atomic kids- duck and cover and atomic alert

8/2/2019 Atomic Kids- Duck and Cover and Atomic Alert

1/21

Film & History 40.1: Bo Jacobs Spring 2010

ATOMIC KIDS:DUCK AND COVER ANDATOMICALERT

TEACH AMERICAN CHILDREN HOW TO SURVIVE ATOMIC ATTACK

Bo Jacobs

Hiroshima Peace Institute

The first-graderslearned to spellatom and bomb before they learned mother

Elise E. BeilerIndian Springs School, Nevada (1952)

Introduction

he experiences of American kids in the Cold War were very differentfrom those of their parents.1 While adults perceived a threat to theAmerican 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 intoand inhabit. These kids of the Atomic Age wondered if they might be the lastchildren on Earth. The prospect of a war fought with nuclear weapons pervadedAmerican culture even when the United States was the sole possessor of suchweapons. The fear and anxiety intensified in the late 1940s, as the Soviet Unionacquired its own nuclear weapons and the Cold War began in earnest. Massivegovernment efforts to design, construct, and deploy nuclear weapons helped tofuel 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, governmentofficials, and parents realized the necessity, even the urgency, of preparing thecountry'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. Colliers magazine showedAmericans into the two-room schoolhouse that was located in a convertedsupply room at the Indian Springs Air Force Base, a security area attached to theclosely guarded atomic testing grounds. The children have witnessed four atomicblasts in the last few weeks. Some of the children have seen as many as a dozen ofthe atomic test detonations.4 A spokesman for the Atomic Energy Commissionexplained that these children were models for the rest of Americas youngsters:

The children in this school by their sheer proximity to the tests are getting thesame type of psychological indoctrination we are giving some of our combattroops. If all the school children in the nation could witness an A-bomb blast, itwould do much to destroy the fear and uncertainty which now exist.

25

T


2/21


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

Most American children received their lessons on the realities of theAtomic Age in less direct form: through pamphlets, films and other materialscreated by government agencies for use in the classroom by teachers and schoolofficials. The information that these authorities presented to American childrenattempted to teach them what steps they needed to take in order survive anatomic 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 stepsand took the correct actions. Survival, therefore, was a choice. The secondintended message was that during an atomic attack the social leaders, thegovernment and the teachers, were in control of the situation. They couldprescribe the simple steps to survival, and they could quickly restore order. Onceyou did your part, which was to follow instructions and to survive, you couldtrust in social authorities to maintain social order, and to maintain society itself.

26

Paradoxically, implicit in these texts was the exact opposite message.The hyper-vigilance demanded by these survival instructions communicated thatnuclear war was not only inevitableit was imminent. The idea of imminentnuclear war portrayed an adult world that was spinning out of control. Thesetexts suggested to children that they would not be able to rely on their adultguardians to either prevent nuclear war, or even to be present to protect and


3/21


guide them through the experience. In attempting to help enlist the children ofAmerica as vigilant Cold Warriors, these texts, in actuality, conveyed themessage that their own Cold War government was unreliable. The childrenconcluded that, ultimately, if their world was to be saved, they would have to actto save it.

The children of the early Cold War were already primed not to seethemselves as passive victims. They had been taught to see Americans as the goodguys, fighting wars fairly for noble and progressive causes. They learned in schoolthat they were part of a tradition that had fought against a corrupt monarchy inthe Revolution, had fought to free the slaves in the Civil War, and had foughtagainst fascism in Europe and the Pacific in World War Two. They were taught,in other words, that their ancestors had made the future a better place. TomEnglehardt has called this heritage of a triumphalist narrative victory culture. AsEnglehardt points out, the story of the Good War (World War II) and the storyof the new Cold War did not fit together seamlessly. The question of whether ornot to use triumphal weapons of a suicidal nature to accomplish national endsproved deeply unsettling not just for adults planning global strategy, but also for

children experiencing both the pride of parents returning victorious from theworld war and the fear that that wars most wondrous weapon engendered. 5Englehardt argues that this tension had unforeseen and profound effects on theBaby Boomer generation:

If the story of victory in World War II was for a time endlessly replayedin the movies, in comics, and on television, other cultural vistas werealso opening up for the young, ones that led directly into whateverterrified grownups. To escape not into the war story, but into placeswhere that story was dissolving, held unexpected pleasures, not the leastof which was the visible horror of adults at what you were doingManychildren instinctively grasped the corrosiveness of the postwar

transformation, gravitating toward new forms of storytelling thatseemed to rise unbidden from alien worlds.6

In Englehardts view, the children of the 1950s grasped the pleasures of victoryculture as an act of faith, and the horrors of nuclear culture as an act of faithlessmockeryof the virtues implicit in the victory culture of World War II.7

Alone in the Flash

27

Public discussion about the dangers of nuclear weapons fillednewspapers, magazines and radio broadcasts beginning on the day Hiroshima wasbombed, but the acquisition of these weapons by the Soviet Union in late 1949

created a seemingly more dire situation for Americans. The New Yorkerdevoted anentire August 1946 issue to John Hersey's "Hiroshima," with its unflinchingreports of horrifically injured survivors. The Beginning or the End, a 1947docudrama film about the Manhattan Project, speculated on whether mankindwould survive its latest invention. Five years after Hiroshima and a year after thefirst Soviet bomb test, the popular weekly Collier's ran a cover painting of amushroom cloud over Manhattan, illustrating a lead article titled "HiroshimaUSA."8 Hysteria over the threat posed by Soviet weapons served to justify boththe increased stockpiling of nuclear weapons by the United States and also an


4/21


expanding series of weapons tests in Nevada and the Pacific. In 1950 the UnitedStates government began the mass distribution of civil defense pamphlets aimedat preparing the American public to survive a nuclear war. Survival Under AtomicAttack, the first civil defense pamphlet, was sent to over 20 million households in1950. Survival guides filled mailboxes, newspapers, and bookshelves, and publicanxiety over the prospect of a Soviet attack and the destruction of American cities

fueled atomic fears across the United States. 9

Among the most influential documents to reach the American publicduring the 1950s was a text aimed at children and produced by the U.S.government. This was the famous Duck and Cover movie and its accompanyingpamphlet, produced on behalf of the United States federal government anddistributed by the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA).10 In recentyears, Duck and Coverhas become a classic of comedy and camp, thanks largely tothe inclusion of clips from it in the 1982 documentary The Atomic Caf.11 But in itsoriginal release, the film was deadly serious. Duck and Cover was part of themassive, sometimes hysterical, response on the part of the people and thegovernment of the United States to the Soviet Unions acquisition of nuclear

weapons and the first Soviet test detonation in late 1949.12

If the Soviets were toattack without warning, the children would need to know what steps to take tosurvive. The purpose of Duck and Cover was to teach children how to survive anuclear attack by themselves, without adult assistance.

Made by Archer Films under contract to the FCDA, Duck and Coverwould be shown in thousands of schools across the United States, and thecompanion pamphlet would be distributed to millions. The film came completewith a cartoon mascot, Bert the Turtle, and a catchy song written by the sameteam whose jingle had advised Americans to See the USA in a Chevrolet.13

28

The film opens with a cartoon segment featuring Bert the Turtle, who is

walking along accompanied by his theme song. Bert walks by a monkey hangingout of a tree, holding a twig from which hangs a stick of dynamite that danglesmenacingly close to Bert. Ever alert, Bert sees the danger and drops to theground, withdrawing into his protective turtle shell.14 But even in this shortcartoon, which is the part of Duck and Cover most frequently reproduced andridiculed, the iconography is a bit skewed: Bert, with whom the kids aresupposed to identify, is drawn almost as an old man with a bow tie, a wrinkledneck, and a civil-defense-style helmet, while the monkey is drawn as a classicallymischievous kid. Even Berts voice sounds like an old mans. Clearly, for AtomicKids, Duck and Covertruly was grown-up business.


5/21


Bert the Turtle and the bad monkey, in Duck and Cover(1951)

The narrator instructs the viewer that Bert is always prepared for dangerand that is why he has his shellSometimes it even saves his life! Children haveto learn to be safe like Bert; they have to learn to duck and cover, as Bert does inhis shell, to avoid danger. Immediately, the narrator turns his attention to thebomb, We all know the atomic bomb is very dangerous. Since it may be usedagainst us we must be ready for it.15 In order to make this threat normative, thenarrator describes other dangers with which the children are more familiar, suchas fires and automobile accidents. There are methods for avoiding or respondingto each of these dangers, but the introduction to the effects of the bomb, asnarrated in the film, is truly grim:

Now, we must be ready for a new danger, the atomic bomb...You willknow when it comes. We hope it never comes, but we must be ready. Itlooks something like this: there is a bright flash! Brighter than the Sun!Brighter than anything you have ever seen! If you are not ready and didnot know what to do, it could hurt you in different ways. It could knockyou down hard, or throw you against a tree or wall. It is such a bigexplosion it can smash in buildings and knock signboards over and breakwindows all over town. But, if you duck and cover like Bert, you will bemuch safer. You know how bad sunburn can feel. An atomic bomb flashcan burn you worse than a terrible sunburn.

29

The children are told that we can expect to have warning of mostattacks from our national defense and our warning systems. The narrator then

Next the young audience is presented with the basic rationale for theirtraining: there are two kinds of attacks, those with warning and those without,and they need to know what to do in each case. If there is warning, there will betime for us to get in our homes, schools or some other safe place. In such a case,adults may be present to help the children.


6/21


recites a

ard, playing, when the signal comes. Thatsignal means to stop whatever you are doing and get to the nearest safe

rrator furtherdeconstructs the safe world of childhood: sometimes, and this is very, veryimportan

ck and

cover in the school hallway. Ducking and covering means taking shelter againstany kind

m of their handsomelyfurnished suburban home, where their mother stands waiting for them at the

door. Sh

Scout meeting when

suddenly there is a bright flash. Tony instantly dives from his bike into the gutternext to

list of the typical places where youngsters might find themselves whenthey hear the warning sirensplaces that until now had certainly seemed to bethe safe, idyllic settings of childhood:

You may be in your schooly

place fast. Always remember, the flash of an atomic bomb can come atanytime, no matter where you might be. You might be out playing athome when the warning comes. Then be sure to get into the house fast,where your parents have fixed a safe place for you to go.

After this brief bit of reassurance, however, the na

t, sometimes the bomb might explode without any warning. Then, thefirst thing we would know about it would be the flash, and that means duck andcover fast! Wherever you are! Theres no time to look around and wait!

The children are then treated to a demonstration of how to du

of structure in the nearby environment: falling to the ground next to acurb, crouching next to a wall, then covering your head and the back of yourneck to shield them from injury. The narrator assures the children that they willbe safe if they crouch down and lean against a wall, even though just a minuteearlier he had told them that the atomic bomb can smash in buildings. Theyoungsters are told to cover their faces and necks, so that if the glass breaks andflies through the air, it wont cut you, as the camera shows their backs exposed,hardly inspiring a deep sense of safety from flying glass.

Next we meet Paul and Patty in the living roo

e takes each of their hands and kisses them good-bye. They look cheerfulas they head out. Good-bye! she calls after them. They are now on their ownon the front lines of the Cold War, ready to face the Russian nuclear weapons.Getting ready means we must all be able to take care of ourselves, the narratorexplains; the bomb might explode when there are no grown-ups near. Paul andPatty know this, and they are always ready to take care of themselves. Herethey are, continues the narrator, on their way to school on a beautiful springday. But, no matter where they go or what they do, they try to remember whatto do if the atomic bomb explodes right then! A flash then appears on screen,and the narrator exclaims, Its a bomb! Duck and cover!

Next we see Tony; he is riding his bike to a Cub

30

the curb, Tony knows the bomb can explode any time of year, day ornight, he is ready for it. Its a bomb! Duck and cover! That-a-boy, Tony! Thatflash means act fast!...Tony knew what to do. Notice how he keeps from movingor getting up or running? He stays down until he is sure the danger is over.


7/21


Paul and Patty encounter the bomb on the way to school in Duck and Cover(1951)

In a school corridor, in a school cafeteria, on a school bus, at a picnic,playing at home or in the park, bright flash after bright flash turn all the normalsettings of the daily lives of children into the ground zero of an atomic attack.

While children were supposedly being trained to physically survive anatomic attack, Duck and Cover also delivered a subtle message about therelationship of children and their world to the world of their parents. Olderpeople will help us like they always do. But there might not be any grown-upsaround when the bomb explodes, the narrator somberly reminds them. Then,

youre on your own. Duck and Cover was designed to teach children that theycould survive a surprise nuclear war even in the absence of adult caretakers,conveying a powerfully mixed assurance. The film leaves no doubt that the threatof attack is always imminent and that the key to the survival of these children istheir constant mental state of readiness for nuclear war: No matter where welive, in the city or the country, we must be ready all the time for the atomicbombYes, we must all get ready now so we know how to save ourselves if theatomic bomb ever explodes near us. But the film also reveals that the worldchildren take for granted, the safe world of their childhood, could dissolve at anymoment. And when that debacle happens, the adults will be gone; the youngsterswill be on their own.

31

This is the narrative about nuclear war, about the Cold War, and aboutchildhood that millions of American children, the Baby Boomers, received fromtheir government and from their teachers in their schoolrooms: a tale of adangerous present and a dismal future. Ducking and covering is after all, acatastrophic pose, one in which the emphasis is on avoiding head injury at theexpense of bodily injury: it is the desperate posture of an attempt at baresurvival. To duck and cover is to fall to the ground and hope that you live tostand back up. As we watch each setting of childhood succumb to the bright flashof death and destruction in the film, no grown-ups are in sight; it is up to the


8/21


children to survive the world that their parents have made for thema worldseemingly without a future, where survival is measured day to day, minute tominute.16

Soldiers in the Cold War

If parents couldn't be present to help their children to survive, at leastthey could organize to identify their bodies. Starting in 1951, many metropolitanareas issued dog tags to students, and over 2.5 million tags were distributed inpublic and private schools in San Francisco, Seattle, and Philadelphia, as well asNew York City. FCDA education experts chose dog tags after consideringtattooing, the marking of clothes, and fingerprinting. The tags were intended toaid in the identification of children after the war, helping to reunite them withtheir families. The heat- and corrosion-resistant metal tags that were chosencould also aid in the identification of bodies after a nuclear attack. 17 In1981Albert Furtwangler, a professor of English, recalled growing up in the early1950s in Seattle: In fifth and sixth grades, I also dressed every morning with a bitof cold metal against my chesta dog tag with my name and address, furnished

at cost by the Parent-Teacher Association.18

The military-style tags served tofurther signify to American children that they were soldiers in the Cold War.

The wartime mobilization of American children was not new. On theWorld War II home front, children were encouraged to invest their nickels anddimes in war bonds rather than candy, to plant victory gardens as members of 4-H clubs, and to learn to recognize German and Japanese aircraft silhouettes. Theywere mobilized--often through their schools, sometimes organized into military-style hierarchies of "lieutenants," "sergeants," and "privates"--to collect scrapmetal and kitchen fats that could be used for war production.19 However, themobilization undertaken by Cold War civil defense officials was very different. Itfocused around the idea of the children's own deaths rather than on their aiding

an effort that was far from their homes and that they would never directlyexperience. While there was no war visible in their towns, it was clear that thefront lines of the Cold War ran down their own suburban and city streets andthat their lives were on the line. They were being prepared for an attack, a muchmore intimate experience than gathering materials to contribute to attacks on theother side of the world.

32

In 1951, Encyclopedia Britannica Films released a film similar to Duckand Cover, titled Atomic Alert, for distribution in elementary schools.20 Like Duckand Cover, it was aimed at training elementary-school children to be prepared fornuclear attack. The fact that both films were shown to children in theirclassrooms served to give these messages a chilling authoritativeness. Both films

stressed the need for atomic-age children to be self-reliant in the face of nuclearattack, but the messages they delivered were subtly different. Whereas Duck andCover emphasized the possible separation of children and adults, Atomic Alertenlisted children as partners with adults in the serious enterprise of national civildefense. Its rhetoric of teamwork would have tapped parents and older siblingsstill-fresh memories of the World War II homefront and, perhaps, resonatedwith the 1950s emphasis on joining and belonging. The film begins by definingthe role of these elementary school children in atomic-age America: The chanceof your being hurt by an atomic bomb is slight, but since there is a chance, you


9/21


must know how to protect yourself. We have the national defenses to interceptan enemy, and we all form a team to help each other through emergencies. Youare on that team.21

The two national-defense team members who guide the childrenthrough the rest of the film are Ted and Susie. Like fellow team members Paul

and Patty, Ted and Susie help to answer the central question the film poses to itsviewers: What is your job? Ted and Susie are home alone when the warning ofan enemy attack comes. With Ted as the responsible older brother and Susie asthe impish grade-schooler, we learn that survival is the primary job of youngdefense-team members and that survival depends on thorough preparation andpractice. If youre home, the narrator intones, youve got work to do. Tedand Susie go through a checklist of tasks in the house, from closing the curtains toshutting off the stove and oven (turning off the burners but unwisely leaving thegas line itself open). The radio tells them that this alert is only a test, and whenSusie wonders why they have to check everything if it is only a test, Ted lecturesher: We need this practice. Now come on, lets do our jobs. Then they takeshelter in their well-prepared basement and check on the supplies they have

stashed.

But, ponders the narrator, what if there were a bomb detonationwithout warning? What is your job then?Atomic Alert shows children respondingto an explosion in a number of outdoor situations, much as in Duck and Cover,.They take cover inside school buildings during recess; they run into apartmentbuildings when they are playing outside; they are even told that they should justknock on the door of any house if they are far from home and that strangers willadmit them. They are shown jumping into ditches if they are in fields, discardingtheir outer (presumably contaminated) clothing as they run.

33

Benefiting now from all of their practice, Ted and Susie turn on their

battery-powered radio as they shelter in their basement and hear the civil defenseannouncer declare that a bomb has exploded between Fourteenth Street and thewaterfront; then, suddenly, the announcer shouts that another bomb hasexploded underwater at the waterfront and that radioactive mist is falling on thecity. Ted tells Susie what to do if the mist were to fall on her. They areinterrupted by a knock on the door as the local civil defense block warden arriveswith a radiation monitor to check the house. The wardens deadpan tone lets thechildren know that all is in order and under control. He tells Ted and Susie thathe has seen their mother at the shopping center and that their father is down atheadquarters, so the kids know that the adult members of their family defenseteam are doing their jobs. Then he tells the children, Youve done a good job.These little soldiers in the Cold War have done their part to help the team and to

defend the nation.


10/21


Part of the civil defense narrative was the rapid restoration of socialorder following an atomic attack. While U.S. government films about thebombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would dwell endlessly on flattened anddepopulated images of the two cities, civil defense texts dared not envision adevastated American landscape following a nuclear war. Rather, social recoverywas to follow a nuclear attack in a natural and controlled fashion. In both Duck

and Coverand Atomic Alert, adult civil defense workers show up quickly once thechildren have taken the proper steps to insure their own survival.

Prudent teenagers wisely discard their contaminated clothes as they head for shelter inthe Encyclopedia Britannica filmAtomic Alert of 1951

But most youngsters knew that this scenario was not what they couldreally expect. Science-fiction books, magazines and filmswith their coreaudience of teenage boys--had been filled with tales of nuclear devastation sincethe late 1940s. Stories like Judith Merrill's 1948 "That Only A Mother" (about awoman's fierce love for her radiation-disfigured child), or Ward Moore's 1953"Flying Dutchman" (about a robot bomber flying mindless postwar sorties over adead Earth) might only reach an audience of hardcore fans, but more mainstreamofferings like Ray Bradbury's 1950 story collection The Martian Chronicles (whichused atomic war on Earth as a backdrop) touched many more. Atomic-mutationfilms like Them! (1954), nuclear-crisis thrillers like Peter Bryant's Red Alert(1958), and post-holocaust stories like Dean Owen's The End of the World(1962),popularized images of nuclear devastation far beyond what fans proudly called the

"science-fiction ghetto." The obliteration of great cities (in Eugene Burdick andHarvey Wheeler's 1962 Fail-Safe) or human life itself (in Nevil Shute's 1957 OnThe Beach) was, by the end of the decade, an established part of mainstreampopular culture.22

34

Civil defense authorities, teachers, and even presidents might describenuclear war as something that could be won or that would be followed by therapid restoration of social order. Children heard the message loud and clear:popular culture convinced them that no such comforting illusions should be


11/21


harbored and that they would be just as alone after the war as they were when thebombs went off. The flash would not only mark the interruption of an afternoonof play; quite possibly, it would bring the end of the world.

No Future

In 1950, the Bowman Gum Company of Philadelphia, one of Americasbest-selling baseball-card companies, issued its first series of Wild Man PictureCards, which were sold right alongside baseball cards in candy stores, five-and-dimes, and other stores across America. Card #34 was named Atomic Doom.It asked children: What will a war be likeif it comes? Science is constantlyincreasing the destructive power of the atomic bomb. In a future war, not one ortwo but many of these weapons could be let loose on target areas. The results,the card assured, would be catastrophic: Explosions might cause a chain reactiondestroying the earth or rendering it so barren that it could not support human oranimal life.23 The picture on the front of the card showed the earth exploding.The cards even came with a stick of gum to chew on while contemplating the endof the world.

Childrens collector card Atomic Doom (Bowmans Wild Man Picture Cardseries (1950)

In the 1952 film Atomic City, young Tommy plays with a friend on the

living-room floor while his mother is cooking in the kitchen. Tommy asks hisfriend, What do you want to be if you grow up? Tommys mom is noticeablystartled and insists, When you grow up, not if, when! This scene frames adilemma central to the childhood of many Baby Boomers: would the world bethere when they grew up?

35

Nuclear fears were very real to American children in the early ColdWar years. In an article in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Robert Musilrecalled his childhood in the early Cold War suburbs of New York City: My first


12/21


recollection of danger came from the newspapers in the early 1950s. Each year Iwatched bemused as widening circles, representing atomic destruction on a mapof New York crept outward from Manhattan. Only with the advent of deliverableRussian thermonuclear weapons in the mid-1950s did those circles finally reachmy home. I began to worry.24 Richard Rhodes, who would go on to write thePulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb, remembers writing this

haiku as a fifth grader in the late 1940s:

Look up in the sky.See the pretty mushroom cloud.Soon we will be dead. 25

During the late 1970s, journalist Michael Carey worked with thepsychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton to collect oral histories of Baby Boomersrecollections of their nuclear fears in childhood. In another article in the sameedition ofThe Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1982, Carey presented some of theresults of his interviews that led him to conclude that the bomb had permanentlymarked this generation. One respondent from Philadelphia remembered that

when, as a youngster, he had been told the United States was a melting pot, oneof my thoughts was, It really will be a melting pot because of that business withthe bomb. Carey himself recounted growing up in Fairbanks, Alaska, near aStrategic Air Command base, busy with the comings and goings of bombers ladenwith nuclear weapons. My school had unsettling air raid drills, but I recall morevividly my terror of the citywide blackouts, when we had to cover our windowswith blankets to ensure no enemy could find Fairbanks. I was curious about thebases by day but frightened of the bomb at night.26

Another of Careys respondents recalled seeing film footage of civildefense experiments conducted at the Nevada Test Site when he was a child. Oneof these showed the famous explosion of House One (Test Shot Annie,

conducted on March 17, 1953). The thought of a building bursting into flamesin that way, explained the respondent, is kind of startling...It undercuts thesense of reality. You kind of grow up knowing that certain things are stablethatcertain presuppositions about the way things are remain constant. Namely,buildings stand. They may burn down[,] or[,] lets say in an earthquake, theymight collapse, but reality is fairly stable. When you suddenly see a picture likethat, its kind of like getting the rug pulled out. 27 Another respondent toldCarey of a terrifying moment in his childhood in California in the 1950s. Heheard a missile test being conducted at one of the many military bases in the area,and he believed that an actual nuclear explosion was in progress. He divedbehind the couch, yelling Get down! Its happened! only to discover that he hadmade a fool of himself.28 In his book on the 1960s, the historian Todd Gitlin

recounts a particularly disturbing practice in his grade school: Every so often,out of the blue, a teacher would pause in the middle of class and call out, Takecover! We knew, then, to scramble under our miniature desks and to stay there,cramped, heads folded under our arms, until the teacher called out, All clear! 29

36

How much do we really know about the thoughts of children at thetime, as opposed to their later memories? How seriously did children take thepresence of nuclear weapons looming between themselves and their imaginedfutures? During the early 1960s, several researchers set out to answer such


13/21


questions. Under the direction of Milton Schwebel, a professor and the chair ofthe Department of Guidance and Administration in the School of Education atNew York University, researchers interviewed thousands of public-schoolstudents, most of them enrolled in high schools and junior high schools in NewYork and Pennsylvania; these interviews were held in the immediate aftermath ofboth the Berlin crisis of 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The

interviewers asked students to answer three questions: Do I think there is goingto be a war?; Do I care? Why?; and What do I think about fallout shelters?30

Schwebel reported a broad range of responses, with students roughlysplit on whether or not there would be a war. Almost all students, however, saidthat they did care very much whether or not there was war. Among the reasonsthey offered for this concern were: I will die; my parents, brothers, sisters,friends will die; My family and I will be separated; If my family dies and I live, Idrather be dead; I am young and want a future to live, marry, have a family, work,create, paintEven if I survive, what will there be worth living for, withmillions dead? Some students revealed an intense personal anxiety about thefuture, I worry. I cry. Sometimes I am disturbed at night.31

The work of Sibylle K. Escalona, a professor of psychology at the AlbertEinstein College of Medicine, offered corroborating data. Escalonas open-endedquestions about the future, put to 311 children between the ages of ten andseventeen from the New York City area in 1962, reaped some fascinatinganswers to the question Think about the world as it may be ten years from now.What are some ways it might be different from today? Seventy percent of theyoungsters spontaneously raised the issue of war, and most of these 219respondents, Escalona claims, were pessimistic. Maybe we will not even be here10 years from now, posited one twelve-year-old; Maybe there will be no suchthing as a world. Another child responded, I think I would be all broken upbecause of the war which will come. The war destroys New York. One

fourteen-year-old said, The people of the world never change, but the atomicpowers will still be expanding and the threat of war and complete destructionwill hang as a cloud of fear over the world.32

Schwebels interviews put the notion of war into the heads of thestudents whom he interviewed, allowing them to respond positively or negativelyto this suggestion by an adult. But Escalonas open-ended questions allowed thestudents to individually prioritize their own beliefs about the future.

Its clear from both the reminiscent and the contemporary data thatAmerican children were deeply troubled and worried about the impact of nuclearweapons on their lives. They feared death, the loss of family members and

friends, and expressed concern that life in the world left behind by nuclear warmight not be worth living.

Kids to the Rescue

37

The Baby Boomers, taught by their government, their teachers, andtheir parents to prepare for the onset of death and destruction at every wakingmoment, still managed to find ways to grow up believing in a future. Fromducking and covering on the way to Scout meetings to reading about superheroes


14/21


bitten by radioactive spiders, boomers inhabited a different world from the onein which their parents lived. Where their parents saw a world of fear and threats,these children walked in an unstable landscape, still fearful, but also filled withheretofore unimaginable possibilities.

The flash could come at any moment! cautioned Bert the Turtle.

Robert Musil recalls, It was with that awful knowledgewe were not safe atallthat I experienced duck and cover drills, and developed an earlydisillusionment with, even disdain for, authority.33 Groomed to survive anatomic attack in isolation and through constant vigilance, these little soldiersplayed in a million parks across America and dreamed about what the worldmight be like when they grew up. And when they dreamed, they knewinstinctively that if the world were to exist at all, it would have to be verydifferent from the world of their parents. The Baby Boomers saw the world oftheir parents as a world of war, as the first half of the twentieth century had seentwo world wars. If this militaristic and nationalistic way of life was to continue,only one outcome was logically possible: nuclear war, commonly referred to asWorld War IIIclearly a war of their parents generations makingand this

war would be followed bynothing. No future. Since their parents did not seemto be working very hard to bring about change, it seemed obvious that if changewas going to come, if the future was to be saved, it was up to the nextgeneration, the children, to change the world.34

Science fiction movieswhere threats to the future came from therealm of the fantastic rather than the political or ideologicalwere an earlyindicator of the emerging role of young people as the saviors of the future. As thewider culture whirred and boomed with space launches, and forays into futuristictechnology, early science fiction films stayed much closer to home and thepresent, ushering youthful audiences through familiar territory, now beset bygiants, monsters, prehistoric cave dwellers, mad scientists, menacing slime, and,

of course, alien life forms, exploring the nature of science, coming of age, andthe need to take action in the face of imminent danger.

The science fiction films of the early and mid-1950s were often child-free. Where children did appear, they were largely passive, and peripheral to theaction. Scenes of crowds fleeing a rampaging monster, for example, typicallyincluded a small child being dragged to safety by a parent or other authorityfigure. Even child characters that were central to the story did little to shape thecourse of events. Bobby Benson observes but does not participate in his mother'sencounter with an alien in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). The young girlwho first alerts authorities to the giant ants in Them! (1954) is nearly speechlessfrom the shock of her encounter with them. The children in Invaders from Mars

(1953) and The Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) watch, powerless, as monstersinvade their once-safe worlds. The teen heroes of I Was a Teenage Frankenstein andI Was a Teenage Werewolf (both 1957) are helpless experimental subjects at themercy of mad adult scientists.

38

Beginning in the late 1950s, however, a new wave of science fictionfilms portrayed teenagers not just as active participants in action, but as saviors.Peter Biskind, a film historian, has written that science-fiction films of the earlyand mid-1950s often depicted a battle between what he calls cops and docs to


15/21


solve the problem posed by a monster or an alien.35 This plot line was indicativeof a larger tension in society over whether brute force (embodied by the policeand the military) or reason (embodied by scientists) was the best way toovercome the dilemmas of the atomic age. The young heroes of late-50s sciencefiction films add another sort of tension to the films' narratives -- a generationaltension -- as their parents and other adult authority figures refuse to listen to or

believe them. Alerted to unnatural threats to human society, they take mattersinto their own hands in order to save the Earth and also demonstrate to theirparents generation the actions that must be taken in order to preserve a viablefuture for the human race. 36

The Blob (1958), one of the earliest such films, makes its generationalallegiances clear from the outset. A meteorite falls to earth in a field near anarchetypal American small town and releases an amorphous pulsating red blobthat devours every life form it touches, growing larger and larger with eachfeeding. The two young heroes, Steve and Jane, attempt to warn thetownspeople, but they and their hot-rod-driving friends are accused by the localpolice sergeant of causing the disturbances themselves. After Steve and Jane

barely escape from the Blob, another teen calls the police, but he too is rebuffed.Is every kid in town in on this? brays the sergeant, who complains to his boss,You know, I think they got it in for me, theyve heard about my war record andit bugs em. Steve, like the sergeant, sees a generational divide between theteens and the town fathers. Frustrated, he urges his friends to direct action: Allright, we tried to do it the right way, now were gonna wake this town upourselves. They gather their hot rods in the center of town and all begin to leanon their car horns. One of them activates the air-raid siren.

Startled into action at lastan old man is seen jumping out of bed as hecries, An air raid! Where is my civil defense helmet?the adults converge onthe town center. Steve (backed by his friends) urges them to respond: This town

is in danger! We had to make this noise, we had to make it so youd listen to usso we could warn you. He enlists the support of the nearest authority figure, thepolice chief: Make em listen to me. There is a monster! We saw it in Dadsstore, only its bigger now!

As if on cue, the Blob appears in the center of town: proving to theadults that their children were right all along, but also inciting panic. Steve, Jane,and Janes little brother are trapped by the advancing monster in the local diner,and again it is Steve who takes decisive action when the adults freeze. Attemptingto put out a fire, he notices that the Blob retreats from the cold spray of the CO 2fire extinguisher and relays his discoverythe Blob hates coldto thepolicemen outside. The monster is vanquished: first by local adults wielding

more fire extinguishers and then by even bigger adults in Washington, DC, whosend forces to transport the Blob to the Arctic, where it will stay frozen, nolonger a threat to society. 37

39

Here we can see, as early as 1958, the receptivity among the teenaudience to the message that the previous generation just didnt get the nature ofthe threat facing the human race. By the 1960s, in films such as The Horror of PartyBeach (1964), Village of the Giants (1965), and Eegah! (1962), teen heroes werealigning with, and often surpassing, adult authority figures to overcome a range


16/21


of fantastic threats to the future. 38Duck and Coverhad come truethey were ontheir own.

The teens try to warn the adults in The Blob (1958)

The Baby Boomers raised on civil defense films, tales of nuclearannihilation, and stories about teens saving the world from fantastic threats came of age, politically, in the 1960s, becoming founders and leaders of the NewLeft.39 Raised to believe that the world stood on the brink of catastrophe, theygrew to adulthood primed to see a pressing need for action. Taught, fromchildhood, that they had the power and responsibility to save themselves andthose around them, they were equally primed to take action. Students for aDemocratic Society was one of the primary organizing vehicles for campus

protests against the Vietnam War. In 1962, the Port Huron Statement--afounding document of the New Left--begins with a reflection about the reasonAmerican youth should become activists: The enclosing fact of the Cold War,symbolized by the presence of the Bomb, brought awareness that we ourselves,and our friends, and millions of abstract others . . . might die at any time. Thestatement is a call to action to oppose racism and war, and it makes it clear thatour work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in theexperiment with living.40

40

A childhood animated by civil defense drills, warnings about flashes oflight in the sky, and instructional films such as Duck and CoverandAtomic Alert laidthe foundation for the path traveled by these young activists and revolutionaries.When they were faced with catastrophic social destruction as children, they weretold that they should learn how to throw themselves to the ground and huddleinto a gutter and hope that, when they got back up, the world would still bethere. As young adults, they refused to live in the basement of fear and fatalismtoward nuclear war, a shelter that was prepared by the preceding generation.Many of these former Atomic Kids believed that the militarism of the Cold Wargeneration had to be changed if it was not to lead to nuclear warfare and the endof their future. They placed flowers in the gun barrels of American militarismand demanded that their government stand down in its war in Vietnam, and, like


17/21


41

the teen-agers in The Blob, they employed a wide range of increasingly boldstrategies in order to be heard and to draw attention to the threat of Cold Warescalation and nuclear holocaust. As a generation, the Baby Boomers did notsolve the problems of militarism or the threat of nuclear war, but they didbecome adults, creating a different set of expectations for their world, beyondthe platitudes of Bert the Turtles message to duck and cover.

1 There is extensive scholarship examining the focus of the efforts made by the FederalCivil Defense Administration to affect both the American family and children in thesetting of the school, but almost none on efforts aimed at children as individuals. Fordiscussions of civil defense efforts focused on family and school, see MargotHenriksen. Dr. Strangeloves America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age. Berkeley:University of California Press, 1997. 108-111; Laura McEnaney. Civil Defense Beginsat Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2000. 68-87; Guy Oakes. The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and

American Cold War Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 105-17;Spencer Weart. Nuclear Fear: A History of Images. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1988. 129-37; Kenneth D. Rose. One Nation Underground: The

Fallout Shelter in American Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2001.126-140; JoAnne Brown. A is forAtom, B is for Bomb: Civil Defense in AmericanPublic EducationJournal of American History75:1 (June 1988): 68-90.

2 See The Public Papers of the Presidents:Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960-1961. Washington, DC:Government Printing Office, 1961. 1034-1040.

3 Michael Scheibach.Atomic Narratives and American Youth: Coming of Age with the Atom,1945-1955.Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2003. 7.

4 Robert Cahn. A is for Atom, Colliers 129 (June 21, 1952), 16.5 Tom Englehardt. The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a

Generation. New York: Basic Books, 1995. 7.6 Engelhardt, 7-8.7 Englehardt, 9.8 John Hersey. Hiroshima. The New Yorker, August 31, 1946; John Lear. Hiroshima

USA: Can Anything Be Done About It? Colliers 127 (August 5, 1950), 11-15, 60-63; online at . Paul L. Boyer. By The Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at theDawn of the Atomic Age. New York: Pantheon, 1985. Surveys American responses tothe Bomb in the decade after its first use.

9 Federal Civil Defense Administration. Survival Under Atomic Attack. Washington D.C.:GPO, 1950. See also, Robert A. Jacobs. The Dragons Tail: Americans Face the Atomic

Age. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009. 63-4.10Duck and Cover, dir. Anthony Rizzo, prod. Leo M. Langlois. Archer Films, 1951. See

also Civil Defense Film for Schools. The Elementary School Journal52:1 (September1951): 12.

11The Atomic Caf, dirs. and prods. Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty, Pierce Rafferty. TheArchives Project, 1982.

12 August, 29, 1949, in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan. This test is commonly referred to asJoe 1.

13 The jingle writers were Leo Carr and Leon Corday, with Leo Langlois. See, Puttingthe Jingle in Bert: Post Production. Duck and Cover: The Citizen Kane of Civil Defense.2006. www.conelrad.com/duckandcover/cover.php?turtle=01 (accessed April 2,2009).

14 The explosion would seem to annihilate the monkey.15 This and the following quotations are taken from the narration in Duck and Cover.16 The single exception to this absence of adults is a scene of a family at a picnic; when the

flash occurs the children scramble under the picnic blanket while the father falls to


18/21


the ground and covers his head with a newspaper. In an actual nuclear attack, theimmediacy of the effects of the blast and heat would deny most children the abilityto alter their destinies by taking shelter a few seconds later.

17 William M. Lamers. Identification for School Children. NEA Journal41:2 (Feb.1952): 99; JoAnne Brown shows that the integration of civil defense segments into

public-school curricula served professional as well as civic purposes; see Brown. "Ais forAtom.18 Albert Furtwangler. Growing Up Nuclear. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 37:1

(January 1981): 44.19 William M. Tuttle, Jr.. Daddy's Gone to War: The Second World War in the Lives of

America's Children. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. 134-147; SusanStrasser, Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. New York: Holt, 1999. 255-259.

20Atomic Alert (Elementary Version). Encyclopedia Britannica Films Inc., 1951. The film wasmade in collaboration with the Institute for Nuclear Studies at the University ofChicago.

21 This and the following quotations are taken from the narration ofAtomic Alert.22 For discussions of nuclear devastation in science-fiction books, see David Dowling,

Fictions of Nuclear Disaster. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987. 43-113; AlbertE. Stone. Literary Aftershocks: American Writers, Readers, and the Bomb. New York:Twayne Publishers, 1994, 33-65; Paul Brians. Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War inFiction, 1895-1984. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1987.

23 Atomic Doom. Wild Man Picture Cards, No. 34. Philadelphia: Bowman Gum Co.,1950.

24 Robert K. Musil. Growing Up Nuclear. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 38:1 (January1982): 19. At the time, Musil was both an antinuclear activist and a lecturer inAmerican Studies. He was writing in response to the earlier article by Furtwanger.

25 Richard Rhodes. Introduction to Face to Face With the Bomb by Paul Shambroom.Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2003. xi. See also Richard Rhodes. TheMaking of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986.

26 Michael J. Carey. Psychological Fallout. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 38:1(January 1982): 20. See also, Michael J. Carey. The Schools and Civil Defense: TheFifties Revisited. Teachers College Record84:1 (Fall 1982): 115-27. Careys work is

also summarized in, Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk, Indefensible Weapons: ThePolitical and Psychological Case Against Nuclearism (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 48-56.

27 Carey, Psychological Fallout. 21.28 Carey, Psychological Fallout. 22.29 Todd Gitlin. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York: Bantam Books, 1987.

22.30 Milton Schwebel. Nuclear Cold War: Student Opinions and Professional

Responsibility. Ed. Milton Schwebel. Behavioral Science and Human Survival. PaloAlto, CA: Science and Behavior Books, Inc., 1965. 210.

31 Schwebel. Nuclear Cold War, 212.32 Sibylle K. Escalona. Children and the Threat of Nuclear War." Child Study

Association of America, Children and the Threat of Nuclear War. New York: Duell,

Sloan and Pearce, 1964. 3-24.33 Musil, Growing Up Nuclear. 19.34 See Mick Broderick. Rebels with a Cause: Children versus the Military Industrial

Complex. Eds. Timothy Shary and Alexandria Seibel. Youth Culture in Global Cinema.Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. 37-55.

35 Peter Biskind. Seeing Is Believing. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983. 23-36.36The Blob, dir. Irwin S. Yeaworth, Jr., prod. Jack H. Harris. Paramount Pictures, 1958.

The following quotations and incidents are taken from the film.

42

37 The salvation of the world is cast in doubt, however. The words The End in the finalframe of the film morph into a question mark.


19/21


38 Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper. Its Hip to be Square: Rebels, Rock andRoll, and the Future. in Ed. Mathew J. Bartkowiak. Light-Years from Home: Music inScience Fiction Film.Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010.

39 Todd Gitlin, himself a former activist, remarks that to many in my generation,especially the incipient New Left, the grimmest and least acknowledged underside of

affluence was the Bomb. . . . We grew up taking cover in school drillsthe firstAmerican generation compelled from infancy to fear not only war but the end ofdays. The Sixties, 22.

40 SDS, Port Huron. See also Scheibach,Atomic Narratives. 1516.

Works Cited

Atomic Doom. Wild Man Picture Cards, No. 34. Philadelphia: Bowman GumCo..1950.

Biskind, Peter. Seeing Is Believing. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983Boyer, Paul L. By The Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn

of the Atomic Age. New York: Pantheon, 1985.Brians, Paul. Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1895-1984. Kent, OH:

Kent State University Press, 1987.Broderick, Mick. Rebels with a Cause: Children versus the Military Industrial

Complex. Youth Culture in Global Cinema. Eds. Timothy Shary andAlexandria Seibel. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. 37-55.

Brown, JoAnne. "A Is for Atom, B Is for Bomb: Civil Defense in AmericanPublic Education, 1948-1963. The Journal of American History, 75.1(1988): 68-90.

Cahn, Robert. A is for Atom. Colliers 129 (21 June 1952): 16.Carey, Michael J.. Psychological Fallout. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

38:1(1982): 20._____ The Schools and Civil Defense: The Fifties Revisited. Teachers College

Record84:1 (Fall 1982): 115-27.

Civil Defense Film for Schools. The Elementary School Journal52.1 (1951): 12.Dowling, David. Fictions of Nuclear Disaster. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press,1987.

Englehardt, Tom. The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioningof a Generation. New York: Basic Books, 1995.

Escalona, Sibylle K.. Children and the Threat of Nuclear War." in Children andthe Threat of Nuclear War. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1964. 3-24.

Federal Civil Defense Administration. Survival Under Atomic Attack. WashingtonD.C.: GPO, 1950.

Furtwangler, Albert. Growing Up Nuclear. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists37.1 (1981): 44.

Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York: BantamBooks,1987.Henriksen, Margot. Dr. Strangeloves America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.Hersey, John. Hiroshima. The New Yorker, 31 August 1946.Jacobs, Robert A.. The Dragons Tail: Americans Face the Atomic Age. Amherst, MA:

University of Massachusetts Press, 2009.

43

Lamers, William M.. Identification for School Children. NEA Journal41. 2(1952): 99.


20/21


44

Lear, John. Hiroshima USA: Can Anything Be Done About It? Colliers 127 (5August 1950), 11-15, 60-63; onlinehttp://www.pages.drexel.edu/~ina22/301/hnrs301-HUSA-1.htm>.

Lifton, Robert Jay and Richard Falk. Indefensible Weapons: The Political andPsychological Case Against Nuclearism. New York: Basic Books, 1982.

McEnaney, Laura. Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in

the Fifties. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.Miller, Cynthia J. and A. Bowdoin Van Riper. Its Hip to be Square: Rebels,

Rock and Roll, and the Future. Light-years from Home: Music In ScienceFiction Film. Ed. Mathew J. Bartkowiak. Jefferson, NC: McFarland,2010.

Musil, Robert K.. Growing Up Nuclear. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 38.1(1982): 19.

Oakes, Guy. The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Putting the Jingle in Bert: Post Production. Duck and Cover: The Citizen Kane ofCivil

Defense. 2006. www.conelrad.com/duckandcover/cover.php?turtle=01

(accessed 2 April 2009).Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster,

1986._____Introduction. Face to Face With the Bomb. Ed. Paul Shambroom.

Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2003.Rose, Kenneth D. One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture.

New York: New York University Press, 2001.Scheibach, Michael. Atomic Narratives and American Youth: Coming of Age with the

Atom, 1945-1955.Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2003.Schwebel, Milton. Nuclear Cold War: Student Opinions and Professional

Responsibility. Behavioral Science and HumanSurvival. Ed. MiltonSchwebel. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books, Inc., 1965.

Students for a Democratic Society. Port Huron Statement of the Students for aDemocratic Society. New York: Students for a Democratic Society,1962.

Strasser, Susan. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. New York: Holt, 1999.Stone, Albert E.. Literary Aftershocks: American Writers, Readers, and the Bomb. New

York: Twayne Publishers, 1994.Tuttle, Jr. William M.. Daddy's Gone to War: The Second World War in the Lives of

America's Children. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.Weart, Spencer. Nuclear Fear: A History of Images. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 1988.

Filmography

The Atomic Caf, dirs. and prods. Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty, Pierce Rafferty.The Archives Project, 1982.Atomic Alert (Elementary Version), Encyclopedia Britannica Films Inc., 1951. Made

in collaboration with the Institute for Nuclear Studies at the Universityof Chicago.

The Blob, dir. Irwin S. Yeaworth, Jr., prod. Jack H. Harris. Paramount Pictures,1958.

Duck and Cover, dir. Anthony Rizzo, prod. Leo M. Langlois. Archer Films, 1951.


21/21

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Author:

Title:

Source:

ISSN:

Publisher:

Jacobs, Bo

Atomic Kids: Duck and Cover and Atomic Alert Teach American Children

How to Survive Atomic Attack

Film Hist 40 no1 Spr 2010 p. 25-44

0360-3695

Center for the Study of Film and History

Polk 305 Elmwood Avenue, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI 54901

The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced

with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright isprohibited. To contact the publisher: http://www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory/

This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or makeany representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independentlyverified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoevercaused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

atomic kids- duck and cover and atomic alert

Documents