Stay Safe, Stay Strong: The Facts About Nuclear Weapons

These vintage government films try to convince the average citizen that nuclear war is no big deal. After you get over that pesky radiation sickness, you'll be back to work in no time, at least until the next major nuclear exchange.

WARNING RED (1956): An ordinary drive home from work becomes a nightmare for Joseph Cunningham when an atomic bomb is dropped in the middle of his commute. Now he must reach home on foot while warning survivors to stock up on "beans, beef stew, and peas!" Includes a grotesque scene where Cunningham encounters a shell-shocked young woman trying to "give away" her baby to everyone walking by. Director Nicholas Webster also made the notoriously bad Christmas movie Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (1964).

TOWN OF THE TIMES (1963): Ralph Meeker and Larry Gates play opposing school board members arguing over how best to prepare "Main Street, USA" for the forthcoming nuclear annihilation. It ends with a town hall meeting in which the benefits of shelter living are endlessly debated. "What if I'm in one shelter and my husband's in another?" asks a beehived, bullet bra-wearing housewife. Meanwhile, teenagers do the twist to a song with the lyrics "I'm gonna live, live, live in my fallout shelter." Coincidentally, Larry Gates had starred in an episode of The Twilight Zone called "The Shelter" two years earlier. Ralph Meeker is best known for playing Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly (1955), which also dramatically demonstrated the dangers of radiation.

PUBLIC SHELTER LIVING: THE STORY OF SHELTER 104 (1964): This claustrophobic Civil Defense film, meant to be viewed only "under the guidance of a trained shelter management instructor", tries to show us what day-to-day life in a fallout shelter while nuclear war rages outside would be like. Things become even more tense when beatnik folk singer Pete McCann (who looks remarkably like Lenny Bruce) barges in. "You know, the fact is, you've made a stinking mess out of everything," says our socialist insurgent, "and now we're all going to die down here, in this black little hole!"

STAY SAFE, STAY STRONG: THE FACTS ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS (1960): Meant "to be shown to Authorized Personnel ONLY", Stay Safe, Stay Strong tries to dispel the "myth" that atomic weapons could be a danger during peacetime. A stilted, crewcutted host insists that even if a nuclear bomb were to accidentally drop out of a plane, it wouldn't explode. (Why such a thing would happen in the first place is never explained.)

TARGET YOU (1953): "Our President has told us that an aggressor in possession of atomic bombs...could cause horrendous damage." Target You uses crude animation to teach families what to do in the event of nuclear war. "The aged and infirm will be as helpless as children," intones the heartless narrator. Like many Civil Defense films from the early 50s that dealt with the nuclear threat, Target You was eventually pulled from circulation for falsely depicting fallout as essentially harmless.

THE MEDICAL ASPECTS OF NUCLEAR RADIATION (1950): This unintentionally hilarious Armed Forces film did a horrendous job of calming the fears of nervous GIs in a post-Hiroshima world. "The general public...is determined to regard radioactivity as potent and irresistible as the evil spirits of the Indians(!!!)" The advice given is usually of the 'common sense' variety, such as when the narrator tells us that if an atomic bomb is dropped, "try to be somewhere else when it happens." Even more preposterously, radiation sickness sufferers are told to just buy a toupee when their hair falls out! And don't worry about becoming impotent as a result of nuclear radiation...you'll be dead long before that can happen! "Sterility by radiation is a matter a dead man wouldn't worry about!"

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