From Hiroshima and the Atomic Café to Terra! Terra! Terra!

[Cleita]

Will the real commies, eh terrorists, please stand up and identify
yourselves?

We all sat glued to our black and white grainy televisions back in the early fifties as Senator Joseph McCarthy grilled hapless witness after witness with the question, “Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”

You see after World War II, we had defeated the Nazis and the Japanese, so now we needed a new enemy. Soviet Russia in its imperial quest to conquer the four geopolitical points of the world emerged as the new enemy, or more specifically, the Communist dominated nations of the new world order, replaced the old and defeated enemies of World War II under the flag of the hammer and sickle of the Communist Party.

A new threat loomed, that of nuclear war. When America’s President Harry Truman unleashed the untried new bomb technology on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he unwittingly opened a Pandora’s Box of world domination politics. In those days the Pentagon believed that any nation or bloc of nations that held the four corners of Eurasia in its grip would rule the world. So began the tug and pull of the Cold War right after World War II in 1945 up to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1990.

Americans fought the Korean War and the Vietnam War to hold back the Communist insurgency into Asia and not for the many invented reasons that the American government announced to the American people. Both sides agreed on one philosophy, whoever controlled the geopolitical four corners of Eurasia, dominated the world. Neither side considered Africa, South America or Australia in this myopic equation of world domination.

In the early days of the Cold War it was believed that World War III would be a nuclear war and American leaders made it a top priority to keep the secrets of making “The Bomb” out of the hands of the rest of the world. So the Russians launched a barrage of covert operations with the express purpose of getting the secret of making “The Bomb”. They succeeded and the Cold War descended into a deep freeze for many years to come.

I'm old enough to remember "duck and cover" and many other scare tactics used back during the Eisenhower administration to keep the American public on edge and fearful of nuclear war at all times. When you read about the aftermath of Hiroshima, the con game becomes crystal clear. For those who don't know about this let me explain.

In a government film, shown in classrooms across the nation, children were taught to pull jackets, sweaters or whatever was available over their heads and anywhere there was bare skin and dive under their desks in a frog position the minute a bright flash was seen that meant a nuclear bomb had been dropped. This, they were assured, would protect them from radiation until they could seek shelter elsewhere. The movie, “Atomic Café” immortalized the “duck and cover” clip from civil defense films about this crazy era in America’s past.

On saner retrospection, Hiroshima taught us that anyone close enough to ground zero to see a flash could be considered nuclear toast. If there were survivors, they certainly didn’t escape radiation, which spread before one had much of a chance to seek shelter. This lie, one of many told to keep the population from asking questions, led to the widely held view of the world as being on the edge of annihilation. I believe this childhood brainwashing was why it was so easy to lead America into Vietnam and how later it stood to create the rebellion against the establishment by those same children, who were now adults and fed up with the lies put out to keep their parents afraid and quiet.

The shelters were supposed to be built by us in our homes, by the municipalities and other government agencies for the protection of the population. They were supposed to be stocked with food, blankets and first aid provisions. At the time there was a building boom of companies that offered to build shelters, for a price of course. The municipalities and other government agencies dragged their feet. Every now and then a city under citizen pressure would designate already existing tunnels as a shelter and put up signs pointing to them. None of them were stocked with provisions. None of them could hold more than a fraction of the population of any given area. Did they know something we didn’t?

The local militaries organized civilian air watches. A friend of mine, whose father worked at a local air base, dragged me into this because her family insisted that she volunteer and she didn’t want to do it alone. So for several hours a week, we went out on a remote part of the base with binoculars trained on the horizon, looking for airplanes from red China coming over the horizon. Never mind that we were too far inland for anything to happen in our bucolic county.

They had used the same propaganda tactics the Nazis had used in Germany, to turn the German people into pliable putty for anything the Reich did. The Nazis blamed the Jews for all the problems Germany was suffering back then in the aftermath of World War I. They convinced them that they needed to attack neighboring nations to save Germans in those nations as well as in the fatherland from those Jews and Slavs bent on harming Germans. They even staged attacks on Germans on the borders of these countries so that an excuse for invading them was readily available.

Now today Tom Ridge is using the same old tired meme. Even if we are subject to terrorist attacks, there is no reason to frighten the public. 99.999% of Americans will not be affected even if a nuclear bomb is dropped. Also, if anyone has seen F-9/11, you know that most of our borders are unprotected and impossible to protect. We have to take our chances. There are ways to lower the chances of terror attacks, with vigilance on the part of the people we pay to do this and checking leads for suspicious incidents, like the pilots taking training, but not interested in learning how to take off and land, a report incidentally that was ignored by the Bush administration prior to 9/11.

Our present government up until now, hasn’t done much for national security other than silly announcements about duct tape and plastic sheeting (bomb shelters anyone?); color coded alerts (duck and cover?); and being alert to everyone in your surroundings (civil air watches?). Yawn. Been there. Done that. They do not want to spend the money they are stealing on our security, but to fill the corporations they are enriching with taxpayer’s money. These scare tactics are as old as Troy.

Look out yonder at the hundreds of black ships of the Achaeans approaching our shore!

Roll up the gates!

Hide Helen!

Or, better yet, put her out on the beach and tell them to take the woman and go home!

Never mind that it took ten years of siege and a dirty trick, the Trojan horse, to bring down Troy. Although the story is a fantasy it probably reflected a universal truth about war, why people go to war and what the price of war is. So terrorists cannot bring down America, by declaring war and attacking, but by treachery. The real enemy, who is practicing treachery, is now residing in the White House and will bring our country down from within. If Americans don’t stop and look through the smoke and mirrors of the tricks, lies and deceits the criminals of the Bush administration are perpetrating on them, we will be harmed for generations to come.

This latest warning is only a ruse to get Bush reelected. We know their intelligence can’t be trusted because it has proved to be manufactured in the past and there is no reason to believe it’s any more genuine now. They are using the same propaganda tactics the Nazis used in Germany. Hitler used the Reichstag fire to galvanize the German people against the perceived enemy just as the Bush administration used the tragedy of 9/11 against Iraq. They convinced them that they needed to attack neighboring nations to save Germany.

We also spread propaganda during the Cold War about any pink tinted Communists let alone the scarlet red variety. Today, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it seems that the mythical geopolitical advantage to world domination has shifted to the Middle East. Today, the enemy, mythical or real, is the Al Queda or anyone who is a “terrorist”. A nice handy generic word like terrorist I guess gives us permission to invade any country that has terrorists. Perhaps we should start at home and focus on the terrorists residing in our White House as I type. These people didn’t come out of a vacuum but think tanks like the Carlyle Group and the Project for a New American Century, but this is a subject that has already been covered on many other posts.

[Cleita]

1. Kick. Someone must care.

I hope.

[lectrobyte]

2. excellent essay -- the only thing I might add is that

once you invade a country and start bombing and killing, if there weren't "terrists" there before, they will be there now...

[Cleita]

4. Thanks.

I was putting it on my blog, so I was looking for a little feedback.

[G_j]

3. well done

a little perspective in the ever popular fear & panic game.

[Cleita]

5. Thanks for taking the trouble to read this.

eom

[Blue-Jay]

6. <applause> -- n/t

[SOCOM]

7. I heard

some buildings were hit by planes somewhere....

[Cleita]

8. Yes, and I heard a President who should have been making

quick decisions at that time decided to read a book about goats.

[inriporter]

10. Grievous error; pardon me

In my earlier post I used the phrase "there own", when obviously the correct phrase is "their own". I have lots of excuses..it's the middle of the night, I'm tired, etc., but those are only excuses. I would ask that readers please forgive my abuse of the language. And thanks.

[inriporter]

9. The essay "From Hiroshima to the Atomic Cafe..."

This is an interesting essay. It's main point...that we are caught in the middle of an ongoing political fraud conducted by an administration composed of cheese-heads (and worse)...is hardly debatable. I hope that I might not be condemned for pointing out, however, that the use of overly-generalized and somewhat inaccurate misunderstandings (or mis-appreciations) of history detract considerably from the effectiveness of the piece.

An example of this can be found in the phrase "...after WWII we had defeated the Nazis and the Japanese, so now we needed a new enemy." To some extent, the "we" used here is misleading. If it means 'we-the-non-Axis world', there is some truth in it; but if it means 'we-the-U.S.', then it is an error. A completely understandable error, given the myths surrounding U.S. involvement in WWII, but an error nonetheless. The U.S. did not get into the war until after the major battles had been fought; and in large part it is more correct to maintain that the Soviet Union played a much larger part in the defeat of Germany than did the U.S. The U.S. was involved in the European ground war for less than a year -- June of 1944 until May of 1945 -- while the rest of Europe had been at war since September of 1939. As for 'needing' a new enemy, that was hardly the case; Soviet expansionism and aggression had become a major concern of the western powers long before the end of the war in Europe, and in fact one of the considerations for using the nuclear weapons was the possibility that they might check Soviet expansion, particularly in Asia. That is to say, we did not need a new enemy: we already had one. In relation to Soviet attempts to acquire nuclear weapon 'secrets', it should be kept in mind that this was not at all a post-war activity. Unrestrained flow of technical information to the Soviet Union was a part of the U.S. Lend-Lease program, and this information, while having little to do with actual nuclear weapon development, was sufficient to jump-start the Soviet industrial and engineering base necessary to produce an actual device. Within the context of the weapons themselves it is hardly necessary to mention the work of Klaus Fuchs and others within the Manhattan Engineer District (mistakenly called the "Manhattan Project") to provide the Soviets with research and technical information that saved considerable time in the Soviet efforts to achieve a weapon of there own. It is worth mentioning here, perhaps, that among the 'others' who aided Fuchs is an American, still living, who provided even more data than did Fuchs but was never caught or prosecuted. More importantly, perhaps, is the unpleasant fact that the "secret" of nuclear weapons is that THERE IS NO SECRET...nor had there been since the late 1930s. Any country that has ever attempted to produce a nuclear weapon has succeeded on the first attempt; and in fact is became easier after the development of the American weapons, as there was no longer any doubt about the possibilities of success.

The 'duck-and-cover' programs were not entirely a con. Without going into the long-term psychological damage that the programs may have created in a couple of generations of Americans, it is important to remember that there was, in those very early days, a not unreasonable belief that surviving a nuclear strike was possible. It is not correct to state that "...anyone close enough to ground zero to see a flash could be considered nuclear toast." Many, many people have seen this flash, often called the "Teller-Ulam" flash, with no adverse effects (other than being scared silly). One of them, the remarkable Richard Feynman, watched the Trinity detonation with no eye protection at all. This is not to minimize the danger, but rather to point out the flash is sufficiently grand to be seen by persons well away from the immediate danger area of such a detonation. "Escaping radiation" is too generalized a term to be very useful. Escaping radioactive fallout is very different from escaping radiation from an actual detonation; fallout is a by-product, subsequent to the event...moving upwind with great rapidity can provide temporary relief from fallout, assuming that one survives the 'basic' event. Escaping radiation from the detonation itself is not possible, as that kind of radiation leaves the device even before the device itself is destroyed...a few nanoseconds...although it may be moot, as fast upon the heels of that pulse will be thermal and blast waves, hardly more survivable than massive irradiation.

After the Soviet detonation of Joe 1 and the ensuing madness of the nuclear weapons race -- predicted even before the Trinity detonation -- there was time when national survival was not out of the question; hence 'duck and cover'. Those days (and those beliefs) passed quickly enough, but certainly left a mark (or better, a scar) on the always fragile American psyche. It seems increasingly obvious, however, that rather than creating a generation that could be led bleating to Vietnam, 'duck and cover' may have had more pronounced effects manifested in that same generation's becoming very rowdy...the turmoil of the Vietnam years may have had less to do with Vietnam and more to do with the level of terror made inevitable (and necessary) by the nuclear arms race itself.

It is not correct to refer to the strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the use of "untried" weapons. The device used on Nagasaki ("Test 3", as the U.S. government still calls it) was identical to the device tested at Trinity in July of 1945 (without the fins or the packaging, of course). The Hiroshima device was untested, but only because by that point in time there was no doubt at all that the weapon would work, albeit very inefficiently.

It may be noteworthy to point out that by the time "Red" China became a nuclear nation, civilian bomber-watching had long ceased to be a practice in the U.S. Watching for Soviet Russian bombers was a delightfully terrifying civilian experience, but short-lived; and in that same vein, only the Army-McCarthy hearings were publicly broadcast on our grainy B&W tubes; the interrogations themselves were generally only displayed on newsreels shown before movies.

It strikes me as very, very foolish to suggest that "...99.999% of Americans will not be affected even if a nuclear bomb is dropped." It would, in fact, be a national disaster, and one which the U.S. is in no way prepared to handle. The 9-11 attacks, with their (relatively) paltry numbers of casualties, threw the country for a complete loop; to think that a nuclear strike of any size would do less strikes me as a very dangerously self-delusional. The U.S. could be quite easily destroyed by less than 3 dozen contemporary nuclear weapons; those who believe or profess otherwise generally are speaking from great ignorance...which points to the blatant stupidity behind the so-called "Star Wars" concept, as fine a boondoggle as was ever foisted on any nation, any time, any where. The ignorance that allows this lunacy to be considered is the same lunacy that allows the 'War on Terror' to be conducted, but that is best saved for another time and forum; it is sufficient to say that American ignorance is a much greater problem than any others currently acknowledged.

As a favor, I would ask for greater explanation of the term "geopolitical four corners of Eurasia". I have never heard the term before, and have a difficult time imagining where these corners are, or what they can mean.

I must thank you, if I have not already done so, for an interesting and thought provoking essay; and along with my thanks, I send my

Warm regards.

Henry Porter, his mark.

[Cleita]

11. First let me say that I appreciate all critique and criticism,

no matter how nit-picky even though I don’t necessarily always agree. Since this was written somewhat as a personal reminiscence of history that I personally witnessed, your inaccuracies are my facts. I think it depends on point of view. I do agree I generalized somewhat skimming over minute details because things like World War II, of whom beat whom, post Wold War II America, nukes and the Cold War are tomes in themselves, so I only touched briefly to make my point.

However, here are a few things I think I need to clarify to you. It is my opinion that the “duck and cover” civil defense film and many others shown to children and civic minded citizens at clubs, political gatherings and such were nothing more than pure propaganda. Yes, when we were testing above ground, many did witness the flashes from a great distance and some military even closer, but these films gave one the impression you could survive a nuclear attack at very close range. I think you can find them in film archives still.


When I speak of untried weapons, well this is semantics and I meant that they hadn’t be tried in war before nor since for that matter.

As for the TV broadcasts, I personally watched those. We had TV news back then. Also, one of the local stations here in California broadcast film of the hearings, as well and the Kefauver hearings, and both conventions when Ike ran against Adlai, live programming children tap dancing etc. because at that time television was relatively new and they were desperate for programming.

As for the airplanes from red China, in the air watch we were taught to look for various markings and other identifying marks as not being our aircraft and therefore suspicious. They would be coming from the west either China or soviet Russia. Both countries were very red then. It was implied they could be dropping nukes. Kind of the same kind of disinformation that ties Iraq to Al Queda, by implying such.

Since in round figures, three thousand lives were lost in America on 9/11 out of a population 281,421,908 million (2000 census figure), I stand by my 99.9999% estimate.

My world history class in college in 1959 invited an army general, a graduate of West Point, to teach us about the wars of the twentieth century including the Korean War. Vietnam was not on our plate then. He brought up the term geopolitical. It is in the dictionary, incidentally and means the same thing today. He claimed the four corners of Eurasia were the prize that the two powers of Russia and the USA sought. His take on the wars incidentally was that of a football coach planning plays in his playbook. His take took the blood and guts aspect out of those wars and introduced us to the game plan.

He claimed that this is why Russia was swallowing up nations all the way to the Pacific Ocean because the philosophy then was that if they ruled this real estate they would rule the world. It was our duty as Americans not to let this happen. This is why we had to stop the communists in Korea. This is why I am sure we went to Vietnam, even after the French warned us not to bother. It was believed that if Russian vassal states owned these countries they would rule the world.

This is still happening but today the geopolitical advantage has shifted to the Middle East. Why is this so? For some fascinating reading, go to the Project for a New American Century website, http://www.newamericancentury.org
and read about their plan to take over the Middle East by invading first Iraq, then Iran and Syria. Instead of owning the world though, they will own instead all the mineral wealth of that region. There is so much I agree that I touched on that should be gone into in more depth and I will in the future. I want to explore the Trojan Horse aspect of our administration more, a thing I only brushed on in this piece.

By the way, welcome to DU. Thanks for reading and taking the trouble to comment.