JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 456
“Those who control the present control the future. Those who
control the future control the past.” –George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
“Political language -- and with variations this is true of
all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make
lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of
solidity to pure wind”. --George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
“Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict
accordance
with the limitations and incapacities of the human
misunderstanding."—Ambrose Bierce, Devil’s Dictionary
Making the unthinkable thinkable was the de facto aim of
this pamphlet. It described the complete
vulnerability of any nation in total “atomic war”, yet proceeded to advise the
population of the United
States
to proceed as actors in a drama that
could have variant endings. And so began
the concept of the winnable, survivable nuclear holocaust, a petulant and
terrifically arrogant attempt to control the language in which the idea of
nuclear war would be discussed with a government-made language.
This simple (1953) pamphlet was a product of the Federal
Civil Defense Administration and was a public document, though it replaced the
edition of 1952, which was a “restricted document”. (We are also warned that if we have this
earlier document that we are to burn it, even though the information contained “as
no longer of a classified nature”.) It
outlined the cities and regions in the United States that would be the
subject of an attack. “City” is
redefined here as a “Target Area for Civil Defense Purposes”, and then
redefined in terms of a greater population as a “Critical Target Area for Civil
Defense Purposes”. There were 193 such “areas”
defined, of which 70 were “critical targets” encompassing a population of 67
million. (I hate to say it, but if you
were to map the “critical” zones it would look much like the Blue State map of 2008.)
I am surprised to see that my own little city, Asheville
(N.C.), makes the list for a “target area”, somehow, as one of the four cities
mentioned for North Carolina. I have no idea why, except that it is the
seat of a sort-of populous county--there
was nothing here of interest to the Soviets.
On the other hand there are two cities specified forNew
Mexico, both of which are 70 miles or so east of the Los Alamos installation.
The unnamed author(s) warn the reader that the 100+ million
people specified in the two major attack areas was open to a greater blanket
attack than described, what with the number of warheads available and all—everyone
was subject to being bombed. Also, the
whole issue of chemical and biological weapons was not addressed: ‘therefore, the resources of the entire
country outside the listed target areas, as well as within them, must be
mobilized for civilian defense”.
The only mobilization for defense was that against fear--there really wasn't anything else worth talking about.
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