Massive Retaliation for Kids: Duck and Cover

Context

On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb, and ended the American monopoly on nuclear weapons. In a political climate marked by escalating the Cold War standoff, especially following North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in June 1950, some American politicians and scientists renewed their interest in protecting civilians from a potential nuclear war. On January 24, 1952, educators in Washington previewed one of the most memorable civil defense films, Duck and Cover. (“Duck and Cover: the Citizen Kane of Civil Defense”)

The film was part of an even larger civil defense campaign aimed at school children that included the distribution of 3 million comic books. On a even more morbid note, New York City issued 2.5 million free dog tags to all school children in order to identify the dead after a nuclear attack (Winkler 115). These preparations created an ambiance of paranoia that underscored the supposedly placid “Leave it to Beaver” childhoods of the generation that grew-up in the 1950s.

Novelist Tim O’Brien later described his childhood experience of the “atomic age.”
When I was a kid I converted my Ping-Pong table into a fallout shelter. Funny? Poignant? A nifty comment on the modern age. Well, let me tell you something. The year was 1958 and I was scared. Who knows how it started? Maybe it was all the CONELRAD stuff on the radio, tests of the Emergency Broadcast System, pictures of H-bombs in Life magazine, strontium 90 in the milk, the times in school when we’d crawl under our desks and cover our heads in practice for the real thing (Winkler 123-124).

President Eisenhower, however, found the prospect of nuclear war unimaginable and the prospect of planning for one a grotesque farce. At a meeting of his generals, he stated “Recovery, [after a nuclear war] would literally be a business of digging ourselves out of the ashes, starting again” (Winkler 119). Given the expense and limited utility of protecting American civilians against the atomic (fission) bomb, much less more-powerful fusion weapons, the US civil defense effort remained limited throughout the Cold War (Winkler 135).

Here is the film

Discussion Questions

Does the film try making a nuclear war appear “winnable”?

How does the film downplay the dangers of nuclear weapons? Why do you think that the filmmakers did this?

Does the film feel funny or “dated,” why?

Do your parents or grandparents remember seeing Duck and Cover or similar films in school? Did these films and other civil defense activities frightening, comforting, or did they just ignore them?

Sources
“Duck and Cover: The Citizen Kane of Civil Defense”
Allan M Winkler, Under a Cloud American Anxiety About the Atom. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993 and 1999.