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  • 2017-08-04 (xsd:date)
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  • Were 'Highway Closed in Event of Enemy Attack' Signs Posted During the Cold War? (en)
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  • A passing detail in Garrett M. Graff's chilling book Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself — While the Rest of Us Die (Simon & Schuster, 2017) caught the eye of a vigilant Snopes reader, who wrote in to ask: The subject is briefly broached on page xxii of the book's introduction, in which Graff recounts the history of U.S. efforts to prepare in advance for national catastrophes such as nuclear war: There should indeed be at least a few baby boomers who remember such signs, which according to contemporaneous press reports were erected along designated roadways as early as 1951 as part of a nationwide civil defense preparedness initiative launched by the Truman administration (making them older than Eisenhower's interstate highway system, which wasn't authorized until 1956). The effort was driven by two events: the Soviet Union had conducted its first atom bomb test in 1949, and, North Korea, with the backing of both the U.S.S.R. and China, had attacked South Korea the following year, raising the specter of a nuclear confrontation. Beginning with the publication of a civil defense manual (nicknamed the Blue Book for the color of its cover) aimed at all levels of government in September 1950 and culminating later that year in the creation of the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA, a precursor to today's FEMA), the Truman administration conceived an emergency management system that issued guidance from the top while delegating the nuts and bolts of implementation to state and local entities. For example, a section of the Blue Book calling for the creation of emergency transportation networks to facilitate both military and civilian use of the roadways didn't specify precisely how it was to be done: Local civil defense coordinators charged with developing these plans set about the task with varying degrees of urgency. New York City was among the first municipalities to undertake planning for emergency traffic control, with Civil Defense Director Arthur W. Wallender announcing in February 1951 that the use of certain roadways would be restricted in the event of enemy attack, and unauthorized movement of civilian vehicles prohibited. On 9 February, the New York Times published a photograph of workmen erecting a sign on the outskirts of the city that read In the event of an enemy attack on New York City this highway will be closed to all traffic except civil defense & military vehicles. One of these signs shows up briefly (at the 3:19 minute mark) in the short film Our Cities Must Fight, produced for the federal government in 1951 by Archer Productions (the same outfit responsible for the nuclear survival training film now regarded as a quintessential example of Cold War kitsch, Duck and Cover): Press reports show that the implementation of local emergency transportation plans continued throughout 1951, though it's unclear how many of these included signage like New York City's. An example of one metropolitan area that did follow suit was Boston and environs, who announced their defense plan in the North Adams Transcript on 30 March:Massachusetts civil defense officials offered insights into the reasoning behind restricting civilian traffic: They further explained that: Some state and local governments took years to produce tangible results. For example, Maryland's emergency transportation plan wasn't rolled out until July 1953 and Virginia's closed in event of enemy attack signs didn't go up until 1954 — by which time some emergency management experts were rethinking the wisdom of restricting civilian access to highways. Among them was Eisenhower's FCDA Administrator Val Peterson, among whose top priorities was responding to the U.S.S.R.'s development of a hydrogen bomb. A 14 July 1954 editorial in the Syracuse, New York newspaper The Post-Standard reflected the shift in strategic thinking that had occurred: By 1955, according to a Gannett News Service report, Peterson was openly calling for the signs to be torn down, a proposal that didn't sit well with some local civil defense directors: Stay up they did (at least for a few more years), but their extinction would be inevitable thanks to the reality of the H-bomb and the Eisenhower administration's stated preference for mass evacuation over duck and cover. By 1958, newspaper columnists like Pulitzer-winning Marquis Childs were ridiculing the signs as vestiges of a dysfunctional civil defense system: In 1961, Virginia Sen. A. Willis Robertson (at that time the newly elected chairman of the joint Senate-House Defense Production Committee) characterized the signs as a waste of taxpayer money: We were unable to ascertain when the last of the highway closed in event of enemy attack signs finally came down, though we're fairly sure none survived beyond the 1960s, after which point the only published mentions of them we found were couched in the past tense. A February 1977 article in the Hamilton, Ohio Journal-News reminded readers that they had once existed, at the same time noting that they seemed to have faded from the highway landscape. (en)
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