Emergency Operations Centers:
Radiological Defense Operation
Radiological Defense Operation
Office of Civil Defense
Department of the Army
1967
Opening with a poetic
ode to the importance of a fallout shelter sign, Emergency Operations Centers:
Radiological Defense Operations masks a general decline in support and funding
for civil defense programs in America which had taken hold by 1967. Still
a year away from the In Time of Emergency campaign which would
inject new life into federally guided nuclear preparedness, the Office of Civil
Defense was chronically underfunded and lapsing in credibility. In what
appears to a solution to this budget crunch, a number of short, low-cost films
were produced which blended an engaging storyline and relatable characters with
the tedious procedures needed when monitoring fallout. Designed both to
inform, and reassure a skeptical public civil defense was alive and well, this
monitoring series spans the arc of a simulated enemy attack, from the pre-war
tensions in Introduction to a Radiological Defense Exercise,
to the final safe passage outside in Planning for Emergence
from Public Shelters.
Department of the Army
1967
Opening with a poetic
ode to the importance of a fallout shelter sign, Emergency Operations Centers:
Radiological Defense Operations masks a general decline in support and funding
for civil defense programs in America which had taken hold by 1967. Still
a year away from the In Time of Emergency campaign which would
inject new life into federally guided nuclear preparedness, the Office of Civil
Defense was chronically underfunded and lapsing in credibility. In what
appears to a solution to this budget crunch, a number of short, low-cost films
were produced which blended an engaging storyline and relatable characters with
the tedious procedures needed when monitoring fallout. Designed both to
inform, and reassure a skeptical public civil defense was alive and well, this
monitoring series spans the arc of a simulated enemy attack, from the pre-war
tensions in Introduction to a Radiological Defense Exercise,
to the final safe passage outside in Planning for Emergence
from Public Shelters.
Set in the fictional Central City,
described in Emergency Operating Centers: The Basic Concepts,
as "a bustling metropolis of around 80,000", the
film picks up just moments after an enemy attack has occurred and descends into
a command post to follow Dan Carter and his team of radiological monitoring
officers. The population of Central City appears to have been
spared a direct nuclear attack. Not as fortunate, however, is the nearby
Cobb Air Force base. As the clip below relates, the base suffers a direct
hit and the fallout from the blast is headed towards Central City. The
series remains focused on the county-level headquarters through this film, then
expands to several smaller city shelters to describe how to monitor the fallout
accumulation on people entering the shelter and how to keep food from becoming
contaminated.