Read the following aloud in class and then watch the two videos about what life was like in the Cold War where the government produced "educational films" for the public to keep them safe.
Yesterday, we watched a video about World War II, where it ended with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you were in block six, you missed it, but here again is the story for all. On August 6, 1945, the United States changed all of world warfare, when it entered the nuclear age. The Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, was flying at over 31,000 ft. at over 300 mph. 43 seconds after dropping the bomb, it detonated, and just over three minutes later, the Enola Gay shook vigorously after it was 11.5 miles away from the drop site. Can you imagine dropping a bomb and it being so powerful that you could fly 300 mph at 31,000 ft AWAY from the drop zone and still feel it 11.5 miles away!? That's like dropping the bomb on the Georgia Dome and feeling it here at Davis. In all, over 140,000 Japanese civilians were killed by the atomic bombings.
It was only a matter of time before the public found out the true horrors of the bombings and other nations wanted in on the technology. Between 1945-1951 the United States tested over 23 nuclear bombs on islands in the Pacific. The threat of nuclear war was real once the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb in 1949.
In 1951, the United States government created this video as a Civil Defense film against nuclear war. In schools, movie theaters, and in work places videos were shown to students, employees, and citizens on what to do in the case of an atomic bombing in the United States. I want you to watch this video and simply imagine what it was like in the 1950s and seeing a commercial like this.
This was also an educational film that showed how to survive an atomic bomb in a fallout shelter and how to determine
what "fallout" was:
what "fallout" was: