The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 brought panic to millions of Americans who built fallout shelters for their homes.
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The 1964 Oak Ridge civil defense project conceived the Nuclear War Survival Skills book in 1979.
One thing noticeable about the book is that it downplays the existential danger posed by a nuclear attack by America’s enemies.
This is not a hidden agenda, because it is mentioned as a strategic goal of the book in its foreword.
It makes sense to downplay the danger since the author and inventor of the KFM believed panic is the real immediate danger not the bombs.
Its author concluded three things: the average American knew too little about how to survive a nuclear attack, the best chances of survival was to spread the information they needed and let Americans fend fro themselves, and Russian nuclear war preparations meant Russia would likely survive a nuclear war with America.
Physicist Eugene Wigner recruited Cresson Kearny.
Kearny, inventor of the Kearney Fallout Meter (KFM), says the real killer is panic.
He considers the Nazis bombing Britain as an example in which panic killed more people he says, then the actual bombs being dropped on their heads.
The original print edition covers 1979-1987
Only 400,000 copies of it were sold by publishers.
The second edition claims to be updated to hold more current information based on changes in Soviet nuclear strategy and survival instruction and equipment advancement.
The book even has a chapter on surviving nuclear fallout caused by bombs not detonated on American soil, “Trans-Pacific Fallout”.
Mutual Assured Destruction
The author claims that MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction, the majority leader of civil defense strategy thought, was wrong.
The idea was that the Soviet Union would not attack the United States with nuclear weapons, because an equal force measure would be returned in response.
This meant mutually assured destruction for both countries.
How You’ll Know It’s Coming
The book tells us that a realistic set of events ending with a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union would look like this:
Mass migration activity by Soviet citizens to rural areas in order to prepare for the likely American nuclear response.
A worsening crisis of hostility between the US and Russia just as the Cuban Missile Crisis presented itself.
First Actions Post Nuclear War
Because of the popular belief in the false assurance of MAD American civil defense spending is less than adequate to ensure survival from a nuclear attack.
Sweden for example spends nearly 12.5 times per capita on civil defense and has a robust fallout shelter infrastructure in place.
Sweden is however a much smaller country than the United States.
One of the strategic goals of the book is to dispel common nuclear fallout myths according to the authors.
A critical part of the research project, Kearney contributed the KFM which the book prescribes as the first tool to create and use immediately.
With just household items the KFM can be crafted and used by a house leader to navigate irradiated areas.
Living in Nuclear Fallout America
The initial blast it claims, would create a giant crater, absorbing most of the radiation into the ground.
Traveling radiation would only be an immediate threat if carried down to the ground by rain, it says.
The book tries to cover the steps and routines to surviving daily life in the new American lifestyle.
It even covers how to poop correctly outside of your fallout shelter.
Some of the finer instruction routines explain how to remove irradiated iodine from water, a critical function to survival.
While there’s no mention of the dangers of armed super mutants roaming the desolate new America there is a hope by the author that everyone do thing:
These are the words of the U.S. Government funded Nuclear Survival Skills book, “Remain calm and survive, help yourself.”
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