving the briefing states that “there are only three things to think about. Blast, heat, and radiation....” He goes on to describe these effects and their dangers with relative accuracy, only stumbling with his description of radiation: “Truthfully, it’s the least important of the three effects.” In another government-sponsored film of the same nuclear test, “Operation Cue,” houses and

383 Eric Schlosser, “World War Three by Mistake,” The New Yorker, 23 December 2016. 384 “Atom Soldier,” The Big Picture, television, TV-308, Army Pictorial Center, 1955. 120 mannequins are subject to the effects of the bomb to test civil defense preparedness.385 A mannequin of a young boy stands beside a window as the shockwave arrives and pulverizes the house (the charred mannequin is later briefly seen being removed from the rubble). Mannequins exposed in the open to test textiles have endured flash burns and damage from flying debris, but the “reporter” who serves as one narrator of the film is more concerned with the effects of the bomb on their clothing. “Do you remember this young lady?” she asks, referring to a mannequin in a dress. “This tattoo mark was left beneath the dark pattern.” The fabric is lifted to reveal a significant . Of a well-dressed mannequin: “This is how the blast charred and faded his new dark suit,” she remarks, lifting the lapel without mentioning that the mannequin’s exposed face is also charred. “Operation Doorstep,” filmed two years earlier during the Upshot-Knothole testing series, seems similarly blind to the wellbeing of our mannequin stand-ins.386 The camera pans down over a house demolished in the blast as the narrator says, “Fifteen thousand tons of TNT. A mass of rubble. Less than a mile from ground zero. A human being in a shelter should have survived.” The camera reveals a mannequin in a lean-to shelter, arm twisted, its shirt ripped open and tattered by the force of the blast. Despite these more candid moments, the majority of early civil defense films are far more optimistic in their outlook for surviving the first moments of an atomic attack. We again turn to the body of film sponsored byUS civil defense agencies in the first two decades of the Cold War.

American Civil Defense: Duck and Cover

American civil defense can be viewed as a series of campaigns rather than a coherent policy over time. As the threat shifted with the advent of new weapon technologies, civil defense recommendations also changed in response. Of these campaigns, perhaps none is more lodged in the public memory and lore of the Cold War than Duck and Cover.387 Originally part of a series of five civil defense-sponsored films, Duck and Cover was made for children to introduce the concept of taking immediate shelter (ducking) and covering exposed skin that might be prone to flash burns or flying debris.388 Using an animated turtle named “Burt” to illustrate the concept, Duck and Cover comes across as a cheery instructional film despite the subject matter and was well received. The

385 Operation Cue, film, Federal Civil Defense Administration, 1955 386 Operation Doorstep, film, Federal Civil Defense Administration, Byron Incorporated, Washington, D.C. 1953 387 Duck and Cover, film, Directed by Anthony Rizzo, distributed by Archer Productions, 1952. 388 “Annual Report for 1951,” Federal Civil Defense Administration, US Government Printing Office. 1952. 121 film was screened for the first time in early 1952 and distributed to schools throughout the United States.389 Through 1953, the FCDA still promoted “Duck and Cover” as a viable personal defense, admitting in the annual report for 1953 that some combination of localized evacuation and “Duck and Cover” would have to be used because most cities would have no more than 15 minutes of warning time.390 Nevertheless, new weapons developments prompted the FCDA to admit that “The duck and cover concept would be ineffective as a life saving device” and the “Duck and Cover” campaign was declared obsolete in 1955.391 Though Duck and Cover gave the concept a name, it had been introduced in previous civil defense preparedness films. Pattern for Survival (1950) illustrates the defensive measure explicitly.392 Narrator Chet Huntley provides the viewer with a scenario in which the only warning of an attack is a bright flash. “There will be an intense flash of light!” Huntley delivers his lines dramatically while gesticulating wildly. “When you see that light forget all about shelters and preparations! Just don’t look at that light! Cover your eyes with your elbow like this and dive for cover!” Pattern for Survival shows a dramatization of all of the standard civil defense advice of the time—closing curtains, moving to your shelter space, and wearing white clothing if going outside was absolutely necessary. Contrary to U.S. civil defense films that would be released subsequently, Pattern for Survival actually depicts people in a panicked run on a city sidewalk after hearing the air raid sirens. A woman drops her belongings and abandons them and a stack of morning newspapers are trampled in the frantic dash to get to the shelter. The British film The Waking Point (1951), meant as a cautionary tale rather than an instructional film, also shows a stampede of panicked civilians looking for shelter, trampling one another and getting into fist fights because not enough civil defense wardens were available. (The film is intended to encourage volunteerism). After this, depictions of the moments before a blast encouraged quick but orderly movement to shelters. Atomic Alert (1951) encourages young people to “move quickly but in good order.” Survival Under Atomic Attack (1951) shows people in orderly lines filling shelters.393

389 “New Film to Help in Bomb Training.” New York Times. 25 January 1952. 390 “Annual Report for 1953.” Federal Civil Defense Administration, US Government Printing Office. 1954. 391 “Annual Report for 1955.” Federal Civil Defense Administration, US Government Printing Office, 1956. and “Annual Statistical Report, Progress Report, Fiscal Year 1955,” FCDA, 30 June 1955. 392 Pattern for Survival, film, William Lawrence, Chet Huntley, Cornell Film Company, 1950. 393 Survival Under Atomic Attack, film, produced by Castle Films, Federal Civil Defense Administration, 1951. 122 These films are also relentlessly optimistic about the aftermath of an attack. You Can Beat the A-Bomb (1950) offers an upbeat outlook for those who follow a few simple civil defense tips.394 After an atomic airburst, a well prepared father leads his family up from the basement shelter to their minimally disheveled living room. “Children, you’d better clear up this broken glass and all this debris. All in all, I’d say we’ve been very lucky around here. Nothing to do now but wait for orders from the authorities and relax.” As unlikely as relaxing in the aftermath of a nuclear strike might be, it is a piece of the official advice of the film. When young “Buddy” is caught out in the blast, he runs home—a serious post-attack blunder. “I was playing ball at the school diamond,” Buddy says. “I came home as fast as I could. I ran all the way.” His concerned father orders that the family “get Buddy’s clothes off. Take him into the bedroom and have him lie down immediately!” With great apparent anxiety, his father continues, “I’m afraid he was in the danger range. He shouldn’t have exercised so much, running home after the blast....The best way to help radiation sickness is to lie down and rest!” In another incongruous piece of dramatized good fortune, a surprisingly unburned Buddy relates his experience: “Boy it was hot, grandma. I never felt anything so hot!” Atomic Alert (1951) sees elementary aged “Sue” and her older brother “Ted” weathering the attack calmly and with no visible damage to the house. When the Civil Defense Block Warden arrives to check for radiation, there is none and he tells Ted that “everything’s under control.” Also important in understanding the early civil defense films is how completely the bombing of cities in the Second World War informed the perception of how a nuclear strike might be survived. Though admitting a quantitative difference in the size of the new weaponry, little changed in the qualitative understanding of a campaign to level a city. The Civil Defense Blue Book stated that “The outcome of two world wars has been decided by the weight of American industrial production in support of a determined fighting force. In any future war, it is probable that an enemy would attempt at the outset to destroy or cripple the production capacity of the United States and to carry out direct attack against civilian communities to disrupt support of the war effort.”395 The earliest civil defense sponsored films reflected this dual concept which opposed mass evacuation and encouraged people to stay to shore up wartime industrial capacity that might survive.

394 You Can Beat the A-Bomb, film, Emerson Film Corporation and Crystal Productions, Inc., RKO, 1950. 395 United States Civil Defense (aka “Blue Book”), Executive Office of the President, National Security Resources Board, NSRB Document 128 (Washington D.C., US Government Printing Office, 1950), 8. 123 Our Cities Must Fight (1951) reflects on the mass evacuation of European cities in World War II, encouraging urban residents to stay put during an attack because “if war comes and we desert our cities, we’ve lost the war.” The argument continues: “Every able-bodied person is needed in the city before as well as after an attack.” Interspersed throughout is stock footage of European civilian populations in disarray and civil defense workers fighting fires and demolishing gutted buildings. Of the concern over health risks of remaining in a city leveled by an atomic attack, the film offers this very optimistic encouragement: “The danger of lingering radiation is not really very serious. After an atomic air burst, the danger of radiation and falling debris is over in, oh, a minute and a half.” The following year, the Ohio Bell telephone company created Modern Minute Men.396 Though the film does not directly deal with the realities of an atomic attack, it is interesting to note that it is a sort of sequel to a the 1942 film “Ready on the ” and uses the same main character and scenes from that World War II-era film to describe the necessity of civil defense and readiness in the atomic age. 1953 brought Disaster on Main Street, an excellent example of the way that early civil defense planning was rooted in the World War II experience. The film was a collaboration between the FCDA, Castle Films, and the American journalist Edward R. Murrow. It is comprised almost entirely of stock footage from World War II, and provides examples of how civil defense preparation in that war resulted in the saving of lives and property. The film uses images of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb and footage of the immediate aftermath of the Texas City Disaster of 1947 in which an industrial accident created a 3.2 kiloton explosion and resulted in widespread devastation and loss of life. Disaster on Main Street acknowledges that an atomic attack would be even larger, but asserts that with effective civil defense measures, damage could be mitigated. By the advent of the thermonuclear age, American civil defense was forced to reckon with the fact that new weapons had rendered the World War II civil defense strategies obsolete. With a degree of frankness not previously seen, the FCDA produced Let’s Face It in 1955 which described the new and increased danger of “H-bombs.”397 Even with this admission, the advice given in the film was declared obsolete in only two years as the missile threat reduced warning times and the possibility for mass evacuation and a focus moved toward sheltering from post-attack radiological hazards rather than simple in the event of an air raid that might have been familiar to

396 Modern Minute Men, film, Ohio Bell, 1952 397 Let’s Face It, film, Federal Civil Defense Administration, Lookout Mountain Laboratory, USAF, 1955. 124 any Londoner during . Because of this, American civil defense films no longer concerned themselves with depictions of actual nuclear strikes or the immediate aftermath. The final historical thread that influenced the ways in which civil defense was to be practiced and therefore depicted in film was the vacillation of policy regarding mass evacuation, self evacuation, home shelters, and various mass shelter schemes. Though U.S. civil defense has been previously discussed in the context of preparation for war, the intention here is to examine the official policy doctrine for civil defense and survival schemes in the moment of a strike and its immediate aftermath. Over the course of the Cold War, while technical developments in weapons systems were a driver in defense policy and planning, civil defense policy was largely determined by non-technical drivers such as the quality of leadership, congressional financial support, and presidential patronage. This is why there appears such an ebb and flow in civil defense interest in the United States and a spastic uncertainty about the benefits of evacuation or shelter during an actual attack. After World War II, President Truman relegated civil defense to a state and local responsibility, citing the fact that a crisis on the national scale spurred by a Soviet atomic attack would not be a realistic threat until at least 1953.398 Events developed more rapidly, however, with the first Soviet bomb in 1949, forcing Truman to reevaluate his stance. By establishing the Federal Civil Defense Administration in December of 1949, Truman effectively elevated the matter of civil defense to the federal level. The Defense Production Act of 1950 offers the first official consideration of mass evacuation, not of populations, but for the dispersal of industrial capabilities. The Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950 directed the FCDA to draw up plans for the evacuation of populations. The FCDA also requested funds to establish a national shelter system in its first budget request of $250 million. Support in Congress was not only lacking, but key members of the congressional appropriations committees actively opposed the nature of the FCDA, believing that civil defense remained a state and local issue and that the procurement of “expensive things”—such as shelters—was not in its mandate. The final budget approval was for a mere $31.75 million, just 13% of the request.399 Although much of the debate over shelter programs for the remainder of the Truman years had to do with whether

398 Survival in the Air Age: A Report by the President’s Air Policy Commission (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1 January 1948), 19. 399 B. Wayne Blanchard, American Civil Defense 1945-1984: The Evolution of Programs and Policies, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Monograph Series, volume 2, number 2 (Emmitsburg, Maryland: National Emergency Training Center, 1985), 3, Defense Technical Information Center, ADA226013. 125 purpose-built shelters, modified shelters, or dual-use shelters would be the best use of the withered civil defense budget, a major message of civil defense films was that evacuation was untenable and that people needed to shelter in place. Survival Under Atomic Attack (1951) instructs that, “Our cities are prime targets for atomic attack, but mass evacuation would be disastrous. An enemy would like nothing better than to leave our cities empty and unproductive.” A similar message comes from Our Cities Must Fight (1951), “It’s easy to imagine what would happen if most of the people in town took to the highways all at once. All you have to do is look at some of our Sunday traffic jams.” Disaster on Main Street (1953) recalls World War II to make a point about the unfeasibility of evacuation schemes. “The German evacuation system broke down under the unforeseen impact of sixteen million people on the move.” The civil defense message was clear: stay put, then help dig. This would all change in the Eisenhower years when the Soviet Union succeeded in developing the hydrogen bomb in 1953, trailing the U.S. success by less than a year. So magnified were the destructive traits of the new weapon that Val Peterson, the director of the FCDA, began to assume that cities would experience total destruction and that the shelter program, as envisioned, was useless. The FCDA redirected its planning efforts to urban evacuation. In the course of a year, civil defense films glorified evacuation schemes. Let’s Face It (1954) states that civil defense was organized to teach citizens how to survive in the thermonuclear age by “evacuating your area as directed.” Clips of evacuation drills led by civil defense volunteers are shown in a montage. A Day Called X (1957) depicts a 1955 exercise named “Greenlight” that successfully evacuated downtown Portland, Oregon and relocated the mayor and other city officials to an underground bunker on the outskirts of the city. Finally, “Operation Scramble” (1957), depicts an exercise in 1955 to create plans for hospital evacuations. The Eisenhower administration supported evacuation schemes and stayed with a policy of evacuation through 1955. Even so, the specter of fallout and radiation loomed large in the public consciousness following the 1954 Castle Bravo test which irradiated a Japanese fishing vessel in the well known Lucky Dragon incident, causing international consternation that brought these dangers to the forefront. There would be little or no protection from fallout for evacuating populations. Though the Eisenhower administration still supported evacuation, at the beginning of the president’s second term, the FCDA reversed itself and submitted a budget proposal which included a national system of shelters. In 1957, the Gaither Report—a report of the President’s Science Advisory Committee that laid out both active and passive national defense measures (officially titled, “Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age”)—explicitly supported the shift. In the subsection,

126 “Measures to Reduce Vulnerability of Our People and Cities,” the report asks for “A nationwide fallout shelter program to protect the civil population.”400 What is common to all of the evacuation plans is the necessity for early warning. Over the course of the 1950s, expected warning times had been reduced from hours to just half an hour with the advent of the ICBM—far too short a time to evacuate urban centers. This reality brought the fallout shelter back into the policy mix. Films from 1957 onward once again include fallout shelters as a viable survival measure in the event of an attack and give much more serious attention to the radiological hazards. In 1959, the newly established Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization produced Fallout: When and How to Protect Yourself from It that gave practical advice for monitoring the immediate aftermath of a nuclear attack. “After an explosion in daylight, watch any unusual accumulation of dust. At night, put a white or light colored plate outside. Examine it every fifteen minutes or so. If dust has accumulated on the plate, treat it as fallout.”401 Eisenhower never put his support behind the shelter plan, but the incoming Kennedy administration saw the value of individual protective measures and of a national shelter infrastructure. Kennedy announced the plan in a speech to the nation on 25 July 1961 in which he stated that he intended to ask congress for funds to identify space in existing structures and stock them with supplies.402 The plan was further reiterated in an open letter published in the 15 September 1961 issue of Life.403 In 1963, the Office of Civil Defense produced Protection Factor 100 (1963) showing the progress of the ongoing national fallout shelter survey. “This unique kind of inventory is designed to survey every building, every school and hospital, every major structure in America which could protect fifty or more people from the threat of radioactive fallout.”404 That same year, Planning for Public Shelter Entry provided practical information on the process of transitioning into shelter living in the panicked initial moments of an attack.405 One of the most realistic films depicting the first days in a fallout shelter is a complete departure from the usually optimistic tone of civil defense films. Three Reactions to Life in a Fallout Shelter (1964) has the look and

400 Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age, United States President’s Science Advisory Committee, Security Resources Panel, 1957. 401 Fallout: When and How to Protect Yourself from It, film, produced by Creative Arts Studio, Presented by Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, 1959. 402 Theodore C. Sorensen Personal Papers. JFK Speech Files, 1961-1963. Berlin speech to the Nation, 25 July 1961: Drafts. TCSPP-060-016. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum 403 John Kennedy, “A Message to You from the President,” Life, 15 September 1961. 404 Protection Factor 100, film, Norwood Studios, Inc., Office of Civil Defense, Department of Defense, 1963. 405 Planning for Public Shelter Entry, film, produced by Office of Civil Defense, 1963. 127 feel of a Twilight Zone episode, with competent acting and demonstrations of rage, frustration, and despair.406 While one character derides the “yakking” of civil defense officials and has to be restrained from physical violence, another character, despondent over the loss of his wife and son, slips out of the shelter into the radiation and likely death. Occupying a Public Shelter (1965) offers a more positive view of the benefits of bureaucratic organization in the moments following shelter entry. Supplies are organized and roles assigned. The film seeks to answer the question, “How will you adjust to the new and different way of life you will encounter, living in a public shelter?”407 Despite the renewed interest in the shelter program, Congress continued to prove reluctant to funding civil defense and the previously approved civil defense programs saw their appropriations cut by half. Albert Thomas, the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee responsible for civil defense, failed to believe that civil defense would work at all, stating that it would take two weeks to evacuate a large American city and citing a conversation with the Mayor of after World War II in which the mayor described his experiences in the bombing of the city and believed that being in the open was safer than being in the shelters. Thomas also believed that no funding for food stockpiling was necessary because ubiquitous corner drugstores already served the purpose.408 Funding ebbed and flowed over the course of the Johnson administration, but a shift occurred under Nixon in 1971. Funding was further decreased for those programs directed at nuclear attack, but the agency in charge of civil defense programs (now the Office of Civil Defense) began to reorganize priorities and emphasize non-nuclear disaster planning and preparedness.409 This involved putting an end to the marking and stocking of fallout shelters until such time as an international crisis might make such action prudent. Also part of the change was the “development or guidance for local governments, based on risk analysis, to include evacuation planning....”410 This would be a different concept from the rapid urban evacuation demonstrated in 1955’s Operation Greenlight or the hospital relocation of Operation Scramble. Instead it would be a preemptive evacuation to be implemented in times of international crisis that might lead to a nuclear war.411

406 Three Reactions to Life in a Fallout Shelter, film, produced by Army Pictorial Center, in cooperation with Staff College, Office of Civil Defense, Department of Defense, DOD CD-8-216, 1964. 407 Occupying a Public Shelter, film, produced by Army Pictorial Service and Staff College, Office of Civil Defense, presented United States Army and Office of Civil Defense, CD 20-234. 1965. 408 Blanchard, “American Civil Defense,” 9. 409 Annual Report 1971—Changes and Challenges, US Department of Defense (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1982), 1; Blanchard, “American Civil Defense,” 16. 410 Civil Preparedness—a New Dual Mission: Defense Civil Preparedness Agency Annual Report 1972, Defense Civil Preparedness Agency (Washington D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1972), 2. 411 Blanchard, “American Civil Defense,” 18. 128 The history of U.S. civil defense campaigns dealing with the nuclear threat came to an end in 1972 with Your Chance to Live. This campaign of print media and film reflected the shifting mission of civil defense toward an integrated multi-disaster response, known in official circles as Comprehensive Emergency Management. It did produce one film on the topic, “Your Chance to Live: Nuclear Disaster”—the strange sensibilities and narrative structure having already been discussed—but that brought to an end the period of representing nuclear attack in government- sponsored film in the United States.

Facing the Facts: Documentary Film and Journalism

Concurrent with the surge in antinuclear activism, the early 1980s saw a range of serious investigative films, particularly on British television. In 1980, the news magazine Thames Report produced “The Bomb: Would You Survive.”412 This segment investigated the effectiveness of the suggestions made in a Home Office information campaign called Protect and Survive.413 While civil defense in the United States had moved away from nuclear planning, this civil defense campaign had been developed in the late 1970s and dealt exclusively with nuclear preparedness and survival. A 30 page pamphlet covering preparations and the post-attack period was written but not printed or distributed. discussed the pamphlet and its contents in an article on 16 January 1980 generating widespread public interest that eventually led to the mass printing of the pamphlet in May 1980.414 With the assistance of an average suburban family, the Thames Report simulated the conditions of a nuclear emergency and questioned whether sufficient materials would be available to create, on such short notice, a survivable shelter. The conclusion casts doubt on the civil defense advice in Protect and Survive. “This rehearsal is a grim reminder of just how fragile our home defenses would be in the event of a real nuclear attack.” In addition to the print material, 20 short animated films were developed and intended to only be shown in the three days prior to a presumed nuclear attack.415 Despite the secrecy, the films were leaked to the BBC and portions were shown on Panorama, another investigative television news

412 Angela Lambert, “The Bomb: Would You Survive?” television, Thames Report, Thames Television, 1980. 413 Protect and Survive, pamphlet series, Home Office (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1976). 414 P. Evans, “Civil defence-1: Government to give greater priority to protect millions of people,” The Times, 16 Jan, 1980, 4. 415 Protect and Survive, film series, produced by Richard Taylor Cartoons, Central Office of Information for Home Office, 1975. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/1964to1979/filmpage_warnings.htm. The British National Archives maintains a website with further information on the series, including text transcripts, but the short films themselves appear to have been removed. The free archive site, “Archive.org” maintains viewable copies of each of the 20 animated shorts. 129 magazine, in March 1980. This episode of the long-running program was titled “If the Bomb Drops” and explores what it seems to assume is a far more dire situation in the realm of British civil defense measures than the Home Office could admit. Host Jeremy Paxman introduced the program as an attempt “to find out how many could survive a nuclear attack, what life would be like after such a catastrophe, and what’s being done to help us survive.”416 The first narration of the film suggests the overall tone of the investigation. The film quotes General Sir John Hackett, the former Commander in Chief of NATO’s Northern . “After a nuclear war, the whole of Europe could become a vast uninhabitable desert. No industrial society. Nothing that we would recognize as government would survive. There would be a state of total anarchy, with all those left alive prey to bands of savage marauders, disease rampant and violent death commonplace. In an all out nuclear war, to use the word ‘survival’ is idiotic.” The film details the lack of civil defense preparedness in Britain and shows a simulated nuclear war and one of the many local centers of control as they attempt to respond to the disaster and impose order from their bunker over the course of the first 14 days. The unsanitized details of the effects of a nuclear strike over London are described by Jeremy Paxman as he flies over central London in a helicopter. “A one-megaton bomb exploded 7,000 feet above the House of Commons would create a fireball over a mile across, over , Trafalgar Square, the very heart of London. The fireball would last for approximately ten seconds, reaching inside it temperatures of hundreds of thousands of degrees centigrade. Over an area of about a mile, as far down as Vauxhaul Bridge, there would be winds of 700 miles an hour.” The specificity of these details with the city as a backdrop conjures to life the otherwise clinical description of the effects and offers the audience a vision of nuclear war more tangible—and potentially more useful—than the simple assumption of instant death, though Paxman leaves no doubt as to death’s certainty. Another film shown on the BBC in 1982 as part of the series QED took the visceral depictions of a nuclear strike on London to a new level.417 Titled “A Guide to Armageddon,” The Times described the film as a “dispassionate assessment” and “self-consciously deadpan” in its recounting of the horrors of a nuclear strike over St. Paul’s Cathedral.418419 The assumptions in the film were drawn from scientific studies and dramatized with a combination of makeup (to simulate

416 “If the Bomb Drops,” television, Panorama, BBC, 11 March 1980. 417 “A Guide to Armageddon,” television, QED, BBC, 26 July 1982. 418 “Today’s television and radio programmes,” Edited by Peter Lee, The Times, 26 July 1982, 21. 419 “Television,” Bryan Appleyard, The Times, 27 July 1982, 9. 130 burns and injuries) and demonstrations in which items such as a large cut of meat and a pumpkin stand in for humans and are exposed to heat and blast effects.420 In the first demonstration, the narrator explains in a coldly factual tone that “the effect on directly exposed flesh is the same. It behaves like the meat in the butcher’s window. Animal fats melt and burn.” Makeup applied to faces demonstrates graphically the severity of burns at various distances from ground zero. In a demonstration of the effect of flying debris, shards of broken glass are shot at a pumpkin which is promptly chewed away in the maelstrom. The film is frank about the futility of Protect and Survive and the improbability of survival. After one couple featured in the film completes their sturdy interior shelter on the model provided in Protect and Survive, the narrator offers a wry commentary: “At three and a quarter miles...Joy and Eric should survive. At least, for 17 seconds.” During this period, the growing antinuclear movement fueled a variety of factually-based films and documentaries that brought the realities of nuclear war to the forefront of public discourse. In conjunction with the publication of War Plan UK by investigative journalist Duncan Campbell in 1982, which exposed the problems with civil defense in Britain and the potential realities of nuclear war, the stage was set for ever more realistic depictions of war in dramatic film and further explorations of what it would mean to survive the initial effects of a nuclear strike.

Dramatic Film at the Height of the Cold War

By the end of the Cold War, several notable examples of depictions of nuclear war cast uncertainty on any meaningful application of civil defense measures and doubt as to the survivability of individuals, nations, and the environment in the event of such a war. In this period, narrative film provided the most convincing tests of the assertions made by Protect and Survive and its various, more nebulous U.S. counterparts. The effectiveness of civil defense advice in the immediate post-attack environment is visualized with relentless, horrifying realism in Threads (1984) and with somewhat more restraint (necessitated by U.S. network censorship) in The Day After (1983). The two films stand as the most iconic culminations of nuclear war in film for their respective countries, but many more films deal with these issues in the period. Testament (1983), One Night Stand (1984), Dead Man’s Letters (Письма мёртвого человека, 1986), When the Wind Blows (1986), and Miracle Mile (1988) are a few that take up the issues thoughtfully—if not all entirely seriously. Each is informed by the

420 Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, Energy Research and Development Administration, Department of Defense, Third Edition (Washington D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1977); The Effects of Nuclear War, Office of Technology Assessment, US Congress, May 1979. 131 growing sentiment that survival at the moment of a nuclear strike would largely be an accident rather than the product of planning, and that survival might mean very little in the immediate aftermath. In the 1980s, there would be no depictions of calmly filing into shelters, be they public or private. From harried and frantic last moments to outright panic in the streets, films demonstrated no faith that the few minutes of advanced warning would be anything but mayhem and chaos. The attack sequence in The Day After is one of the most well known in the genre and is a dense 12 minutes depicting all aspects of the strike phase through stock footage, borrowed footage, original content, and special effects. As it begins, an Emergency Broadcast System alert comes only minutes before Soviet missiles rain down over Kansas. The broadcast advises people to proceed to “shelter facilities” which are largely nonexistent. In rural Kansas, some preparations are being made to stock a basement shelter and shovel dirt against basement windows—advice from a bygone era of nuclear civil defense. Scenes of a supermarket mobbed by panicked hoarders suggest a general lack of preparation. When the air raid sirens finally ring out, a downtown Kansas City street is filled with people running in all directions without any idea of where to go. Cars crash into one another in a desperate attempt to escape. Finally, a high-altitude detonation causes an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that burns out electronics and the electrical grid. It is interesting to note that the idea of beginning a nuclear strike with an EMP was very new—at least in the public domain. Though the effect had been a part of nuclear testing from Trinity in 1945, its use as a potentially debilitating first blow became clear after the “” nuclear test in July 1962, during which a 1.44 megaton device was detonated at an altitude of 250 miles over the Pacific and caused damage to the electrical grid in Hawaii.421 For much of the Cold War, this “EMP laydown” at the beginning of a nuclear attack became part of the strategic doctrine of both the United States and the Soviet Union.422 The public only became aware of the extent to which an EMP could be used as a weapon in 1981 when science journalist and writer for the New York Times, William Broad, published three articles on the subject in the journal Science.423 This is a compelling example of how both The Day After and Threads attempted to show a meticulous

421 Charles N. Vittitoe, “Did High-Altitude EMP Cause the Hawaiian Streetlight Incident?” Sandia National Laboratories, June 1989, http://ece-research.unm.edu/summa/notes/SDAN/0031.pdf 422 United States House of Representatives, House Armed Services Committee No. 106-31, Hearings held on 7 October 1999, http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/security/has280010.000/has280010_0.htm#36 423 William J. Broad, “Nuclear Pulse (I): Awakening to the Chaos Factor,” Science, 29 May 1981, 212: 1009– 1012; William J. Broad, “Nuclear Pulse (II): Ensuring Delivery of the Doomsday Signal,” Science, 5 June 1981, 212: 1116–1120; William J. Broad, “Nuclear Pulse (III): Playing a Wild Card,” Science, 12 June 1981, 212: 1248–1251. 132 recreation of what a nuclear attack might really look like by integrating the newest information on strategic nuclear doctrine. In fact, these two examples, in 1983 and 1984 respectively, are the first time that the use of a nuclear EMP as a weapon appeared in film or literature. In addition to the use of a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse, Threads mirrors many of the scenes from its predecessor. Panicked last-minute buying at a supermarket turns to chaos and looting when someone announces that, “They’ve started fighting[...] The Americans and the Russians.” When the air raid sirens sound, pedestrians in Sheffield’s central shopping area scatter in panic. When a distant mushroom cloud rises, a single woman, standing still amidst the chaos, graphically loses control of her bladder. Despite the fact that the Soviet Union had a relatively effective shelter program, the Soviet- era film Dead Man’s Letters depicts a similarly terrified populace, cramming into insufficient shelters and begging for information in a chaotic melee.424 The far less serious film Miracle Mile takes the panic in the streets to a farcical level, with looting and riots, acrobatic bicycle accidents, and at least one fleeting incident of public sexual intercourse. Pessimistic, too, was the general view of civil defense efficacy. Survival, and certainly long- term survival, is shown to have more to do with distance from the targets than shelter preparation. Of the several sets of characters in The Day After, there are two farming families—the Hendrys and the Dahlbergs. Though both live in rural Kansas, the Dahlbergs have prepared a basement shelter and survive, while the Hendrys live adjacent to a missile silo and are graphically incinerated. In Kansas City, despite having the benefit of a marked subbasement shelter, those who have taken refuge are vaporized under a direct hit. Thirty-five miles away, Lawrence, Kansas is severely damaged but modestly sturdy structures have survived. Because survivability and weapons effects as a function of distance are so essential to understanding nuclear war and had been such a major piece of Cold War civil defense planning, The Day After is specific in its mention of real place names and its visualization of levels of damage at various distances. Threads is no less exact in its depiction of destruction at various distances from ground zero. The City of Sheffield and various locations in the narrative are accurately named and represented and the destruction at various distances is accurately depicted given known heat and blast effects. Farther from the bomb, the Beckett family successfully shelters in the basement, while nearer, the Kemps have built an “inner refuge”—a lean-to shelter made of doors suggested in Protect and Survive—but to little end, as the wall and roof have collapsed and left them exposed to the

424 Soviet Civil Defense, Director of Central Intelligence, CIA, NI 78-10003, July 1978. CREST. 133 impending fallout. In When the Wind Blows (1986, based on the 1982 graphic novel of the same name by ), the same lean-to shelter from Protect and Survive is constructed, but a general lack of understanding of the dangers of the post-attack environment on the part of the elderly protagonists leads them to leave the shelter after only a day and sit in the garden remarking on the destruction.425 In the films of the 1980s, death eventually comes for many of the characters who have survived the initial attack, brought about by starvation or radiation. Dr. Russell Oakes of The Day After, dying of radiation sickness, returns to a leveled Kansas City to die. It is left unclear whether the Dahlberg’s daughter will die as the camera tracks back to reveal a makeshift hospital on a University basketball court full of the dead and dying. Mr. Dahlberg meets his fate when he is shot in the chest by a family squatting on his land. In Threads, the Becketts meet a similar fate when they are indirectly revealed to have been killed by looters. Mrs. Kemp dies in the Protect and Survive shelter while Mr. Kemp expires a few weeks later of the effects of radiation. In When the Wind Blows, the elderly Jim and Hilda Bloggs die together of radiation in their sleep. The protagonist of Dead Man’s Letters also dies this way. Taken together, these films all depict a general sense of ill-preparedness and a lack of faith in any form of civil defense. Threads, The Day After, and others show the fruitlessness of Protect and Survive and other civil defense measures by subjecting those recommendations to the factually driven nuclear wars of those films. Even for those who survive by sheltering, an arguably more harsh fate awaits in which death will come slowly, through radiation, starvation, or violence. In this way, the films of the 1980s do not transmit a message that “we’re all going to die” and that there is no point in trying to survive. Rather the opposite, in that they depict a world in which there are survivors, and the argument against nuclear war is not necessarily an argument against the massive loss of life, but rather the loss of the social fabric for those who survive. The argument against nuclear war is not an argument against nuclear weapons—rather, it is an argument against the aftermath.

Aftermath: From Hiroshima to the Erasure of History

At the conclusion of the previously discussed documentary, A Guide to Armageddon, a married couple volunteer to spend two weeks in a cramped, homemade shelter. During this time, the

425 When the Wind Blows, film, directed by Jimmy Murakami, distributed by King’s Road Entertainment, 24 October 1986. 134 narrator muses, “Even though you knew it might be radioactive and deadly, could you resist the temptation to go out and look? And when you finally did after two weeks, what would you find? A world you recognized? Or a wasteland for which little in your experience had prepared you?” These questions lay at the heart of the debate over civil defense and survival at the beginning of the 1980s. What good is surviving the strike when the aftermath offered no promise of a return to normalcy? In the closing remarks of the film, the core of the argument is summarized: “When, after two weeks you crawl out of your trench, or concrete bunker, It could be that your real problems could just be beginning.” This sentiment was phrased even more succinctly by Herman Kahn in his 1960 treatise On Thermonuclear War when he asked the question, “Will the living envy the dead?”426 From the beginning of the nuclear age, this has been a question frequently debated and has motivated civil defense strategy, government policy, and most importantly, public perception of what the aftermath of a nuclear war might look like and what it would mean for the survivors. As the Cold War went on and the numbers of nuclear weapons swelled, the answer to this question changed from a qualified hope in the ability to recover to a widely held perception that a nuclear war would mean the end of civilization. When the highly publicized TTAPS study on nuclear-induced global cooling was published in 1983, it seemed as if the mechanism by which humanity would extinguish itself had been discovered. Visions of the survival or collapse of the infrastructure of society fill the body of film discussed in this chapter. Less common, though compelling in their reasoned approach, are films that continue past the destruction of a and seriously examine the longer-term implications for the survival of the environment and the human species. Though it is arguably the most hypothetical of all aspects of nuclear war, understanding the aftermath might ultimately be the most important question that can be explored by these films as they seek to depict the ultimate conflict.

Survivable: The Films of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The effort to visualize the aftermath of nuclear weaponry began before the rubble of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had cooled. In Hiroshima, Yoshito Matsushige, a 32-year-old newspaper photographer, attempted to photograph the immediate aftermath of the bomb even as fires still burned in the city. He was so traumatized by the carnage that he only managed to take seven

426 Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, Chapter 2. 135 pictures, two of which could not be developed. Those five images remain the only visual document of Hiroshima on the ground on the day of the bombing.427 The military photographer Yosuke Yamahata arrived in Nagasaki 16 hours after the bombing and spent the day wandering amidst the smoldering ruins, taking more than 100 graphic images of the destruction and death. These photographs are among the only images which include , as the bomb had been so recent that no organized effort at removal of bodies had yet been mounted.428 The photographs were disseminated throughout Japan within days by the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun, and also circulated through duplicate prints.429 Yamahata’s work was seized by the occupying Allies and censored, though he managed to retain most of the negatives. When censorship was lifted in 1952, some of the less graphic images appeared alongside Matsushige’s work in Life magazine.430 Yamahata released a more complete collection in Kiroku-shashin: Genbaku no Nagasaki (Recollections of the Atomic-Bombed Nagasaki) in 1952.431 As in later images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the destruction extends to the horizon, block after city block leveled and burned. Shell- shocked civilians wander through the rubble. Here, though, smoke still rises from the ground and though at first the bramble of wreckage reproduced in high contrast black and white photography camouflages the corpses, they can be seen littering the ground. In some images too graphic even for the “uncensored” Life article, a dead body is the explicit subject of the photograph. A child with blackened skin lays lifeless on the shattered ground, arms and fists in the pugilistic pose characteristic of those who have died by fire. A soldier stands beside a truck watching over people strewn on the ground. Two seem to sit upright, though several more have died and fallen over. A girl, apparently physically unhurt, stands looking vacantly at something not captured in the frame. Behind her, smoke rises from piles of rubble and wreckage. At her feet, a blackened skull and shoulders stripped of flesh appear to be crawling out of a mound of shattered stone. These are the only images of their kind and represent the only real record of the immediate aftermath of a nuclear

427 “Yoshito Matsushige, Hiroshima Photographer, Japan,” The Atomic Heritage Foundation, online, http://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/yoshito-matsushige. 428 Yosukē Yamahata and Rupert Jenkins, Nagasaki Journey: the Photographs of Yosuke Yamahata, 10 August 1945 (San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1995). 429 In 2014, an album of these duplicate prints went up for auction having been confiscated during the occupation and preserved in the possessions of the US serviceman. http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21651/lot/348/ 430 “When Atom Bomb Struck – Uncensored,” Life, vol. 33, no. 13, 29 September 1952, 19 - 25. 431 Kitajima, Muneto and Yosukē Yamahata, Genbaku no nagasaki: Kiroku shashin (Tokyō :̄ Tokyō ̄ Gakufu ̄ Shoin, 1959). 136 strike. They remain the only images we have of a real nuclear war—and yet in so many ways, they are insufficient. Within weeks, the Japanese film critic and producer Akira Iwasaki arrived in Hiroshima with a film crew in tow. Iwasaki began shooting in both devastated cities before the U.S. occupation force arrived, but when U.S. soldiers eventually found one of the camera crew in Nagasaki, he was arrested and the film confiscated. The drama that ensued between the Occupation, members of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, and the filmmakers, is documented by historian Abé Markus Nornes in his analysis of the eventual production and release of the documentary.432 In short, Iwasaki was allowed to complete the documentary he had set out to create with permission from the Occupation. The result was The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a nearly three hour survey of the effects of the bombs from multiple disciplinary viewpoints. When Americans arrived in the months that followed, the cities had already begun to transform themselves, disposing of bodies and building makeshift housing for the survivors. In March and April 1946, a U.S. film crew from the Strategic Bombing Survey group documented the damage in the city and also captured scenes of recovery. Even as First Lieutenant D.A. McGovern and his cameramen Harry Mimura and Sergeant R.V. Wizbowski of the 5th Combat Camera Unit wandered the ruins, documenting blast and heat effects throughout Hiroshima, in the background, civilians stroll from place to place, bicycles pass, and a streetcar ambles along the undamaged track through the rubble.433 Despite the obvious destruction, certain portions of the final report of the Strategic Bombing Survey alluded the survivability and recoverability of a nuclear strike. In a passage on infrastructure, the report states that “Trains were running through Hiroshima 48 hours after the dropping of the atomic bomb on that city.”434 The report also touts the usefulness of shelters in an atomic attack. In Nagasaki, where tunnels had been dug into hillsides around the city, “all the occupants back from the entrances survived, even in those tunnels almost directly under the explosion.” In keeping with this optimistic tone, the report offers detailed descriptions of blast

432 Abé Mark Nornes, “Production Materials from ‘The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,’” Center for Japanese Studies Publications, The International Institute, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2004) https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cjfs/production-materials.html 433 United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), “Atomic Bomb Physical Damage, Blast Effect, Hiroshima 03/13/1946 - 04/08/1946,” US Air Force. Records of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Record Group 243. 1928-1947 (bulk 1944-1946). National Archives. 434 “The United States Strategic Bombing Survey - Summary Report (),” President’s Secretary’s File, Truman Papers, 1 July 1946, Truman Presidential Library. 137 damage at various distances but is unequivocal in its rejection of some anticipated effects of the bomb:

The above description mentions all the categories of the destructive action by the atomic bomb explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There were no other types of action. Nothing was vaporized or disintegrated; vegetation is growing again immediately under the center of the explosions; there are no indications that radioactivity continued after the explosion to a sufficient degree to harm human beings.

It is with this report and the documentary film evidence that the full weight of the effects of a nuclear attack began to ease, the edges blunted, the horrifying realities muted. These materials provided a small portion of optimism for those who wanted or needed it. For all of the horrors endured by the Japanese population at the end of the Second World War, the lesson learned was one of atomic survivability, particularly when sufficient warning, evacuation, and shelter were available. Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki before, a city or a nation that found itself the victim of an atomic attack could survive, recover, and rebuild. For all of the death and all of the destruction, the resurrection of infrastructure and economy was measured in mere months. Industrial society would rise again—a function of personal toughness and national resilience.

Fallout and Radiation

On 2 September 1945, almost a month after Hiroshima had been leveled, the Australian journalist arrived in the city. As the first foreign journalist to report on the aftermath of the atomic bomb, he also became the first to describe the effects of exposure to radiation and fallout. His article, “The Atomic ,” was published on 5 September in London’s Daily Express, and brought news of this particular mode of the bomb’s lethality to the world. Burchett wrote: “In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly—people who were uninjured by the cataclysm—from an unknown something which I can only describe as atomic plague.”435 According to journalist Amy Goodman, George Weller of the Chicago Daily News wrote a similar account of

435 Wilfred Burchett, Rebel Journalism: the Writings of Wilfred Burchett, eds. George Burchett, and Nicholas L. Shimmin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 138 radiation sickness in Nagasaki, but the publication of this article had been blocked by U.S. military censors.436 Both men encountered the progression of acute radiation sickness and the almost certain death of those suffering from its effects. Bleeding gums, loss of hair, necrotic lacerations and an array of other symptoms were graphically reported. Fearing a public relations disaster and loss of morale, the military employed William L. Laurence, science writer for the New York Times, to contradict the stories of the mysterious radiation disease. Laurence had been the official historian of the Manhattan Project and was present on one of the B-29s that made the atomic bombing run on Nagasaki. On 12 September 1945, the New York Times ran an article by Laurence denying that any ill- effects from radiation were real and that the stories were instead the continuing efforts of Japanese propagandists. “The Japanese are still continuing their propaganda aimed at creating the impression that we won the war unfairly...the Japanese described ‘symptoms’ that did not ring true.”437 Despite this, the specter of lingering radiation and the effects of fallout made its way into the popular consciousness and began to figure into visualizations of nuclear war and calculations for survival. The 1955 film The Day the World Ended by famed B-movie director Roger Corman is largely a , but deserves consideration because of its semi-serious concern with radioactive fallout.438 The film’s narration begins: “Over all the lands and the waters of the Earth hangs the atomic haze of death.” A respectable piece of realism is added with the use of the first model of the CDV-700 Geiger counter that had been issued by civil defense agencies the previous year. The premise of the film is that the survivors have taken refuge in a prepared fallout shelter in a box canyon with lead ore in the rocks. Ten years after Burchett’s account of the events of Hiroshima in which he attributed increased casualties to the radioactive “black rain” that fell in the aftermath, the film makes the rain a primary threat. “As long as the wind blows and the rain doesn’t come too soon,” one character explains, “we may live.” Atomic Attack (1954), which was based on the 1950 novel Shadow on the Hearth by Judith Merril, deals with the same fear of fallout and radioactive rainfall. After a nuclear strike on New York, the family’s high school-age daughter is exposed to radioactive rain during a class trip. Though she turns out to be safe, her younger sister develops severe radiation poisoning from contact with one of her dolls that had been left outside in the rain.

436 Amy Goodman and David Goodman, “The Hiroshima Cover-up,” The Baltimore Sun, 05 August 2005. 437 William L. Laurence, “U.S. Atom Bomb Site Belies Tokyo Tales,” New York Times, 12 September 1945, 1. 438 The Day the World Ended, film, directed by Roger Corman, produced by Golden State Productions, distributed by American Releasing Corporation, December 1955. 139 The push toward meticulous realism in the 1980s saw radiation and fallout depicted in great detail and with an eye toward scientific accuracy. One exception to this is the powerful but remarkably understated Testament (1983).439 In this family drama, reference to radiation sickness from unseen fallout is made once in a scene of a town hall meeting during which the local doctor is called on to explain what the days and weeks ahead might have in store for the population: “We don’t know yet,” he admits. “We really have no equipment available for accurately measuring radiation fallout. If the rads dosage reaches 40 or 50 per hour and remains there long, there will be illness.” No graphic scenes of the effects of radiation are ever shown, even as characters begin to die—first an infant, then the family’s youngest son, the weak, and the elderly. The film only implies that radiation is the culprit. Released the same year, The Day After is explicit in its depiction of radiation and fallout, with visual examples coupled with expositional dialogue that chronicles the process. As the first particulates settle over Lawrence, Kansas, science professor Joe Huxley remarks, “Here it comes....” Scenes of actual particulate fallout come next, followed by graphic depictions of the health effects. A character who has been outside since the moment of the attack shrouds himself in a thick blanket as he walks, but complains of bleeding gums. The daughter of the Dahlberg family exposes herself to radiation when she runs out of the family shelter and is later shown to be suffering from acute radiation sickness. Eventually, Dr. Oaks, one of the story’s main characters, is shown losing his hair and returns to the ruins of his home in Kansas City to die. The wider effects of radiation on the environment and biology are also discussed when the lone local civil defense official speaks at a community meeting of area farmers. “So, what we want you to do now is burn out your current crop, start decontaminating the soil, and plan next spring’s planting. Crop selection must consider plants least susceptible to radiation and yields for human rather than animal consumption.” One farmer in attendance asks, “How do you go about decontaminating the soil?” An argument ensues over the impractical government recommendation to remove the top four to five inches of top soil over thousands of contaminated acres. Threads took the description and depiction of fallout and radiation even further with its documentary or docu-drama approach in which bulleted text and narration as might be found in a scientific documentary is interspersed with dramatic scenes. The sequence begins with text that reads, “Fallout imminent: Fire-fighting and rescue attempts unlikely.” The narrator states that “The first fallout dust settles on Sheffield. It’s an hour and 25 minutes after the attack. This level of attack

439 Testament, directed by Lynne Littman, produced by PBS, American Playhouse, distributed by Paramount Pictures, 4 November 1983. 140 has broken most of the windows in Britain. Many roofs are open to the sky. Some of the lethal dust gets in. In these early stages, the symptoms of radiation sickness and the symptoms of panic are identical.” This is followed by a scene of Mr. and Mrs. Kemp huddled in their government advised lean-to shelter as Mr. Kemp vomits into his hand. The threat of radiation lingers for the protagonist, Ruth, as she wanders out into the ruined world after the two-week period mandated by Protect and Survive. Desperately hungry, she encounters a former acquaintance and together they come across a dead sheep. They debate the radiation hazard.

RUTH: Is it safe to eat? BOB: I don’t know. How can you tell? It’s got a thick coat. That should have protected it. RUTH: You breath it in though, don’t you? BOB: It should be all right. RUTH: Sheep don’t die of cold. It must be radiation. BOB: You’d be able to taste it, if it were contaminated. RUTH: Oh, I don’t know.

Without another option, they tear the sheep apart and eat the meat raw. This graphic scene of near starvation illustrates another aspect of the hazards faced in the aftermath of a nuclear war. With the immediate danger of radiation waning, a lack of supplies and distribution networks leaves starvation an ever-encroaching threat. Exposure to the elements in an increasingly hostile environment compounds the risk of starvation in the short term, while in the intermediate term, these environmental changes through atmospheric dust or irradiated soil make prospects for survival bleak.

Social Collapse, Environmental Collapse, and Nuclear Winter

The popular culture website tvtropes.com specializes in identifying and categorizing various tropes found in television, film, literature, and other media. In one particularly useful set of categorizations, the site has developed a ranking system for end-of-the-world scenarios. These range from a “Class 0 Apocalypse” in which destruction is limited to societal disruption at a local level, to a “Class 6” in which all life on Earth—or even the planet itself—is destroyed. This humorous attempt to identify repeated tropes is useful in the more serious business of understanding the level of disruption and destruction expected at various stages of the Cold War. The government-

141 sponsored films of the 1950s referenced several times already often considered an atomic exchange to be little more than a Class 0 disaster (localized societal disruption). Films such as the previously discussed Our Cities Must Fight and Atomic Attack, for example, all speak of individual cities taking shelter and then coming out again after the debris had stopped falling to rebuild homes and . Larger thermonuclear weapons of the late 1950s and 1960s brought with them books and films that speculated on much larger disasters that tvtropes.com might categorize as Class 4 (Planetary Scale, multiple species Extinction), Class 6 (Planetary scale, total extinction), or even Class 10 (Planetary annihilation). A film that might fall into this last category is The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) in which nuclear testing has knocked the Earth off of its axis.440 On the Beach (1959) frames its nuclear apocalypse as a shroud of fallout that will kill all life, a modest Class 5. Like so many films of the Cold War, these examples were speculative and not rooted in the technical realities of nuclear conflict. A nuclear test was never going to knock the Earth off its axis anymore than all life would be killed by a shroud of encroaching radiation as in On the Beach or Dr. Strangelove. But the 1980s brought something new to the world of nuclear war on film. For the first time, hard scientific data and decades of research supported the proposed apocalyptic aftermath. Science had given the world the tools to understand and accurately depict and environmental destruction. Instead of tropes and science fiction speculation, now global disaster took the form of scientific papers in peer reviewed journals. It had become the age of “nuclear winter” (a mere Class 4). In the decades that came before, very few films looked seriously at the broader environmental impacts of nuclear war, and certainly not the global impacts. It could be argued that the “monster movie” genre made use of the biological impacts of radiation, though only locally and far from seriously. In 1959, On the Beach envisioned a global from radiation, followed by the half-hour French La Jetée in 1962 that imagined a nuclear war driving survivors into a scarce subterranean existence.441 The plot of Dr. Strangelove in 1964 never quite arrived at the aftermath, ending during the nuclear exchange, but the “” promised to force survivors into deep mines for decades to avoid the radiation. Some films utilized a global die-off as a plot device, but gave no plausible explanation. These include the previously

440 The Day the Earth Caught Fire, film, directed by Val Guest, produced by Val Guest Productions, distributed by British Lion Films (UK) and Universal International (US), 23 November 1961. 441 La Jetee,́ film, directed by Chris Marker, Janus Films and Public Media Incorporated, Chicago, 1964. 142 discussed Day the World Ended (1955) and The World the Flesh and the Devil (1959), but they were far from serious visions of collapse. It was not until the 1980s that plausible scenarios began to be suggested or overtly depicted in film. With exceedingly measured pacing, Testament (1983) shows the slow social collapse of a small California town as it becomes increasingly isolated from the devastated outside world.442 Though the town endured no damage from the bombs, over the course of weeks and months, the lack of utilities, dwindling food supplies, and slow death of the young and the infirm by malnutrition and a small but apparently persistent radiation hazard leaves the unmistakable impression that even an area spared the initial ravages of a nuclear war will have begun a slower march toward disintegration and death. The Day After (1983) offers a similar assessment of society’s chances. A radio address from the U.S. president promises that, “The government, functioning under certain extraordinary emergency options, are prepared to make every effort to coordinate relief and recovery efforts at the state and local levels.” Despite the encouragement, scenes of a hopeless local situation play out under the words. At a station, an army truck is beset by rioters and looted as the soldiers fire into the crowd. A hint at the impending anarchy in the new era comes when Jim Dahlberg confronts a family crouched around a dead cow and a campfire on his land. Without words, a member of the squatters shoots Dahlberg and returns to his cooking pot without emotion. In a mirror of this scene, and the final scene of the film, Dr. Oakes returns to the ashes of his Kansas City home to find a family squatting there. As he shouts at them to “get out of my house!” (really just an ashen crater and rubble), he collapses from exhaustion. The father of the squatting family comes to him and embraces him in consolation. The hopeful human tone of the scene is obviously tempered by the fact that they are all doomed to die in the radioactive ashes. Beyond the immediate fallout and radiation hazards discussed in the previous section, The Day After also touches on the intermediate implications of the environmental poisoning by radiation. Even as the Dahlberg family is still in the shelter, Jim Dahlberg ponders the future. “The corn will be a total loss. Should have harvested ten days ago. Cows can’t graze. Contaminate the milk as well as themselves.” His wife interjects and says that the family is lucky to be alive. “We’ll see how lucky that is.” Threads (1984) offers many explicit examples of similar themes. In fact, some of the scenes could be shown as a side-by-side comparison with The Day After with little to differentiate themselves save for The Day After’s softer edge provided by ABC’s network censorship. Looting,

442 Testament, 1983. 143 food shortages, and insufficient medical care for the injured and dying are all subjects visualized in both films. Threads, however, puts a premium on demonstrating the deterioration of society. The title itself refers to the “threads” that hold together an urban society, explained in the opening narration: “In an urban society, everything connects. Each person’s needs are fed by the skills of many others. Our lives are woven together in a fabric, but the connections that make society strong, also make it vulnerable.” After the attack in Threads, the first of the threats to the social order is an inability to feed the survivors. On-screen text reads: “Attack plus 1 week. Food stocks controlled by central government representatives” and “No food distribution likely until 2 weeks after attack.” As survivors begin to emerge from their shelters after two weeks, the lack of food is immediately evident. An angry mob gathers at one military-controlled food cache and rushes the locked gate. A military officer shouts through a bullhorn, “The allocation of foodstuffs will begin shortly. The distribution points will be announced.” The group of government officials with the authority to distribute food and supplies remains trapped in a bunker under the collapsed Sheffield city government building debating the problem. One of the officials asks, “Can’t we get any food from outside?” The answer from Sutton, the head of the local wartime government summarizes the problem. “Where from? We told County and everybody’s in the same boat.” Facing a lack of food and two caches potentially raided and looted by the same angry mobs previously shown, the officials ponder what to do. Sutton asks the doctor on the committee for his advice. The doctor responds, “We’ll have to cut their rations. I’ve worked it out now. A thousand calories for manual workers. Five hundred for the rest.” The narrator explains that, “Money has had no meaning since the attack. The only viable currency is food, given as reward for work or withheld as punishment. In the grim economics of the aftermath, there are two harsh realities. A survivor who can work gets more food than one who can’t, and the more who die, the more food is left for the rest.” This tenuous social contract is the last vestige of society teetering on the brink of collapse. As food supplies dwindle, the existing government loses its ability to coerce civil behavior and looters begin to roam the ruined city, pursued and executed by the military or rounded up in impromptu detention camps. One scene shows an angry crowd confined to a fenced tennis court and guarded by a traffic warden— presumably the last of a dwindling number of law enforcement officers. At five weeks after the attack, without electricity, water, or public sanitation, the last of the social contract dissolves and increasing numbers of survivors begin a migration out of cities in search of food. One significant thing that differentiates Threads from The Day After is that its writing and production had the benefit of an additional year. In this year, a team of scientists including Carl

144 Sagan, published a paper in Science titled, “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions.”443 Building on the work of Paul Crutzen and John Birks in “The Atmosphere After Nuclear War: Twilight at Noon” published in Ambio in 1982, the new study utilized a computer model to quantify the hypothesis offered by Crutzen and Birks—namely that a nuclear war would throw a huge amount of dust into the atmosphere and darken and cool the planet. With all of the social and environmental stresses, adding a months-long dramatic cooling of at least the Northern Hemisphere seemed to be the final blow to any sense that agriculture could replenish the burdened stores of food. Add to fallout in this bleak vision of the aftermath. The Day After alludes to the environmental impacts of nuclear war on agriculture and to the inevitable decline in agricultural productivity, but the mechanism is radiation. By the next year, nuclear winter surpassed irradiated topsoil as the means by which agriculture would be plunged into medieval levels of production. Threads blends the science and the dramatic visualization of the post- nuclear world, highly conscious of this new scientific work. More than a week after the events of the attack, the narrative pauses and one of the film’s factual slides reads: 3000 megaton exchange. Smoke produced: 100 million tons. Dust lifted into the atmosphere: 500 million tons.” These numbers can all be relatively easily derived from the calculations in the TTAPS paper. The narrator then succinctly summarizes the concept of nuclear winter: “Across large areas of the northern hemisphere, it starts to get dark. It starts to get cold.” The impact of that cold is the chronic stunting of crops. Another informational slide states that with an attack in the spring, “Darkness and cold reduce plant activity to very low levels. Little ripening of crops.” The narrator explains that, “Collecting this diminished first harvest is now literally a matter of life and death.” Threads makes clear that the foundation of industrial civilization is a stable agricultural base. A radio announcement overlays images of urban destruction and explains, “If we are to survive these difficult early months and establish a firm base for the redevelopment of our country, then we must concentrate all of our energies on agricultural production.” Unfortunately, the environment in which that agricultural production must take place is shown to be in rapid decline. What The Day After implies about the future of agriculture, Threads explores with specificity. As the effects of nuclear winter begin to subside, on-screen text tells us that, “Skies become clearer. Returning sunlight now heavier with -violet light.” This is a further demonstration of the infusion of hard science into this unique depiction of nuclear war. The idea that a nuclear war might increase UV light had been a part of the debate on the atmospheric effects of nuclear war from the early 1970s and posits that nitric oxide

443 Turco, et. al., “Nuclear Winter,” 1983. 145 and nitrogen dioxide produced in nuclear fireballs would destroy the atmospheric ozone layer. The concept was put forward by scientist John Hampson in his paper “Photochemical War on the Atmosphere” in Nature in 1974.444 It was further popularized by journalist and antinuclear activist Jonathan Schell in his controversial 1982 book The Fate of the Earth, which detailed the potential environmental impacts of a large-scale nuclear war.445 Another title card informs us that future harvests will suffer increased vulnerability due to the depleted ozone and other compounding factors: “No fertilizers. No agrochemicals. Crops susceptible to viruses, diseases and insects.” The cold of nuclear winter and further environmental collapse also takes a human toll. Over images of snow-covered bodies, the narrator states that in the first winter, the stresses of hypothermia, epidemic, and radiation fall heavily on the very young and the old. Their protective layers of flesh are thinner. ...in the first few winters, many of the young and old disappear from Britain.” As the sunlight returns, the additional ultraviolet radiation cause widespread cataracts and lingering environmental radiation hazards cause and increased risk of cancers and leukemia. This sets the stage for the final unraveling of the “threads” of modern society. In the years that follow, the informational title cards inform us that “3-8 years after attack: population reaches minimum. UK numbers may decline to mediaeval levels. Possibly between 4 and 11 million.” With ten minutes left in the film, Threads’ analysis of the aftermath moves beyond the timeframe of any other serious depiction of nuclear war. Superimposed over a grainy black and white photograph of two hunched figures wearing rags, scraping the dirt with improvised hoes in a scene reminiscent of subsistence-level medieval peasantry, text reads “10 years after. Ruth and her daughter.” Building on thoughtful analysis, scientific study, and intensive research into expected outcomes of nuclear war, Threads moves into uncharted analytical, theoretical, and narrative territory about the long-term effects of nuclear war and what the period of “recovery” over a decade might really look like or even mean in a world that has bombed itself back to the Middle Ages.

The Erasure of History

This is the most speculative of all representations and may more rightly reside in the realm of than the history of science and technology, but visions of the distant aftermath of a nuclear war constructed with serious intent are important thought experiments. One branch of speculation sees the nuclear war and collapse of society as the starting point for a new beginning.

444 John Hampson, “Photochemical War on the Atmosphere,” Nature 250 (19 July 1974): 189-191. 445 Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (New York: Knopf, 1982). 146 This was often repeated in film and literature in the early Cold War and used as a device for serious speculation as well as sensationalized monster movies. Another branch of speculation, more common as the existential threat of nuclear war came to be understood, is what Tom Overton in the Review called “the erasure of history.”446 In these works, either by the collapse of civilization or the destruction of the planet, the lessons of the past are lost to whatever society might grow into the void left by the global holocaust. When nuclear war still seemed manageable and society recoverable—through most of the 1950s—no matter what level of destruction was depicted, films often ended with some ray of hope that from disaster would come a new beginning. The year 1947 saw the release of the first film to deal with nuclear weapons—.447 Even in its title, the film proposed that a new era had been brought about by nuclear weapons. The film’s closing frame reads: “To the people of the 25th century, this was the beginning. Only you, and those who have lived between us and you, can know the end.” This presupposes that there will still be moviegoers in the 25th century. The first film ever to depict the aftermath of a nuclear war was Five.448 Released in 1951, Five deals with the interpersonal relationships of five survivors and ends with a quote from the Book of Revelations: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth...And there shall be no more death. No more sorrow...No more tears...Behold! I make all things new!” Like Five, the Roger Corman film Day the World Ended, looked at the interactions and stresses of an ensemble cast, and like Five, the film ends with the hopeful optimism of a title card that reads: “The Beginning.” 1959’s The World, the Flesh, and the Devil also ends with the words “The Beginning” after the last three people on earth wander off together through the vacant streets of New York. This trope was followed by two later post-apocalyptic films as well, such as The Creation of Humanoids (1962) and Panic in Year Zero! (1962).449 The next decade brought more ambiguous conclusions to films in the genre, leaving the survival of civilization and humanity in doubt. In the last year of the 1950s, On the Beach portrays the extinction of humanity through nuclear war, but ends with a stern warning on a banner flapping in the wind of the empty city: “There is still time, brother.” The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) tells the

446 Tom Overton, “Worst-Case Scenario,” The Paris Review, 10 April 2017. 447 The Beginning or the End, film, directed by Norman Taurog, produced by MGM, distributed by MGM, 7 March 1947. 448 Five, film, directed by Arch Ober, Produced by Arch Ober productions, distributed by Columbia Pictures, 25 April 1951. 449 The Creation of the Humanoids, film, directed by Wesley Barry, produced by Wesley Barry, distributed by Emerson Film Enterprises, 3 July 1962.; Panic in the Year Zero, film, directed by Ray Miland, produced by Arnold Houghland, distributed by American International Pictures, 5 July 1962. 147 story of a pending planet-wide environmental disaster brought about by nuclear testing. In an effort to right the planet’s orbital orientation, a final nuclear test is planned. The film ends with a countdown and a shot of a church steeple and offers no answer to the audience as to whether the planet was saved or doomed. Ladybug, Ladybug (1963) ends with a child shouting “stop!” repeatedly and the sound of jets or bombers overhead, though the film never makes it entirely clear whether war is coming or it was a technical glitch. Fail-Safe (1964) ends with the atomic bombing of New York City in retaliation for the accidental bombing of Moscow in order to avert a wider war, while Dr. Strangelove in the same year ends with a massive global nuclear war and the possibility of survival only in deep salt mines. The global holocaust montage at the close of Dr. Strangelove, set to the ironically hopeful tune of Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” ushered in a new era in the genre, one in which nuclear war brought about the end of civilization—and in the most extreme cases, the erasure of history. This shift was likely a response to the increasing dangers of the Cold War seen in the first half of the 1960s. In 1961, the Soviet Union had detonated the largest ever tested, a 58 megaton aircraft deliverable bomb over Novya Zemlya. 1962 saw the brinksmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and 1964 would bring with it a Chinese nuclear test and the ever-expanding threat of a multi-lateral nuclear war. Such threats would continue to mount as films for the rest of the Cold War would envision a world in which nuclear war was so devastating and traumatizing to society that it would cause a complete break in the historical narrative and a loss of knowledge of what came before. The 1966 Czechoslovakian film Late August at the Hotel Ozone (Konec srpna v Hotelu Ozon) imagines a post-war world in which a band of women born after the war exist in a semi-feral state and society is non-existent.450 The film begins with a scene in which the leader of the band, “Old Woman,” who still remembers a time before the war, marks her memories by looking at the bands of a felled tree. The tree, now dead, will no longer mark the years, and when Old Woman dies, there will be nothing left of the past. Planet of the Apes was released in 1968 and depicts a world in which a nuclear war has returned humanity to a wild state and apes have inherited the mantle of civilization.451 History has been so completely erased that it is only revealed in the closing moments of the film that the “planet of the apes” is actually Earth. The Bed Sitting Room (1969) was originally a

450 Late August at the Hotel Ozone (Konec srpna v Hotelu Ozon), film, directed by Jan Schmidt, 18 June 1967. 451 Planet of the Apes, film, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, produced by APJAC Productions, distributed by Fox, 8 February 1968. 148 darkly comedic absurdist play that depicts a ruined Britain with only vestiges of pre-war society.452 The BBC is a single man who delivers the news by kneeling behind a hollowed out television, the National Health Service is a single nurse, and no one can remember if the war, which lasted two minutes and twenty-eight seconds, was three or four years ago. Glen and Randa (1971) is set in a world that has reverted to a tribal society after a nuclear war.453 It follows a young couple who are oblivious to the world outside of their tribe except for what Glen has learned from pre-war comic books. Zardoz (1974), A Boy and his Dog (1975), and the animated feature Wizards (1977), are all American-produced post-apocalyptic visions of a world that has lost its memory due to the rupture of a nuclear war.454 Though useful in tracing the trajectory of post-nuclear fears, the majority of these later films are fanciful at best, and are not serious explorations into what the world after a nuclear war might be like for the survivors and their . As with other aspects of nuclear war on film, the 1980s provided unique and compelling exceptions. The final scenes of The Day After offer little hope that national recovery is possible in any meaningful sense. Most of the main characters are dead or dying and with the last lines of the film, it would seem that any coherent national government or infrastructure has already failed. The words are spoken over the HAM radio operated by Joe Huxley at the University of Kansas science building: “Hello? Is anybody there? Anybody at all.” There is no answer. The Day After concerns itself with the aftermath of the war out to approximately three weeks. Threads, on the other hand, puts considerable effort into creating a vision of the post-war future out to more than a decade. Ruth, the surviving protagonist, is seen with her 10 year old daughter (identified only in the screenplay as “Jane”) dressed in rags, hoeing the soil on a hilltop when Ruth collapses. Prematurely aged, eyes milky with the cataracts brought about by increased ultraviolet light

452 The Bed Sitting Room, film, directed by Richard Lester, produced by Oscar Lewenstein Productions, distributed by United Artists, 25 March 1970. 453 Glen and Randa, film, directed by Jim McBride, produced by Sidney Glazier, distributed by Universal Marion Corporation (UMC), 1971. 454 Zardoz, film, directed by John Boorman, produced by John Boorman Productions, distributed by 20th Century Fox, 6 February 1974; A Boy and His Dog, film, directed by L.Q. Jones, produced by LQ/JAF Productions, distributed by LQ/JAF Productions, 14 November 1975; Wizards, film, directed by Ralph Bakshi, produced by Bakshi Productions, distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, 9 February 1977. 149 or a decade of exposure, Ruth dies.455 Apparently unable to understand this, her daughter pokes her and says, “Ruth. Ruth. Work. Work. Up.” in a halting English that offers the first clue as to the assumptions made about the state of the survivors. In the next scene, a few children sit in a gutted lecture hall watching a heavily damaged VHS tape of a pre-war educational television program. Their faces are blank and expressions empty. The next scene shows the children, including Jane, employed in the business of pulling the threads from fabric—an obvious metaphor for the unraveling of society and the titular connecting threads. There is some rudimentary return of electricity, some societal order and attempt at education, but the world as depicted has not recovered to any meaningful degree and remains almost entirely preindustrial. Next, on-screen text reads “13 years after” over still images of a wholly ruined city. Another image shows some scavenging efforts, still another shows miners with pick axes and other primitive tools, followed by a steam tractor indicating that at least some parts of Britain have managed, in 13 years, to return to an early industrial age. What comes next undermines any sense of hope that these previous developments may have offered. Jane is seen tending a fire in a barn with a dead rabbit. Two young men enter the barn and confront her in nearly indecipherable English. (What follows is taken from the screenplay which does provide translations).

SPIKE: Hoy! What’n be? (What is it?) GAZ: Seed’n. N’coney. (I saw it. It’s a rabbit.) SPIKE: Giss’n. Come on. Giss’n. (Give it to us.) GAZ: Better, else us’ll bray’n. (You better had. Or else we’ll beat you.) JANE: Best stand off ‘fore tha’ll ger’n. (You’d better stand back or else you’ll get hit.) GAZ: Where’n stop at? Come’n us? (Where are you staying? Coming with us?) JANE: Where’n? (Where?) GAZ: Us place. Gaz n’ Spike. SPIKE: Share’n coney, then. Come an’ share’n coney. Giss’n. (Share the rabbit.)

455 Gabriel Chodick et al., “Risk of Cataract after Exposure to Low Doses of Ionizing Radiation: A 20-Year Prospective Cohort Study among US Radiologic Technologists,” American Journal of Epidemiology 168, no. 6 (2008): 620–631. PMC. Web. 3 November 2017. 150 This patois is the result of a generation of young people raised in the vacuum of society. One might speculate that not only would there be no formal education in the years after the war, but that many of the children in the generation would not have known their parents, raised in a feral state or in profoundly damaged communities. It is one of the many unknown intermediate and long-term effects of gutting a society by global catastrophe. In 1980, writer Russell Hoban published Riddley Walker, a novel written entirely in the deformed English of the distant centuries after a nuclear war.456 One of the major themes of the novel is the way in which history has been incorrectly remembered and the memory of the war conflated with religion (for example, the USA is personified as St. Eustace, the spelling being “Eusa” who was the first to pull apart the “Littl Shyning Man the Addom” who is both the personified atom and, in the folk mythology of the novel, Jesus Christ). Threads offers a similar mechanism by which language, and by extension memory, could be lost with only a single “lost” generation of survivors. Threads also offers up another intermediate and long-term impact of global nuclear war that has been discussed from the beginning of the atomic age, though perhaps never so chillingly visualized. The biological impact on the immediate survivors—burns, radiation, cancers—is all well understood. It is suggested, though not explicitly stated, that Jane has been left intellectually stunted due to being in utero at the time of the war. Evidence for the effects of radiation on fetuses or infants is limited and controversial, but studies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors as well as the Chernobyl accident indicate that it would be reasonable to see birth defects in that first generation after the war.457 Threads, in its final moments, asks what might come after that, and even after that for the survival of the human species. Jane, now almost 14 and heavily pregnant, stumbles through the ruins with the first contractions of labor. She makes her way into a hospital, sparse with pale light and metal-framed cots. The nurse ignores her as she pleads for help. Eventually, the baby is delivered. Unlike Jane’s own birth in a barn to an exhausted but relieved Ruth, the scene is silent. There is no crying. Without being shown, the baby is wrapped in a bloody cloth and given to Jane. Her face contorts in disgust. As she opens her mouth to scream, the frame freezes and cuts to black. No explanation is given, no informational text with scientific assumptions are offered. The film leaves the viewer to speculate about what comes next—for Jane, for society, for the species. For

456 Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker (London: Jonathan Cape, 1980). 457 Nori Nakamura, “Genetic effects of radiation in atomic-bomb survivors and their children: past, present and future,” Journal of Radiation Research, Supplement B:B67-73. 2006; Health Effects of Chernobyl: 25 Years after the Reactor Catastrophe, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), Berlin, Germany, April 2011. 151 all of the data, the studies, and the research that went into the making of the film, in its final moment, it reminds us that for everything we know about nuclear war, it is what we do not that should scare us most of all. It puts in doubt whether a “recovery” is possible when the war has corrupted society, the environment, and even ourselves at a fundamental level. The message is bleak. Survival is not assured.

Conclusion: Imagining the Unimaginable

Brandon Stoddard, the president of ABC Motion Pictures in 1983, originally conceived The Day After as an exploration of the effects of nuclear war on the United States. While Stoddard later told Time magazine that the film had no particular political intent and was not intended as a political statement, director Nicholas Meyer has since been clear that his motivations for working on the project were decidedly political. “I hoped the movie would unseat Ronald Reagan. My secret thought was that if people saw the face of nuclear war, they wouldn’t vote for someone who had come to power believing in the concept of a winnable nuclear war.”458 The national debate began immediately after airing, with a special episode of ABC’s Viewpoint hosted by Nightline anchor Ted Koppel.459 The panel was made up of Henry Kissinger, Elie Wiesel, William F. Buckley, Carl Sagan, Brent Scowcroft and Robert McNamara, and was the venue for the coining of Sagan’s now famous analogy for the : “Imagine a room awash in gasoline and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has 9000 matches. The other has 7000 matches. Each of them is concerned about who’s ahead, who’s stronger.” The program began with Koppel remarking wryly, “There is...and you probably need it about now...there is some good news. If you can, take a quick look out the window. It’s all still there.” What ensued was a heated political debate about the nuclear arms race and war, as well as the validity of The Day After as a realistic portrayal of nuclear war in the 1980s. Director Nicholas Meyer, who was not part of the Viewpoint discussion, certainly intended the film to be as realistic as network standards of the time would allow, focusing on a wide range of causes and effects and packaging them in a way that would educate more than it would entertain. In retrospect, he said: “It wasn’t intended to be a good movie. It was intended to be effective. But it is

458 Braund, Empire, 2010. 459 Viewpoint was a news commentary panel program that aired sporadically on ABC from 1980 to 1994, often in conjunction with Nightline. As of the time of this writing, the episode in question can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcCLZwU2t34 152 good in that it takes you by the balls and squeezes. The point of it was, this is a topic we avoid facing up to. We abstract it, we depersonalize it. What happened is that people who had filtered out the specifics saw it from A to Z.”460 In Film and the Nuclear Age, Toni Perrine recalls some of the assertions of the publicity deployed ahead of the release of The Day After that mirror the director’s sentiments. “The Day After removes the unimaginable from the abstract and makes it shatteringly real: this is what a nuclear Armageddon is going to look like.”461 This idea that these nuclear wars fought on film exist to conjure to life what is otherwise unimaginable is a summary of the entire body of film explored in this section. Early in the Cold War, government-sponsored films depicted a survivable war, encouraging the population and allaying fears. As the nuclear threat increased and the outcome of a conflict became ever more uncertain, filmic explorations of the late 1950s and 1960s looked at the possibilities of a war and what aftermath might await its survivors. Then, in the last decade of the Cold War, films with attention to technical detail and forty years of anxiety unleashed the horrors of a modern apocalypse on society, civilization, and the Earth itself. Social historian William J. Palmer writes that historical films have a powerful effect on mass consciousness, and “actually participate in the making of history by motivating the mass mind of society to its own historical interpretation.”462 In the case of these speculative films of nuclear war, they motivate the mass mind of society to its own interpretation of the future. Like government wargames, the numerical analysis of a think tank, or the brute force simulation of live nuclear testing, these films refuse to allow nuclear war to be “unimaginable” and in doing so confront the world not with fictions, but with a spectrum of possibilities.

460 Braund, Empire, 2010. 461 Perrine, Film and the Nuclear Age, 154. 462 Palmer, The Films of the Eighties, 11. 153 CHAPTER 4

NUCLEAR WAR BY THE NUMBERS

A Secret Subcommittee

On the night of 18 November 1956, a small Air Force L-26 twin-engine, six-seat Sky Commander made its way from Dobbins Air Force Base outside of Atlanta, Georgia, to Bolling Field, south of Washington, D.C. Winds were calm, visibility good, and the frigid water of the Potomac River snaked below as the plane radioed the tower at Bolling for clearance to land. The plane carried three men. Lieutenant Richard H. Perlich, an instructor pilot at Bolling, occupied the left crew seat. Behind him sat Major Jose Blondet, commander of the 1104th Base Flight Squadron. At the controls, Major General James C. Selser began the slow descent to the field. Without warning or apparent cause, both of the plane’s engines sputtered and died. Selser reported to Bolling that the plane was in trouble and maneuvered toward the dark ribbon of the Potomac where he ditched the plane 600 feet offshore near Fort Washington—about 8 miles short of the runway. As the plane sank, Perlich escaped by kicking out the side window panel. The two other men joined him in the icy water and they began to swim toward the Maryland shore. Perlich eventually made landfall. The others did not. Major Jose Blondet of Bolling Air Force Base, and Major General James C. Selser, attached to the staff of the National Security Council, drowned that night in the Potomac.463 The next morning, the accident was reported by the (AP) and International News Service (INS)—with one curious additional fact. The AP specified that “Selser, a veteran of 22 years in the Air Force, was named deputy director of the net evaluation subcommittee of the National Security Council last July.”464 The INS went further: “The Air Force identified Selser as deputy director of the [National Security Council’s] top-secret net evaluation subcommittee. The council advises the president on vital security matters.”465 The New York Times, surely ignorant of the purpose of the posting, offered simply: “Deputy Director of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee of

463 “2 Airmen Missing,” New York Times, 19 November 1956. 464 “Air Officers Missing in the Potomac,” The Victoria Advocate, 20 Nov 1956. 465 “High Ranking Ike Aide Missing in Plane Crash,” St. Petersburg Times, 19 Nov 1956. 154 the National Security Council and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee.”466 No further details were offered by any publication in the wake of the accident. In retrospect, what is truly remarkable is that the name of what is arguably the most secretive group ever to be spawned by the National Security Council—charged with producing the most sensitive analytical research of the Cold War—had casually made its way into the public sphere and commanded no further investigation. The Deputy Director of the group had drowned in the Potomac and not a single inquiry was made into the nature, purpose or provenance of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee of the National Security Council. So secret was the NESC—and so successful at tending the gates of that secret were those in the know—that the New York Times mentioned it exactly twice in the entirety of the Cold War. The first was the morning after the crash in the Potomac. The second was on 12 April 1984, in the obituary of General Gerald C. Thomas, former “director of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee of the National Security Council.” No additional explanation is given.467 What, then, was the Net Evaluation Subcommittee? What were the “vital security matters” on which it was charged with advising the president? What was its mandate and what work engendered such extraordinary secrecy? Furthermore, how did the work of the NESC contribute to the body of “virtual wars” fought as proxies for nuclear annihilation over the course of the Cold War? Uncovering the work of the NESC, its subsequent annual reports, the discussions that surrounded those reports—as well as auxiliary studies and reports released on nuclear strategy and vulnerability during the period—reveal an interesting and exceptionally telling narrative about the turn from cautious optimism to crushing doubt in the first years of the Cold War. Between 1953 and 1963, the NESC studies on the net capabilities and effects of a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States undergo a progression from cautiously optimistic to apocalyptic. The information contained in the highly secretive reports reflects—in less than a decade—the same loss of confidence and insurgence of doubt that would play out for the rest of society over the course of more than forty years. Using statistical and intelligence analysis, the annual reports offered scenarios that eventually demonstrated the untenable position of ever fighting a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

466 “2 Airmen Missing,” New York Times, 19 November 1956. 467 “Gerald C. Thomas, 89, Marine Corps General,” New York Times, 12 April 1984. 155 An Optimistic View in 1953

What would eventually become the Net Evaluation Subcommittee was conjured to life at the outset of the Eisenhower administration in January 1953 by the directive NSC 140 and a report from National Security Council’s Executive Secretary James S. Lay titled, Directive for a Special Evaluation Subcommittee.468 This report referenced the need for “a more adequate evaluation of the U.S.S.R.’s net capability to inflict direct injury on the United States” and ordered, by authorization of the president, the preparation of a summary evaluation to be submitted by 15 May 1953. The evaluation was to consider “U.S.S.R. net capabilities against the continental United States and major U.S. installations outside the United States” and cover “all possible types of attack, including direct military, clandestine military, and sabotage, physical and non-physical.” The scope of the study was to be limited to “the initial phases of war, or the period during which all or a major part of the Soviet atomic or thermonuclear weapon stockpile might be expended.” Four months later, the first incarnation of the NESC (the newly constituted Special Evaluation Subcommittee) delivered its findings to the National Security Council. The report, while decidedly serious, presented an overall picture of a “winnable” nuclear war with the Soviet Union through at least 1955 (the timeframe analyzed by the subcommittee).469 Under the subheading of “Over-all Damage to the United States” the subcommittee wrote: “We believe that over-all damage to the U.S. would not be such as to prevent the delivery of a powerful initial retaliatory atomic air attack, the continuation of the air offensive, and the successful prosecution of the war.” The specific data sets and analysis which led to this conclusion are useful as benchmarks with which to compare future reports and the rapidly deteriorating advantage assumed to be enjoyed by the armed forces of the United States. In terms of human life, the report stated that “optimum bomb placement on population targets could produce a maximum of 9 million casualties in 1953, and 12.5 million in 1955, one half of which might result in deaths.” These numbers were qualified, however, in the lines that followed. “We believe that actual casualties would be at an indeterminate lower level, possibly as low as 50 per cent of the above figures.” By this analysis, a massive Soviet attack on the United States might well result in only 2.25 million deaths in 1953 and a little more

468 United States National, Security Council, “Directive for a Special Evaluation Subcommittee,” Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 469 United States National Security Council, Summary Evaluation of the Net Capability of the U.S.S.R. to Inflict Direct Injury on the United States Up to July 1, 1955, 1953. Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 156 than 3 million in 1955. Far less than the population of 1950s New York City and less than 2% of the nation’s entire population.470 Similarly optimistic conclusions were reached with regard to the survivability of industry. “Direct damage as the result of random destruction of plants probably would be substantial, but would not destroy a sufficient portion of any industry or industries to prevent attainment of minimum essential levels of production of war material and civilian goods.” This was a remarkable analysis—particularly when compared to those of later years—in that it not only posits the survivability of the American industrial infrastructure, but presupposes that industry would be able to recover and assist in the further prosecution of what is assumed to be a prolonged and winnable war with the Soviet Union. Further upbeat conclusions were made based on dire assessments of the state of the Soviet military machine. The report showed little faith in Soviet bomber technology and indicated that a major mode of attack would be one-way missions which would first have to be “sold” to the flight crews, and which would presumably end with bailout into a hostile nuclear warzone, suicide, or both. In addition, the report asserted that “20 percent of the bombers initially launched would abort and return to base before completing their missions.” The cause for this attrition was not specified, but a lack of faith in Soviet bomber crews was certainly shared by President Eisenhower at the time. At a meeting of the National Security Council on 4 June 1953 during which the subcommittee’s findings were discussed, Eisenhower questioned whether the report had been too generous with Soviet military capabilities because of “their obvious inferiority and even incompetence in the navigation of planes at long ranges.” The president pointed out that “anyone who had ever ridden with Soviet pilots could vouch for this incompetence.”471 At this same meeting, Eisenhower asked “in a facetious vein” why the subcommittee had not “turned themselves into Russians and tried to figure out what the Russians were thinking.” He went on to muse that the Russians “must be scared as hell.” Lieutenant General Idwal H. Edwards, the chairman of the committee, mirrored the nearly flippant positivity of the meeting with regard to a winnable nuclear war. “Any attack on the United

470 The US population in 1950 according to the US Census Bureau was 151,684,000. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970: Part 1, Bureau of the Census, US Department of Commerce, US Government Printing Office O-499-508, September 1975, 8. 471 Memorandum of Discussion at the 148th Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, June 4, 1953, FRUS 1952-1954, volume 2, part 1, National Security Affairs, document 69, Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower papers, Whitman file. 1953. 157 States by the Soviets during this period would be an act of desperation and not an exercise of military judgment.” This first foray into deep analysis of the capabilities and effects of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union has a tone of confidence, albeit cautious, in the ability to fight, win, and rapidly recover from the nuclear blow. This was not to remain the case for long, as new technologies, new modes of analysis, and new threats made their way into the work of the subcommittee.

A Second Subcommittee in 1954

The following year, under the new moniker “Net Capabilities Evaluation Subcommittee,” the group released an even more complete body of research with assessments made through the period of 1 July 1957.472 A psychological appraisal of Soviet war planners was decidedly sanguine, stating that “Soviet leaders will be extremely apprehensive—probably more apprehensive than the actual facts would warrant—that the U.S. might discover Soviet preparations for attack” and launch a preemptive nuclear first strike. The subcommittee assumed that Soviet generals were so busy shaking in their boots that they would avoid launching a strike at all—at least through 1957. However, in the remote case that the Kremlin could overcome its paralyzing nuclear apprehension and attack, the subcommittee found that things would hardly go well for the Communist Bloc. The lack of faith in the Soviet ability to mount a long-range nuclear campaign reappeared as a feature of the 1954 report and this limitation resulted in the assumption that most of the nuclear force would be directed at Strategic Air Command bases in a first strike in order to blunt the retaliatory blow. The report confidently asserted that “Development of Soviet long-range military capabilities is not likely to have proceeded far enough by 1957 to permit the U.S.S.R. to rely on decisively defeating the U.S. by direct attack.”473 One-way suicide missions were again assumed to be the norm in Soviet war planning, owing largely to the shorter range of their aging bomber fleet and the inability of the fleet to undertake mid-air refueling. As in the 1953 report, an abort rate of 20 to 25 percent of Soviet bombers further

472 United States National Security Council, Directive for a Net Capabilities Evaluation Subcommittee 1954, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 473 Net Evaluation Subcommittee, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library (DDEL), National Security Council Staff Records, 1948-1961. Disaster File, box 37, 1954, 3. It should be noted that all 161 pages of the 1954 report have been declassified with relatively minimal redactions thanks to a twelve-year-long appeals process undertaken by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. 158 degrades the Soviet war-fighting capability. Intercontinental ballistic missile development is recognized as a solution to this issue and is addressed, though only in terms of its absence through 1957. The report also asserts that the Soviets would likely only have at their disposal WWII-era V-1 and V-2 rockets for nuclear delivery, and these with a reliability estimate of only 40 to 60 percent.474 In the absence of ICBMs, warning times would continue to be in the range of eight hours in length—an assumption which led the subcommittee to calculate highly optimistic mortality rates. Casualty totals for a high-altitude attack on industrial targets were 4.4 million, of which 2 million would die in the first 24 hours. Of those who survived the first 24 hours, 1 million would die within seven weeks and 1.4 million would recover. For a low-altitude attack on the same targets (a more effective attack strategy, owing to greater accuracy and less opportunity for radar detection and interception) the numbers were actually smaller, with total casualties placed at 3.1 million. Compared with the report of the previous year, these numbers were drastically lower. The discrepancy was the result of the belief that urban evacuation schemes undertaken by the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) would be well developed and deployed by 1957 and would allow the evacuation of between 80% and 95% of the population from target areas. The 1954 subcommittee report assumed that “most, if not all, of our major cities will have well- developed, tested evacuation plans.” Additionally, plans for “the feeding and care of the evacuees will be well advanced.”475 The FCDA placed great faith in these evacuation schemes and undertook to test them in a series of civil defense exercises known as Operation Alert from 1954 to 1962. Industrial capabilities of the U.S. also weathered the simulated nuclear storm, though to varying degrees. In terms of the big picture, the report explained that “the comparatively limited target list, resulting from the limited Soviet supply of nuclear weapons and from the high attrition likely to be caused by U.S. defenses, prevented the breadth of the attack on U.S. industry from being as great as has hitherto been generally accepted as the inevitable consequence of an all-out enemy effort.”476 This assumption informed the broad analysis of industrial survivability, which posited that in the worst case, not more than 10% of each of the four categories of U.S. production would

474 This assertion is borrowed for the NESC report from the National Intelligence Estimate of 11 June 1954, “Soviet Capabilities and Probable Programs in the Guided Missile Field.” It is interesting to note that this estimation proved to be incorrect, with the Soviet Union successfully firing the world’s first true ICBM, the R-7, on 21 August 1957, though a deployable strategic unit would not come into service until 1959. 475 Net Evaluation Subcommittee, 1954, 122. 476 Net Evaluation Subcommittee, 1954, 101. 159 receive “heavy” damage and 15% would receive moderate damage.477 For purposes of the report, “heavy” damage was defined as “plants suffering a degree of damage that would range from complete destruction to retention of some limited salvage value,” while the moderate category was defined as “plants suffering a degree of damage that would range from retention of considerable salvage value to a capacity for restoration to production within a few weeks.”478 As individual industries within broad industrial categories were analyzed, however, the damage became acute, localized, and severe. Certain industries would suffer greatly. The report specifically noted that the aircraft industry would receive a combined total damage (heavy and moderate) of 44% in a low altitude attack. Close behind was the telephone and telegraph industry at 41% and motor vehicles at 38%. In an ironic turn of events, the explosives industry received no damage in the attack, and the fertilizer industry—which could be converted quickly to the manufacture of explosives—received only 4% combined damage. The report included a table which analyzed the effect of this combined damage on the “three year war plan.” This is very telling in terms of expectations of survivability in the event of nuclear war. There persisted in the thought process of war planners and civilian leaders an assumption that nuclear war could not only be survived, but victory could be achieved—at least through mid-1957. There was an acknowledgement in the report that one essential piece of data for fully understanding —and by extension, the rate of industrial recovery—was missing. “Casualties in this evaluation include only those resulting from blast, heat, and initial nuclear radiation. This is, of course, unrealistic[....] Fall-out from these bursts might greatly increase the casualty totals.”479 The seeds of the end of the optimistic outlook for the use of nuclear weapons is found in this passage. A lack of understanding of the radiological effects of fallout, and inadequate means of defense against the threat, pokes significant holes in the findings of the subcommittee during this period. The report acknowledged these holes, but in the absence of hard data, those acknowledgements did little to prepare the consumers of the report’s findings for the radical changes that were to come and the rapid turn away from the untenable faith in the ability to fight and win a nuclear war.

477 Net Evaluation Subcommittee, 1954, 104. A chart on page 102 of the report is used to graphically demonstrate these figures, but the numbers are somewhat contradictory. The table on page 104 is used instead. Both the chart and table identify the production sectors as “Primary Metal,” “Metal Fabrication,” “Instruments,” and “Food Processing Industries.” This information was based on 1952 plant shipment data. 478 Net Evaluation Subcommittee, 1954, 103. 479 Net Evaluation Subcommittee, 1954, 125 160 The passage also identifies the ultimate source of this change—new wartime technologies, both offensive and defensive. “This phenomenon [fallout], in the new magnitude given it by the surface burst of multi-megaton weapons, will seriously modify civil defense doctrine in almost all fields.”480 These new multi-megaton weapons were the thermonuclear devices (“hydrogen bombs”) only just beginning to come into existence. With the test in November 1952 and the Castle Bravo test in March of 1954, it was clear that the theoretical concept would eventually lead to arsenals of weapons that were capable of explosive force orders of magnitude larger than the atomic arsenals of the late and early 1950s. What the U.S. tests also made clear was that it would only be a matter of time before the Soviets successfully designed and detonated their own thermonuclear weapons—an inevitability that became manifest a year and three weeks after the presentation of the subcommittee’s findings. These weapons would be capable of lofting vast quantities of ash and particulate debris into the atmosphere which would then rain back as radioactive fallout. Not only would they produce more fallout, but they would be capable of sending it higher, resulting in a much larger footprint of radiological effect. Such a threat would require new shelter systems and defensive technologies resulting in the development of more and larger weapons. This was a race to the apocalypse that is at the core of the shift in attitudes about the survivability of nuclear war.

So Let’s Go On: The Killian Report and Seeds of Doubt

On 14 February 1955, NSC 5511 established the Net Evaluation Subcommittee in its permanent form. While the prior two incarnations of the evaluation subcommittee had been tasked with different questions about the net capabilities of the Soviet Union, the permanent NESC’s mandate was “to provide integrated evaluations of the net capabilities of the U.S.S.R., in the event of general war, to inflict direct injury upon the continental U.S. and key U.S. installations overseas, and to provide a continual watch for changes which would significantly alter those net capabilities.”481 The reports were to include both overt and clandestine attacks, consider multiple possible Soviet war plans, and also take into account improvements in both “military and non-military” defense programs. This date—the 14th of February—is significant because it is also the day that President Eisenhower was presented with a report titled, Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack (often called “The

480 Net Evaluation Subcommittee, 1954, 126 481 National Security Council, A Net Evaluation Subcommittee, 14 February 1955, 2, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 161 Killian Report” for James R. Killian, president of MIT and chairman of the Technological Capabilities Panel of the Science Advisory Committee).482 Its frank assessments painted a picture of a near future in which the U.S. no longer enjoyed nuclear superiority and the outlook for survival of the nation in a nuclear exchange was decidedly more bleak than the net capabilities assessments which had come before. The presentation of the Killian Report began a series of meetings and briefings in 1955 that appear to have altered Eisenhower’s thinking on nuclear war and the threat posed to the United States. Memos, letters, and transcripts make clear that Eisenhower was keenly, viscerally aware of the depth and breadth of the threat facing the nation and the world. He not only responds with pointed questions and observations in these documents, but several comments carry the apparent weight of a dark, emotional reaction to the estimates and figures with which he was presented. It seems clear that during 1955, Eisenhower began to reevaluate his confidence in the ability of the United States to effectively engage in a war with nuclear weapons and survive. The Killian Report asserted first and foremost that at the time of its preparation, the United States was unacceptably vulnerable to a surprise nuclear attack by Soviet forces. It went on to analyze the value of science and technology in mitigating this threat. Its recommendations were wide-ranging, but included the augmentation of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line of radar stations across the North American continent and accelerated development of an intercontinental ballistic missile capability.483 Though the Killian Report is important for a variety of reasons which will also be discussed, what is important to the narrative at hand is the report’s description of the downward trajectory of U.S. military superiority over the Soviet Union. The report constructed a timeline in four periods. The first, “The Present Phase,” was characterized by the U.S. having a significant offensive advantage over the Soviets but also being unacceptably vulnerable to surprise attack. The second period, spanning the timeframe “1956/57 to 1959/60,” was characterized by peak U.S. superiority and diminished vulnerability to surprise attack, largely stemming from the stockpiling of multi-megaton weapons and the ability to deliver them accurately—capabilities not enjoyed by the Soviets. In this period, “Our military superiority may never be so great again.”484 The third period would be a time of transition between periods two and

482 Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack, Report by the Technological Capabilities Panel of the Science Advisory Committee, 14 February 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, National Security Policy, volume XIX. Document 9. 483 “Report to the President on the Threat of Surprise Attack,” Policy Planning Staff, Department of Defense, 14 March 1955, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 2. 484 Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack, 43. 162 three, characterized by an ascendant Soviet Union with newfound multi-megaton weapons capability and a new fleet of jet bombers capable of delivering these weapons to the continental U.S. The fourth period would be “indefinite in length; possibly beginning within a decade,” its primary feature being a nuclear stalemate between the United States and Soviet Union. This was a period “so fraught with danger to the U.S. that we should push all promising technological development so that we may stay in Periods II and III–A as long as possible.” The danger was described succinctly: “An attack by either side would result in mutual destruction.”485 This phrase— mutual destruction—would continue to resonate in political policy and military planning, in culture and society, to the end of the Cold War. In fact, this potentially disastrous state of affairs, far from being avoided, would go on to become the main mode of deterrence against nuclear war. A description of the doctrine of “mutual assured destruction” hardly differs from the Killian Report’s own description of this period “so fraught with danger” that it was to be avoided at any expense.

This is the period when both the U.S. and Russia will be in a position from which neither country can derive a winning advantage, because each country will possess enough multimegaton weapons and adequate means of delivering them, either by conventional or more sophisticated methods, through the defenses then existing. The ability to achieve surprise will not affect the outcome because each country will have the residual offensive power to break through the defenses of the other country and destroy it regardless of whether the other country strikes first. 486

Of course, the danger of this state of affairs is inherent. The report went on to speculate that “Period IV would be a period of instability that might easily be upset by either side and that a world catastrophe might occur.” This point could not have been lost on Eisenhower, who went on to act on many of the report’s recommendations, seeking, through the embrace of technological development, to stave off Period IV for as long as possible.487 The Killian Report was a prescient

485 Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack, 44. 486 Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack, 44. 487 “Report to the President on the Threat of Surprise Attack,” 3. These actions included the extension of the DEW Line through Greenland and Iceland to the Faros to augment early detection of an attack, and an increased focus on the development of the ICBM capability to create greater deterrence of Soviet aggression. 163 work, as it was not until the 1956 NESC report that analysis showed that 1959 would mark the year of transition into the perilous period of stalemate and assured destruction.488 One question which remained unanswered by the 1955 NESC report was whether the Soviet Union would develop and stockpile multi-megaton weapons by 1958—the year of the report’s predictions.489 This question was resolved less than a month later when the Soviet Union detonated its first megaton-range thermonuclear weapon at the , yielding 1.6 megatons.490 Though the first “true” hydrogen bomb, this was not the first large-scale device to derive a portion of its explosive power from fusion. A year and a half before, on 12 August 1953, a particularly large Soviet detonation (400 kilotons) was detected and was taken to be a successful Soviet hydrogen bomb test. Coming less than a year after the first megaton-range U.S. test and a full seven months before a deliverable megaton-range device would be tested, this Soviet detonation caused significant consternation in the ranks of the Eisenhower administration and distress in Eisenhower himself.491 In a memo from Robert Cutler, the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles dated 3 September 1953, Cutler noted that Eisenhower was preoccupied with the new threat. “The new H-bomb development, which we discussed, was on his mind.”492 A week later, in a memo to Admiral Strauss, the chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, Cutler wrote, “[The president’s] mind turned again, as it has very

488 “Actions and Results Under Conditions of ‘Strategic Surprise,’” United States Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman’s Staff Group, 1956, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 489 “263d Meeting of the NSC, 27 October 1955.” Eisenhower, Dwight D. Papers as President, 1953-61 (Ann Whitman File), NSC Series, Box 6, DDE. NOTE: The 1955 NESC report remains classified, though the discussion which followed its presentation to the NSC is declassified in full. On page 12 of this memorandum, Allen Dulles reveals this uncertainty in a question: “One of the basic questions which remains unanswered at the present is whether the U.S.S.R. will have megaton weapons for use by 1958.” 490 Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Jeffrey I. Sands, Nuclear Weapons Databook Vol. IV: Soviet Nuclear Weapons (New York: Harper and Row, 1989). See also: The Johnston Archive, Database of Nuclear Tests [http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/tests/U.S.S.R.-ntests1.html] NOTE: The test proved the workability of Andrei Sakarov’s “Third Idea.” This weapon design used the principle of “staging,” allowing for a theoretically unlimited yield and is often referred to as the first “true” Soviet hydrogen bomb, 491 The first test of a device utilizing the principles of nuclear fusion was “George” (Operation Greenhouse, U.S., 8 May 1951), followed by “Mike” (Operation Ivy, US 1 November 1952). Neither of these devices were practical, deliverable weapons. Despite the lack of scalability, the Soviet test of 12 August 1953 was deliverable by air and so it served as a valuable propaganda victory for the Soviet Union. 492 “Memorandum by the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (Cutler) to the Secretary of State,” 3 September 1953, FRUS 1952-1954, volume II, part 1, National Security Affairs, Document 87, 443. 164 frequently, to the thermonuclear device explosion on August 12.”493 As time went on, and a team at Los Alamos determined that the design of the Soviet device was simply a “boosted” atomic bomb, fears were temporarily allayed, but the inevitability of a Soviet hydrogen bomb—and the significant power of thermonuclear weapons in general—continued to weigh heavily on the president’s mind.494 By 1955, Eisenhower’s concern over the threat posed by the indefinitely scalable hydrogen bomb was palpable. The emerging advances in weapons technology resulted in a new tone of discourse. The discussion at the 257th meeting of the NSC reveals just how much had changed in Eisenhower’s thinking as a result of the advent of the hydrogen bomb and missile technology. Curious about the sustainability of the arms race, Eisenhower said that “he would like to see some social scientist brought into our security planning to study how long civilization can take these weapons developments.” While that question remained open, Eisenhower himself defined his own breaking point. Remarking on the push for more missiles and advances in the ICBM program, he said, “if the Russians can fire 1000 a day at us and we can fire 1000 a day at them, then [I] personally would want to take off for the Argentine....We can’t fight that kind of a war.”495 Eisenhower’s wry wit is apparent here, but in discussions of the thermonuclear threat, his comments become decidedly more bleak. During the meeting, Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson was asked about the assumed size of a bomb delivered by ship or submarine and “who [in the AEC] was talking about 1000 megatons?” To this, Eisenhower asked “how much force it would take to knock the globe off its axis?” The conversation continued in this vein, with Governor suggesting that scientists were “concerned only with the theoretical limit to the size of the bomb.” Dr. Willard Libby of the Atomic Energy Commission explained that there was no theoretical limit. This prompted Eisenhower to muse, “we finally will get destruction of such magnitude that you can’t talk about defense,” and went on to ask how much it would take to make the Earth radioactive. Libby returned a frank approximation: “1000 megatons would be close to the tolerance.”496

493 “Memorandum by the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (Cutler) to the Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (Strauss),” 10 September 1953, FRUS, 1952- 1954, National Security Affairs, volume II, part 2, Document 105. 494 Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 524. 495 “257th Meeting of the NSC, 5 August 1955.” Eisenhower, Dwight D. Papers as President, 1953-61 (Ann Whitman File), NSC Series, Box 6, DDE. 496 It is interesting to note the conflict between Libby’s lethal limit of 1000 megatons and the assumptions of the 1955 NESC study which assumed that the Soviets would be able to deliver 600 megatons and the United States would respond with 9,000 megatons—presumably irradiating the Earth nearly ten times over. This pales in comparison to the 1956 study in which the combined megatonnage exchanged was a conspicuously 165 Eisenhower’s closing remarks on the subject are poignant, not only for the blunt summation of the problem with swelling nuclear weapons arsenals, but also for revealing the president’s keen comprehension of the impending nuclear stalemate predicted by the Killian Report and eventually described by the NESC:

We [will] soon get so far along in these scientific things that we get to the point where no one can win. Then there [will] be no use in talking much more. All life [will] lose its meaning. But maybe we’re not that badly off yet, so lets go on. 497

This statement embodies the whole of the Cold War dilemma, the cognitive dissonance created by a situation in which war must never be fought, but in which nations must be willing to fight, nevertheless. Richard Neustadt and Graham Allison later articulated this in the afterword to Robert Kennedy’s 1968 memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. “In a world of mutual superiority, neither nation can win a nuclear war, but each must be willing to risk losing.[...]In order to be able to preserve certain values, the leaders must be willing not to choose destruction, but nonetheless to choose the risk of destruction.”498 It was a race for weapons that could end civilization and (with perhaps only 1000 megatons, according to Libby) all life on Earth, and yet it was a race eagerly undertaken in the name of defense and deterrence. We’re not that badly off yet, so let’s go on. And so they did.

A Human Limit: NESC at the End of the Eisenhower Years

Eisenhower began 1956 with a newfound sense of the severity of nuclear war and its destructive effects on society and civilization. On 23 January 1956 he entered in his diary a personal

precise 16,247 megatons. [National Archives, Record Group 273. Records of the National Security Council, box 84, 442nd Meeting of the National Security Council, April 26, 1960] 497 “257th Meeting of the NSC, 5 August 1955” 498 Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1968), 115. 166 summary of the 1955 NESC report.499 This appears to be the only currently declassified version of the assumptions of the report, but even in this brief catalog of hypothetical horrors, it is clear that a transition to the Killian Report’s “Period IV” was already well underway. Eisenhower wrote that Lt. General Harold L. George (USAF, retired) presented the findings of the subcommittee which were based on two sets of assumptions about a nuclear attack in 1958. The first was that no warning of Soviet attack would be received until the DEW Line had been reached. The second offered a month of strategic warning but not the hour of the actual attack. The predictions of the first scenario are particularly grim.

Under the first case, the United States experienced practically total , which could not be restored to any kind of operative conditions under six months to a year. Members of the Federal government were wiped out and a new government had to be improvised by the States. Casualties were enormous. It was calculated that something on the order of 65% of the population would require some kind of medical care, and in most instances, no opportunity whatsoever to get it.500

This passage indicates that in only three years, casualty estimates had risen from roughly 7% to 65% of the U.S. population. Based on the 1960 census, this would account for the injury or death of more that 116 million people. That first report also outlined a scenario in which industry could not only recover quickly, but essential wartime production would actually survive intact. It is a stunning reassessment that only three years later, no usable industrial infrastructure is assumed to survive. Eisenhower also relates that the report indicated that the damage inflicted on the Soviet Union by the United States would be roughly three times greater. The president then calls the overall picture of destruction “appalling.” Of the United States and its potential for recovery, Eisenhower writes, “It would literally be a business of digging ourselves out of ashes, starting again.” This diary entry is in response to a briefing held that morning for the National Security Council on the 1955 net evaluation. The minutes of that meeting bring to light still more of Eisenhower’s sentiments on the growing threat of nuclear weapons. In the meeting, Eisenhower

499 Dwight D. Eisenhower and Robert H. Ferrell, The Eisenhower Diaries (New York: Norton, 1981), 312. 500 “Diary Entry by the President,” 23 January 1956, FRUS 1955-1957, National Security Policy, volume XIX, Document 53. 167 stated that “the whole prospect of an exchange of all-out blows with thermonuclear weapons simply staggered the human mind.” Furthermore, and in the same vein as his 1955 suggestion to involve social scientists in war planning to estimate the psychological effects of the arms race, he expressed his doubt in the ability of the human mind to “[meet] and [deal] with the kind of problems that would be created by such an exchange of blows.” Eisenhower often brought up this idea and admitted that his mind returned over and over to the simple, distilled question, “what will people stand?”501 He mused that even if the total number of megatons delivered was only one-seventh of what the NESC assumed, “this is the sort of thing the rational mind could not invite or take steps that might produce it.”502 Later in 1956, Eisenhower received the contributions of the social scientists he had hoped for. The report was published in November of 1956 under the title, Panel on the Human Effects of Nuclear Weapons Development.503 The study had been commissioned by the National Security Council in order to investigate an increasing concern that the fear of nuclear destruction on the part of the American people had grown so acute that it was having a negative impact on public support for administration policy.504 The panel began with the assumption that a nuclear war would result in 50 million U.S. casualties from 90 cities with 30 to 35 million people killed. Given those figures, the report stated grimly that “national disintegration might well result.”505 The panel concluded that the sociological problem facing the nation was that “information has not become knowledge,” meaning that that factual information on nuclear weapons and war had not been effectively transformed into useful knowledge that could be translated into “constructive action.” The report described the psychological landscape after an attack as one in which “the people would, therefore, be psychologically overwhelmed by the extent of damage and casualties....”506

501 “Conference of Joint Chiefs of Staff with the President 8:30, 10 February 1956” Memorandum for the Record, 10 February 1956, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 502 “Memorandum for the Record by the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Anderson),” 23 January 1956, FRUS 1955-1957, volume XIX, National Security Policy, Document 54. 503 A Report to the President and the National Security Council by the Panel on the Human Effects of Nuclear Weapons Development, Washington D.C., 21 November 1956, US Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information, Department of Energy, [https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/16380692- 2bTLur/16380692.pdf] 504 “Memorandum for the President, from Val Peterson (FCDA Administrator)to Dwight D. Eisenhower, March 23, 1956,” FCDA Folder, Administrative Series, Whitman File, Eisenhower Library. 505 Panel on the Human Effects, 1956, 9. 506 Panel on the Human Effects, 1956, 10. 168 For Eisenhower, the results of the study were chilling. Particularly striking for him was the foundational assumption of 50 million casualties. During discussion of the report at the 312th meeting of the NSC on 7 February 1957, the president stated that if this assumption were correct, the United States would necessarily have to change its war plans and focus on only the first week of the war because, “it would all be over by that time.” He went on to say that the problem addressed by the panel “is the most serious problem which has ever faced the world.”507 Despite the casualty estimates of the report, which were unacceptably high to Eisenhower, the NESC study of 1956 painted a still darker picture. Some of the more stark assessments were contained in the estimates of the Federal Civil Defense Administration, which concluded that the results of a Soviet surprise attack would find “the national Government virtually wiped out,” and “labor forces almost non-existent,” along with severely damaged transportation, manufacturing, and power generation.508 The NESC analysis showed that the transition to the Killian Report’s Period IV was at hand, but the oral presentation of that analysis at the 306th meeting of the NSC on 20 December 1956 made clear the bleak implications of fighting a war in a period of nuclear stalemate. “In 1959 a nuclear war initiated by the U.S.S.R. would result in the mutual devastation of both the United States and the U.S.S.R., and neither side could expect to destroy the nuclear capability of the other or to be able to defend itself adequately against nuclear attack.”509 The NESC estimated that the Soviet Union could launch an attack in 1959 that could “kill approximately 40% of the U.S. population, seriously injure another 13%, and disrupt the political, social, and economic structure of the United States.” If, however, the United States failed to prepare to fight such a war, the outcome would prove to be even more dire, resulting in the defeat of the United States and the ascendance of the Soviet Union in a single decisive blow. “If the United States should fail to maintain adequate alert nuclear forces that cannot be destroyed by surprise attack, the U.S.S.R. by nuclear attack on the continental United States will emerge as the dominant world power in 24 hours.” If Eisenhower had not already reached the conclusion, this report must have surely made him completely aware of the new reality of war in an era of stalemate: nuclear war—independent of

507 “Memorandum of Discussion at the 312th Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, February 7, 1957,” 7 February 1957, FRUS 1955-1957, National Security Policy, volume XIX. Document 108. 508 Actions and Results Under Conditions of “Strategic Surprise”, United States Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman’s Staff Group, Department of Defense, 1956, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 509 “Memorandum of Discussion at the 306th Meeting of the National Security Council,” Washington, 20 December 1956. Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, NSC Records. Top Secret. 169 any gambit, tactic, or strategy—would result in the same unacceptable destruction to the United States in victory or defeat. He returned to that pensive refrain that had preoccupied his thinking on the matter. “What will people stand?” When the oral presentation had finished, Eisenhower said that, “considering the magnitude and gravity of the problems covered in the Net Evaluation study, we come to the point of asking how much can or will the United States stand.[...] How much destruction [can] the United States and its people absorb and survive?” The next year’s NESC report analyzed four scenarios for a nuclear exchange in 1960: 1) a surprise attack with mixed civilian/military targets and low defense effectiveness, 2) a surprise attack with mixed civilian/military targets and high defense effectiveness, 3) a surprise attack on only military targets, and 4) an attack on mixed targets during full alert. In the worst of these cases (the fourth scenario under full alert), casualties rose to 95 million dead and 12 million injured—roughly 60% of the population of the United States. Though it was true that previous NESC assessments had presented a dim view of the post-attack United States, the 1957 report went so far as to describe a scenario that fundamentally challenged the idea that the United States could survive a nuclear war intact under any circumstances. In addition to the growing casualty figures, the report described the state of government control after a nuclear attack as, “virtually wiped out. President and legal successors killed. Few Congressmen remaining. 18 State Governments destroyed.” In the oral presentation of the report, General Gerald C. Thomas, the director of the NESC, summed up the state of affairs after such a decapitating strike. “Military and civilian leadership of the U.S. at the Seat of Government would be virtually wiped out.”510 The estimation of support for survivors is equally grim. “Post-attack stocks of processed foods would have been exhausted by survivors by D+21 [21 days after the attack].” The report also addressed the effective loss of 88% of U.S. industrial infrastructure and noted that the national recovery would be in the balance.511 Perhaps Eisenhower had come to expect this tone from the NESC presentations, as the memorandum of discussion of the meeting fails to register the personal reaction to these growing estimates of death and destruction that had been common for Eisenhower in previous meetings on the topic. This is not to say that he had become jaded to the descriptions of carnage or that he was

510 “Memorandum of Discussion at the 344th Meeting of the National Security Council, Wednesday, November 12, 1957,” 12 November 1957, FRUS 1955-1957, National Security Policy, volume XIX, Document 162. 511 “Summary and Conclusions,” 1957 Report of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, National Security Council, 15 November 1957, Top Secret, excised copy. Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 170 no longer preoccupied with questions of survival and mass destruction. The prior week, on 7 November 1957, Eisenhower had been presented with the results of the so-called Gaither Report. This study, titled Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age, had been prepared by the Security Resources Panel of the Science Advisory Committee and had originally been intended as an analysis of various defensive measures to protect the civilian population in the event of nuclear war.512 The report offered further support to what the NESC had already determined—that 1959 or 1960 would be a critical point in the nuclear balance beyond which the Soviet Union may attain the ability to attack a defenseless United States with a of intercontinental ballistic missiles. It did not help to soften the overall reception of this analysis that the Soviet Union had successfully launched Sputnik 2 only four days earlier (a successful follow-up to Sputnik 1 the previous month). The former Defense Secretary Robert Lovett recalled that reading the report was like “looking into the abyss and seeing Hell at the bottom.”513 Eisenhower had specifically requested that the panel address the question of what course of action should be taken in the event of nuclear war. Jerome Wiesner, future chair of the President’s Science Advisory Committee under John F. Kennedy and one of the authors of the Gaither Report, was present in the meeting that day and later recalled that Eisenhower realized he had asked the wrong question of the panel. Rather than determining what to do in the event of a nuclear war, Eisenhower said, “You can’t have this kind of war. There aren’t enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the street.” Wiesner also recalled that the comment indicated “a real sea change for the president.”514 The next week, following the oral presentation of the NESC on 12 November, Eisenhower took the members of the NSC and the staff of the NESC to the Oval Office and discussed a change to the way the reports would be made. Each new NESC study would assume a different type of attack each year on a three year cycle. The reason for Eisenhower’s suggestion was his belief that there was “not a sufficient annual change in the world situation to modify materially the results of the evaluation.”515 It was, in other words, always the same bad news. The 1958 NESC report followed this new directive and assessed a single attack scenario defined as “an initial surprise attack, based on a U.S.S.R. decision to give first priority to damage to

512 Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age, United States President’s Science Advisory Committee, Security Resources Panel, 1957/ Digital National Security Archive, the George Washington University. 513 Albert Wohlestetter, “Rivals but No Race,” Foreign Policy, Fall 1974, 85. 514 Gregg Herken, Counsels of War (New York: Knopf, 1985), 116. 515 “The 1958 Net Evaluation [Includes Enclosures],” Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, 8 November 1957, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 171 the Continental United States.”516 This “strategic surprise” resulted in the usual enumeration of nuclear horrors that had become common to each of the NESC studies. The collapse of the national government, widespread famine in the Northeast, a “lethal blanket of radiation which covered at its maximum one-half of the nation,” and 50 million dead within a year.517 In fact, certain elements of the reports had become so repetitious, that a section was added to the summary titled “Recurrent Conclusions.” This reiterates that in each report since 1955, it has been found that “a nuclear general war, initiated by the U.S.S.R., would result in devastation of both the United States and the U.S.S.R..”518 While the 1958 report indicates that both the United States and the U.S.S.R. would likely survive as nations, the rapid depopulation and destruction of industrial infrastructure would leave them in a virtual pre-industrial state for years. At the presentation of the report at the 387th meeting of the NSC, the president offered his thoughts on this annual annihilation of the Soviet Union. Eisenhower recalled recent history in which the military planners had “no more than 70 targets in the Soviet Union” and he believed that the destruction of these 70 targets would be sufficient to economically and militarily paralyze the Soviet Union. He compared this to the current formulation in which every city with a population over 25,000 was to be destroyed. Eisenhower stated that the ultimate goal of U.S. military action after the initiation of hostilities should be to “destroy the will of the Soviet Union to fight.” If, as outlined in the report, that could be accomplished in the first thirty hours of the exchange by inducing massive civilian casualties, what would be the point of continuing to bombard military installations? “One could not go on to argue that we must require 100 per cent pulverization of the Soviet Union,” Eisenhower said. “There is obviously a limit—a human limit—to the devastation which human beings can endure.” 519 Also in attendance at the presentation to the NSC was the Director of Policy Planning, Gerard C. Smith, who penned a memo to Under Secretary of State the following week which called sharply into question the morality of the type of war outlined in the NESC report. “Leaving aside the morality of this type of general destruction of the Soviet Union, I have serious doubts as to the morality of a retaliation against the Soviet Union which would have serious effects

516 “The 1958 Net Evaluation,” 3. 517 “1958 Report of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, National Security Council.” 10 November 1958, Digital National Security Archive, George Washington University. 518 “1958 Report on Net Evaluation,” 26. 519 “387th Meeting of the NSC, 20 November 1958.” Eisenhower, Dwight D. Papers as President, 1953-61 (Ann Whitman File), NSC Series, Box 10, DDE. 172 on non-belligerent nations.” He went on to reflect Eisenhower’s sentiments on the ballooning number of essential targets. “We used to be advised that a doctrine of ‘restraint’ governed our strategic bombing operations. It is difficult to see any fruits of any such doctrine in this briefing.”520 Eisenhower seemed to harbor similar misgivings about the direction of U.S. retaliatory doctrine. Seeking a means of paralyzing the Soviet Union and sapping it of its will to fight in minimal time and with minimal (or at least without overkill), he called for a review of retaliatory plans and an appraisal of the relative merits of “(1) Primarily a military target system, or (2) an optimum mix of a combined military-urban industrial target system.” This reassessment would eventually lead to the flexibility of the Single Integrated Operations Plan in 1960—a war plan that would survive with annual revisions for more than four decades.521 The 1959 NESC report was the last to be presented to Eisenhower while in office. Delayed by the addition of the study of “optimum mix” targeting requested by the president the previous year, it was presented on 28 April 1960 at the 442nd meeting of the NSC. The study again assumed a Soviet surprise attack, but added a 48 hour “strategic warning.” In the final report it is assumed that this warning would allow the federal government to relocate safely to emergency sites and succeeded in preserving almost all of the state governments.522 Eisenhower questioned whether such a relocation could be undertaken without raising public awareness of an impending war. The president suggested that “insofar as possible the preparations might be made to appear part of a four-day exercise.”523 The following month, the assumption that the government could be successfully evacuated was tested through a unique and secretive feature of Operation Alert 1960—the ongoing series of national public air raid drills discussed elsewhere in this work. The results of this curious exercise cast serious doubt on the survivability of the government. This was the occasion of an incident already mentioned in Chapter Two, and involved a last- minute change in the location of the 443rd meeting of the National Security Council that seems to have been initiated by the president himself. The meeting was moved at the last possible moment from the Cabinet Room of the White House to the remote emergency operations bunker at Mount

520 “Memorandum from Smith to Herter,” Record Group 59, Records of the Department of State, Policy Planning Staff Records, 1957-1961, box 205, S/P Chron, 1957-59. 521 “387th Meeting of the NSC.” 522 “Summary and Conclusions,” 1959 Report of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, National Security Council, Top Secret, excised copy, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 523 “Memorandum of Discussion at the 442d Meeting of the National Security Council,” 28 April 1960, FRUS 1958-1960, National Security Policy; Arms Control and Disarmament, volume III, Document 97. 173 Weather. Members of the National Security Council began receiving telephone calls to make them aware of the change in venue at 7:20 a.m. Disoriented and confused by the change, the results were grim. The record of the discussions of the NSC at the 443rd meeting enumerated the ensuing confusion. National Security Advisor Gordon Gray reported that General Twining, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been “left in Washington.” Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates and Acting Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon had been so surprised by the call that they had been unable to obtain official government transportation to the site of the evacuation helicopters. Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA was able to obtain official transportation at the last minute but it “broke down in the first hundred yards.” Secretary of Defense Gates arrived at the evacuation site after presumably using a taxi or personal vehicle only to discover that he had forgotten his identification. The Marines guarding the location refused to let him through the gates to board the helicopter.524 The NESC report of 1959/60 may have painted an overly-optimistic assessment of the ability to evacuate the national government of the United States, but it also clinically and candidly depicted what sort of nation might be left for those surviving leaders to govern. The section detailing results of the three nuclear weapons effects (blast, heat, and radiation), described a Continental United States in which blast damage has opened windows, walls, and roofs in the dwellings of 30% of the pre-attack population. Fires quickly engulf 150,000 square miles of the continent, most of these former urban areas. The land on which 28% of the pre-attack population resided is consumed. Radiation effects are described succinctly: “A lethal blanket of radiation which, at its maximum, affected over one-half the land area of the nation.” Nearing the end of his presidency, and having been exposed to studies on the environmental and physiological effects of nuclear war and fallout for the prior eight years, Eisenhower mentioned in the meeting that it seemed to him that the estimate of the final effects of fallout were too low. He asked his science advisor, George Kistiakowsky, to comment on the matter. Kistiakowsky felt that real estimates of fallout remained too much the subject of variables and it was dependent on where and how the explosions took place. Injecting a dose of proportion and perhaps his own brand of common sense, Eisenhower reminded the meeting that fallout from a single Soviet or U.S. nuclear test was quickly measurable

524 “Discussion at the 443rd Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, May 5, 1960,” 5 May 1960, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 174 globally. The study being presented assumed the creation of 1000 times the fallout produced by all the nuclear tests up to the present within just a few hours. Kistiakowsky mentioned that the NESC presentation may have dealt with the short term effects of fallout, but had not described the long- term effects. Eisenhower added that “Scientific reports seem to indicate that long-term fallout effects would be serious.” John McCone, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, said that information developed by the AEC showed that, while fallout effects were undoubtedly serious, the situation would not be as bad as that portrayed in Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, though after “5000 megatons of nuclear weapons have been exploded, it no longer matters what target was hit because a lethal blanket of fallout will be produced regardless of the target.”525 Digesting this information, Eisenhower stated that a nuclear exchange of the kind they were speaking of “might put so much fallout in the atmosphere that no one would want to live in the Northern Hemisphere.” Kistiakowsky offered a measure of cold comfort. “I do not believe that such a war would make the Northern Hemisphere uninhabitable unless there were more nuclear explosions than those assumed in the Net Evaluation Study.[...] Though the Northern Hemisphere would be a less pleasant place to live.” “I feel sure of that conclusion,” Eisenhower said.

Not Just Tragic, But Preposterous

As Eisenhower stared down the possibility of nuclear war during his presidency, he underwent a slow but subtle shift in his thinking on the survivability of nuclear war—not on a personal or individual basis, but on a national level. By the end of his administration he had moved from understanding nuclear war as a destructive—though ultimately winnable—course of action, to one which could cause irreparable harm to the United States as a nation and threaten its ultimate survival, and finally to the understanding that such a war threatened the survival of life on Earth. In the early days of the NESC studies, victory through superior numbers seemed possible. Before a more robust understanding of the effects of radiation and fallout reached Eisenhower’s

525 Andrew Bartlett, “Nuclear Warfare in the Movies,” Anthropoetics 10, no. 1. Spring/Summer 2004. Nevil Shute’s On the Beach was published in 1957 and made into a film by Stanley Kramer released on 17 December 1959. Both the book and film depict a world in which radioactive fallout from a nuclear war has caused mass extinction in the Northern Hemisphere and the effect is slowly drifting south. There was no longer any way to assert the relative innocuousness of radioactive fallout, but the U.S. government did openly complain of the film’s inaccuracy, stating that there was no threat of extinction because there were not (yet) enough weapons in the arsenal. The Cabinet, and possibly the President, screened the film in the first week of December. 175 desk, rebuilding seemed a natural extension of victory and life after the war seemed at least marginally livable. This notion was brief and transitory. Increasingly the reports of the NESC described two nuclear powers in parity, each capable of exacting a terrible price from the other for initiating a nuclear war. Eisenhower’s entire concept of a winnable nuclear war began to falter, and the idea of deterrence through mutual suicide became ever more absurd. No rational political or military actor could engage in a war that would guarantee national ruin. But it was in this very assumption that Eisenhower, a man with so much experience in wartime, saw the inherent instability of the suicidal stalemate. It would require only one side to initiate the destruction of both. He had seen leaders of unstable character, cornered in unwinnable positions, choose to fight nonetheless. In 1956, in a letter to , Eisenhower explained that he did not share Churchill’s view of the unlikelihood of nuclear war.

I do not fully share your conclusion that an end to nuclear war will come about because of a realization on both sides that by using this weapon an unconscionable degree of death and destruction would result....You will remember that in 1945 there was no possible excuse, once we had reached the Rhine in late ‘44, for Hitler to continue the war, yet his insane determination to rule or ruin brought additional and completely unnecessary destruction to his country; brought about its division between East and West and his own ignominious death.526

Eisenhower had come into the presidency with a hesitancy about nuclear war born of his own wartime experience, but an understanding of the usefulness of nuclear weapons rooted in that same experience. During a news conference on 16 March 1955, Eisenhower was asked about the potential use of nuclear weapons in a war in . He responded: “I see no reason why they shouldn’t be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else.”527

526 “President Eisenhower Does Not Share the British Belief That Nuclear War Will Never Come Because of the Destruction and Death That Would Result,” Letter from Dwight Eisenhower to Winston Churchill, 27 April 1956, Executive Office of the President, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 527 “President’s News Conference,” 16 March 1955, Q. Charles S. von Fremd, CBS News to the President, The American Presidency Project, document 10434. 176 Two and a half years later, at the 1956 Republican National Convention, Eisenhower’s words indicated a profoundly changed way of understanding nuclear war. “We are in the era of the thermo-nuclear bomb that can obliterate cities and can be delivered across continents. With such weapons, war has become, not just tragic, but preposterous. With such weapons, there can be no victory for anyone. Plainly, the objective now must be to see that such a war does not occur at all.”528

11 Copies Destroyed: Kennedy’s First NESC Briefing

On Thursday, 20 July 1961, President John F. Kennedy arrived in the Oval Office at 9:50 a.m. in preparation for a National Security Council meeting.529 It would be his second such meeting in two days and third in a week as the administration sought to deal with the ongoing Berlin Crisis and escalating tensions with the Soviet Union. This was the first time that the new president had found himself in a situation that might well lead to a nuclear showdown with the Soviets and discussions in the NSC meetings throughout July were tense, illustrating the increasing gravity of the situation. By the beginning of July, the potential for nuclear disaster over Berlin had already become apparent. In a memo from Deputy National Security Advisor Carl Kaysen to National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, Kaysen expressed concern that after requesting military plans in connection with Berlin, the Joint Chiefs offered a plan for “general war” that was essentially a restatement of SIOP-62—a “one shot response with all our nuclear forces”—without a nuanced response specific to the Berlin situation.530 As far as the Joint Chiefs were concerned, an outbreak of hostilities in Berlin would, according to plan, lead to all-out nuclear war. In the NSC meeting of 13 July, the possibility of declaring a state of national emergency was discussed so that military reserves might be called up to bring additional force to bear in Berlin.531

528 Dwight D. Eisenhower, Address at the Cow Palace on accepting the nomination of the Republican National Convention, 23 August 1956, The American Presidency Project, document 0583. 529 “President’s Daily Schedule, 20 July 1961,” Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, Personal Secretary’s Files, Schedules, President’s daily, January 1961-August 1962, John F Kennedy Presidential Library. 530 “Military Response in Berlin Could Be All-Out Nuclear as Envisioned in SIOP 62,” memorandum from Carl Kaysen to McGeorge Bundy, 3 July 1961, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 531 “Memorandum of Discussion in the National Security Council on July 13, 1961—Berlin,” 24 July 1961, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 177 Secretary of State Dean Rusk recommended against this, citing his fear that it might have the “dangerous sound of mobilization.”532 In the still (as of 2018) heavily redacted minutes of the 488th meeting of the NSC on 19 July, there was a general agreement among attendees that “taxes should be increased in order to give the American public a feeling of participating in the crisis.”533 The president then called for four additional Army divisions and two additional Marine divisions that would be ready for rapid deployment to Europe in the event of a change in the Berlin situation.534 The situation was worsening, and a military confrontation over Berlin might well push the world over the brink. It was in this atmosphere of crisis that President Kennedy received his first NESC briefing at 10:00 a.m. on 20 July 1961. The 489th meeting of the NSC took place in the Cabinet Room of the White House and was attended by more than 40 people.535 The scenario examined was similar to prior NESC studies—to determine the damage inflicted on the United States and Soviet Union after a surprise attack by the Soviets in late 1963. The NESC calculated results for three “weights” of attack—light, medium, and heavy.536 The report begins with a kind of disclaimer present in previous years indicating that the conclusions rest on many assumptions, but those assumptions were based on the best available data and though “no individual case can be defended as unimpeachable,” the results of the study are within realistic limits. With this said, the introduction to the report also states that “the scope and intensity of destruction and the shattering of the established political, military, and economic

532 In fact, Kennedy’s speech announcing an increase in armed forces on 25 July did sound to Khrushchev like mobilization. In a meeting during a Black Sea vacation with John Jay McCloy, the US High Commissioner of Germany, Khrushchev let his concerns be known. McCloy stated that the Soviet Premier was “really mad on Thursday after digesting President’s speech.” Khrushchev evidently felt that an escalation in hostilities would mean war and that war was “bound to be thermonuclear.” John Jay McCloy, John McCloy Recounts Discussion with Khrushchev on the Soviet Position on Berlin, Diplomatic telegram, National Security Council Office of the Executive Secretary, 29 July 1961, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 533 “Memoranda of Minutes of the National Security Council, July 20, 1961,” 20 July 1961, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. https://login.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1679056980?accountid=484 0. 534 “National Security Council Meeting, July 19, 1961,” 19 July 1961, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 535 “President’s Daily Schedule, 20 July 1961.” Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. President’s Office Files. Personal Secretary’s Files. Schedules, President’s daily, January 1961-August 1962, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. 536 “Summary and Conclusions,” 1961 Report of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, National Security Council, Top Secret, excised copy, 1961, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 178 structure resulting from such an exchange would be so vast as to practically defy accurate assessment.” This was Kennedy’s introduction to the work of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee of the NSC. In previous years, the “Summary and Conclusions” document, which distilled the much longer and more comprehensive complete report, used specific numbers in discussing damage estimates. It is notable that in the 1961 presentation, the summary of the effect of the Soviet attack on the continental United States uses loose numbers and broad generalizations, perhaps due to the caveat in the introduction that the damage would be too vast to allow for accurate assessment. “Tens of millions of Americans were killed outright, millions more died in subsequent weeks. The framework of the federal and of many state governments was shattered. Military forces in CONUS were in large measure destroyed.” In further sections, the report remarks that “the resultant damage and destruction was of such a magnitude that the survival of the nation could be in jeopardy.” One intriguing redaction which invites speculation as to just how calamitous these hypothetical nuclear wars had become can be found in the summary of the “National Appraisal” section. Paragraph 42 states: “At least a nucleus of essential elements of recovery emerged following the light and medium attacks to permit the nation to survive....” Paragraph 43, however, begins: “The heavy attack was so utterly—” and the rest of the paragraph is redacted. One might imagine that the heavy attack put an end to any hope that the “essential nucleus” would or could survive. The 1961 NESC report once again describes an unwinnable nuclear war that, if fought, could potentially result in national annihilation. The NESC had come to this conclusion since at least 1957. From the beginning of the studies, megatons and megadeaths had risen and surviving infrastructure and assets had declined. The complete 1961 report remains classified as of 2018, but there is reason to believe that the oral presentation to Kennedy that day in July contained new elements and analysis that moved the narrative of nuclear war beyond the destruction of the United States, and into the realm of the globally apocalyptic. In his memoir, As I Saw It, Secretary of State Dean Rusk makes reference to the 20 July meeting. In describing it, he states that “adverse effects [of a nuclear war described by the report] included serious climatic change; even in 1961, long before Carl Sagan’s nuclear winter thesis, we knew that neither superpower could tolerate the effects of nuclear weapons.”537 A discussion of this effect is nowhere to be found in the “Summary and Conclusions” document, but could have been part of the oral briefing. Rusk makes reference to the well known 1983 TTAPS article (discussed

537 Dean Rusk, Richard Rusk, and Daniel S. Papp, As I Saw It (New York: Norton, 1990), 246. 179 previously in this work), that investigated the possibility that a multitude of nuclear weapon detonations could lower the global temperature.538 This question had been raised prior to 1961 during the first thermonuclear tests in the Pacific and subsequently in an edited volume titled The Effects of Nuclear Weapons in 1957, though both of these early studies determined that there would be no such effect.539 It was not until 1966 that a study published by the RAND Corporation indicated that such climatic change might be possible.540 This would mean that the 1961 NESC report contained some freshly frightening revelations about weapons effects—not only an admission of the possibility of global due to nuclear war, but some kind of quantified description of it. Such an assessment would have been new information to most people in the meeting that day, and certainly to Kennedy who had not yet received such a briefing. Dean Rusk describes the meeting in his memoir:

The first [briefing]—on the effects of nuclear war—came shortly after our assuming office. That lengthy briefing was an awesome experience. Long aware of the power of nuclear weapons, I was surprised nonetheless by the magnitude of destruction that a full-scale nuclear war would bring. Every aspect of life would be affected.[...] To see it all laid out vividly confirmed Khrushchev’s warning ‘In the event of a nuclear war, the living would envy the dead.’541

Whatever new revelations the oral presentation of the NESC might have held, or whatever new horrors it might have postulated, we may likely never completely know, despite ongoing efforts at declassification by scholars. This is because, in a somewhat unusual step, it appears that all copies of the oral presentation were collected and destroyed after the meeting. A “Certificate of Destruction” signed by the Records Management Officer of the NSC, James B. Russell, reads

538 R. P. Turco; O. B. Toon; T. P. Ackerman; J. B. Pollack & Carl Sagan, “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions,” Science, 222 (4630): 1283–92. 539 N.M. Lulejian, Effects of Superweapons upon the Climate of the World: A Preliminary Study, Directorate of Nuclear Applications, Air Research and Development Command, Baltimore, Maryland, 1952, Office of Scientific and Technical Information, Department of Energy, [https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/16365183.../16365183/]; Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, “Nuclear Bombs and the Weather,” The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. (Washington: US Dept. of Defense, 1977), 69 - 71. 540 E.S. Batten, The Effects of Nuclear War on the Weather and Climate (Santa : Rand Corporation, 1966), [https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_memoranda/2008/RM4989.pdf] 541 Rusk, As I Saw It, 246. 180 simply: “Oral Presentation of the 1961 Net Evaluation. Confidential listing of subjects covered and individuals. 11 copies Destroyed.”542 No surviving copies of this document have surfaced.543 It is useful here to take a moment to discuss the destruction of the oral report of the NESC as a function of the way Kennedy viewed the importance of the material presented and as a reaction to his first exposure to the enumerated horrors of the Net Evaluation. Though it is unusual for all existing copies of such a document to be destroyed, there is a possible explanation when the NESC briefing is viewed in the context of Kennedy’s evolving concerns over confidential documents and a recent reassessment of document secrecy after leaks of information regarding planning in Berlin. In June, Kennedy had tasked former Secretary of State Dean Acheson with drawing up a report on the evolving situation in Berlin and possible policy options. It was completed on 27 June 1961 and presented at the NSC meeting on 29 June. Prior to the meeting, McGeorge Bundy sent a memo to Dean Rusk at the Department of State reminding the secretary of the sensitivity of Acheson’s report. “In accordance with the president’s wishes, the circulation of the attached report has been strictly limited to those individuals having immediate action assignments connected herewith.”544 The president’s wishes were not respected. At the NSC meeting the next day, proceedings began with a discussion of the security control of highly sensitive documents. This discussion was brought on by Kennedy’s “great concern about leaks of information which had already occurred with respect to Berlin planning,” and he “expressed his displeasure at the number of copies of the Acheson Report in circulation.” Kennedy went on to specify that his interest in document security was narrow in scope. He wanted to “make it clear that he was speaking not of ordinary documents relating to ordinary problems, but to such unusually sensitive papers.”545 Unsatisfied with the state of confidentiality, Kennedy asked that all copies of the Acheson Report be recalled immediately. General Maxwell Taylor was given an exception and allowed to keep the report to study over the weekend, after which it would be hand

542 “Certificate of Destruction, Oral Presentation of the 1961 Net Evaluation,” Joseph B. Russell, 24 July 1961, Papers of John F. Kennedy. National Security Files. Charles Johnson Box 467. Folder: National Security Council: Net Evaluation Subcommittee. John F Kennedy Presidential Library. 543 During a search for this document at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, archivists confirmed that the complete destruction of all copies of such a document does indeed appear to be unusual. 544 “Restrictions on the Use of the Attached Report,” memorandum from Bundy to Rusk, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 545 “Memorandum of the Discussion at NSC Meeting 29 June 1961,” Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 181 carried to the White House and delivered directly to the Executive Secretary of the NSC, Smith.546 Only three weeks later, Kennedy was confronted with potentially devastating revelations in the NESC briefing. Fearing a leak of whatever new information the report held, and with the recent precedent of the Acheson Report to undermine his confidence in the ability of officials to keep a lid on secret documents, the White House ordered the destruction of the oral report. One thing can be deduced with some degree of certainty. Whatever shook Kennedy went beyond the annually recurring casualty estimates and the expectations of destruction. Those figures can be found in the “Summary and Conclusions” document which, though redacted throughout, primarily omits information on force strength and does not shy away from magnitudes of devastation. At any rate, it was not recalled for destruction. Along with the possibility of a nuclear winter, any revelations about newfound impacts of nuclear war that may have been presented to Kennedy and the others that day must remain speculation. Nevertheless, the effect the meeting had on the president appears to have been profound. Dean Rusk describes Kennedy’s private response to the meeting in a quote which has been attributed to the president many times over the years. “After the briefing ended, Kennedy led me back to the Oval Office. As we walked through the door, he had a strange look on his face. He turned to me and said, ‘And we call ourselves the human race.’”547 Another account of the meeting appeared as part of an article, “The Great Fall-out Shelter Panic” by Fletcher Knebel in the 5 December 1961 issue of LOOK.548 Knebel was a notable political writer and political novelist, and the account reads as such—with narrative and color. He describes the scene in the Cabinet room as the NSC briefing unfolds, the president’s pained reactions and the following discussions. In truth,. enough of the details of the article are at odds with the established format of a NESC briefing that one might not even make the connection between Knebel’s account of a meeting and the 489th meeting of the National Security Council—except for the fact that McGeorge Bundy makes the connection for us. In a stern and nearly breathless refutation of the soon-to-be-published article, Bundy clearly links the NESC meeting with Knebel’s article on a point by point basis. “Here is a list of the people who attended the meeting of the National Security

546 “Memorandum for General Taylor, Acheson Report on Berlin,” 30 June 1961, Office of the White House, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 547 Rusk, As I Saw It, 246-247. 548 Fletcher Knebel, “The Great Fall-out Shelter Panic,” LOOK, 5 December 1961, vol. 25, no. 25. 182 Council at which the Net Evaluation Subcommittee reported.[...] This account itself [Knebel’s article] is riddled with errors.”549 With the link between the description of the meeting in LOOK and the 489th meeting of the NSC firmly established, the question becomes simply what weight to give Knebel’s account in understanding the impact that this first NESC report of the Kennedy administration had on the new president. Note that Fletcher Knebel was not at the briefing and had not been invited, so any description of the meeting was necessarily second-hand with all of the problematic issues that entails. With that said, perhaps the account can offer some insight into why Kennedy seemed so vexed after the meeting to offer the famous reflection to Dean Rusk, or why the copies of the oral presentation were collected and destroyed. Knebel begins by stating that Kennedy had summoned “top officials, including Vice- President Lyndon B. Johnson and General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to hear four scientists describe the probable face of America after a massive Russian hydrogen bomb attack.” McGeorge Bundy would have us know in points 2 and 3 of his memo that Kennedy did not “summon top officials—they came in regular fashion to an NSC meeting” and that the briefing “was not handled by four scientists but by a group of military officers under the direction of Lt. General Hickey.” This group would have been the regular staff of the NESC. The article continues:

One participant watched the faces of Kennedy and Johnson as the details unfolded—great cities in rubble, millions upon millions dead, vast fires scorching crops and forests, poisonous fall-out sifting down over tens of thousands of square miles. President Kennedy, realizing that a sudden attack might kill his own two small children along with millions of others, sat as though transfixed. Johnson, whose face reflects emotions like a mirror, was the picture of a man in torture.

The specific descriptions of destruction are certainly in keeping with the content of the 1961 NESC report and match what conclusions are available. Bundy does not dispute the imagery of

549 “Memorandum for the President, 21 November 1961,” Bundy to the President, John F. Kennedy Library, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, National Security Files, Meetings and Memoranda, National Security Council meetings, 1961: No. 489, 20 July 1961, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

183 great cities in rubble or the assessment that there would be millions upon millions dead or even the or even the destructive power of mass fires and fallout. Nor, it is interesting to note, does he defend Lyndon Johnson against the assertion that he “was the picture of a man in torture.” Knebel’s characterization of the president, however, is roundly refuted.

I myself watched the president during the meeting and did not feel that he ‘sat as though transfixed,’ or showed ‘great stress.’ I do not recall that he made any of the remarks attributed to him. How anyone could know what his internal thoughts about his family were during such a meeting, I do not know.

The Knebel article is an interesting description of a meeting that clearly had an effect on the new president but is, nonetheless, shrouded in a layer of secrecy because of the destruction of the oral presentation.550 One would normally turn to the memorandum of discussions at the meeting, though the normal memorandum does not exist. In its place is an abbreviated document titled “Notes on National Security Council Meeting, 20 July 1961.”551 This document was prepared by Colonel Howard Burris, Lyndon Johnson’s military aid.552 The single page record of the meeting has the air of having been unusually sanitized. It is simple and utilitarian and contains none of the descriptive color of Knebel’s article, nor even that of such NSC meeting records of the Eisenhower administration. It is unusually terse in tone and short

550 Bromley Smith Oral History Interview - JFK #2, 7/23/1970. Interview by D.J. O’Brien. JFK Oral History Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. 26. A 1970 oral history interview with Bromley Smith might shed some light on any “stress” Kennedy would have demonstrated in the briefing. Smith recalled that at a presentation of the net evaluation, Kennedy, who preferred reading to listening to briefings, became bored and agitated. Smith recalls: “President Kennedy started rocking in his chair. I personally was afraid he was going to leave the room. I leaned over to [McGeorge] Bundy and said, ‘Have you got anything that I can give the President to read?’ He handed me some document which I took around the table and put down in front of President Kennedy. He began to read. The tension was off. He didn’t walk out of the room.” (Note that Roswell Gilpatrick recalled that Kennedy did walk out of the room. See footnote 543). 551 “Notes on National Security Council Meeting, 20 July 1961,” McGeorge Bundy. Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, VP National Security File. National Security Council (II) [United States Military Aide to the Vice President. Notes on National Security Council Meeting, July 20, 1961 1961.] 552 James K. Galbraith and Heather A. Purcell, “Did the US Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?” American Prospect, no. 19, Fall 1994, 88-96. In a 1994 article by James Galbraith and Heather Purcell in which the secrecy surrounding the meeting is proposed to be in response to planning for a preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, the authors suggest that the abbreviated report was for Vice President Johnson who was not in attendance. The Vice President was, however, in attendance. This is made clear by McGeorge Bundy’s list of those in attendance affixed to the point-by-point refutation of the Knebel article. 184 on details. Measuring a single page, it falls well short of the length to be expected of these documents. In this only official account of the meeting, a brief and unremarkable exchange is recorded between Kennedy and General Hickey about a study of damage to the Soviet Union following a preemptive attack. The president also asked about the overall trend of the effectiveness of Soviet attack since 1957. He then asked how long people would be required to stay in shelters after the attack and a member of the subcommittee replied that two weeks would be expected. The last paragraph of the memorandum includes the president’s direction that “no member in attendance at the meeting disclose even the subject of the meeting.” This final remark seems to reiterate Kennedy’s interest in an added layer of secrecy and security, though this official record answers no question as to what was revealed in the presentation that so shook the president. Perhaps new information, such as Rusk’s suggestion that climatological effects were discussed, or simply the weight of an enumerated and quantified description of nuclear war that could not be won and would leave the United States in ruins. Whatever the case, the 1961 Oral Presentation of the NESC remains a potentially extraordinary though elusive document.553

Stalemate: Preemption is Not Possible

Unlike the deeply secret story of the 1961 report, the first volume of the 1962 report has been declassified in total with minimal redactions. This reveals a 133-page document replete with charts, graphs, and images depicting a general nuclear war in 1965. It also contains features that were a marked departure from previous years.554

553 Roswell L. Gilpatric Oral History Interview - JFK #4, 8/12/1970. Interview by D.J. O’Brien. JFK Oral History Collection. JFKL. 117. Another recollection of the meeting can be found in an oral history interview with Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric who recalled that Kennedy was so disgusted by the meeting and bored by the poor presentation that he “got up and walked right out in the middle of it.” Gilpatric also claims that this was the last NESC presentation the administration received and they “washed them right out” cancelling the work of the subcommittee. It is likely that Gilpatric is conflating two presentations. First, NESC reports would continue into 1964. Second, it seems highly unlikely that Kennedy would simply walk out of a National Security Council meeting without the event being recorded elsewhere (With that said, in an oral history interview, Bromley Smith recalled that Kennedy almost walked out of a NESC briefing out of boredom. See footnote 540). Third, the brief memorandum of the meeting records Kennedy closing the meeting in a normal fashion. Fourth, the officer allegedly giving the presentation, Lieutenant General Samuel E. Anderson, is not listed on any of the records of the attendees of the 20 July meeting and was not a part of the NESC. 554 “1962 Report of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, National Security Council,” Volume 1, [circa 22 August 1962], Top Secret, excised copy. NARA, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Records of JCS Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, box 19, 381 Net Evaluation, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. 185 The first and most obvious was a war scenario that focused on a localized conflict in resulting in an escalation and global conflagration. All previous studies had relied on the assumption that through miscalculation or malevolent intent, the Soviet Union launched a surprise first strike on the United States. In the 1962 report, the United States responded to an invasion of South Vietnam and by the Communist North which had been encouraged and supported by the Communist bloc. Expecting a U.S. response, Soviet and Chinese forces went on heightened alert. Continued escalation in the region caused the United States to go on high alert as well and the Soviet Union launched a preemptive nuclear strike. Here, the NESC deviated again from established scenarios by analyzing a second possibility—one in which the United States launches a preemptive attack on the Soviet Union. Throughout the Eisenhower years, the NESC never entertained the idea of striking first, but it became a feature of the Kennedy administration’s thinking. Looking again at the short summary of discussions after the 1961 NESC presentation, Kennedy asked if “there had ever been made an assessment of damage results to the U.S.S.R. which would be incurred by a preemptive attack.” The third difference from prior NESC reports—at least the most recent—was that the United States could fight a nuclear war and the “net balance following a general war in 1965 would favor the U.S.” This phrasing presents the idea without much fanfare or enthusiasm, and certainly does not indicate an overall posture of victory following the war, but it does present the possibility that the United States might come out ahead. Whatever subtle aspect of the wargame allowed for this slight advantage, 1963 saw it evaporate and inaugurate the full comprehension of nuclear stalemate. What stands out from the 1963 NESC report is not the scenario or hypothetical tactical options, it is the final assessment. “Neither the U.S. nor U.S.S.R. can emerge from a full nuclear exchange without suffering very severe damage and high casualties. This holds true whether the attack is initiated by the U.S. or the U.S.S.R..”555 In a memo to Kennedy in preparation for the oral

555 “1963 Report of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, National Security Council Oral Presentation, 27 August 1963,” Top Secret, excised copy. NARA, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Records of JCS Chairman Maxwell Taylor, box 25, 381 Net Evaluation, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. 186 presentation of the NESC, Bundy summarized what they were about to hear. “The fundamental conclusion is that these wars are unacceptably destructive for both sides on all assumptions.”556 Kennedy was surprised by the casualty estimates provided by the NESC, having been briefed in Omaha by Strategic Air Command in December 1962 and told that a preemptive strike would reduce U.S. casualties to only 12 million.557 The NESC, on the other hand, described a trend of increasing casualties from an estimated low of 63 million in 1964 to 134 million in 1968—a radical difference from the SAC planners and an increase in the figures from its own report of the previous year which estimated between 64.1 million and 70.1 million casualties.558 There were two reasons for this difference. The first was that the NESC assumed that the Soviet Union would target civilian populations in U.S. cities. The second was that they included in the computations the effects of “huge megaton weapons” for the first time.559 Between 1961 and the end of 1962, the Soviet Union detonated five nuclear weapons that were larger than the largest ever detonated by the United States. These “huge” weapons included the October 1961 aircraft deliverable 58 megaton device and the 24 megaton ICBM deliverable “Test 219” in December 1962.560 If the NESC study served one essential purpose in 1963, it was to make perfectly clear that a preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union was not a viable option. At the 517th meeting of the NSC where the NESC report for 1963 was given, Kennedy asked if the casualty estimates could be reduced if the United States made a preemptive strike “today with the Soviets in a low state of alert?” The question was answered by Secretary of Defense McNamara. “In the many studies I have had done for me I have not found a situation in which a preempt during a low-alert condition would

556 “Net Evaluation Subcommittee Report 1963,” memorandum from McGeorge Bundy to President Kennedy, 12 September 1963, Top Secret. NARA, Record Group 273, Records of the National Security Council, Records of NSC Representative on Internal Security, box 66, Net Evaluation Subcommittee, 1961- 64 557 “National Security Council meetings, 1963: No. 517, 12 September 1963.” Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. National Security Files. Meetings and Memoranda. National Security Council meetings, 1963: No. 517, 12 September 1963. JFKL. 558 “1962 Report of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, National Security Council,” Volume 1, [circa 22 August 1962], Top Secret, excised copy. NARA, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Records of JCS Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, box 19, 381 Net Evaluation. Table 17, p. 52. 559 “National Security Council meetings, 1963: No. 517, 12 September 1963.” Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. National Security Files. Meetings and Memoranda. National Security Council meetings, 1963: No. 517, 12 September 1963. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. 560 The largest nuclear device ever detonated by the United Sates was the 15 megaton “Castle Bravo” test on 1 March 1954. 187 be advantageous. Under no circumstances have I been able to get U.S. casualties under 30 million. In fact, I have not been able to get them down to 30 million.” “Preemption is not possible for us,” Kennedy said. “And that is a valuable conclusion growing out of an excellent report.” Because the findings of the NESC in 1963 suggested so strongly that nuclear war would ultimately mean the destruction of the United States in all instances, members of the NSC questioned whether releasing some of those findings to congress might not have some value in bringing about increased support for the administration’s policies. Secretary of State Dean Rusk suggested that if “Congress knew the conclusions presented in the report that the administration could get funds for aid and information programs which are the resources we must rely on in our effort to prevent all-out nuclear war.” McGeorge Bundy was quick to point out that whole existence of the NESC had been one of the very few government projects that had not been leaked. Kennedy agreed but felt that releasing some of the most sobering findings might have value and so the NSC decided that the NESC should be kept secret and that when the information was eventually released to Congress, it would be made to look as if it had come from another agency.

Institutional Suicide: The Last Days of the NESC

It could be said that the NESC committed a kind of institutional suicide in 1964. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the subcommittee and the Joint Chiefs deviated dramatically from the original NESC charter, stepping on departmental toes and eventually bringing down the wrath of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. The report itself is classified (as of 2018), though a summary of the tasks undertaken by the NESC in 1964 does exist in the form of a letter from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Earle Wheeler, to McGeorge Bundy. The final report fails to follow the format set out in all previous years, a meticulous quantitative evaluation of a general war between the United States and the Soviet Union or Sino-Soviet Bloc. It instead delves into issues of diplomacy, policy, and the overall disposition of forces in Europe. Rather than answer the specific questions with which it had been tasked that year, the NESC seemed to veer into areas of policy consultation and war planning. For the 1964 NESC study, the group was asked to consider three areas: “(1) The manner in which a war between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. might be initiated, (2) the factors—political, military and economic—affecting decisions at critical points in the war, particularly during the early phases of

188 hostilities, and (3) the effects on the U.S., its allies, and the U.S.S.R. of actions resulting from such decisions.”561 The introduction goes on to state that “the report’s overall purpose was to evaluate the validity and feasibility of this type of analysis as a basis for providing guidance for political-military planning....” With this, the NESC had moved into areas of war planning instead of force and damage evaluations, concentrating on “an appraisal of the suitability and adequacy of existing NATO war plans.” This placed the work of the NESC squarely in the territory of Robert McNamara’s Department of Defense. Moreover, the NESC transgressed into matters of the State Department by taking into consideration the ways that “alliance politics” hampered the military and political decision making process. It was a wildly different interpretation of the job of the subcommittee and immediately drew the ire of McNamara. According to the summary in the letter from General Wheeler, the report “underscores the risks and dilemmas to the Alliance due, in part, to the restricted flexibility of SACEUR’s [Supreme Allied Commander Europe] forces, resulting from peacetime maldeployments, uncertain reinforcement capacity, the requirements to maintain a general war posture, and logistics limitations.” Clearly the NESC report addressed problems that the Pentagon felt required greater attention than Robert McNamara had given them. It was a laundry list of issues, or, as the letter states, “a useful reminder of some unfinished tasks and current realities.” The work of the NESC was circulated in October and in response Bromley Smith sent a memo to McGeorge Bundy on 24 October 1964 that is an enumerated list of his issues with the report. It also sheds light on the fact that forces in the administration had been at work to disestablish the NESC for some time, likely urged on by McNamara. First, Smith complains that the questions to be addressed had been changed by the Joint Chiefs, then suggests that without supporting studies, the NESC report “knocks down the assumptions on which European political and military planning is currently based.” Smith also urges that a copy of the report be sent to the State Department because “the subject involves political-military NATO policy.” Having listed the transgressions of the subcommittee, Smith states: “On the basis of this report I believe we should try again to abolish this mechanism or at least turn it over to McNamara to use as he sees fit.”562 McGeorge Bundy in turn sent a somewhat more measured and diplomatic letter to General Wheeler on 26 October that addresses the deviation from expectations. “The report differs from the

561 “JCS Chairman Wheeler to McGeorge Bundy,” 15 October 1964. NARA, Record Group 273. National Security Council. Records of NSC Representative on Internal Security, box 66. 1964 Net Evaluation. 562 “Fate of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee,” 24 October 1964, memorandum from Bundy to Smith, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 189 reports of earlier years in that it does not evaluate a model war situation, and in this respect it seems to me to have given a different interpretation than usual to the directive approved by the president.” Bundy then asks that Wheeler furnish copies of the report to the secretaries of Defense and State.563 At the briefing for the report (which was itself a deviation from the norm, with President Johnson not in attendance), McNamara made his feelings clear. In an interview conducted by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University with James E. Goodby, then a member of the Policy Planning Council in the State Department, Goodby recalled that McNamara became “visibly angry” in the meeting. Goodby had participated in the preparation of the report and was sent to Europe to meet with the military leadership there. It was his feeling that McNamara reacted as he did because the NESC saw itself as an independent channel for the military to provide analysis to the White House and therefore presented a challenge to McNamara’s authority.564 In an interview with Henry Glass, assistant to the comptroller of the Defense Department, the interaction between the NESC and McNamara is clearly recounted, specifying what made McNamara so “visibly angry” and what finally brought about the dissolution of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee. “It was a dangerous thing to keep information from McNamara,” Glass recalled. “He set an example early on with the Net Evaluation subcommittee of the NSC. General Leon Johnson [Director of the NESC] told McNamara they were not working for him, and McNamara got rid of that subcommittee. McNamara did not tolerate the withholding of information.”565 McNamara became a man on a mission to abolish the NESC soon after. On 23 December 1964, he circulated a draft memo titled “Elimination of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee of the National Security Council” in which he stated that he had “for some time questioned the value of continuing the work of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee (NESC) of the National Security Council” based on his belief that the group represented a wasteful expenditure when other study groups in the Pentagon were doing better, more specific work in the area. McNamara wrote, “While the annual study program of the NESC had value and relevance in 1958, its contribution today is marginal....”566

563 McGeorge Bundy to Wheeler, 26 October 1964, Confidential. NARA, Record Group 273. National Security Council. Records of NSC Representative on Internal Security, box 66. 1964 Net Evaluation 564 “Studies by Once Top Secret Government Entity Portrayed Terrible Costs of Nuclear War.” Telephone conversation with Ambassador James Goodby, 5 June 2014, The Nuclear Vault, The National Security Archive, The George Washington University. [http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb480/] 565 Interview with Glass, Henry 10/28/1987, Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, [http://history.defense.gov/Historical-Sources/Oral-History-Transcripts/] 566 “Elimination of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee of the National Security Council,” memorandum from Robert McNamara to Secretary of State et al., 23 December 1964. NARA, Records of Department of State 190 McNamara must have been particularly eager to shut down the NESC, as a memo from Benjamin Read, the Executive Secretary for the Secretary of State, registers a certain degree of impatience. “I have received two or three calls from Secretary McNamara’s office urging action by us [Department of State] on this proposal by Secretary McNamara to abolish the Net Evaluation Subcommittee. Apparently we are the only agency which has not commented on the proposal at this time.” The next day, acting Secretary of State George W. Bell replied to McNamara’s memo and agreed that the argument for discontinuing the NESC was sound and that Department of State had no objection to the proposal.567 On 18 March 1965, President Johnson signed National Security Action Memorandum 327 and the Net Evaluation Subcommittee “having served its purpose” passed into history.568

Conclusions: A Window on a War

Through luck, judgment, wise counsel, or some optimal mix of the three, the presidents who served during the years of the NESC never had to launch an atomic attack or endure a Soviet first strike, and yet they fought many nuclear wars. Through continuity of government and evacuation exercises, the wargames and studies undertaken in the Pentagon, or the annual analysis of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, these presidents were engaged in an unrelenting virtual nuclear war that saw the United States, Soviet Union, allies, enemies, and eventually the environment destroyed in an array of apocalyptic . Over time, attitudes surrounding such a war changed, reflecting the increasingly dismal appraisals of victory, and then survivability of the individual, the nation, and the world. The Net Evaluation Subcommittee did not provide the tactics or strategies for nuclear war. That was the dominion of other groups in other departments and organizations. It did not offer solutions to the Gordian knot of nuclear policy or resolutions to the threat of nuclear war. What the NESC did was to provide a detailed account of a war that had not been fought, but nonetheless might be fought and to offer a window onto the aftermath of that war. It was a window onto a world

Participation in the Operations Coordinating Board and the National Security Council, 1947-1963, box 96, NSC 5816 567 “Discontinuance of Net Evaluation Subcommittee. Includes Related Memoranda,” United States Department of State, Office of the Secretary, 27 January 1965, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 568 “Discontinuance of the net evaluation subcommittee of the national security council. United States National,” 18 March 1965, Digital National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 191 shaken and unmoored by the nearly unimaginable scale of death and destruction. It was a window that appalled, repulsed, and often horrified those who saw the view.

192 CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

Three New Ideas

Throughout the Cold War, experiments in visualizing the realities of a nuclear-armed conflict were undertaken in a variety of ways by governments, through war planners and politicians, individuals such as filmmakers and writers, and the population as a whole through the project of incorporating the threat of nuclear war into the fabric of society, whether willingly or reluctantly. This work has examined, compared, and contrasted these three areas of Cold War study, each of which approaches the same fundamental question—what might nuclear war look like. I have attempted to integrate them into a coherent narrative of the virtualization of nuclear war throughout the Cold War era. In doing so, three contributions to the field of Cold War scholarship have emerged. The first of these is the production of an argument in support of the civil defense efforts of the 1950s and 1960s that stands as a counterpoint to the critical view held by many scholars. The second is the development of a curated list of films (and literature to a lesser extent), in the genre of what might be termed “atomic cinema” that transcends the usual Cold War filmographies and is limited to a body of material that represents aspects of nuclear war with varying degrees of fidelity, and in doing so moves beyond science fiction sensationalism. The third is a model for understanding the commonalities between each of the three pillars of this work as well as other aspects of Cold War history. As a multidisciplinary work with seemingly disparate elements, defining the means by which they relate is essential. Here I explore the interaction between the “specific” and the “general” in operation between these three areas, a dynamic which allows each to support and inform the others.

Rehabilitating Civil Defense

This work serves as a counterpoint to a body of scholarship that finds efforts in civil defense to be fruitless and even frivolous. In Stages of Emergency, Tracy C. Davis argues that the civil defense project was mere theater—either rehearsal or performance in disaster preparation.569 Dee Garrison, in Bracing for Armageddon, is glib in her treatment of civil defense, picking the low fruit of the “Bert the Turtle” jingle or the advice to men to turn down the brims of their hats to protect from

569 Tracy C. Davis, Stages of Emergency: Cold War Nuclear Civil Defense (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007). 193 the bomb’s rays.570 Kenneth D. Rose, in One Nation Underground, gleefully draws attention to some of the more eccentric advice given in the early days of the Federal Civil Defense Administration, one example being the recommendation for urban evacuees to take shelter in roadside ditches and cover themselves with tar paper until the danger of radioactive fallout had passed.571 Susan Roy is overt in her criticism of civil defense measures in Bomboozled: How the U.S. Government Misled Itself and Its People into Believing They Could Survive a Nuclear Attack, in which the author argues that the clumsy, propagandistic push for the family fallout shelter was merely the exploitation of paranoia in the service of quelling public fears.572 Collectively, these works treat the U.S. civil defense effort as a government boondoggle, worthy of ridicule and without efficacy or legitimate purpose. This work rehabilitates civil defense planning, not as a workable plan for survival (it most often was not), but at least as a sincere attempt to experiment with methods that might genuinely help communities and governments in the event of catastrophe. The dramatic clearing of Times Square during the first “Operation Alert” may not have saved any lives in the event of a Soviet thermonuclear attack on Midtown Manhattan, and it may indeed have been the most obvious kind of showmanship that rankles critics of civil defense, but the elaborate, multilevel communications, command, and control exercises that would come in later civil defense operations offered a real look into what a functioning civil defense control room might look like in a real nuclear war. In support of this idea, when it was determined at the national level that some participants in these civil defense exercises were not playing fully by the rules of the scenario, the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (successor to the Federal Civil Defense Administration), put a monitor system in place to keep the wargames—these war virtualizations—executed by the rules so that the data they yielded would remain legitimate.573 As bomb yields increased and delivery systems became more sophisticated, civil defense agencies responded by adapting their scenarios to the new realities. It was through these experiments that the federal civil defense agencies—the Federal Civil Defense Administration and those that came after—began to determine that their role would necessarily be limited and localized after the likely collapse of federal control. Finally, with ephemeral funding and spotty congressional

570 Dee Garrison, Bracing for Armageddon: Why Civil Defense Never Worked (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 13. 571 Kenneth D. Rose, One Nation Underground: The fallout Shelter in American Culture (New York: NYU Press, 2004), 31. 572 Susan Roy, Bomboozled: How the US Government Misled Itself and Its People into Believing They Could Survive a Nuclear Attack (New York: Pointed Press, 2010). 573 “1960 Annual Report,” Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, Executive Office of the President, 1960, 60, Homeland Security Digital Library, https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=34679. 194 support (not to mention the realization that the disaster of a nuclear war would far outstrip the agency’s ability to oversee any kind of recovery), U.S. civil defense embraced a dual-use stance in order to remain relevant and continue to appeal to local and state partners.574 Today, the legacy of American civil defense is risible, defined by the image of Bert the Turtle, the “Duck and Cover” campaign, and the collective memory of the family fallout shelter, but the results of civil defense efforts, as fruitless as they may have been for survival, were not the underlying project of civil defense. That project was to create scenarios in which to fight its part of an imaginary war, to find weaknesses and strengths, and improve its organizational fortitude. Civil defense at the federal level continued with this project until the circumstances of the virtual nuclear wars imposed on itself became insurmountably disastrous.

A Canon of Atomic Cinema

Atomic cinema and its sibling, atomic literature, is often viewed as a large continuum of work that is highly inclusive. A bibliography of many books that treat the subject in this way appears in Chapter 3. This list includes works that explore the spectrum of Cold and literature from the mutant monster movies of the 1950s to several serious takes on nuclear war discussed here. Of these works, Paul Brians’s Nuclear Holocausts is likely the most inclusive and the most complete compendium of Cold War-era atomic cultural artifacts, with an annotated list of more than 800 items, including novels, stories, and films. Within these, Brians identifies a subset of film and literature that addresses the issue of nuclear war and its effects with a greater degree of accuracy, but that list is vanishingly small compared to the larger bibliography. While understanding trends in culture can necessitate such an all-encompassing list, the key question of this work requires a curated selection of films and literature that represent aspects of nuclear war outside of sensationalism and science fiction. This list represents film and literature that treats elements of nuclear war centrally and with serious intent. Other Cold War genres have enjoyed this privilege over the decades. The clash of Cold War in cinema is addressed by Tony Shaw and Denise Youngblood in Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds.575 Cold War issues viewed through a British cinematic lens is a topic that also has its own filmography and is analyzed in British

574 Russell R. Dynes and E.L. Quarantelli, "The Role of Local Civil Defense in Disaster Planning," University of Delaware Disaster Research Center, Report #16, 1975, 25-26. University of Delaware Library, Museums, and Press, http://udspace.udel.edu/bitstream/handle/19716/1263/RS16.pdf 575 Tony Shaw and Denise J. Youngblood, Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2010). 195 Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda and Consensus.576 A parallel view from a Hollywood perspective can be found in Shaw’s Hollywood’s Cold War, in which a wide range of film genres are examined from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.577 The era of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunist crusade, and the entertainment industry blacklist are topics that come with their own list of canonical films, including The Red Menace (1949), High Noon (1952), The Robe (1953), On the Waterfront (1954), and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).578 Each of these films is discussed in Jeff Smith's Film Criticism, the Cold War, and the Blacklist: Reading the Hollywood Reds.579 An alternative take on this period can be found in Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture by Thomas Doherty which focuses on the role of television, delving into overtly anticommunist programs such as I Led 3 Lives, and the more subtly subversive I Love Lucy.580 Science fiction film in the Cold War (and the Cold War in science fiction) has produced the most extensive list of canonical films and scholarship on those films of any subgenre. Some of these works include, The Way to Ground Zero: The Atomic Bomb in American Science Fiction by Martha Bartter, War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination by H. Bruce Franklin, In a Dark Time: The Apocalyptic Temper in the American Novel of the Nuclear Age by Joseph Dewey, Nuclear Movies: A Critical Analysis and Filmography of International Feature Length Films Dealing with Experimentation, Aliens, Terrorism, Holocaust and Other Disaster Scenarios, 1914-1989 by Mick Broderick, Monsters in the Machine: Science Fiction Film and the Militarization of America after World War II by Steffen Hantke, and American Science Fiction and the Cold War by David Seed.581 What is missing—

576 Tony Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda and Consensus (London, UK: I.B. Tauris, 2006). 577 Tony Shaw, Hollywood's Cold War (Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007). 578 The Red Menace, directed by Robert G. Springsteen, distributed by Republic Pictures, 1 August 1949; High Noon, directed by Fred Zinnemann, distributed by United Artists, 24 July 1952; The Robe, directed by Henry Kosler, distributed by 20th Century Fox, 16 September 1953; On the Waterfront, directed by Elia Kazan, distributed by Columbia Pictures Corporation, 28 July 1954; Invasion of the Body Snatchers, directed by Don Siegel, distributed by Allied Artists Pictures, 5 February 1956. 579 Jeff Smith, Film Criticism, the Cold War, and the Blacklist: Reading the Hollywood Reds (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2014). 580 Thomas Doherty, Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 581 Martha Bartter, The Way to Ground Zero: The Atomic Bomb in American Science Fiction (New York: Greenwood, 1988); H. Bruce Franklin, War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008); Joseph Dewey, In a Dark Time: The Apocalyptic Temper in the American Novel of the Nuclear Age (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1991); Mick Broderick, Nuclear Movies: A Critical Analysis and Filmography of International Feature Length Films Dealing with Experimentation, Aliens, Terrorism, Holocaust and Other Disaster Scenarios, 1914-1989 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 1991); Steffen Hantke, Monsters in the Machine: Science Fiction Film and the Militarization of America after World War II (Jackson, 196 and what this work offers—is a canonical list of films and literature that represent aspects of nuclear war, or nuclear war generally, with a high degree of accuracy . This project is necessarily subjective, but each film presented in this work is situated in the context in which it succeeds to accurately represent an aspect of that hypothetical war.

The Interplay of the Micro and Macro

A useful architecture for seeing the interaction of the three pillars of this work and for understanding how each fills a knowledge gap for the others is a “micro/macro” model. Put another way, it could be termed the personal and the public, the specific and the general, or the individual and the body politic. While data analysis and war planning studies excelled in abstracting the business of nuclear war, with millions dead and huge swaths of the American landscape rendered uninhabitable, they failed to personalize the experience. Cultural representations filled this gap, by placing fictional characters against a backdrop rooted in the perceived realities of a nuclear war, but focusing on the individual experience. Similarly, two exercises in the live-fire nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site—“Operation Doorstep” and “Operation Cue”—created extremely personal and even intimate human spaces designed to be bombed. Houses were constructed, pantries and cupboards filled with food, living rooms fully appointed with furniture, and middle class American automobiles parked in the driveway—and yet these spaces were entirely devoid of people. In their stead were department store mannequins and film cameras set up to record their demise in a tiny nuclear attack on the floor of the Nevada desert. Despite the effort of civil defense planners to create an accurate and representative environment, this flaw in the experimental design limited the ability of an observer to connect to the implications of the destruction. Here again, cultural representations in film and literature fill in the gaps, by replacing the mannequins with characters that are more accessible stand-ins. The limited scope of the destruction in these civil defense exercises also leaves a gap in the production of knowledge. One bomb on a constructed neighborhood with no occupants can not speak to the implications of the scenario being repeated again and again over every major city in the United States. Here the large-scale analytical studies fill the gap, still divorced from the personal, the individual, the micro scale, but fully cognizant of the

Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2018); David Seed, American Science Fiction and the Cold War (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 1999). 197 bigger picture.582 Another way of understanding the micro/macro interplay is through the lens of Cold War science and technology, and specifically the science and technology most closely related to nuclear war. In this dynamic, science serves as the macro—the dispassionate body of knowledge applicable to all, excepting none. The production of this knowledge, whether resulting in new weapons designs, delivery methods, defensive measures, or understanding the effects of radiation, was wholly divorced from the individual, and yet its impact on the individual was pervasive. Nevertheless, it fell to cultural representations of war to depict those elements of nuclear weapons that were becoming increasingly understood through science. The threat from radioactive fallout became a part of the broader public understanding of nuclear weapons in the years after World War II, but that general understanding was personified in 1954 after the “Castle Bravo” nuclear test in the created a much larger than anticipated plume of fallout and contaminated the Japanese fishing vessel Daigo Fukuryū Maru (Luck Dragon Number 5), sickening the crew and creating an international incident. Cultural representations of nuclear war began to integrate the threat of radiation into their own stories, focusing on the personal and the local rather than the science of the larger issue. Alas Babylon by Pat Frank was published in 1959 and tells the story of small Florida town that has survived a nuclear war against a backdrop of a patchwork of irradiated land. The same year, the film On the Beach (based on the 1957 novel of the same name by Nevil Shute), took the radiological threat to the extreme, depicting a shroud of lethal fallout descending over the world. Still, the film focused on a group of survivors grappling with their own mortality and doom. Some of the most important films in what might be called the genre of “atomic cinema” rely on the science of nuclear war, and the power of those films is arguably derived from adherence to scientific facts, though they still focus on the struggle and suffering of individual survivors and communities. The Day After follows several independent groups of characters against a backdrop as realistic and bleak as the filmmakers could manage in an environment of network censorship. The film was the first to depict the relatively new concept of the “electromagnetic pulse”—a byproduct of a high altitude nuclear detonation that can damage the power grid—and it deals realistically with the progression of

582 Analyses of historical works addressing ‘test’ structures constructed at the Nevada Test Site is provided in Chapter 2. For general overviews of the testing at this facility and its impact, see Howard Ball, Justice Downwind: America's Atomic Testing Program in the 1950s. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Andrew G. Kirk, Doom Towns: The People and the Landscape of Atomic Testing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Sarah Alisabeth Fox, Downwind: A People’s History of the Nuclear West (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014). 198 radiation sickness. Another element of the radiological threat is brought into the narrative at a community meeting in which a local official instructs farmers to remove the irradiated topsoil and plant a new crop—an impossibility, the farmers point out, without topsoil. This in itself is an example of the interplay of the micro and macro, of science and the individual, as the advice is technically sound and correct (and rooted in real guidance prepared by civil defense agencies), though on the ground, among the people it affects, the advice represents an impossible dilemma. 1983 saw the publication of "Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions," in the journal Science. This paper introduced the concept of a “nuclear winter,” a climatological effect of a large-scale nuclear exchange. What began as a computer simulation of dust particulates in the upper atmosphere became the backdrop for a major portion of the film Threads the following year.583 The film also incorporates large bodies of scientific analysis into its docudramatic vision of a global nuclear war. (This film and others are covered in detail in Chapter 2). Understanding the ways that each of these areas of study reinforce the others—namely through the lens of the specific and the general, the micro and the macro—is important to fully appreciating the struggle to envision the results of a nuclear war. It is important to understand the gaps in these representations and how each area served to inform the others when information was lacking. This interaction served to produce viable and realistic assumptions about what nuclear war would mean across a wide spectrum of society, from governments and economies to Main Street, U.S.A. It is this interaction that necessitates the multidisciplinary approach undertaken in this work.

Executive Summary

Through a discussion and analysis of the exercises carried out during the era of nuclear testing, civil defense drills, films that depict nuclear war, and the analytical studies of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee and other groups during the Cold War era that sought to quantify the results of a nuclear exchange between the world’s nuclear-armed powers, I hope to have created a coherent depiction of a massive project at all levels of society to represent nuclear war, its causes, effects, and aftermath. What follows is a summary of each of the major points of the three body chapters and a reevaluation of their conclusions.

583 R.P. Turco, O.B. Toon, T.P. Ackerman, J.B. Pollack, and C. Sagan, “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions,” Science 222, no. 4630 (1983): 1283-1292. 199 Chapter Two: Live Fire and Civil Defense Drills

From the very real nuclear detonations in Nevada and the Pacific Proving Grounds to the air raid drills and exercises undertaken in the name of civil defense, material objects, structures, soldiers, civilians, and the human psyche were subjected to these slivers of nuclear war. Through this repeated exercise—the testing, planning, and drilling—spaces were created in which to examine the effects on all of these subjects, from a demolished family fallout shelter to the mental fortitude of troops in trenches witnessing a nuclear detonation for the first time. Technologies, systems, institutions, and individuals were at least in some small regard better prepared for potential disaster through these exercises. Military simulations of nuclear war began with Operation Crossroads in 1946 and continued through the era of atmospheric nuclear testing until the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 which drove those tests underground. These atmospheric tests offered the unique opportunity to subject men and matériel to the real conditions of a nuclear detonation and examine the effects that might be expected in a nuclear-armed war. Furthermore, the troop maneuvers undertaken at the Nevada Test Site during the Exercise Desert Rock series offered insights into the psychology of troops witnessing a battlefield nuclear weapon and the ways that tactical nuclear weapons might be used on the battlefield. The first data sets on the effects of nuclear weapons in a wartime scenario came from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the work of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey which began its technical survey of the damage in September 1945. The final report of that group offered the world’s first window onto what a nuclear war might mean for cities and their civilian populations. The following year, Operation Crossroads subjected a fleet of 242 naval vessels and a host of other test objects including airplanes and live specimens to two nuclear tests—an atmospheric, air- dropped bomb and a submarine detonation that wrought havoc on the ghost fleet. In terms of virtualizing a nuclear attack on naval vessels, the official military stance was that Crossroads had been designed to gather scientific data and was not an attempt to prove or disprove any matters of and tactics (holding that the fleet in Bikini was atypically closely anchored and so the damage would be lessened by scattering the ships more widely). Nevertheless, the realities of the radiological threat posed to naval personnel under nuclear attack was a major finding, particularly after the second, underwater test. That test was also a proof of a tactical concept that would shape the way that nuclear weapons might be used by the Navy at sea, demonstrating that the damage, from both blast and radiation, was significantly increased in a submerged detonation. Finally, the 200 official report of the operation offers a description for the motivation for Crossroads that seems to confirm its role as a live-fire attack simulation. “We want ships which are tough, even when threatened by atomic bombs; we want to keep the ships afloat, propellers turning, guns firing; we want to protect the crews so that, if fighting is necessary, they can fight well today and return home unharmed tomorrow.” Creating a virtualized atomic battlefield was always problematic. Due to radiological safety concerns and the necessarily disingenuous foreknowledge of the detonation’s exact location and time (which failed to accurately represent the threat from an enemy weapon, but was an acceptable concession in those scenarios in which the bomb was used by friendly forces on an enemy line). Even so, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps developed the Exercise Desert Rock series of troop maneuvers in 1951 to coincide with the Operation Buster-Jangle testing series at the continental test site in Nevada. Over the course of the next six years, Exercise Desert Rock I through VIII would involve thousands of troops in a variety of tactical nuclear battlefield scenarios, an education program designed to reduce troop anxiety in the face of using nuclear weapons, and experimentation with tactics and the reorganization of Army units into the new “pentomic” unit designed to be more resilient on a nuclear battlefield. The exercise series was discontinued in 1957. In conjunction with these military maneuvers in Nevada, civilian-managed civil defense effects tests were also carried out to offer a view into what the fate of everyday household goods and building materials might be in the event of a nuclear war. These tests began simply with Operation Ranger in 1951, during which 100 material swatches, including textiles, plastics, and wood, were placed at various distances from ground zero. “Operation Hot Rod” was also carried out during the series and included five family sedans from the placed at half mile intervals from ground zero to test whether vehicles could provide any useful degree of shelter. During the 1953 Upshot-Knothole testing series, more elaborate and representative tests were designed for civil defense experiments. “Operation Doorstep” also tested vehicles—fifty passenger cars—along with eight shelter designs and two full-sized, two-story houses with basements and minimal furnishings. The trend toward more elaborate simulations of a nuclear attack would be taken to a new level by the Federal Civil Defense Administration in 1955 with “Operation Cue.” This would be the height of civil defense simulations and prove to be the most extensive civil defense test in the era of atmospheric nuclear testing. Eight houses of different designs were constructed, industrial facilities, power and gas infrastructure, and the whole area (dubbed Survival City and Doom Town in news coverage) occupied by department store mannequins. Newspaper accounts varied as to the

201 survivability demonstrated in the tests. This uncertainty prefigured the deployment of ever larger thermonuclear weapons that would be deployed by the start of the 1960s when traditional civil defense methods and shelters demonstrated in “Doorstep” and “Cue” seemed to offer little hope for survival. While civil defense experimentation was going on in Nevada, the Federal Civil Defense Administration initiated an annual series of command and control drills known as “Operation Alert.” Included in these national exercises were air raid drills, evacuations, and tests of emergency operations. By late 1951, 38 state-level civil defense agencies had conducted major test exercises—a number which grew as the complexity of the coordinated Operation Alert exercises increased. By 1954, the FCDA staged a 24-hour nuclear war simulation with 2,471 communities from all 48 U.S. States in what the Los Angeles Times called “the most realistic air raid defense test of the atomic age.” The 1955 exercises introduced the first real acknowledgement of the severity of the problem of fallout in the thermonuclear age, creating a virtual war in which megaton-range weapons were used on 60 U.S. cities resulting in contamination of 63,000 miles. Operation Alert provided civil defense training in command, control, and communications, as well as annual assessments of readiness. As the years went on, despite the efforts of the FCDA and its successor agencies, it became clear that no central civil defense authority could effectively coordinate recovery efforts after a full scale nuclear war. Interest in the effort waned along with funding and the exercises were discontinued after 1961. For whatever failures the Operation Alert exercises laid bare in terms of national-level planning, they also represented a sincere attempt, insomuch as it was possible, to create a simulation of nuclear war and produce some kind of plan to respond, to mitigate the disaster, and provide support for the survivors. During the early years of the Cold War, these exercises and operations, for all of their performative nature, scripting, or stagecraft, did offer participants and observers a chance to watch some small part of an unfolding nuclear war. In attempting to simulate an event which has never unfolded, some degree of performance is necessary. Despite this, they provided a much needed window onto a disaster scenario that would require action. These simulations offered real-world experience to civil defense professionals and volunteers and gave the chance to undertake experimentation to better understand everything from the effect of a nuclear weapon on textiles to the complex logistics of urban evacuation.

202 Chapter Three: Atomic Cinema

The earliest visual depictions of nuclear weapons and their effects came in the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The work of Japanese photographers such as Yoshito Matsushige, the newspaper photographer who is the only one to have captured images on the day of the Hiroshima bombing, and Yosuke Yamahata, who took similar images of Nagasaki 16 hours after the attack, offered the world its first look at nuclear devastation. Later, motion picture and still photography was produced extensively by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey and provided the earliest foundation for understanding nuclear weapons in war. The following year, the Operation Crossroads tests in Bikini Atoll provided two new sets of visual representations of the weapons in the form of test films and photography that were quickly released to the public. What would follow were many government films of real testing series, some classified, but many released to inform the public. After this, without further wartime use of nuclear weapons, the project of creating a virtualization of nuclear war fell necessarily to the realm of fiction in film and literature. Sometimes these visual representations were more documentary in their scope, such as The War Game (1964), Threads (1984), or the news magazine documentary films “If the Bomb Drops,” aired on the BBC’s Panorama in 1980 and “A Guide to Armageddon,” aired on the BBC’s QED in 1982. In other instances, the films are designed to provoke thought and entertain and succeed in getting some aspect of the lead-up, execution, and aftermath of the nuclear war (likely) correct. In order to discuss these films in terms of the process of virtualization, I have used a thematic structure of four stages to organize and analyze each of the included works. These stages are 1) Escalation, the period of political and military escalation prior to war, 2) Launch, during which a nuclear war is initiated and people attempt to shelter, 3) Strike, which explores the immediate impact of the weapons and the overall effectiveness of civil defense and shelter systems, and 4) Aftermath, which explores the days, weeks, and even years after a nuclear strike, and is focused on recovery and rebuilding. The period of escalation is a phase of war that is represented in different ways depending on the circumstances of the production of the film. Over the course of the Cold War, examining this phase is useful in tracing perceptions of the overall Soviet threat, the persistent geopolitical tensions that might lead to war, and the technologies that might play a role in a looming conflict. In the earliest days of the Cold War, government sponsored films such as Pattern for Survival, Atomic Alert, Our Cities Must Fight, and You Can Beat the A-Bomb, encourage a state of persistent readiness, and assume that an atomic attack would come as a surprise, the effects of which could be mitigated by 203 vigilance. As radar warning time was improved through the 1950s, the character of the threat also changed. The “Pinetree Line” series of defensive radar stations were deployed in the early 1950s across Canada, but the radar technology was soon obsolete, leading to the construction of the “Mid- Canada Line” which was itself superseded before the end of its construction by the still more northerly “Distant Early Warning Line,” each of which increased warning times of advancing Soviet bombers. As this process took place, and it was assumed that there would be at least some level of tactical warning, the concept of evacuation began to be represented in the government sponsored films of the late 1950s. Operation Scramble (an Office of Civil Defense film released in 1957) and A Day Called X (produced for CBS Television in 1957), both represented the possibility of evacuating urban centers if an orderly plan could be implemented with sufficient warning. This all changed with the advent of the intercontinental ballistic missile in the late 1950s. The Soviet R-7 first flew in 1957 and the U.S. Atlas followed in 1959. Because of their speed, these weapons delivery systems reduced warning times so that the idea of urban evacuation was abandoned by U.S. civil defense agencies and replaced with the concept of sheltering for the remainder of the Cold War. In addition to a means of exploring changing technologies, escalation prior to the war in The War Game, The Day After, and Threads, reveals the geopolitical hotspots perceived to be trigger points for a conflict between NATO and the . Perennially, Berlin plays a role as the spark of nuclear war and is central to escalation in all three of these films. Unique to The Day After and Threads, both films of the 1980s, events in the Persian Gulf also escalate tensions to the point of war. The Day After sees a simultaneous outbreak of in the Persian Gulf with Soviet efforts to push into Western Europe. Threads is more explicit in its description of the involvement of the Middle East, positing a scenario in which the U.S. has instigated a coup to overthrow the Ayatollah in Iran—a reasonable and timely scenario as the U.S.-backed Shah had been deposed in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, only five years before. In Threads, Soviet forces occupy the northern part of Iran to prevent the U.S. from returning the Shah to power, and in response, the U.S. invades the south to prevent Soviet occupation of the oil fields. This also mirrors contemporaneous events, as the Soviet Union maintained a major presence in the region during the Afghan War, which began in 1979. In the Launch and Strike phase of these films, either the events of the escalation have rendered a nuclear war inevitable (previously discussed), the attack comes as a surprise (as in the early years of the Cold War civil defense film), the war comes about as the result of an accident or technological error (particularly faults in computers), or instigation by nuclear terrorism (much more common in the years after the Cold War and as a result, few examples are analyzed in this work).

204 Technical faults certainly seem to emerge in film and literature as a response to two elements of the Cold War—the development of a “launch on warning” stance that would allow a volley of missiles to be launched the moment a warning of Soviet attack was detected (at first with the radar pickets and later with satellites) and the development of a deterrent policy of Mutual Assured Destruction which necessarily dictated that any nuclear war would be a totally destructive and completely catastrophic exchange. The concept of launch on warning (use ‘em or lose ‘em) or an automated response found itself central to Dr. Strangelove in 1964 with the plot device of the “doomsday machine” that would automatically enshroud the world with fallout if the Soviet Union were attacked. Technology is also the root of the dramatic conflict in Dr. Strangelove and Failsafe (1964) when the nuclear armed bombers fail to return because of technologies put into place to ensure that the Strategic Air Command attack would default to proceeding once the bombers moved beyond their designated fail safe points—a real feature of Strategic Air Command bomber operations at the time. When a filmic depiction of nuclear war is successful, viewers are able to survive and observe an event which they may not have been able to survive in actuality. This vicarious experience serves different ends depending on the intent of the filmmakers—education, propaganda, pacification, or protest—but all seek to reconstruct the events of a nuclear conflict in order to explore likely or possible outcomes. The concept of using film as a vehicle not to portray a fictional world, but to construct a very real model of a frighteningly possible world is a trait common to all of the films discussed in this chapter. Like live nuclear testing or massive civil defense exercises, the films discussed here do not allow the concept of a nuclear war to remain unimaginable to the viewer. Rather they present a set of possibilities that are all too imaginable, particularly in the context of the dangers of the Cold War.

Chapter Four: Analytics and Nuclear War

In 1953, National Security Council directive 140 established a special subcommittee tasked with producing what NSC Executive Secretary James S. Lay termed “a more adequate evaluation of the U.S.S.R.’s net capability to inflict direct injury on the United States.” This “Special Evaluation Subcommittee” (and later the Net Evaluation Subcommittee) went on to produce annual reports based on the best available intelligence and analytical data that described in extraordinary detail the expected results of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

205 This chapter reveals the work of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee over the course of a decade and describes the changing assumptions, estimates, and outcomes of a nuclear armed conflict as force sizes and technologies changed. The annual reports and the discussions surrounding those reports, which represented the most sincere attempts to construct a likely nuclear war scenario, reveal a trajectory from cautious optimism in victory to complete doubt in the ability to survive such a conflict. Between 1953 and 1964 the findings of the NESC moved from confidence in not only survivability, but in victory over the Soviet Union, to describing apocalyptic scenarios of destruction and collapse of the United States. This faltering and failing confidence represents, over the course of a decade, what would play out in the rest of society over the course of the rest of the Cold War—a movement from confidence in victory, to suspicions about the efficacy of civil defense measures, to a widespread belief that a nuclear war would mean the end of civilization. The first report of the subcommittee in 1953 offered a scenario in which a nuclear war with the Soviet Union would be winnable through 1955, assuming that the damage inflicted by the Soviet Union would allow not only a retaliatory air attack, but allow the reconstitution of industrial capacity and the successful prosecution of the war. The overall tone of this first report was one of confidence in the ability to fight, win, and quickly recover from a nuclear war. This would not remain the case, as Soviet stockpiles and delivery capabilities continually outpaced the projected horizons offered annually. In the following year’s report, a decisive Soviet victory remained unlikely, with the limited range of their bomber fleet and only World War II-era V-1 and V-2 rockets at their disposal, putting parts of Europe at risk but sparing the United States. In the absence of intercontinental ballistic missiles, warning times remained high, in the range of eight hours, leading the NESC to assume that urban evacuation schemes would reduce casualties significantly. The Federal Civil Defense Administration was also in the midst of developing evacuation plans that were projected to be fully developed by 1957—the horizon of the 1954 report. What was missing in 1954 was a calculation of the effect of fallout on the casualty numbers. The absence of these data were acknowledged, but this could do little to prepare war planners for the dramatic shift in technology that would push the effect of fallout to the forefront of the NESC reports. The advent of the thermonuclear era and multi-megaton weapons meant that a detonation near the surface could force exponentially larger amounts of fallout into the atmosphere, resulting in a significant shift in the number of casualties attributed to each of the bomb’s effects (heat, blast, and radiation). Not only could these weapons produce more fallout, but larger thermonuclear

206 weapons could thrust that fallout higher into the atmosphere, meaning a greater footprint for the radiological threat. War planners—and the NESC in particular—would be required to recalibrate their assumptions about the effects of a nuclear war. In 1955, Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack, a report often dubbed the “Killian Report,” was presented to President Eisenhower and laid out the likely (and even inevitable) scenario of a future without U.S. nuclear superiority. Along with this sobering assessment, the Killian Report also asserted that the U.S. was exceedingly vulnerable to a surprise nuclear attack. This, as well as the 1955 NESC report, influenced Eisenhower to move into 1956 with a renewed and refined sense of the potential severity of a nuclear war. The 1956 NESC report estimated for the first time that the economy and industrial infrastructure might collapse in the event of a war through 1958. It also found that with current Soviet capabilities, the federal government would be almost entirely wiped out and new governments would need to be improvised by the States. To this was added the dire prediction that 65% of the population would require medical care and have “no opportunity whatsoever to get it.” This estimate represented an increase in casualties in only three years from 7% in 1953 to 65% in 1965. This trend of ever-worsening scenarios continued through the remainder of the Eisenhower presidency and was accompanied by a shift in Eisenhower’s attitude toward nuclear war, from cautious optimism to a consistent sentiment—evident in the records of his discussions at the National Security Council—that nuclear war was, as he put it in a 1956 speech, “not just tragic, but preposterous.” As his successor, John F. Kennedy, came into the office of the presidency, the NESC reports had already represented estimations and analysis of the darkest possible scenarios for several years. Kennedy would be immediately confronted by these realities. Kennedy’s first NESC report was presented to him on 20 July 1961. It is notable that this report uses generalizations and broad ranges of numbers, due in part to the admission in its introductory comments that “the scope and intensity of destruction and the shattering of established political, military, and economic structure resulting from such an exchange would be so vast as to practically defy accurate assessment.” This was the first admission in an NESC report that a nuclear war would surpass estimation—the very job of the NESC. This may, in part, have been an early catalyst for the demise of the subcommittee. A larger motivation for its eventual disbanding was a shift away from the group’s original charter. The 1962 NESC report depicted a nuclear war in 1965 that began as a localized conflict in

207 Southeast Asia. The report also offered a scenario in which the United States launched a preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, deviating significantly from established norms of U.S. military strategy which had never formally entertained the idea of a preemptive nuclear strike. This option was quashed in the report of the following year. At the NSC meeting during which the report was presented, Kennedy asked whether a preemptive strike might be able to reduce U.S. casualties. To this, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara responded that “in the many studies I have had done for me I have not found a situation in which a preempt during a low-alert condition would be advantageous. Under no circumstances have I been able to get U.S. casualties under 30 million.” Kennedy responded that preemption was not a possible option—a conclusion, he said, growing out of an excellent report. The NESC moved into 1964 on precarious ground. For at least two years, it had produced reports that presented estimates of destruction that indicated that any nuclear war would be a war impossible to win. If nuclear war proved impossible to win—and suicidal to fight—then the work of the NESC would prove redundant. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the NESC deviated still further from their original charter, delving into issues of diplomacy, policy, and the disposition of forces in Europe. The 1964 report appeared to not only deviate from the original presidential directive, but also stray into areas that were squarely situated in Robert McNamara’s Defense Department, presenting a challenge to McNamara’s authority. McNamara began a campaign to abolish the NESC and succeeded in 1965 with National Security Action Memorandum 327 which discontinued the work of the subcommittee. Throughout the decade of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee’s existence, a nuclear war was never fought and the estimates in the annual reports were never put to the test in a real-world catastrophe. Nevertheless, the NESC reports presented presidents and planners with detailed accounts of wars that had not been fought, but might be fought, and these narratives—in lists, charts, and graphs—appear to have significantly impacted the thinking of those who read the highly classified data. Like each of the virtualizations of nuclear war previously discussed, the NESC reports were windows onto virtual wars.

Future Work

Through each of the sections of this work, there are woven themes of mental preparedness, operational preparedness, civil and military planning, and cultural commentary and reflection on the

208 threat of nuclear war. Any one of these themes could be expanded into a book-length project, as could any of the three body chapters—nuclear testing and civil defense drills, cinematic depictions of nuclear war, and the analytical project of Cold War estimates of what a war might look like. I would like to outline a few specific areas that I believe could serve as a useful starting point for future expansion and further exploration of the topics covered here. The rehabilitation of the reputation of civil defense as previously discussed is a project worthy of further investigation, particularly at the state and local level. Some localities, such as Portland, Oregon (discussed in chapters 2 and 3) were pioneers in civil defense in the nuclear age. This leadership was showcased in the film A Day Called X and was largely a result of the leadership of the first Director of Civil Defense for Portland, Charles Pray, who was a vociferous advocate of the cause and championed the construction of the first completely subterranean civil defense facility in the United States.584 Sate and Local archives are very likely full of such stories of the sincere efforts of local officials to create working, effective civil defense programs. While civil defense at the federal level suffered from chronic underfunding and often produced flawed guidance that, in retrospect, may be the easy target of ridicule and satire, the story of civil defense at the state and local level is very different. Utilizing the five categories of the analytical structure in Chapter 3, a much more complete list of literature could be formed as a companion to the filmography. Further, a transnational list of both film and literature could be developed, incorporating Soviet and other cinematic traditions. The richness of the topic is hinted at in this work, and I have included references to British, Soviet, Japanese and Czechoslovakian film, but inclusion of the filmographies outside of the United States remains incomplete. Expanding only Chapter 3 in this way could create a unique and significant work of cultural history apart from the subjects covered here. Chapter 4 is primarily focused on the history of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, arguably the most consistent producer of hypothetical war scenarios during the years of its existence. Nevertheless, there were other reports from various committees constituted by congress or through the executive branch. The Bull Report (A Study of Civil Defense, 1947), the Hopley Report (Civil Defense for National Security, 1948), and the Killian Report (Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack, 1955), are just a few of these commissioned reports mentioned here. An expansion of the discussion in this chapter should also include the many reports of the RAND Corporation, the Hudson Institute, and

584 Brian K. Johnson, "Portland Civil Defense," The Oregon Encyclopedia, A Project of the Oregon Historical Society, 2018, https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/portland_civil_defense/pdf/ 209 other think tanks that dealt with the analysis of the strategies of nuclear war. One notable example of a report that went to new lengths in the project of virtualizing nuclear war is The Effects of Nuclear War, a 1979 study by the Office of Technology Assessment. Included in the report is a work of fiction titled “Charlottesville: A Fictional Account” by journalist Nan Randall. This story was commissioned by the Office of Technology Assessment, “in an effort to provide a more concrete understanding of the situation which survivors of a nuclear war would face.”585 The date of this report falls outside of the range explored in Chapter 4, but it stands as an excellent example of how the project of that chapter could be significantly expanded in the future.

In Closing: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Revisited

The world after Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed so dramatically and so quickly that the paradigm of those wartime uses of nuclear weapons could not keep pace with, or inform, the realities presented by the technological developments and the stockpile expansions of the early Cold War. Images of the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings continued to be held as exemplars of the potential effects of a nuclear war long after what was depicted in those images likely represented only a fraction of the destruction, suffering, and death that might reasonably be expected in a general nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. The discontinuity between what was understood from the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and what was to be expected from a global nuclear war was the genesis of the project to create the virtual wars and visual depictions that have been discussed here. This work has been an attempt not to understand these subjects on their own terms, in their own contexts, but as part of a wider, interlinked project to move past the Hiroshima and Nagasaki paradigm and create a vision of nuclear war not as it was, in those isolated events of August 1945, but as it swiftly became in the arms race of the Cold War. In many ways, perhaps we have returned to a world in which Hiroshima has again become a meaningful way of understanding the nuclear threat. Though the possibility of a global nuclear war may still technically remain—the arsenals and means of delivery are still very much present and in quantities which could easily achieve the apocalyptic levels of damage expected in the films of the 1980s—the real threat on a day-to-day basis is not an existential one. A terrorist may be able to bring an end to a city. A rogue actor such as a nuclear armed could unleash its vanishingly

585 The Effects of Nuclear War, Office of Technology Assessment, Congress of the United States, Washington D.C., May 1979, 124. 210 small reserve of nuclear weapons on a neighbor or, in the event of the development of a long range delivery system, the West Coast of the United States, but even these eventualities, for as much of a humanitarian disaster as they would certainly be, are not existential threats. They would not end a nation or irreversibly poison the biosphere. The United States or any nation that found itself the target of a limited act of nuclear terrorism would pool its material resources, survive, recover, and rebuild. The scar may forever remain on the city, and the memory of the trauma would forever be retained in the national consciousness, but it would not be a fatal blow. The images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be replayed, now in a modern setting, but like those images, they would represent only a piece of the potential devastation that was the everyday business of war planners and the everyday concern of whole swaths of the human population during the Cold War. Visions of global conflagration produced during those dangerous years remain powerful reminders not of what was, but of what still may someday be.

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216 “Cue for Survival: Operation Cue, A.E.C. Nevada Test Site,” A Report by the Federal Civil Defense Administration, FCDA, ADA395954, (May 5, 1955), Defense Technical Information Center http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a395954.pdf.

D.F. Jones. Colossus. Rupert Hart-Davis: United Kingdom. 1966.

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Dead Man’s Letters [Письма мёртвого человека]. Directed by Konstantin Lopushansky. Lenfilm. 1986.

Dean Rusk, Richard Rusk, and Daniel S. Papp. 1990. As I saw it. New York u.a: Norton. 246.

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“Exercise Desert Rock,” Staff Film Reports, No. 177, US Department of Defense, 1951, Department of Defense Special Weapons Agency, DASIAC Media Collection, Kirtland Air Force Base. Film released by US Department of Energy, Albuquerque Operations Office, https://archive.org/details/ExerciseDesertRock1951.

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Fallout: When and How to Protect Yourself from It. Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization. 1959.

“Fate of Net Evaluation Subcommittee.” United States National, Security Council. 1964.

218 “Final Report,” Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, (October 1995): Ch. 10.

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Gladwin Hill, “Rumors on Atom Test Irk A.E.C., But Security Rules Yield Little Else,” New York Times, 26 October 1951, 12.

Gregg Herken. Counsels of War. New York: Knopf. 1985. 116.

Guy Oakes, The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture, (Oxford University: Oxford University Press, 1994), 123.

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Harry S. Truman, “Executive Order 9562—Termination of the Office of Civilian Defense,” June 4, 1945, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=77891.

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Harry S. Truman: “Executive Order 10193—Providing for the Conduct of the Mobilization Effort of the Government,” 16 December 1950, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=60783.

Herman Kahn. On Thermonuclear War. Princeton University Press. 1960.

Horatio Bond, “Military and Civil Confusion About Civil Defense,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol 5, no 11, November 1949, 295-296.

“H-Bomb Exercise to be Shortened,” New York Times, 16 July 1956, 23.

“H-Bombs Test US Civil Defense,” New York Times, 16 June 1955, 1. 219 “High Ranking Ike Aid Missing in Plane Crash.” St. Petersburg Times, Nov 19, 1956

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“In the Nation: Case Against Nation-Wide Martial Law,” New York Times, 28 June 1955, 26.

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Jack Gould, “Radio and Televison,” New York Times, Apr 23, 1952.

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Jerome Wiesner. “Warning and Defense in the Missile Age.” President’s Science Advisory Committee. 3 June 1959. Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Anne Whitman File, Dwight D. Eisenhower Diaries, box 42, Staff Notes June 1-15 1959. [http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB43/doc2.pdf]

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220 John Foster Dulles. “The Evolution of Foreign Policy.” Speech before the Council of Foreign Relations. New York. Department of State Press Release No. 81. 12 January 1954.

John Hampson. “Photochemical War on the Atmosphere.” Nature 250. 189-191. 19 July 1974.

John Jay McCloy. John McCloy Recounts Discussion with Khrushchev on the Soviet Position on Berlin. Diplomatic telegram, National Security Council Office of the Executive Secretary. 29 July 1961.

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Jonathan Schell. The Fate of the Earth. Knopf. 1982.

Jonathan Weisgall, Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll, (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1994), 91.

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221 “Kaysen to Bundy.” Memorandum. Military Response in Berlin could be all-Out Nuclear as Envisioned in SIOP 62. National Security Council. 3 July 1961. DNSA collection: Berlin Crisis.

K.T. Bainbridge, “Trinity,” (Los Alamos, New Mexico: Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory of the University of California, May 1976): LA-6300-H.

“Kennedy Tells CD to Keep Public Aware,” Los Angeles Times, 29 April 1961, 1.

Kitajima, Muneto, and Yosukē Yamahata. 1959. Genbaku no nagasaki: Kiroku shashin. Tokyō :̄ Tokyō ̄ Gakufu ̄ Shoin.

Knebel, Fletcher. “The Great Fall-out Shelter Panic.” LOOK. 5 December 1961. Vol. 25, No. 25. New York.

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La Jetee ́ Dir. Chris Marker. Janus Films and Public Media Incorporated. Chicago. 1964.

Ladybug, Ladybug. Francis Productions, Inc. Dist. United Artists. 1963.

“Launch on Warning: The Development of US Capabilities, 1959-1979.” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 43. National Security Archive, George Washington University. April 2001. [http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB43/]

“Lessons Learned from Operations Alert 1955-1957,” (Washington, D.C.: Industrial College of the Armed Forces, 30 April 1958), Publication No. L58-141, 6, Homeland Security Digital Library, https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=458671

“Letter from George B. Owen to County Civil Defense Directors,” History and Archives Division, Archives and Public Records, Arizona State Library, Record Group 23 - Arizona Civil Defense Agency. 22 May 1953, http://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/cdm/ref/collection/archgov/id/463.

Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, (London: Palgrave, 2004), 68.

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Luther J. Carter, “Political Fallout from Three Mile Island,” Science, 204, April 13, 1979, 154.

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Marvin Miles, “Atom City Shows Few Could Have Survived,” Los Angeles Times, 07 May 1955, 1.

222 “McGeorge Bundy to Wheeler, 26 October 1964,” Confidential. NARA, Record Group 273. National Security Council. Records of NSC Representative on Internal Security, box 66. 1964 Net Evaluation

“Memorandum for General Taylor.” Acheson Report on Berlin. Office of the White House. 30 June 1961. DNSA collection: Berlin Crisis

“Memorandum for the President, 21 November 1961.” McGeorge Bundy to the President. John F. Kennedy Library. Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. National Security Files. Meetings and Memoranda. National Security Council meetings, 1961: No. 489, 20 July 1961

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“Memorandum from Colonel. A. W. Betts to Brigadier General K.D. Nichols, 2 August 1946, Confidential.” RG 77, Operation Crossroads Records, 12/1945 - 9/1946, box 26, J-2-1 Manhattan Project Observers, https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2995399/Document-21-Col-A-W-Betts- memorandum-to.pdf

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223 Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945-1954, (Cambridge University, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 210–211.

“Mock Attack Hits 75 Areas in Nation,” New York Times, 21 July 1956, 1.

Modern Minute Men, produced by Wilding, Ohio Bell Telephone Company, Ohio Civil Defense Organization, 1952.

“Modern Minute Men.” (film) Ohio Bell. 1952

“Monumental Auto Jam Seen in CD Evacuation,” Los Angeles Times, 5 May 1960, B2.

N.M. Lulejian. Effects of Superweapons upon the Climate of the World: A Preliminary Study. Directorate of Nuclear Applications, Air Research and Development Command. Baltimore, Maryland. 1952. [https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/16365183.../16365183/].

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“National Security Council meetings, 1963: No. 517, 12 September 1963.” Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. National Security Files. Meetings and Memoranda. National Security Council meetings, 1963: No. 517, 12 September 1963. JFKL.

“National Security Council, Memorandum of Discussion at the 442nd Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, 5 May 1960.

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“New Film to Help in Bomb Training.” New York Times. 25 January 1952.

224 “News Nob,” Nevada National Security Site History, (LasVegas: National Nuclear Security Administration, Nevada Field Office. US Department of Energy, August 2013): NV. DOE/NV—774, http://nnss.gov/docs/fact_sheets/DOENV_774.pdf

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“Observers of U.N. Little Impressed,” New York Times, 1 July 1946, 3.

Occupying a Public Shelter. United States Army. Office of Civil Defense. CD 20-234. 1965.

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On the Beach. Dir. Stanley Kramer. United Artists. 17 December 1959.

One Plane, One Bomb, produced by US Air Force in cooperation with See It Now, CBS News, CBS Television Network, 1953.

“Operation Alert 1958,” Memo to Deputy Director, Support, CIA, 28 January 1958, CREST

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225 1982):74, Defense Technical Information Center, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a123441.pdf.

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Operation Crossroads—1946, United States Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, DNA 6032F, (1 May 1984). http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2- Hist_Rpt_Atm/1946_DNA_6032F.pdf.

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“Operation Cue – 1964 Revision,” (film) Office of Civil Defense, Department of Defense, 1964.

“Operation Cue,” (Film) Federal Civil Defense Administration, 1955.

“Operation Cue,” Federal Civil Defense Administration, 1956, film.

“Operation Doorstep,” (print) 1953-O-25742, (Washington, D.C., US Government Printing Office, 1953). The film of the operation suggests that there were more than 1000 participants.

“Operation Doorstep.” (film) Produced by Byron, Inc. and Federal Civil Defense Administration, 1953.

“Operation Greenhouse 1951,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6034F, (15 June 1983):157, Defense Threat Reduction Agency http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2- Hist_Rpt_Atm/1951_DNA_6034F.pdf.

“Operation Greenhouse,” Department of Energy Film no. 0800088, 1951.

“Operation Ranger: Shots Able, Baker, Easy, Baker-2, Fox, 25 January - 6 February 1951.” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6022F, (26 February 1982), 47, Defense Threat Reduction Agency http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2- Hist_Rpt_Atm/1951_DNA_6022F.pdf.

“Operation Sandstone 1948,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6033F, (19 December 1983), Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2- Hist_Rpt_Atm/1948_DNA_6033F.pdf.

226 “Operation Teapot: Fact Sheet.” Defense Thread Reduction Agency, US Strategic Command Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction, Standing Joint Force Headquarters for Elimination, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/1- Fact_Sheets/16_TEAPOT.pdf.

“Operation Teapot: Report of the Test Manager, Joint Test Organization - Nevada Test Site 1955,” A995154, (Washington, D.C., Defense Nuclear Agency, 1 November 1981), 100, Defence Technical Information Center, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a995154.pdf.

“Operation Tumbler-Snapper Fact Sheet,” Defense Threat Reduction Agency, May 2015, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/1-Fact_Sheets/12_TUMBLER- SNAPPER.pdf

“Operation Tumbler-Snapper, 1952,” United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Defense Nuclear Agency, Department of Defense, DNA 6019F, (14 June 1982): 24, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2- Hist_Rpt_Atm/1952_DNA_6019F.pdf.

“Operation Upshot-Knothole Fact Sheet,” Defense Threat Reduction Agency, http://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/1-Fact_Sheets/14_UPSHOT- KNOTHOLE.pdf

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Our Cities Must Fight, Archer Productions, Inc, US Federal Civil Defense Administration, 1951.

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Pattern for Survival, starring William Lawrence, narrated by Chet Huntley, directed by George Carillon, Cornell Film Company, Factual Films, Inc., 1950.

Paul Binnion. “Threads: A review by Paul Binnion, University of Nottingham, UK.” Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies. University of Nottingham. UK. May 2003. [From an interview with Hines]. http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/scope/

Paul J. Scheips, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1945 – 1992, (Washington, D.C., Center of Military History, United States Army, 2004), CMH Pub 30–20– 1.84.

227 Perrine, Toni A., Film and the Nuclear Age: Representing Cultural Anxiety, (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), 167.

Peter Kihss, “Governor thanks Workers in Alert,” New York Times, 5 May 1960, 14.

Philip Benjamin, “46 States Respond to Alert in Mock Attack,” New York Times, 7 May 1958.

Planning for Public Shelter Entry. Office of Civil Defense. 1963.

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235 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION University of Montana BA, English [history minor] 2002 University of Florida MFA, Writing and Literature 2005 University of Portland M.Ed, Education 2007 Florida State University Ph.D., History 2018

RECENT GRANTS International Social Sciences Association (IASSA) 2011 Florida State University Department of History Grant 2012 American Institute of Physics, Oral History Project 2012 Envirotech Award, Society for the History of Technology 2012 Dark Matters Conference Travel Grant, , Spain 2013 Florida State University Department of History Grant 2014

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

“The Otters of : Alaskan Nuclear Testing and the Birth of the Environmental Movement,” The Polar Journal, Volume 2, Issue 2. 12 December 2012.

“Selling Greenland: The Big Picture Television Series and the Army’s Bid for Relevance During the Early Cold War,” Centaurus, Volume 55, Issue 3. August 2013

PRESENTATIONS AND CONFERENCES

The Otters of Amchitka: The Birth of Environmentalism and Nuclear Testing in the International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS VII) – Akureyri, Iceland 2011

Nuclear Testing and Nature Documentaries: The Conservationist Films of the US AEC International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS VII) – Akureyri, Iceland 2011

Gerboise Bleue: French Nuclear Testing and the Algerian War Western Society for French History, Annual Conference – Portland, Oregon 2011

Selling Greenland: The US Army’s Bid for Relevance in the Early Cold War Danish National Committee for the History of Science – Aarhus, 2011

The AEC’s Propaganda Primer: Revisiting Cold War Atomic Testing in the Arctic Niels Bohr Institute, History of Science Seminar – Copenhagen, Denmark 2011

Engineering Greenland: Icecap-1 and the Militarization of Arctic Technologies Society for the History of Technology – Copenhagen, Denmark 2012

236