Duck and Cover

 

The recent false alarm for an impending nuclear attack that instilled a half hour of fear into Hawaiian residents this past weekend got me thinking about some experiences of the Cold War, and in some cases how some of it worked.  Yep, time for a few small snippets of reminiscing about the “good old days” when we were certain somebody was gonna blow up the whole planet……not that we don’t have these concerns now, just the players and conditions are different.

We were still doing “duck and cover” drills in school when I was a kid.  By this time, however, the familiar hiding under the desks in the classroom had been abandoned.  This is just as well, as the efficacy of hiding under a desk in the middle of a classroom as a blast wave brought a wake of broken windows and falling ceiling materials rushing through the room is questionable at best and most likely to no benefit.  Our school was built in the mid 1950’s.  Some of the architectural features were, I later realized, intended to aid survival in the event of an atomic bomb blast.  This elementary school was comprised of one long central hallway, flanked by classrooms on either side.  An office area and cafeteria/auditorium were situated as an added on shape about midway down the main hall.  The structure was brick and reinforced concrete.  Each classroom had windows of course, but these windows were each fitted with a metal awning.  Light could enter.  You could see outside to the playground.  But no direct sunlight from the sky came through unless it was far away and low towards the horizon.  Most light would therefore have to be reflected from the ground outside which would cut its intensity considerably.  No doubt this seemed to me like a provision intended to prevent flash burn injuries from an air burst.  The images of burned shadows of students in Hiroshima classrooms must have haunted the building’s designer.  Either that or the guy just liked metal awnings.

When we did our monthly duck and cover drill, we were escorted into that long central hallway and lined up along the walls in a crouched down position towards the wall with our hands behind on the back of our necks.  This is more in line with the commonly practiced “Triangle of Safety” type position in event of earthquakes.  The idea being to get beside a sturdy object and when the rest of the place falls around you it will hopefully create a small pocket of space in which you will survive while awaiting rescue.  Granted, in the event of a bomb blast of large magnitude or close proximity it would be of questionable benefit but this was certainly a better method than sitting under our flimsy school desks, whose only real benefit was making us all look rather silly.  And as an added bonus, we got to leave our classrooms for the drill!……few things make a kid happier than an interruption to the school day…for us, the only better drill was a fire drill since we actually got to go outside.

Today it seems almost unreal, but at the time this was a very significant and rational fear.  The Cuban Missile Crisis was still a fresh memory and several homes in the neighborhood had bomb shelters…although not something most 9 year olds should have had to be concerned with…and yet I was…I remember in 4th grade sending a letter requesting (and later receiving) a set of free underground blast shelter plans from the Office of Civil Defense.  I still have them somewhere…just in case…or because maybe I really am a hoarder–take your pick.

Unlike the cell phone alerts pushed out to people in Hawaii last weekend, we had air raid sirens.  Big, loud, dual note mechanical sirens whose sound is unmistakable.  If you are gonna get warned of impending doom, THIS is how you want the message to arrive.  Not some text message with a polite “ding” but a BIG, LOUD, symphonic sound of two musical notes combined in perfect harmony to scare the crap outta you!  Different towns would test on different days/times, although noon is what I mostly recall….this was an important feature–afterall, if EVERYONE tested at the same time then a real attack could be mistaken for “just a drill” or the attack could be timed to coincide with the “all clear” signal.

There were a variety of these sirens from the small hand cranked versions of WWII camps to the larger ones on poles in town, but the undisputed king was the Chrysler-Bell Victory Siren.  Developed by Chrysler and Bell Labs for large cities towards the end of WWII, it was updated in the 1950’s.  Powered by an industrial version of the Chrysler Hemi V-8 and mounted atop a rotating platform, it boasted over 140db at a distance of 100ft away.  It is said that the intensity of the sound vibration was such that it could dissipate fog from an airfield and that a piece of paper placed a foot away would burst into flames!  Crazy loud.  Would easily drown out that car radio next to you in traffic.  Years later I encountered one of these behemoths sitting outside of a home in Texas.  I stopped to take a few photos but when I knocked on the door nobody was there.  So I was unable to get too many photos or speak to the owner, but as I walked around the unit I noticed a few things, among them a battery and set of jumper cables and a connected fuel tank….and the overall good condition.  I suspected that this thing probably still ran.  When I approached the control panel to take a photo of it, the dog in the yard–who had been eyeing me warily during my visit, bolted and hid under the porch.  Poor puppy.  🙁  But that did answer my “does it run?” question in no uncertain terms.

And then there was CONELRAD….CONtrol of ELectromagnetic RADiation.  All the AM radios had a little civil defense triangle symbol in two places on the dial– 640 and 1240.  Radio navigation of aircraft or even missiles was common at this time.  Tune to a station and “ride the beam” as you follow it to your destination.  In an effort to combat this threat, the conelrad system was developed.  In the event of an attack, ALL radio and TV stations would go off the air.  Then, after a brief pause, groups of AM stations would come back on but ALL of them would now be broadcasting on either 640 or 1240 to deliver emergency information.  To an approaching bomber using a station for navigation, either the selected one would be gone…or if they were following one on 640 or 1240 they would now be receiving that signal from multiple sources.  This would cause difficulty in successfully navigating to a target.  Today GPS would be used….and those satellites would be switched off or configured to emit timing errors that would give incorrect data to the receivers.  (TomTom and Siri would no longer be able to tell you how to find your hotel.)

One common electronic project of the era was the “Conelrad Alarm”  ….afterall, what if an attack were to take place whilst you slept?  …you’d just sleep right through the end of the world!  Can’t have that now, can we?   This simple device consisted of a relay set up to respond to the loss of a radio station’s carrier signal.   Once constructed and attached to a radio tuned to one of the nearby stations, if the station went off…the relay would trip and could sound an alarm…..thus allowing you to wake up and be on time for your demise.

An added bonus of the conelrad alarm was for amateur radio operators.  HAMs, like all commercial stations, had to go off the air so that they too could not be used as a navigation signal source.  The conelrad alarm’s relay could also be attached to the power circuit of the transmitter thus providing a prompt and secure shutdown if needed.

Perhaps the wildest defense plan devised was the Nike-Hercules missile system.  This ground to air defense weapon was truly a magnificent piece of engineering and computing for the day, yet also truly a weapon of desperation.  If a fleet of bombers were coming and we were unable to combat them with fighter aircraft, the Nike would be used.  One radar system tracked the aircraft and fed data to a computer while another tracked the missile and fed in its data.  In real time the computer would direct the missile to the bomber fleet.  In close proximity the missile would explode.  It was not necessary to actually hit any of the aircraft.  The reason is that this missile carried a nuclear warhead of its own, the blast wave would break apart any nearby aircraft.  Effective, but desperate.

Today we as a society are more concerned with random terrorism than with the likelihood of a state sponsored coordinated nuclear attack.  But many years ago, this was the daily threat we lived with and the above are a few of the ways we devised to handle it, counter it, or at least feel better about it.  Some of the solutions seem quaint by today’s standards while others have merit for other disasters as well.   Looking back, it is apparent that we were fortunate to have had cool headed leadership in place with ample fail safes added so as to exhaust every other option before launching such an attack against one another.  As the artificially intelligent computer, Joshua, in the 1983 film, “War Games” came to realize:  (nuclear war) “A strange game, the only winning move is not to play.”  But what should one do today?  That could be a lot of discussion about merits of various policies and a variety of books in and unto themselves.  But above all, maybe the best course of action for today is to remember that the folks on the news are mere amateurs–nobody in film or media did nuclear war like Stanley Kubrick……..so pour yourself a glass of pure rainwater, or grain alcohol…pop in a copy of “Dr Strangelove”…….and try to laugh at the one thing which has not changed in the intervening years:   the absurdity of it all.