What was atomic anxiety

The federal government delivered air-raid sirens to the city of Toronto in for use in alerting citizens to impending danger. But municipal officials balked at the installation costs, preferring instead to purchase uniforms, helmets, and other trinkets for the few Torontonians that had actually volunteered for civil defence efforts.

City officials felt, Leslie Scrivener explained in the Star September 23, , that all costs associated with the sirens should be borne by Ottawa or the province. The first generation of plans to respond to a nuclear attack called for the orderly evacuation of major centres—including Toronto—based on the assumption that any attack would come by manned bombers and be detected by early warning systems.

Calgary was evacuated in Operation Lifesaver in September to test the feasibility of such plans. After observing the live drill firsthand, Burtch notes, Toronto alderman Donald Summerville was unimpressed.

Mass evacuation might work in a mid-sized city like Calgary, Summerville thought, but it would never work in the Metro Toronto region. In these early years of the atomic age, Anne Fisher argues in her masters thesis on Cold War civil defence in Canada, nuclear bombs had been discussed in terms of conventional weapons.

An A-bomb being the equivalent of 20 kilotons of TNT, for example. But this conveniently ignored that the former burned several million degrees centigrade hotter than the latter. The devastating impact of radioactive fallout was not yet well understood. The continuous technological improvement in warfare also meant that the USSR could deliver nuclear payloads by intercontinental missile, virtually eliminating any opportunity for early warning detection.

And the blast of the newest hydrogen bombs, according to one expert quoted by Burtch, would leave a kilometre-wide crater at ground zero, flatten everything in all directions for eight to 16 kilometres, and scatter radioactive fallout further still, depending on weather patterns. The more the public and officials learned about atomic weapons, the more they realized the impossibility of mass evacuation, particularly after the effects of radiation became better understood and after the introduction of the hydrogen bomb.

Mass evacuation had been rendered moot, Minister of National Defence George Pearkes admitted to journalists by October As a new strategy, he suggested that Canadians—or at least those far enough from city centres to survive the initial blast—construct concrete-block shelters, outfitted with food and drink, sanitation equipment, bedding, and everything else to sustain themselves for an extended period.

Bomb shelters had long fascinated the public and public displays were common, even before the federal government officially encouraged private citizens to build their own basement and backyard shelters through the publication and distribution of millions of information booklets on the topic. In August , more than 60, visitors inspected a functional, above-ground bomb shelter erected outside Old City Hall by the Telegram.

Toronto alderman Ross Parry and his wife spent seven days in a shelter north of Toronto. The McCallum family was certainly more upbeat in September when they emerged from a fallout shelter outside the CBC headquarters after a week. It allowed for the American people to accept increased taxes and allowed the federal government to increase funding based on national security.

Most notably, the American people's relationship with the open road was forever altered. Leisurely backroad drives which defined open road culture were replaced by the tedium of interstate driving as the road became incorporate with the gray flannel suit of corporate America.

Oidtman, Andrew, "Atomic Anxiety and the Interstate" Student Research Poster Presentations Since the Cold War ended, thoughts of bomb shelters, "duck and cover" and nuclear war have been far from Americans' minds.

But residents of Hawaii were jolted last week when a statewide emergency alert was accidentally sent, warning residents of a ballistic missile threat. Amid nuclear tensions with North Korea, many Americans re-experienced Cold War fears of a nuclear bomb in the modern day. The Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in , intensifying the U. In , Gallup asked Americans how safe they would feel in their city or community in the case of an "atomic war.

Gallup followed up with a question asking U. Americans' perceptions of safety largely depended on whether they felt state officials were doing enough to protect them. Among those who said they would feel unsafe if an atomic attack were to occur, only one in four said their state officials were doing enough.