Atomic Kids: Duck and Cover and Atomic Alert Teach American Children How to Survive Atomic Attack

"The first-graders...learned to spell 'atom' and 'bomb' before they learned 'mother'"

Elise E. Beiler Indian Springs School, Nevada (1952)

Introduction

The experiences of American kids in the Cold War were very different from those of their parents.¹ While adults perceived a threat to the American way of life--to their health and wellbeing and those of their families--their children learned to fear the loss of a future they could grow into and inhabit. These kids of the Atomic Age wondered if they might be the last children on Earth. The prospect of a war fought with nuclear weapons pervaded American culture even when the United States was the sole possessor of such weapons. The fear and anxiety intensified in the late 1940s, as the Soviet Union acquired its own nuclear weapons and the Cold War began in earnest. Massive government efforts to design, construct, and deploy nuclear weapons helped to fuel the emergence of what Dwight Eisenhower would later call the military-industrial complex.² Another critical element of American Cold War society, as historian Michael Scheibach points out, was that "educators, government officials, and parents realized the necessity, even the urgency, of preparing the country's youth for a new, more precarious world."³

The students of the Indian Springs School in Indian Springs, Nevada, confronted the realities of the Atomic Age first-hand. Collier's magazine showed Americans into the two-room schoolhouse that was located in "a converted supply room at the Indian Springs Air Force Base, a security area attached to the closely guarded atomic testing grounds. The children have witnessed four atomic blasts in the last few weeks. Some of the children have seen as many as a dozen of the atomic test detonations."⁴ A spokesman for the Atomic Energy Commission explained that these children were models for the rest of America's youngsters: "The children in this school by their sheer proximity to the tests are getting the same type of psychological indoctrination we are giving some of our combat troops. If all the school children in the nation could witness an A-bomb blast, it would do much to destroy the fear and uncertainty which now exist."

The Students at Indian Springs School Prepare for an Atomic Attack (1952)

Most American children received their lessons on the realities of the Atomic Age in less direct form: through pamphlets, films and other materials created by government agencies for use in the classroom by teachers and school officials. The information that these authorities presented to American children attempted to teach them what steps they needed to take in order survive an atomic attack, but it was coded with both intended and unintended subtexts. Their central message, fundamental to all government civil defense materials, was that you could survive an atomic attack if you learned the preparatory steps and took the correct actions. Survival, therefore, was a choice. The second intended message was that during an atomic attack the social leaders, the government and the teachers, were in control of the situation. They could prescribe the simple steps to survival, and they could quickly restore order. Once you did your part, which was to follow instructions and to survive, you could trust in social authorities to maintain social order, and to maintain society itself.

Paradoxically, implicit in these texts was the exact opposite message. The hyper-vigilance demanded by these survival instructions communicated that nuclear war was not only inevitable—it was imminent. The idea of imminent nuclear war portrayed an adult world that was spinning out of control. These texts suggested to children that they would not be able to rely on their adult guardians to either prevent nuclear war, or even to be present to protect and guide them through the experience. In attempting to help enlist the children of America as vigilant Cold Warriors, these texts, in actuality, conveyed the message that their own Cold War government was unreliable. The children concluded that, ultimately, if their world...