Simple Shelters?: Monitoring Radioactive Fallout Across Canada, 1959–63

Canadian Military History Volume 20 Issue 4 Article 5 2011 Simple Shelters?: Monitoring Radioactive Fallout Across Canada, 1959–63 Andrew Burtch Canadian War Museum, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh Recommended Citation Burtch, Andrew "Simple Shelters?: Monitoring Radioactive Fallout Across Canada, 1959–63." Canadian Military History 20, 4 (2011) This Canadian War Museum is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Canadian Military History by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Burtch: Simple Shelters? Simple Shelters? Monitoring Radioactive Fallout Across Canada, 1959-63 Andrew Burtch uring the early Cold War, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that safety was both simple and Dthreat of nuclear war drove postwar nuclear tests, leads to a reasonably affordable. The price, many governments around the world prolonged breakdown of the body, nearly 10 percent of the average to urge their citizens to build fallout characterized by nausea, bleeding Canadian income, was beyond the shelters in which they could wait gums, internal haemorrhaging, hair means of most Canadians, however. out the deadliest period following loss, painful radiation burns, fever, The federal government, for its an attack. A thermonuclear bomb, delirium, and death.2 In the postwar part, firmly stood by a position that detonating at ground level, would period, civilian and military planners it could not afford to get into the scatter intensely radioactive particles hoped that the population would be business of building fallout shelters hundreds of kilometres downwind of able to limit their exposure to the most for millions of Canadians. the explosion. Numerous explosions lethal doses of radioactivity after an Yet at the same time, the federal would blanket southern Canada with attack by taking shelter underground. government became the largest fallout, which would kill millions With fallout shelters, citizens could builder of fallout shelters in the of citizens. Herman Kahn, the possibly survive an attack, even if country, investing millions of dollars RAND Corporation analyst whose they emerged to a destroyed world, in a secret crash program between outspoken views formed the genesis where increased risks of cancer, 1959 and 1963. Some aspects of this of Stanley Kubrick’s doomsday movie birth defects, and widespread illness project were controversial, such as the Dr. Strangelove, drily commented in would be the norm.3 blast shelter in Carp, Ontario, meant his 1960 dissection of thermonuclear Some governments, most notably to house military and government war that “the radiation from fallout Sweden, invested large amounts of officials. A Toronto reporter who has curious and frightening effects.”1 money to dig massive communal Ultimately, a high dose of radiation, shelters to house tens of thousands Résumé : Au début de la guerre froide, as observed by doctors and military of citizens, and forced the housing le gouvernement canadien a informé la officials following the attacks on industry to include shelters in population qu’elle pouvait construire every new building. The Canadian à faible coût des abris antinucléaires Abstract: During the early Cold War, government took a much less dans leur maison afin de protéger the Canadian government advised the leur famille d’éventuelles retombées public that they could cheaply build interventionist route. In the late 1950s nucléaires après une guerre nucléaire. fallout shelters in their homes to protect and early 1960s, Prime Minister John Publiquement, le gouvernement s’est their families from radiation after a Diefenbaker, provincial premiers, tenu à l’écart de la construction de ces nuclear war. Publicly, the government and local officials unsuccessfully abris en affirmant que le coût aurait été stayed out of the shelter-building advised homeowners to build shelters trop élevé pour lui. Cependant, de 1959 business, citing that the cost was too au milieu des années 1960, l’Armée high. However, from 1959 to the mid- at their own expense. The Emergency canadienne a secrètement construit 1960s, the Canadian Army secretly Measures Organization widely un réseau de 2 000 abris antinucléaires constructed a network of 2,000 fallout distributed blueprints for a shelter dans des immeubles gouvernementaux shelters in government buildings: that homeowners could construct for : le Nuclear Detonation and Fallout the Nuclear Detonation and Fallout a cost of $500 (approximately $4,000 Reporting System (système de Reporting System. This article explores déclaration de détonation nucléaire et the origins of this network and the today). The accompanying designs d’abris). Cet article explore les origines reasons for its decline. were meant to create the impression de ce réseau et les raisons de son déclin. Published© Canadian by Scholars Military Commons History @, Laurier,Volume 2011 20, Number 4, Autumn 2011, pp.49-62. 49 1 Canadian Military History, Vol. 20 [2011], Iss. 4, Art. 5 discovered the bunker and cinderblock, of the during its construction desperation of efforts gave it the nickname to survive the Cold “Diefenbunker.” Much War. to the embarrassment The Canadian of the prime minister, military first entered the nickname stuck.4 the shelter-building Shelters like the business as a result Diefenbunker and of two factors: the similar provincial rapid progress of the sites were intended to Cold War arms race, provide for continuity and the inability of of government federal, provincial, and authority during a local civilian defence national crisis, but agencies to keep pace drew much public with the changing criticism as evidence threat to Canada. of a government’s Thermonuclear or willingness to pursue hydrogen bombs, self-preservation rather developed by the than national survival. superpowers in the One Vancouver couple early 1950s, nullified expressed their anger the plans of civil about government defence agencies shelters in a scathing tasked with defending letter to Diefenbaker in life and infrastructure. response to a televised Planners in Canada, civil defence exercise the United States, in the spring of 1961: and the United “We sincerely hope Kingdom previously that neither you nor developed strategies any Civil Servants with that incorporated fire- access to Government fighting and rescue The nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (above) ushered in a principles tested shelters will be found new era in civil defence. The destructive potential of atomic weapons dead, trampled in the forced the Canadian government to address the issue of protecting its during Second World rush to the entrance citizens in a manner that had previously never been considered. War bombing raids. to the shelters, when Atomic weapons were those who got there first emerge in unprepared for the complexity and powerful enough to destroy parts of two weeks to mourn and bury the difficulty of a project as seemingly cities, but thermonuclear weapons rest of us.”5 simple as installing cinder-block threatened to wipe out entire cities Less well-known than the shelters in basements. The project in a flash. The only solution civil Diefenbunker, but essential to the took three years, at a cost of over $3 defence planners suggested was not government’s post-attack planning, million, but even so the final results to be there when the bomb went off.6 was the Nuclear Detonation and were significantly less substantial By 1954, Canadian officials began Fallout Reporting System (NDFRS). than the military had originally hoped to plan for the evacuation of major This network comprised more than to achieve. The NDFRS provides target cities within three hours of 2,000 fallout shelters modelled on the an interesting case study of the receiving an attack warning. These blueprints distributed to Canadian challenges of emergency planning in arrangements included arrangements families, and installed secretly peacetime and the politics of shelter- to control traffic movement, allay in government buildings across building in Canada. Remnants of public panic, billet and care for the country. The Canadian Army the NDFRS are present in hundreds evacuees, but tended to ignore the hoped to have the network in place of communities across southern lethal effects of radioactive fallout. quickly. The military was, however, Canada, a material record, in mortar Without shelter, evacuees would https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol20/iss4/550 2 Burtch: Simple Shelters? survive the bomb but die from open to different parts of the country report suspicious aircraft movements radiation illness in the countryside. during the opening stages of a war. over the United Kingdom.9 In the The mushroom cloud resulting Provincial and municipal shelters United States, different military and from a thermonuclear explosion were linked in to this network, government agencies at the federal, would spread irradiated ash and dust as were key military facilities in state, and local levels had some in the upper atmosphere, poisoning Canada and the United States. The capability for radiation reporting. the environment for hundreds trouble with the system as it was The Office of Civil Defence and of kilometres downwind of the originally devised was that, once Mobilization (OCDM) had, however, explosion. Even if, as some planners in the shelters, government officials proposed the creation of a Fixed believed,

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