JF Ptak Science Books    Quick Post   The series on Atomic and Nuclear Weapons

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One thing is for certain–the design of this Civil Defense (“trained helpfulness”)  pamphlet issued by Bell Telephone of Pennsylvania was very determined, and obvious, and provocative, and it may have been the best thing about this publication. It is not clear to me how much of the plans for reacting to a nuclear attack (“an atomic Pearl Harbor”) were implemented or implementable when this work was printed (ca. 1950?), but the plans were certainly orderly–and so they seem in the maps of action.

Here’s one interpretation of an action plan for Armageddon in a large city–it is a bare-bones, comforting plan,even though it looks like half of the map is missing (though it isn’t); it is really just a suggestion about the course of action after an attack:

All it shows, really, is that something is going to happen.  

Here’s another vision of action, this taking place in a small Pennsylvania town “100 miles away” from bombed centers:

There are no plans for the population to go anywhere, though there are plenty of plans for convoys going to the bombed areas. Also there’s plenty of expectation, what with a hospital, temporary hospital, mass care center, and a golf course dedicated to mass care for evacuees–there would be plenty of people being removed to the town (as hospitals “prepare(d) extra beds”).  

There wasn’t much in this pamphlet about what to actually do in the event of an (ultra) emergency, though you were told that people would respond to calls–telephone calls. As a matter of fact the phone features largely in this pamphlet:

Maybe it was all about selling telephones–as in would you be ready to receive The Big Call if it was made?