{"id":9922,"date":"2016-01-31T13:27:20","date_gmt":"2016-01-31T18:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=9922"},"modified":"2016-05-11T09:30:09","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T13:30:09","slug":"nuclear-apocalypse-at-12th-arch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2016\/01\/nuclear-apocalypse-at-12th-arch\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuclear Apocalypse at 12th & Arch"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Civil<\/a>
Civil Defense Sign – Roosevelt Boulevard, August 29, 1951. (PhillyHistory,org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the 10th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings approached in 1955, horrors of nuclear war seemed closer, not farther away. Millions of American viewers were rattled to see the disfigured \u201cHiroshima Maidens\u201d on reality TV (This Is Your Life<\/a>), victims visiting the United States for reconstructive surgery. Even more frightening\u2014if such a thing was possible\u2014the arms race with the Soviet Union turned out ever larger and more destructive weapons.<\/p>\n

The Soviets tested their first atomic bomb in August 1949. Four years later, they claimed to have the hydrogen bomb. In November 1955<\/a>, they detonated it. Americans also had also been developing larger and more powerful warheads. In 1952, the U.S. detonated \u201cMike<\/a>,\u201d a 10.4 megaton hydrogen bomb with twice the explosive power of World War II. Two years after that, the Americans tested \u201cBravo<\/a>,\u201d a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb resulting in an explosion more powerful than anticipated. Bravo contaminated 7,000 square miles of the Pacific and blanketed the globe with fallout.<\/p>\n

The possibilities of deploying nuclear weapons were very real. In 1950, President Truman admitted A-bombs were being considered in the Korean War. Five years later, President Eisenhower wouldn\u2019t rule them out in the Formosa Straits Crisis<\/a>. Americans grew increasingly distraught about the possibility, the probability, it seemed, that the United States would attack\u2014or come under attack. And if this were to happen, when this happened, society as known would be over, replaced by a decimated, fragmented version managed by a government hidden deep underground.<\/p>\n

The transition to this new, post-apocalyptic world would begin a few minutes before the bombs hit America\u2019s soon-to-be-obsolete cities. If all went well, apocalypse management would begin with the wail of air-raid sirens signaling a mass exodus from the targets. And Civil Defense authorities figured that any city with a population of over 50,000 would be a target.<\/p>\n

\"Reading<\/a>
Reading Terminal: A Cold War target (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Operation Alert took place on June 15, 1955, a day that otherwise seemed like any other Wednesday. \u201cImaginary atom bombs \u2018blasted\u2019 Washington and 60 other American cities to theoretical rubble,\u201d reported the Inquirer. \u201cThousands of officials, led by President Eisenhower, fled the capital and set up a scattered, skeleton government at sites up to 300 miles away.\u201d\u00a0 A Secret Service motorcade escorted the president and his entourage from the White House to \u201can undisclosed hideaway in a \u2018mountainous, wooded area.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPhiladelphia was brought face-to-face with the grim realities of atomic war. A \u2018surprise bomb\u2019 hit the city at 2:11PM, \u201cstriking at 12th and Arch Sts. and theoretically making a wasteland of many square miles\u2026\u201d Operation Alert \u201cbrought traffic to a standstill throughout the Philadelphia area. \u2026 Sidewalks were emptied of pedestrians and the city\u2019s full complement of Civil Defense personnel and equipment went into action.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMayor Joseph S. Clark and members of his Cabinet left City Hall\u2026to take command at the secret central control station set up in the Northeast. \u2026 Philadelphia \u2018evacuees\u2019 were moved out of the city\u2026to previously prepared reception centers in Bucks, Delaware and Montgomery counties.\u201d Police led convoys from Bridesburg to Council Rock High School in Newtown and from Germantown to Abington High School. More than 1,600 evacuated West Philadelphia in 300 cars and buses.<\/p>\n

\"12th<\/a>
Evidence of life at 12th and Arch Streets in 1959, four years after Operation Alert. (PhillyHistory,org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Casualties would be devastating. Officials \u201ccounted\u201d 760,340 “dead” in Philadelphia and 363,860 “injured” reported The New York Times. More than three quarter of a million would be \u201chomeless.\u201d Across the nation, according to the Civil Defense Administration, \u201ca partial presumed toll of more than 5,000,000\u201d had died; nearly as many were injured. Other officials projected even more: 8.5 million Americans dead, 8 million injured and 10 million displaced. Best guesses had 25 million without food or water.<\/p>\n

\u201cStaggering,\u201d said Eisenhower, who had previously admitted \u201cif war comes, it will be horrible. Atomic war will destroy our civilization. It will destroy our cities. \u2026[it] would not save democracy. Civilization would be ruined\u2026 No one was going to be the winner. \u2026 The destruction might be such that we…go back to bows and arrows.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even so, the Eisenhower Administration supported the policy known as MAD\u2014mutually assured destruction\u2014and the idea that\u00a0Americans were \u201cBetter dead than red.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not everyone bought into Operation Alert, and not everything worked as planned on June 15, 1955. Schoolchildren spotted Eisenhower’s \u201csecret\u201d caravan and shouted, \u201cHey Ike!\u201d as it sped by. In New York, resisters occupied park benches across from City Hall. One official in the District of Columbia declared: “the test will teach us nothing.\u201d Another in Peoria, Illinois refused to cooperate, adding \u201cI can\u2019t see a lot of people running around with armbands on.\u201d And in Flint, Michigan the siren system was broken. Everyone in Flint “died\u201d without ever hearing the Cold War\u2019s piercing, futile wail.<\/p>\n

[Sources: \u201cPresident Leads Flight of Officials To Hideaway Capital in Atom Test,\u201d and \u201c202,000 \u2018Casualties\u2019 Listed In City in Mock A-Bombing\u201d in The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 16, 1955; Anthony Leviero, \u201c’H-Bombs’ Test U.S. Civil Defense: 61 Cities ‘Ruined,’\u201d New York Times, June 16, 1955; and Dee Garrison, Bracing for Armageddon: Why Civil Defense Never<\/em> Worked ((Oxford University Press, 2006).]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the 10th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings approached in 1955, horrors of nuclear war seemed closer, not farther away. Millions of American viewers were rattled to see the disfigured \u201cHiroshima Maidens\u201d on reality TV (This Is Your Life), victims visiting the United States for reconstructive surgery. Even more frightening\u2014if such a thing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}