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The article discusses the nature of dangers that can be brought by nuclear weapons and the measures that can be taken to protect people from those weapons' hazardous effects. Accordingly, the effects of multi-megaton nuclear explosions are blast, heat radiation, and radioactive fallout. Of the three, it is claimed that the most damaging are the severe blast effects occurring within several miles of an explosion. This allegedly means that the lives of all people residing at the vicinity near where the explosion occurred would be put at stake. To protect these people, the establishment of shelter protections is suggested. Included are constructions of a concrete block basement shelter in family house, family underground shelter, and community shelter in reinforced concrete building basement.

The article presents a speech by Dr. Leo Szilard which was delivered at nine colleges and universities in the U.S. He discusses the probability of war as reflected by the pattern of behavior exhibited by the U.S. and Soviet Union, the issues of bomb tests and bomb shelters and the formulation of a political objective on which a dedicated minority could give all-out support to a political movement against war.

The article focuses on the viewpoints of the Federation of American Scientists on the fallout shelter programs offered by the U.S. government as a security measure that would protect the individual citizen in times of war. The group views such program as unusually difficult since it involves measures and estimates that are without precedent which makes predictions highly uncertain. It has been noted that shelter planning involves many technical considerations not easily conveyed to the public. Furthermore, the organization had considered a list of resolutions that would provide a review on the advantages and disadvantages of the fallout shelter programs.

This paper explores the worldwide unprecedented bunker infrastructure of Switzerland. Since the 1960s, the country has built hundreds of thousands of nuclear bomb shelters in family homes. Drawing on poststructural theories of social practice and ritual theory, the all-pervasive structures in the private sphere are analyzed as transitory spaces that coordinate the movement and connections between different milieus, regimes, and bodies. By studying the operational scripts of the authorities and the spatial arrangements and artifacts of the shelter, the paper argues that a sequenced set of “rites of passage” were to be practiced in order to guarantee a transition into the postapocalypse without any violations of norms, social roles, and affective regimes. However, this “territorializing” process launched by the state with the aim of engineering a “bomb-proof” society met with little success. By ignoring, distorting, or violating the constant prewar situation in their homes, Swiss people, as early as in the 1970s, started to undermine the shelter as an instance of concrete governmentality. Being traversed by various processes of “deterritorialization” the bunker lost its function as a locus of secured passage and transformed into a highly dynamic “empty space” that hides, till this day, residua for creativity and difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the integration of the civil defense program as publicly recommended by New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller for a state-wide system of fallout shelters. This program has been estimated to cost for about $100 per shelter occupant for minimum protection, and this cost factor was believed to be the pivotal issue as state legislators wrestle with the difficult civil defense issue. Accordingly, the proposal of Rockefeller was a bold recognition of the fact that the nuclear hazards pose a tremendous challenge to human survival in the event of surprise attack.

In this study, a sea-surface water ΔC record of AD 1966-2000 (i.e., after the atmospheric nuclear-bomb testing period of the mid-1950s to early 1960s) was reconstructed from a coral sample collected from Iki Island, western Japan. The island is located in the Tsushima Strait where the Tsushima Current flows from the East China Sea (ECS) continental shelf into the Sea of Japan, indicating a strong influence of the ECS shelf water on the island. It is widely accepted that the Tsushima Current originates in the area between the ECS shelf break and the Nansei Islands further offshore as a branch of the Kuroshio Current, although another possible origin is the Taiwan-Tsushima Current System. The ΔC record from Iki Island shows the following evidence of a response to the atmospheric nuclear testing: (1) an increase from ~55‰ in 1966 to ~133‰ in 1970, (2) a plateau ranging between ~123 and ~142‰ during the 1970s to the late 1980s, and (3) a gradual decrease from ~115‰ in 1990 to ~83‰ in 2000. Comparison of this record with coral ΔC records from the Nansei Islands (Okinawa Island, Ishigaki Island and Kikai Island), located ~160-280 km off the ECS shelf break and little influenced by the shelf water, suggests that the surface-water ΔC around Iki Island was ~30-45‰ lower than that of the Nansei Islands from the mid-1960s to late 1970s, and that the ΔC difference between Iki Island and the Nansei Islands decreased from the end of the 1970s to ~0-15‰ in the mid-1980s to 2000. The lower ΔC around Iki Island can be explained as follows: (1) in contrast to the Nansei Islands area, the ECS shelf area is a vertically mixed, highly concentrated carbon reservoir significantly connected to subsurface and deeper waters outside the shelf area, strongly suggesting that the surface-water ΔC of the shelf area (perhaps excepting very shallow innermost shelf areas) was significantly less sensitive to the atmospheric nuclear-bomb C spike than that of the Nansei Islands area; (2) the shelf-surface water is conveyed from the northern ECS to Iki Island by the Tsushima Current. Thus, it can be suggested that the post-bomb coral ΔC record from Iki Island reflects oceanographic conditions of the northern ECS shelf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lichens have been used as biomonitors of airborne radionuclides released in conjunction with nuclear bomb testing as well as nuclear power plant accidents. The potential of lichens for monitoringof radionuclides has been well documented. However, there are no studies that determine natural and artificial radionuclide monitoring by lichens, in Iran. Thus, as a first step, we have conducted a comparison of 137 Csactivity concentration capacity of three epiphytic lichen species including Lepraria incana , Xanthoria parietina and Ramalina farinacea from Ramsar Northern Iran. In this work, accumulation capacity of 137 Cs was determined in 36 lichen samples using a gamma spectrometer equipped with a high purity germanium (HPGe) detector. The results showed that highest accumulation capacity of 137 Cs in the lichen species was found in Lepraria incana and Xanthoria parietina, 30.2, 9.8 Bq/kg respectively, and lowest average accumulation capacity were found in Ramalina farinacea 2.7 Bq/kg (dry weight). This study showed that activity concentration 137 Cs is in crustose > foliose > fruticose lichens in the same biotope. Thus, crustose lichens are capable to accumulate higher 137 Cs than foliose and fruticose species because of different factors such as special morphological characteristics in these species and large surface/volume ratio or longer biological half-life of 137 Cs in lichen Lepraria incana . Therefore, Lepraria incana due to high concentration capability of 137 Cs (approximately 3 and 11 time higher than Xanthoria parietina and Ramalina farinacea , respectively), is introduced as biomonitor of Cesium-137 from Ramsar, North of Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nuclear anxiety, as crafted and perpetuated by the United States Federal Civil Defense Administration's programmes, not only informed how, and what, Americans ate in the 1950s, but also contoured their relationship with food. This culinary-based nuclear anxiety was reflected in government-sponsored programmes such as Grandma's Pantry, advice concerning the content of bomb/fallout shelter food stashes, and the cookbooks of the period. The federal government's obsession with atomic age cuisine saturated everything, from its promotion of canned convenience foods, to the question of what would happen if a pantry were exposed to a nuclear explosion as was the case in Operation Cue, to what Americans put on their plates and in their martini glasses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates local groups' opinions on interpreting a dark heritage site for the promotion of tourism and analyzes their roles in tourism activities, through a case study of Hiroshima, Japan. As the first city suffered nuclear bombing, Hiroshima is a primary tourism destination in Japan but faced the challenge of revitalization. Fieldwork investigation methods, including semi-structured interviews, were applied. The results suggest that local people hold favorable attitudes toward tourism development. They conduct an alternative approach to rejuvenating Hiroshima by identifying the essence of the place - a cheerful and peaceful city - and incorporating it into tourism events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes how shelters act as a form of concrete governmentality. Shelters, like other forms of preparedness, are political acts in the absence of a disaster. They are materializations and visualizations of risk calculations. Shelters as a type of concrete governmentality pose the question of how to build something that lasts and resists, and remains relevant both when the object that is being resisted keeps changing and when the very act of building intervenes so publicly in the life of the restless surrounding population. Comparing shelters in India, Switzerland and the UK, we highlight three transformations of preparedness that shelters trigger. First we analyse how shelters compose preparedness by changing the relationship between the state and its citizens. Rather than simply limiting risk or introducing 'safety', the building of shelters poses questions about who needs protection and why and, as we will show, this can generate controversy. Second, we analyse how shelters decompose preparedness by falling out of use. Third, we focus on struggles to recompose preparedness: Changing ideas about disasters thus lead to shelters being suddenly out of place, or needing to adapt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peak activities of radiocaesium (137Cs) in lake sediments have frequently been used to infer the ages of sediments deposited in the 1960s (137Cs derived from nuclear bomb testing) or in 1986 (Chernobyl derived 137Cs). Records of the vertical distribution of 137Cs in sediments can thus be used to provide accurate dates for a critical period in which palaeoecological reconstructions often overlap contemporary monitoring data. However, knowledge regarding how the distribution of 137Cs in sediments is affected by post-depositional processes is limited to interpretations based on the 137Cs distribution in sediments sampled at a single given date. This study assesses the extent to which the 137Cs record in annually laminated (varved) lake sediments is affected by post-depositional diffusion, using 11 archived sediment cores sampled between 1986 and 2007. The sediment record reveals how Chernobyl 137Cs incorporated into the 1986 varve diffused downwards in the core at a decreasing rate over time, whereas the surface sediments continued to receive inputs of 137Cs mobilized from the catchment soils or lake margin. In spite of these processes, all cores post-dating the Chernobyl accident had a clear and well-resolved peak in the 1986 varve, justifying the use of this feature as a fixed chronostratigraphic feature. Because of the very high levels of Chernobyl fallout at this site, downwards migration of Chernobyl 137Cs has, however, completely masked the nuclear weapons 137Cs fallout peak that had been clearly preserved in the 1964 varve of a pre-Chernobyl core sampled just three weeks before the Chernobyl accident. In consequence, the weapons fallout marker is likely to be of little use for determining 137Cs dates in areas strongly affected by high levels of Chernobyl fallout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British government made secret preparations for nuclear conflict throughout the Cold War. Following the disbandment of the Civil Defence Corps in 1968, resources for the defence of civilians were dramatically reduced. The sole measure undertaken after 1968 to minimize civilian casualties in the event of a conflict was the preparation of a public information campaign, Protect and Survive. The material advised civilians to ‘stay at home’ and build makeshift fallout shelters. This article examines the production of Protect and Survive, and some public responses to it. It will be argued that civil servants were left little option but to knowingly prepare inadequate and misleading advice. Public criticism was shaped by anxieties about the likelihood of nuclear conflict, and the impossibility of adequate defence. The individual was seen to be utterly helpless in the face of a nuclear attack. Older institutions designed to facilitate patriotic collective engagement with cold war defence, such as the Civil Defence Corps, were not revived. The government was attacked both by campaigners for improved civil defence, and by a revived and intellectually fertile anti-nuclear movement. Each of these political initiatives represented attempts to develop forms of active cold war citizenship, in contrast to the passivity advised by the state via Protect and Survive. Criticism of the material can therefore be seen to be rooted in a growing scepticism about the state’s ability to act effectively in the interests of the majority, in war as in economic management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the misconception of a mineshaft gap, or disparity in the amount of bomb shelters between the United States and the Soviet Union, during the Cold War. The author explains that the U.S. was led to believe that Soviet civil defense preparations were more advanced and numerous than their own, examines the available information surrounding the Soviet government’s nuclear weapons policies, and explores the history of the Soviet bomb shelter construction program which lends insight into their fears of nuclear war.

The article focuses on the history of the development of fallout shelters in Canada between 1959 and 1963, in the event of nuclear war. The author discusses the Canadian government's involvement under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and their advising of homeowners to build shelters at their own expense, and its lack of success due to homeowner's inability to pay for the materials. The author emphasizes the participation of the Canadian military in the building of shelter buildings due to federal and local government's inability to meet the challenges of the changing threats to Canada and the progression of the Cold War arms race. Details relating to the Canadian Army's use of the shelters to collect and disseminate information on nuclear fallout is provided.

This article presents a paper examining shelters to be used after a nuclear attack. How well they fill the role depends on a set of interdependent decisions made by the people and organizations who prepare and use them. The paper looks at three different decisions; the first being the construction of a shelter according to guidelines from the Department of Homeland Security, the second explores how soon a shelter should be sought and the third considers when it is safe to leave a shelter. In light of the variables, the authors say that these life-and-death decisions deserve formal analysis to provide sound advice.

At the height of the cold war, from the 1950s to the early 1960s, the United States government embarked on a series of civil defence initiatives centred on the home fallout shelter. Calling on 'American' traits of enterprise and independence, shelter advocates sought an accessible and pleasurable way to help citizens prepare for nuclear war by transforming the home fallout shelter into an ideologically charged national do-it-yourself project. The government requested citizens to furnish their own security, and fallout shelters presented homeowners with a do-it-yourself activity that costumed home improvement with family safety. Do-it- yourself provided both men and women with traditionally gender-appropriate tasks that strengthened domestic identity and offered a sense of contained purpose and control in increasingly uncertain times. Such expectations were carried into the construction of the home fallout shelter and perpetuated gender stereotypes in the post-nuclear world--literally building them into a concrete form. Despite public and private initiatives, however, fallout shelters permeated America's post-war consciousness more than its physical landscape; few Americans actually built shelters. Nevertheless, do-it-yourself helped promote the idea of security, while revealing larger cold war insecurities of daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the nuclear shelters being constructed in New Delhi, India as of July 2004. Expectation for the Nuclear Defense War Council to order a retaliatory nuclear strike using secret electronic codes; Construction of prototypes of nuclear shelters by the Defense Research and Development Organization; Problem posed by radioactive material.

From the late 1940's onwards a heated debate took place in the U.S. over whether it was possible to take practical preventive measures against nuclear attack. This assay examines the participation of a number of novelists in that debate and in particular the different ways in which they dramatize the anticipated effects of fall-out and the panic which would follow such attacks. writers such as Judith Merril questioned the reassuring orthodoxies put forward by the U.S. government, and the descriptions of nuclear shelters in the fiction of the period tends to confirm the title of one of the earliest comments on this controversy, namely that there is no place to hide.

Focuses on the aspects of sheltering for nuclear emergency plans. Benefits of staying indoors during a passing radioactive cloud; Factors considered at the time of a nuclear accident; Experience of organizations with sheltering.

The Shelter enclosing the wrecked Chernobyl Unit 4 reactor continues to deteriorate posing an increasing environmental threat due to structural degradation and the ingress of water. The uncertain nature of the wreckage within the Shelter combined with structural instability and high radiation fields make the remediation a very challenging task. A decision-based approach known as the Shelter Implementation Plan (SIP) has been adopted as a way of resolving the many difficulties. This plan has the financial support of more than 20 nations under the Chernobyl Shelter Fund (CSF) which is administrated by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Project execution will pose a number of unique problems in technology, project management, contracting, nuclear regulation and risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents photographs of various fallout shelters in the U.S. where officials and ordinary citizens can spend time in the event of a nuclear exchange. Interest of the U.S. and the Soviet Union in nuclear weapons; Forms in which old missile silos have been converted.

Features Melvin and Maria Mininson who spent their honeymoon in a bomb fallout shelter in Miami. Why the couple were chosen to stay in the bomb-shelter; Activities of the couple while inside the shelter; Problems identified by the couple in the shelter.

The article cites that the University of Georgia has conducted several simulated fallout shelter studies for the Office of Civil Defense. The primary research mission was to appraise minimal survival conditions in public fallout shelters as presently equipped and stocked with emergency supplies. Specifically, the project was to evaluate the interactive effects of such variables as overloading, limited bunks, and bedding, emergency sanitation equipment, marginal ventilation conditions, and minimal food and water supplies. No evidence was found to indicate deleterious psychological or physiological effects as a result of the confinement test. Further studies are in progress on shelter management staff training, in-shelter activity programs, and post-attack preparation.

This article focuses on various fallout shelter occupancy studies conducted at the University of Georgia, Georgia. During the period 1962-67, the University of Georgia Civil Defense Research Staff conducted twelve simulated community fallout shelter occupancy tests. The general research mission was to appraise minimal survival conditions in community fallout shelters as presently equipped and stocked with emergency supplies. As a means of obtaining introspective reports regarding confinement under these conditions, unstructured diaries were presented to the shelter occupants in all the studies.

What impact has the fallout-shelter issue had upon American public opinion? Who have built shelters for themselves and why did they do this? How are opinions regarding shelters affected by beliefs about war, by social class, by community social structure? These are some of the questions answered by this 1963 study of nine Northeastern communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study of radioactive fallout shelter owners in the U.S. and their attitude towards these shelters. As mentioned in the article, former U.S. President John F. Kennedy had called these shelters an insurance against nuclear attack. Moreover, the "Life" magazine carried a large feature article on the building of fallout shelters, and U.S. Civil Defense Office had issued 25 million booklets describing construction details for fallout shelters. Across the country, contractors immediately moved into the market with designs and sales personnel to promote the construction of single-family fallout shelters. However, surveys revealed, among other things, that 4 percent of the respondents had taken special measures to construct fallout shelters for themselves. It was therefore clear from these data that the governmental measures to encourage family fallout-shelter building had not been eminently successful. The results also made evident the need for additional respondents in order to determine to what extent those who built shelters differed from those who did not.

The article focuses on a study towards examining the relationship between media presentation of the controversy about radioactive fallout and certain characteristics of these fallouts exposed to the media. As mentioned in the article, the problem of radioactive fallout and its effects has been vigorously debated in the mass media. The media audience has been confronted with a variety of facts, opinions and arguments on the issue. Proponents of the abolition of nuclear weapons and their testing have argued that the danger from fallout is acute, while the advocates of the resumption of nuclear testing tend to minimize any danger that may be involved. Both sides have brought in experts to support their positions and both have published their opinions widely in the media throughout the country. Further stressed is the point that, knowledge about nuclear fallout will increase as media exposure increases, which is based on the assumption that, since media are the main source of knowledge, the degree of exposure to the media should affect knowledge about fallout.

The probable conditions in Washington following widespread thermonuclear attack are assessed with respect to (1) radiation conditions in the city itself and in the surrounding areas, and (2) deaths and debris conditions in the Nation's Capital Mock attacks with thermonuclear-size bombs were made on all targets designated as critical by the FCDA within a 300-mile radius of Washington. Appropriate fallout contours were selected and oriented as to wind speed and bearing for each target The attacks were repeated 36 times using a random sample of actual 60,000-ft wind readings Radiation levels for the area were then compiled in terms of the per cent of time a given two-day accumulated dose would be exceeded. An attack day was selected at random and the effects of blast heat and local (close-in) fallout in Washington 'were added to indirect radiation effects A comparison of the amount of time a rescue worker would have to wait (impeded by debris and radiation) to enter an area with the amount of time left to a survivor in shelter attenuating 09 of radiation effects was made An area exists, in Virginia, where less than 200 r can be expected a large per cent of the time. A very small percentage of the target population will survive to be cared for in this area It was found that present shelter is not adequate to prevent intolerable numbers of deaths Present 'evacuation areas' should be re-evaluated in terms of likely radiation conditions [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commentary is provided for the article "The National Security Dilemma: Challenge to Management Scientists," by Marshall K. Wood, published in the April 1, 1961 issue of the periodical "Management Science." The author disagrees with Wood's assertion that the development of international law be contingent on the development of a United Nations military force. Also discussed are Wood's views concerning potential protocols in the case of a nuclear attack, including the implementation of a population shelter initiative.