Civil defense in the United States

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United States civil defense refers to the use of civil defense in the history of the United States, which is the organized non military effort to prepare Americans for military attack and similarly disastrous events. Late in the 20th century, the term and practice of civil defense fell into disuse. Emergency management and homeland security replaced them.

There is little known history of civil defense in the United States before the twentieth century. Since ancient times, cities typically built walls and moats to protect from invasion and commissioned patrols and watches to keep an eye out for danger, but such activities have not traditionally been encompassed by the term "civil defense." The US has a particular lack of early civil defense efforts because it was seldom threatened with a significant attack. Nonetheless, there are some early examples of what would today be considered civil defense. For example, as early as 1692, the village of Bedford, New York, kept on staff a drummer, whose responsibility was to sound the town drum in the event of a Native American attack—a very early precursor to the wailing sirens of the Cold War.

Civil defense truly began to come of age, both worldwide and in the United States, during the first World War—although it was usually referred to as "civilian defense". This was the first major total war, which required the involvement and support of the general population. Strategic bombing during World War I brought bombing raids by dirigibles and airplanes, with thousands of injuries and deaths. Attacks on non combat ships, like the Lusitania, presented another threat to non combatants. The British responded with an organized effort which was soon copied in the US. This was formalized with the creation of the Council of National Defense on August 29, 1916. Civil defense responsibilities at the federal level were vested in this council, with subsidiary councils at the state and local levels providing additional support—a multi level structure which was to remain throughout the history of United States civil defense. As the United States had little threat of a direct attack on its shores, the organization instead "maintained anti saboteur vigilance, encouraged men to join the armed forces, facilitated the implementation of the draft, participated in Liberty Bond drives, and helped to maintain the morale of the soldiers." This freedom to focus beyond air raid attacks gave United States civil defense a much broader scope than elsewhere. With the end of military conflict, the activities of the Council of National Defense were suspended. Thus, World War I marked the first time that organized civil defense was practised on a large scale in the United States. Although civil defense had not yet reached the scale and significance it soon would, many of the basic features were set in place.

World War II, which the United States entered after the attack on Pearl Harbor, was characterized by a significantly greater use of civil defense. Even before the attack, the Council of National Defense was reactivated by President Roosevelt and created the Division of State and Local Cooperation to further assist the Council's efforts. Thus, the civil defense of World War II began very much as a continuation of that of World War I. Very soon, however, the idea of local and state councils bearing a significant burden became viewed as untenable and more responsibility was vested at the federal level with the creation of the Office of Civilian Defense (OCD) within the Office of Emergency Planning (OEP) in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) on May 20, 1941. Despite a general agreement on the importance of civil defense, Congress never came close to meeting the budget requests of federal civil defense agencies. Throughout the Cold War, civil defense was characterized by fits and starts. Indeed, the responsibilities were passed through a myriad of agencies, and specific programs were often boosted and scrapped in a similar manner to US ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems with which it was seen as complementary. In declassified US war game analyses of the early 1960s, it was estimated that approximately 27 million US citizens would have been saved with civil defense education in the event of a Soviet pre emptive strike. At the time however the cost of a full scale civil defense program was, in cost benefit analysis, deemed less effective than a BMD system, and as the adversary was increasing their nuclear stockpile, both programs would yield diminishing returns. One primary way in which they did this was the publication and production of federally funded films that were distributed to the mass public. In Duck and Cover, Bert the Turtle advocated that children "duck and cover" when they "see the flash". In this film, children are instructed to "kneel with their backs facing the windows, eyes shut, their hands clasped behind their backs." Duck and Cover also reached audiences through printed media and radio waves. This included a 14 minute radio adaptation, a 16 page coloring booklet, and a nationwide newspaper serialization. Thus, children were able to adapt to a world of panic and come to terms with the existence of the bomb while also learning how to prepare for the possibility of nuclear disaster. Another educational program, produced by the Federal Civil Defense Administration, was Survival Under Atomic Attack. Produced in both film and print, Survival gave Americans information on how to prepare themselves and their homes in the case of a nuclear attack. The film showed citizens how the whole family can get involved in final moments of preparation if they were to hear the warning sirens that alerted them of an incoming attack. Along with popularity of the film, over a million copies of the Survival booklet sold within its first year of publication in 1951. Audiences of both the film and print sources learned specific skills on how to ensure their safety in the case of emergency. This included preparing a first aid kit, storing plenty of water and canned goods, stocking up on batteries for radios and flashlights, and equipping a fallout shelter that they could access easily and safely. While displaying products and information to educate people on the affects and preparedness associated with nuclear weapons, the "Alert America" program also showed federally supported films such as Duck and Cover, Survival Under Atomic Attack, and Our Cities Must Fight. Avoiding the scare tactics that were primarily used by other forms of civil defense education, "Grandma's Pantry" instead attempted a supposedly "softer" and so called "feminine" approach to emergency preparedness by fusing female domesticity with paramilitary education. Through this, women were encouraged to "make ready for the possibility of nuclear war" by warning them against "the possibility of damaged water systems, broken sewer lines, mounting heaps of garbage, and a lack of food and fresh water after an attack", all of which were duties that typically aligned with prescribed gender roles given to women during the postwar era. Thus, civil defense education attempted to seemingly blend into already established societal norms. In 1958, the FDCA was taken over by the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (OCDM). Once that happened, more films for students and families included training in practical life skills lessons that they could implement in the case of nuclear war rather than the hypothetical films that had been put out previously. Home economics courses in grade schools trained students on how to build and maintain fallout shelters, the basics of food preparation and storage, safety and sanitation, child care, and how to care for the sick and injured. Women were also taught to be the ones to dominate kitchen work during the first few days within shelters if there was an emergency, only to be relieved by teenagers and young children who were only expected to volunteer when needed. Despite this early opposition, evacuation plans were soon created. One city at the forefront of such efforts was Portland, Oregon. In 1955, their city government completed "Operation Greenlight"—a drill to evacuate the city center. Hospital patients were packed into semi trucks, pedestrians were picked up by passing motorists, and the city's construction equipment and emergency vehicles were rushed out to "dispersal points." The entire city center was evacuated in 19 minutes. On December 8, 1957, CBS Television aired a dramatization of how a well prepared city might respond to an imminent nuclear attack. The show, A Day Called 'X', produced "in co operation with the Federal Civil Defense Administration," was shot in Portland, using city officials and ordinary citizens instead of professional actors. It was narrated by Glenn Ford. Such plans were plausible in the early days of the Cold War, when an attack would have come from strategic bombers, which would have allowed a warning of many hours, not to mention the high possibility of interception by anti air systems and fighters. However, the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles in the late 1950s made this goal less realistic. Despite that, civil defense officials still worked to prepare evacuation plans. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan announced the Crisis Relocation Program. The White House suggested that the $10 billion, five year program could allow the evacuation of targeted urban centers to rural "host areas" and thus save 80% of the population. The plan allowed up to three days for the evacuation to be completed, believing that a nuclear war would not come in a surprise attack but rather as the culmination of a crisis period of rising tensions. However, the plan has been criticized by academics and organizations like the Federation of American Scientists for failing to take into account disruptions to healthcare infrastructure preventing the effective treatment of the wounded, disruption to the food supply, ecological devastation (including nuclear winter), and social unrest following an attack. Because of these shortcomings, Stanford University physician and professor Herbert L. Abrams estimated that no more than 60 million people (25% of the population) would survive if the program was executed as designed.

Governments made efforts to exist even after an apocalyptic nuclear attack, something called continuity of government. Many city halls built Emergency Operation Centers in their basements.

President Kennedy launched an ambitious effort to install fallout shelters throughout the United States. These shelters would not protect against the blast and heat effects of nuclear weapons, but would provide some protection against the radiation effects that would last for weeks and even affect areas distant from a nuclear explosion. As such, some of them were even located on the upper floors of skyscrapers. CD officials encouraged people to build in the suburbs away from key targets and to be conscientious of the needs of a nuclear age when building houses and other structures.

In order for most of these preparations to be effective, there had to be some degree of warning. The United States embarked on creating systems at both the local and national levels to allow the communication of emergencies. In 1951, President Harry S. Truman established the CONELRAD (Control of Electromagnetic Radiation) Plan. Under the system, a few primary stations would be alerted of an emergency and would broadcast an alert. All broadcast stations throughout the country would be constantly listening to an upstream station and repeat the message, thus passing it from station to station. After broadcasting the message, all radio communications would cease except for two designated lower power AM frequencies (640 and 1240 kHz). This was designed to prevent enemy planes from using transmitters as navigation aids for direction finding. The later threat of ICBMs (which used internal guidance) made this obsolete, and CONELRAD was replaced in 1963.

In 1954, the United States government began an annual national civil defense exercise called "Operation Alert". The exercise extended over several weeks to months, and would culminate in a one day public drill simulating a nuclear attack. The aim of the annual exercise was to evaluate emergency preparedness in the face of a nuclear attack, determine government continuation readiness, and identify problems that might occur during an alert. Operation Alert was actively protested by the Catholic Worker Movement, Ralph DiGia, Dorothy Day and others in New York City when held on June 15, 1955. Protesters objected to the notion that a nuclear war was survivable, and answered with the assertion that the only way to survive a nuclear war was for one not to happen at all. 29 were arrested in City Hall Park and jailed for refusing to take shelter during a drill. Protests, initially small and isolated, continued and grew throughout the 1950s. Opposition to the drills increased; young mothers with children joined the protests in 1960. Civil Defense Operation Alert drills were stopped after the 1961 protest.

In 1963, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) created the Emergency Broadcast System to replace CONELRAD. The EBS served as the primary alert system through the Cold War ICBM era and well into the 1990s. In addition to these, air raid sirens such as the Thunderbolt siren pictured to the right, would sound an alert.

Since the end of the Cold War, civil defense has fallen into disuse within the United States. Gradually, the focus on nuclear war shifted to an "all hazards" approach of comprehensive emergency management. Natural disasters and the emergence of new threats such as terrorism have focused attention away from traditional civil defense into new forms of civil protection such as emergency management and homeland security. In 2006, the old triangle logo was finally retired, replaced with a new logo featuring a stylized EM (for emergency management). The new logo was announced by the Federal Emergency Management Agency; however, a depiction of the old CD logo (without the red CD letters) can be seen above the eagle's head in the FEMA seal. The name and logo, however, continue to be used by Hawaii State Civil Defense Hawaii State Civil Defense and Guam Homeland Security/Office of Civil Defense Guam Homeland Security | Office of Civil Defense. The Republic of the Philippines has an Office of Civil Defense that uses a similar logo.

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