Description: Three photographs document exhibits at the Ohio Women's Civil Defense Council Conference in September 1962. The first photograph shows a display table of fallout shelter supplies, including a medical kit and a radiological monitoring kit. A second photograph features scale models of fallout shelters that could be built in different kinds of homes and buildings. The final photograph shows the amount of food needed to sustain one person in a fallout shelter for two weeks. The photographs measure 8" x 10" (20.32 x 25.4 cm). In the 1950s, many Americans were concerned about the rise of communism and especially the Soviet Union. The dropping of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in 1945 began an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union--each nation sought to develop more destructive weapons than the other. In the so-called Cold War, the two nations struggled for political, ideological, and economic superiority. Concerns over potential nuclear war during the 1950s and 1960s led to a government campaign to teach defense strategies such as "duck and cover" and to encourage citizens to create fallout shelters to protect them from nuclear attacks. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: Om3169_3812925_001
Subjects: Military Ohio; Ohio Women; Fallout shelters; Nuclear fallout; Nuclear weapons; Atomic bomb; Cold War
Places: Ohio