Atomic Warnings: Civil Defense Publications in the Early Cold War, 1945-1965

In August 1949, four years to the month after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. In response, President Harry Truman created the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) to oversee the nation’s civil defense program. The FCDA’s mission was twofold: to inform Americans about the dangers of an atomic war; and, at the same time, to reassure them that survival was, indeed, possible if they adhered to the government’s atomic warnings. This book contains a representative sampling of the multitude of civil defense books, pamphlets, magazines, and signage distributed between 1945 and 1965. Not only did the FCDA and its successors, the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization and the Office of Civil Defense, publish atomic warnings; state and local civil defense agencies distributed materials, as did many independent organizations and private companies. Read more