Misinformation/Disinformation Threat
Every once in a while, usually in older buildings, you’ll come across a 1950s to 1960s era public fallout shelter sign (Photo A) which would lead you to an interior basement room to shelter against a nuclear bomb attack. This era was filled with intense geopolitical tension, primarily between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Civil Defense radiological survey meters (Photo B) and Geiger counters (Photo C) were the norm and widely available among civil defense authorities. Although I was only 7 years old during the Cuban missile crisis, I can vividly remember assisting my dad with digging a hole to build a fallout shelter (Photo D) for our home near Los Angeles. Popular publications of the time even offered DIY (do it yourself) plans for a temporary basement fallout shelter (Photo E).
In the U.S., Civil Defense directors prepped their communities for the possibility of nuclear war. Fortunately, over time, fortune favored cooler heads and the imminent threat of full-scale nuclear war now seems more like a remote possibility. Instead of all-out nuclear war, emergency management teams, especially in large population cities, focus part of their attention on the hazards of a “dirty bomb.” A “dirty bomb” combines conventional explosives with radioactive materials. This type of weapon is lethal, but experts consider it to be more of a psychological weapon than a weapon of
