<Did your parents fall for the Big Lie of survivability, at their own expense? Mine didn't...

My folks couldn't have afforded one anyway. Survivability is not a "Big Lie," and the fact that you say so shows that the leftist propaganda worked quite well. There is one hell of a difference between being on a bomb target and ten miles from one, or a hundred miles, and that difference is where the survivability lies. The pundits, the moviemakers, and everyone else assumed a nuclear attack would consist of thousands of warheads hitting cities, nuclear winters, and "On The Beach" style worldwide complete destruction. This was utter bullshit, both in tactics and the results. Maybe their motivations were pure--the fear that the idea of surviving a nuclear war might encourage one. But that was during the height of the Cold War.

Under current conditions, where the most likely sources of massive radiation are nuclear accidents, dirty bombs, or a few scattered warhead strikes from either terrorists or an accidental launch, there is no excuse for the "doomsday" scenario any more, and people need to be properly educated, just as they are for earthquakes and other emergencies.

Yes, there were designated "shelters" in large public buildings in urban centers - once in a while you can still see the old black-and-yellow signs. Ever been in one? I have, more than a half-dozen, in the course of preparing to design renovations. They were, simply, the basement: no properly-filtered ventilation; unsealed windows; standing room for a few dozen people wedged in among the obsolete textbooks and PTA meeting minutes. Off in a corner were a few tin-plate barrels marked with the old CD logo. The ones for water were empty; the ones that allegedly contained food were full of packaged saltines, if vandals and/or vermin hadn't gotten to them.

Maintenance on these sites was given up long ago, long before they were shut down. And ANY shielding is better than no shielding.

National civil defence always was (and technically still is) deterrence.

Terrorists are undeterrable. And there are still accidents. And a dictator who imagines himself physically sheltered from retaliation in a bunker, and cares nothing for the population of his country, might do anything.

...People who live near nuke power plants are allegedly protected in an 'event' with warnings and evacuation plans (soon to be augmented with iodine supplements?) - but perhaps Mary Anne may want to address that better than I ever could; she's an isotope's throw from TMI.

Evacuation is best, but people need to know how to shelter in place if necessary. Iodine supplements only protect the thyroid gland against only one single source of radiation, iodine isotopes. To the discredit of many supplement salesmen, they often give the impression that this is an all-purpose "anti-radiation" pill. It isn't.

The resulting unnecessary deaths could probably be laid directly at the door of the 1960s anti-war movement.



I suppose they could, if you were looking for straw men or scapegoats. More likely, the deaths would be due to lack of warning, panic, inadequate roads, more panic, unavoidable direct exposure, and even more panic.



Panic is the result of uninformed fear. Educating people that radiation can be dealt with like any other disaster is one answer. And the anti-war movement fought such education tooth and nail. I was there.

To be fair, in the case of nuclear power plants, I suspect that the culprit in discouraging the teaching of such information may be the power companies themselves, who probably don't want to advertise the dark side of nuclear power.