From 1960, here's how to build your own fallout shelter

This video on building your own fallout shelter is from the FEMA archives, via the US National Archives YouTube channel. Per Popular Mechanics:

Released in 1960, "Walt Builds a Family Fallout Shelter," was released by the government's Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (OCDM), working with the National Concrete Masonry Association. The plot is self-explanatory, and the dialogue is meant to convince people that their shelter could have plenty of uses. Sure, it would be handy in the case of nuclear war, but you could use the shelter as a darkroom for photographs! It could be a place for the grandkids to stay, too.

You're supposed to be able to live in this thing comfortably for at least two weeks, assuming you stock it well. The plan is to build it in the corner of a basement.

To see what materials you’ll need, this detailed Family Fallout Shelter Bulletin was released at the same time.

Related posts and links:

On July 16, 1945 the atomic age began with the Trinity nuclear test.

1954 film: How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Survive the Atomic Bomb

Fan of mushroom clouds? Dozens of nuclear test videos declassified, uploaded to YouTube.

In 1961, US nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina

Russian Nuclear Launch Code Backup Procedure: a sledgehammer.

March 5 is the anniversary of Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. 

Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. 

~ Winston S. Churchill (wiki) (1874-1965) (speech, Fulton Missouri, 5 March 1946) 

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both. 

~ John F. Kennedy (wiki) (1917-1963) (speech to NATO, 3 July 1963)

Larger version and related maps here.

An uncharacteristically optimistic quote from Dr. Johnson:

No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it ... There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under any form of government. 

~ Dr. Samuel Johnson (wiki) (1709-1884) (quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson, 31 March, 1772) 

March 5th is the anniversary of Winston Churchill's epoch-making "iron curtain" speech in 1946, at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri - the most famous acknowledgement of the existence of a "Cold War" (wiki) between Russia and the West, which put an end to the alliance that defeated the Nazis in World War II. The Cold War, which would often became quite hot in places like Korea and Vietnam - and damn near led to a nuclear exchange during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 - continued for 45 years until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. 

Sadly, however, the freedoms regained by the nations of eastern Europe seem now to be threatened by growing authoritarianism, and under Vladimir Putin, a new Cold War may already upon us.

Churchill's "iron curtain" phrase had many antecedents, described fully in a relevant Wikipedia article.

Churchill himself used the phrase a year before in a telegram to U.S. President Harry S. Truman, but perhaps most startling was its earliest appearance in the present context in an article by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels (wiki) (1897-1945) in the Nazi newspaper Das Reich on 23 February 1945: 

"Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets ... would occupy all eastern and southeastern Europe, together with the greater part of the Reich. Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain [ein eiserner Vorhang] would at once descend."

Related posts:

Churchill is on Islam, and his "We shall fight on the beaches" speech.

Churchill on governmental redistribution.

Before there was Laffer: Churchill on the fiscal cliff..

And this: 25 years later, deer on the Czech/German border still avoid the Iron Curtain.

Parts of the text above is adapted from Ed's Quotation of the Day, only available via email - leave your email address in the comments if you'd like to be added to his list. Ed is the author of Hunters and Killers: Volume 1: Anti-Submarine Warfare from 1776 to 1943 and Hunters and Killers: Volume 2: Anti-Submarine Warfare from 1943.

Friday links

1954 film: How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Survive the Atomic Bomb.

Why do we have pinky toes?

Digital Atlas Of The Roman Empire

June 30, 1934 was the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler's purge of those standing in his way.

Catherine the Great's Secret Cabinet of Erotic Curiosities

Inventor creates a hover craft by strapping 76 drones to a seat.

ICYMI, Tuesday's links are here, and include weird historical baldness cures, Helen Keller's birthday (with a selection of non-PC jokes), animals with regional accents, and a set of awkward pregnancy photos.

1954 film: How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Survive the Atomic Bomb

A gem from cold war history: "The lack of safe house keeping has doomed this house to destruction."

Atomic tests at the Nevada Proving Grounds (later the Nevada Test Site) show effects on well-kept homes, homes filled with trash and combustibles, and homes painted with reflective white paint. The makers of the film (which apparently include people selling home improvement products as well as the U. S. government) assert that cleanliness is an essential part of civil defense preparedness and that it increases survivability.

Related posts and links:

Fan of mushroom clouds? Dozens of nuclear test videos declassified, uploaded to YouTube.

The anniversary of Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech

This is fascinating: 25 years later, deer on the Czech/German border still avoid the Iron Curtain.

A Secret Cold War Bunker under Brooklyn Bridge.

In 1961, US nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina

Russian Nuclear Launch Code Backup Procedure: a sledgehammer.

Hard to tell if there's anything to this:  Nixon blocked Soviet nuclear attack on China in 1969.

Wednesday links

Physics of superheroes: Batman's powers questioned by scientists.

The History of Revolving Restaurants.

Traditional Japanese Spider Fighting.

Really bad book covers (and books).

Joel Slater, the Stateless Man.

Operation Acoustic Kitty: Cold War attempt to eavesdrop via transmitters implanted into cats. 

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include the summer solstice, the economics of peeing in the shower, healthy summer advice from 1656, state liquor law history, and what will happen if GPS fails.

Friday links

Death and Taxes... and Zombies: a well thought out treatise on the tax implications of the zombie apocalypse.

The Stunningly Intricate Curta Mechanical Calculator, a look Inside The Brains Of Vintage Calculators and (with some overlap) a gallery of the Strangest And Most Beautiful Calculators Ever Created.

That Time the British Developed a Chicken Heated Nuclear Bomb. 

UPS Trucks Don't Turn Left, Saving Them 10 Million Gallons of Gas/Year.

Giant Flesh-Eating Koala of Legend Was Real.

Here's the Soviet Union's Secret Space Cannon.

ICYMI, Tuesday's links are here, and include a 1938 film demonstrating how dramatic sound effects were made for old-time radio shows, tales of real-life castaways, why we have toes, and a supercut of the 100 best one-liners just before the kill.

Groundhog Day links

Groundhog Day links, both the meteorological event and the movie: the history of weather predictions and Candalmas (Groundhog Day), how often Punxsutawney Phil has been correct (39% of the time since 1887), how long Bill Murray was stuck (8 years? 34 years?), and more.

Scenes From the History of Snow Removal. Related; Do You Want To Build a Snowman? Physics Can Help.

Why did the panda’s ancestors ditch meat for bamboo?

Here's a Map of Every Goat in the United States, with bonus goat-related links.

Science: What Spider-Man Would Need to Eat for Breakfast in Order to Swing Around New York. Related: The Problem With Actually Having Superpowers.

Take a Tour of a 1964 Underground Fallout Home.

This is fascinating: 25 years later, deer on the Czech/German still avoid the Iron Curtain

The deer who don't know the Cold War is over: animals still fear crossing the electric fences of the Iron Curtain (wiki) 25 years after they were switched off.

• Seven-year study found red deer on Czech-German border do not cross electrified fence dividing West from communist world taken down in 1991
• None of current deer population were alive when the barrier was up
• Czech and German biologists predict behavior will last for generations

The Iron Curtain fell 25 years ago, but it seems that nobody told the deer.

A new study has found that a quarter of a century on, red deer on the border between the Czech Republic and old West Germany still do not cross the divide.

The red deer were tracked via GPS-equipped

 collars that sent data to computers

After tracking 300 deer, researchers said the animals are intent on maintaining the old boundaries.

One of the scientists involved told the BBC the deer are not ideological, "they are just very conservative in their habits."

During the Cold War, electric fences made the Czech-German boundary impossible to pass.

Czechoslovakia, where the Communists took power in 1948, had three parallel electrified fences, patrolled by heavily armed guards.

Nearly 500 people were killed when they attempted to escape. 

This reconstruction in the Sumava National Park

 in the Czech Republic shows the 

Iron Curtain's electrified fence

The researchers followed the movement of the 300 Czech and German deer via GPS-equipped collars, which sent data to computers.

Biologist Pavel Sustr, who led the seven-year project: "It was fascinating to realise for the first time that anything like that is possible," Mr Sustr said. "But the border still plays a role for them and separates the two populations."

He said that was remarkable because the average life expectancy for deer is 15 years and none living now would have encountered the barrier.

Scientists believe that fawns tend to follow mothers for the first year of their lives and develop a pattern in their movements, so the same area remains the habitat for each new generation.

From Daily Mail and BBC, via Tyler Cohen, who refers to the deer's status quo bias:

Status quo bias is a cognitive bias; a preference for the current state of affairs. The current baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss. Status quo bias should be distinguished from a rational preference for the status quo ante, as when the current state of affairs is objectively superior to the available alternatives, or when imperfect information is a significant problem. A large body of evidence, however, shows that status quo bias frequently affects human decision-making.

Must read Jonah Goldberg : Not Your Father’s Cold War - that was far more than a conflict with Russia

Go to NRO and read the whole thing.  Excerpts (emphasis mine):

The Cold War was far more than a conflict with Russia. Everyone should agree on that. Communism, anti-Communism, and anti-anti-Communism divided Americans for decades, particularly among academic and media elites. Right and Left may still argue over the merits of those divisions, but no informed person disputes that the topic of Communism — the real version and the imagined ideal — incited riots of intellectual and political disagreement in the West for a half-century.

Meanwhile, Putin’s ideology holds little such allure to Americans or the populations of the European Union. 

...

Many have called the decade between the fall of the Soviet Union and the attacks of 9/11 a “holiday from history.” The truth is closer to the opposite. The Cold War years, while historic in a literal sense, were something of a great parentheses, a sharp departure from historical norms. 

It turns out, the Berlin Wall wasn’t blocking us from a new world order, it was holding back the tide of history. Western Europe was especially slow to realize this. Its politicians and intellectuals persuaded themselves that they had created a continental “zone of peace” through diplomacy, when in reality they were taking U.S. protection for granted. They let their militaries atrophy to the point of being little more than ceremonial.

The contrast with Russia and China (not to mention Iran and Saudi Arabia) is amazing. In Moscow and Beijing, they still believe foreign policy is about military and economic power, “spheres of influence,” formal alliances, and political control. In Western Europe (and much of this administration), it’s about moral authority, international norms, and other kinds of “soft power.” Soft power is great, but it’s useless against people who respect only hard power. And that lesson predates the Cold War by a few millennia.