JF Ptak Science Books Post Post 2084 History of Holes series
...and don't forget the DDT.
Nothing quite sells like the smell of fear--or the sound of it. In 1961, about the scariest sound was the air raid siren, which is what opens this record album, If the Bomb Falls. At what was probably the highest height of the Cold War, with schoolchildren taught to "duck and cover" under their wooden school desks to protect themselves from a massive nuclear fireball, and in which thousands of families constructed their own fallout shelters, the Tops record company decided to fan the flames of public fear by producing a this-is-what-it-takes to survive effort.
For the most part, Tops was a low rent label, producing stuff that sounded like ('sound alikes") a current hit, and by indulging in 'exotic" music like its Voodoo hit. If the Bomb Falls answered its own fear-stoked questions with not-very-good responses. That's where the napkins come in--among other things, the album suggests that you keep a two-week supply of napins on hand, in addition to general-purpose paper towels and the like. Also: batteries, just in case the power goes out, and DDT, which went unexplained. And: be aware that in the fallout shelter there will be a period of unusual closeness at hand, testing your privacy.
There is of course a lot of pertinent information survival information on the record, though it comes with very padded edges, and with very little flavor for what radiation is all about, and what it will do. Plus all of that wicked winged death stuff that was waiting for you outside the bunker.
But this is what was done, at the time, to prevent general panic in the though of nuclear attack--stuff like this offered their own bits of religiosity, with the promise of possible islands of heaven here and there, heavens buried in your backyard or scooped out the side of your basement. Like any belief system, it was based in, well belief--and belief doesn't take that much firming-up once somebody believes in it. Things will work out if you believe they will; science and logic take the background in cases of a staggering hope of survival based upon belief (and instructions from micrgoove vinyl).
In the end, what you are left with in the event of nuclear holocaust is what is in the middle of this record:
Other Tops producers included these lovelies (source of which is here):
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