This Is Only a Test How Washington D.C. Prepared for Nuclear War

by Krugler, David F.

• ISBN13: 9781403965547
• ISBN10: 1403965544
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-01
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This Is Only a Test tells the history of nuclear age urban planning, civil defense, and continuity of government programs in one of the nation's most critical Cold War targets: Washington, D.C. Spanning the years 1940 to 1962, This Is Only a Test uses Washington's often conflicting identities--capital, city, and symbol--to explore the connections between the attempted dispersal of vital government offices to distant suburban sites, the District's Office of Civil Defense, and the creation of the secretive Federal Relocation Arc. Measures to protect the federal government resulted in a widening gap between capital and city, while the failures of the city's local program symbolized federal ambivalence toward civil defense. This Is Only a Test shows how the Cold War affected Washington and its racially divided population.

Author Biography

David F. Krugler is Associate Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Platteville.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations and Acronyms	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(8)
A Nuclear Weapons Primer	9	(2)
By the Bomb's Imaginary Light	11	(16)
The Promise and Politics of Dispersal	27	(18)
The District Defends Itself	45	(14)
Downtown, Out of Town, or Underground?	59	(18)
Apathy and the Atom	77	(20)
The Eisenhower Way	97	(14)
Practice Makes Perfect	111	(20)
Capital Confusion	131	(18)
Land of the Blind	149	(20)
The Satchel Has Been Passed . . .	169	(14)
Postscript	183	(8)
Source Abbreviations	191	(4)
Notes	195	(44)
Index	239