PSA Week: Duck and Cover

Well hey there teen gang and welcome to the first round of Public Service Announcement Week or PSA for short. Say let’s start this motif off right with bit of public safety.  Here are a few dos and don’ts on dealing a thermal baric atomic explosion to bring Americans to a safety conscious awareness.    So duck in the basement; get under your desk or just cover eyes from the blast.   This is Duck and Cover.

 

Jeepers Mom, we left Sparky outside during the blast.

Well we don’t all have a spoiler like Bert the turtle that we can duck and cover in.

Let us journey back to a time a large gas guzzling all metal vehicles, no real safety belts and a Norman Rockwell view of society.    The atomic scare is under way due to the rampant spread of Communism and the threat of a high yield explosion that if the sheer concussive force didn’t snap your bones and liquefy your organs, then the concentrated thermonuclear explosion would atomize you where you stand, sit or play.   Rather than be open and honest with the masses the United States National Civil Defense felt a lofty and delightful cartoon describing the unbridled terror of having your flesh fried from your body.

Bert the Turtle is passing the buck on his misinformation.

Commissioned for the National Education Association in 1951, this iconic character Bert the turtle did not wolf down pizza, beat up ninjas or tell you how things were bodacious but in fact taught you what to do in the event of a nuclear blast.   The need to keep calm, keep cool and just let the atomic flames wash over you like a gentle breeze was the appeal apparently.  You are to walk safely and in even files while getting into a basement or shelter that could hold maybe 500 people uncomfortable.  Hiding under a metal desk was also an acceptable barrier to mass levels of shockwaves of pressure and thermo baric pressure and flames generating heat to the magnitude of 1102 degrees Fahrenheit.    I am no rocket scientist but I dare say the levels of lead paint in a house would not shrug off the radiation of these levels.

Here a few fun facts of the hypocrisy of this “educational” film.  While covering the devastation of the initial explosion of an atomic warhead how the concussion force works, they seem to have skipped the 7.5 mile radius spread of extreme heat that would make 3^rd degree burns seem like a day at the beach without sunscreen. Not mention the sheer demolition and defoliation of that area in wide spread disaster.  Not even counting the vast levels of radiation that are omitted around every living thing in the area and taking in account for winds to spread this havoc ensued causing that region of land to be ruined for 80 to 100 years plus. 

Oh good golly this floor needs scrubbing.

Funny, how none of these computations were taken in and handed out to the American households.  So the next time you look to the skies and notice a bright flash, your retinas are not completely burned out.  You too will duck and cover.