The campaign for civil defense and the struggle to naturalize the bomb

Abstract

A key element in the government's attempt to get Americans to accept nuclear deterrence strategy in the 1950s and 1960s was the campaign for civil defense, especially the building of private fallout shelters, as a form of civic duty. A critical approach to the campaign “in the pragmatic attitude” reveals that the campaign really was the site of several competing texts, including mass‐media narratives and pacifist social movement discourse resisting civil defense. The public debate over civil defense programs reveals cultural contradictions between some of these texts and the practices of everyday life, especially the tension between competitive individualism and cooperative community.