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The film "details reasons for maintaining a well organized civil defense in every area of the United States.  Basic reasons are the saving of lives and maintenance of war production which will enable our armed forces to fight back."  This brief description, taken from an audio-visual catalog promoting a line of upcoming "Official Civilian Defense Films", nicely summarizes the plot of a then unreleased film anticipatorily titled The Cities Must Fight.(1)  Shortly after its formation in late 1950, the Federal Civil Defense Administration announced the release of nine films meant to address emerging threats of the Cold War.(2)  Though the films would have the full backing of the United States government, they would be made by private companies which would bid on the rights to produce them.  The burgeoning ad agency Archer Productions won a contract to create films based on the existing pamphlets Civil Defense for Schools (which eventually became Duck and Cover) and The Cities Must Fight, which was ultimately released as Our Cities Must Fight in January of 1952.(3)  Aimed toward older, business-oriented audiences, Our Cities Must Fight argues a tough message, asking the American public to remain in a probable target area or large city after receiving warning of an incoming enemy atomic attack.  Keeping the majority of a population in place, as opposed to evacuating civilians to surrounding areas, would ensure that essential wartime industries could maintain the production output necessary for the nation to fight a war.    

Fred offers three points against evacuation of major cities.  He cites his first point, traffic congestion, as the largest deterrent to evacuation.  If an entire population tries to leave a city at once, all roads clog with stalled vehicles and stumbling pedestrians.  Fred accentuates his second point, that those who do successfully escape the heart of a target city will quickly become unwelcome refugees in neighboring communities, by referring to stock footage of displaced populations during WWII and discussing the problems they caused.  His third and final point is the oft repeated message of Our Cities Must Fight.  With a city's population gone, its workforce would evaporate, hampering rescue efforts and halting factory production, effectively crippling the United States' ability to wage, and win, a war.  As the 1950's progressed, the idea of evacuation as an official policy would fall out of favor with government planners.  However, this was primarily due to advances in weaponry which cut probable warning times for an impending enemy attack down to mere minutes.  The development of intercontinental ballistic missiles meant that patriotic calls to keep urban populations in place to support American industry would no longer be needed, because those populations would very likely have no time to go anywhere.  Indeed, by 1956 the F.C.D.A. removed Our Cities Must Fight from its motion picture catalogs and, citing the changing nature of warfare and protection, declared the film obsolete.(4)