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Welcome to Atomic hobo. To get ad free listening plus bonus episodes, visit patreon.com Atomichobo. In a recent series on Harold Macmillan, I marveled at the weird time warp effect produced by Super Mac, as they called him. It always seems strange to me that Macmillan, a Victorian gentleman, could have been Prime Minister during the Cuban Missile Crisis. How could a Victorian be dealing with the threat of nuclear war? It has always felt odd, incongruous to me, even though simple arithmetic shows us that loads of Victorians live to see nuclear weapons in Britain. As long as you were born before 22 January 1901, then you had existed in the Victorian era. And so a baby born January 1901 would only have been in his mid-40s when the first nukes were exploded. So there would have been loads of Victorians running about then he couldn't move for them. Nonetheless, it has always seemed strange to me. Well, I get the same feeling about the subject of today's episode, which is civil defense in North Carolina. I've never been to America, so have no direct experience of that state. But the image I have of it certainly doesn't sit neatly alongside the idea of nuclear war. Some states go with nuclear war. We might think readily of the nuclear threat if we imagine Kansas and Missouri because of the day after. Or if we think of Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota. Those states, for example, host nuclear missile silos. Alaska has its early warning radar, so there are plenty of states whose name alone might summon a nuclear shudder. But surely not North Carolina. It's on the coast and it's in the South. So therefore, according to this foreigners lazy perception, it's sun kissed and relaxed and has palm trees and everyone must speak in a lovely southern drawl and sip mint juleps on their porch. So how could the people of North Carolina, who are nicknamed Tar Heels, I learned, be bothered by the nuclear threat? It has no place there, just as it had no place bothering the Victorians. Well, today's episode looks at the state's civil defence preparations in the early 1960s, and we'll see that most people weren't particularly bothered, despite the hard work of their local civil defense office. Despite Kennedy addressing the nation on the Berlin crisis, and despite Cuba and its missiles being unnervingly close to this southern coastal state. Okay, so we are all obsessed with civil defense. We find it horrifying and fascinating, but it would seem that the majority of people just want to turn away from the threat and go on with life. That was the case in North Carolina in the early 60s, despite nuclear tensions reaching two worrying peaks then with the Berlin crisis of 1961, and then of course, Cuba the following year. But in my reading and in the newspaper archives, I saw very little evidence of panic or distress amongst Tar Heels. A power cut in Goldsboro during the Cuba crisis did cause a bit of a stir, as some people assumed that it would be knocked out by nuclear missiles. And a slight increase in traffic accidents was put down to nuclear jitters. But there was no statewide panic buying or everyone rushing out to build a fallout shelter. People stayed relatively calm. And this was despite Berlin and despite Cuba, and despite the local civil defense guys actually getting quite frustrated people's indifference. So let's see what happened. The 1960s, of course, began with a new American president. GfK was elected in November 1960. His inauguration followed in January 61. And one of the first big problems on his desk was Berlin. Khrushchev had been grumbling about Berlin since 1958, but things had got worse by 61 because the eastern part of the city was losing so many people, often its highly educated and trained citizens who were departing for the West. This was hideously embarrassing, of course, for the Communists, because if Communism is so great, why is everyone clamouring to leave? So Khrushchev's solution was to sign a peace treaty with East Germany. Of course, East Germany and the Soviet Union were pals, so there was no need for peace to be declared between them. Instead, Khrushchev was thinking that a treaty would legitimize East Germany as a separate state. Because look here, here it is out signing treaties. So it's not simply a, a sad half of Germany hanging about waiting to be reunited with the western half. It would suit the Soviets very nicely for East Germany to be recognized as a state on its own. And that was because of course, the Soviet Union did not want a reunited Germany. As for understandable reasons, they feared a strong, united Germany. And so when the two leaders met at the Vienna summit in July 61, Khrushchev told Kennedy that the Soviets intended to sign a treaty with East Germany and that such a treaty would invalidate all the post war agreements on Western access to West Berlin. If the Americans didn't like that, then they were free to sign a treaty too. You can agree all over again with East Germany. East Germany would be fine, totally cool with signing a treaty with you as well. But the Americans would not countenance that because they believed in eventual German reunification. And that would be undermined if they went around signing treaties with East Germany. So in Vienna, Kennedy said, we are in Berlin not because of someone's sufferance. We fought our way there. If we were expelled from that area and if we accepted the loss of our rights, no one would have any confidence in US commitments and pledges. So there was no way that Kennedy, that America, that NATO, would allow themselves to be frozen out and ejected from West Berlin. So the two men partied at Vienna with things in a very grim state. Khrushchev was still insisting they're going to go ahead with their treaty, meaning the west will be cut off from West Berlin. And Kennedy was insisting they would never allow that to happen. Khrushchev said, it is up to the US to decide whether there will be war or peace. And Kennedy replied, Then, Mr. Chairman, there will be war. It will be a cold winter. These quotes come from the book John F. Kennedy, An Unfinished Life by Robert Dallek. And the author says that the Berlin crisis required very careful handling from Kennedy because he needed to find a balance, he needed to be tough. Of course, he couldn't allow the Western powers to be driven out of West Berlin, but at the same time, he. He could surely recognize that the situation in East Berlin, where the regime was losing thousands of its best and brightest people, couldn't continue. The Communists needed a way to stop that exodus because it was a constant humiliation to them. And of course, Kennedy could recognise that Khrushchev's original idea to stop the haemorrhage had been by bringing in better living standards. Yeah, but how was that working out? Especially when everyone in East Berlin could see with their own eyes, often just a few streets away, Western freedom, Western wealth, and all they had to do to access it was take a little walk. So that was the situation after Vienna, things were looking very grim. And when Kennedy got back home, the position in Washington was, we've got to beef up the nuclear deterrent. At this time of crisis, the Soviets must be in no doubt that America is willing to go to war, yes, even nuclear war, to defend West Berlin and by extension, to defend the west itself, because if we can show we're serious, then they might back down. And the whole idea of being serious did matter because there were. There were fears that Khrushchev did not take the new, young JFK seriously. And JFK felt that after the Vienna summits, which had been their first meeting as chairman and President, JFK said privately that Khrushchev had beaten the hell out of him and treated him like a little boy. And he found he was getting similar insults at Home. Richard Nixon, whom Kennedy had of course recently defeated in the presidential election, said, never in American history has a man talked so big and acted so little. Now, we are wading too far into the Berlin crisis here and haven't heard a peep about North Carolina. So let's skip to JFK's address to the nation on 25 July 1961, where he outlined what he would do about the Berlin crisis. In his excellent speech, he made it clear that America, with her allies, would defend West Berlin.
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Berlin is not a part of East Germany, but a separate territory under the control of the Allied powers. Thus, our rights there are clear and deep rooted. But in addition to those rights is our commitment to sustain and defend, if need be, the opportunity for more than 2 million people to determine their own future and choose their own way of life. Thus, our presence in West Berlin and our access thereto cannot be ended by any act of the Soviet government. The NATO shield was long ago extended to cover West Berlin, and we have given our word that an attack upon that city will be regarded as an attack upon us all. For West Berlin, lying exposed 110 miles inside East Germany, surrounded by Soviet troops and close to Soviet supply lines, has many roles. It is more than a showcase of liberty, a symbol, an island of freedom in a communist sea. It is even more than a link with the free world, a beacon of hope behind the Iron Curtain, an escape hatch for refugees. West Berlin is all of that. But above all, it has now become, as never before, the great testing place of Western courage and will, a focal point where our solemn commitments, stretching back over the years since 1945 and Soviet ambitions now meet in basic confrontation. It would be a mistake for others to look upon Berlin because of its location is a tempting target. The United States is there, the United Kingdom and France are there, the pledge of NATO is there and the people of Berlin are there. It is as secure in that sense as the rest of us.
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He went on to say he'd be requesting an increase in the defence budget and in the size of the armed forces. And then he turned to civil defense, saying funds would be made available to identify and mark suitable spaces across the country as fallout shelters, and they would then be stocked with the necessary water, food and first aid supplies. So his address to the nation made it clear there was an increased risk of nuclear war and that America was beefing up its military and its civil defense to meet that threat. And yet apathy towards civil defence remained the default. In North Carolina. Families and individuals may have shrugged, but Those employed to care about civil defence were certainly busy. JFK had announced there would be a national shelter survey to identify suitable places as fallout shelters. And so groups of men spread out across the nation with their clipboards and their measuring tape to scrutinize basements and cellars and warehouses and factories, in public buildings and in private businesses. And those which were deemed suitable as fallout shelters would be approved and would get one of the famous yellow and black fallout shelter signs and then supplies would come to make it ready for habitation. As a shelter, it was a mammoth task, of course. And so the survey teams only reached North Carolina in December of 1961, by which point the Berlin crisis was over. It had culminated, of course, in the building of the Berlin Wall in August of that year. And Kennedy had privately remarked that whilst it wasn't ideal, a wall was preferable to a war. So the shelter survey teams arrived in North Carolina in December, found that the state was severely lacking in shelter space. In 1960, before the Berlin crisis had erupted and before the shelter survey had been created, the state had only two. Yes, that's two public fallout shelters and only 25 private domestic shelters. Well, the survey guys got to work in North Carolina measuring and assessing and chewing their pencils and scratching their heads. And by the time the Cuba crisis broke in October of 62, they had approved and signposted shelters for 2.8% of the state's resident population. Now that's poor coverage. Indeed. And so the authorities may have breathed a sigh of relief at the contribution made by the state's colleges and universities. They hadn't sat back and waited to be told by the government to build shelter space. They weren't waiting for the survey lads to turn up with their measuring tapes. They got on and did it on their own initiative, making them some of the most efficient and and reliable providers of shelter in the state. Here's a few examples. Wake Forest University, for example, created shelter space for every student. And Fifer College had space for all students, all staff, and some leftover for the locals too. North Carolina State College had shelter space for every single student in its Carmichael gymnasium and Nelson hall and Chapel Hill University of North Carolina had designated space for 12,175 people with fallout shelter signs put up at 31 locations across campus. The local paper noted there were very few shelter spots in town. And so in the event of war, citizens of Chapel Hill were will be largely dependent on the university for shelter. And there was Duke University, which planned shelter space for every one of its students. And staff and their families. Altogether, that was shelter space for 25,000 people. Now, we might be cynical and wonder why these colleges and universities were taking such care to provide shelter space in abundance. Was it a sales pitch? We all know you need to cough up big bucks to get a college education in the States. So was this simply an advertising thing to push at mum and dad, your little treasure will be safe with us. Or was it a wider project to offer shelter to America's bright and educated youth citizens who arguably will be of more value than others after the bomb? Certainly we've talked before in the pod about the role American schools played in civil defense, specifically in the school building being a place of shelter and often it'd be designated for the kids and the staff, but sometimes it could make itself available to the public too. The thinking was that everyone in the community knows the school and it may have an element of trustworthiness as the public will know that it's been built according to certain standards and is staffed by trained and educated people. Also, many American schools which were built in the 50s and 60s, and that's a lot of them, thanks to the post war baby boom, they were built with civil defence in mind, so may have featured a basement or a gym or a cafeteria for example, which was purpose built to double as a shelter if the moment came. If you look at the podcast archive, you'll find an episode from December 2024 called Artesia's Underground School, which is about a school in New Mexico where the entire building is designed to function as a shelter because the whole school was built underground. So for many Americans in the 60s, it was known that the local school could be a place of shelter. And it was similar for colleges and universities, many of whom created or adapted shelter space on campus. Indeed, Duke University back in North Carolina, they were so serious about shelter provision that to organize a shelter experiment. In November 1962, just after the end of the Cuba Crisis, of course, 175 people entered one of its shelters and would stay there for 12 hours. Those involved were doing a short course offered by the university which sought to train them to become shelter managers if the bomb dropped. So they were here to get a little taste of shelter life and also to drum up a bit of publicity for the local civil defence efforts. The newspapers who reported on the experiment made it all sound like a great game. They said the volunteers had to face tasks and challenges whilst in the shelter, such as enduring a short power failure and having to cope with staged examples of sickness and and hysteria. After which they all chowed down on some survival rations and passed the time with playing cards, reading magazines, and enjoying an impromptu magic show. So in North Carolina, the educational institutions were making huge special efforts of their own, both to train people and to provide physical shelter. But the local authorities were still making their own efforts, of course, even though most of the public weren't really bothered. And on 25th of October, 1962, in the very midst of the Cuba crisis, the city of Durham, North Carolina published in the local paper a list of all the fallout shelters which had so far been approved for use. It was a very eclectic list, including the local ymca, the Liggett and Meyers cigarette factory, the Belk department store, the Jack Tar Hotel, and the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance building. The paper did warn readers, however, that these shelters, although they'd been approved and labeled as fallout shelters as part of the government scheme, they had not yet been stocked with bedding, food or water. They were still awaiting these supplies from federal government. So if the bomb did drop and you had to run along to the Jack Tar Hotel or the Liggett and Myers cigarette factory for shelter, you would have to bring along your own supplies. Citizens who found themselves in such a rush to get to the shelters were asked to please go on foot if possible, to avoid traffic jams. But there were no indications that the public were suffering anxiety, panic, distress, even during Cuba. The local paper, the Durham Morning Herald, seemed to take pride in its front page headline in the very midst of the crisis, which read, durhamites react slower than some to war scare. The article said that local shopkeepers said that there had been some increase, this is during the Cuban missile crisis, some increase in people buying tinned food. But it wasn't anything that could be called panic buying. And one supermarket manager said, yes, there had been some increases, but quote, they're not tearing our doors down. A department store here and there reported, yes, someone bought a lantern. Few people bought a cots, collapsible beds for the, for their shelters. But there was no panic buying. There was no rush. And the local paper seemed to be proud of that fact. But of course, there were private individuals who did not care to wait. They weren't willing to wait for the federal government to supply the Belk department store or the Jack Tar Hotel or the YMCA with fallout shelter, bedding, and food and water. There were some individuals who decided to build their own shelters. One example I found in the local papers concerned a Mr. Helms from Garner, North Carolina, who built a shelter which was said to resemble a Big hill of potatoes. The newspaper, the Sentinel said first he formed a big pile of dirt into the shape of an igloo. The pile was about 12ft wide at the base and tapered off at the top to a height of about 6ft. Then, over the dirt, he poured a heavy mixture of concrete to a thickness of about 6 inches. When the concrete had dried, Mr. Helms removed the dirt and put it on top of the concrete, leaving room for a door and ventilation pipes. This shelter cost about $150. But of course, people who are building their own private shelters were the exception. As the local newspaper in Salisbury, North Carolina, reported in November, 61, that's just after the Berlin crisis had ended. There were no nuclear jitters, but there was a calm concern. The newspaper reported a nationwide survey showing no signs of nuclear jitters, and it addressed itself directly to Khrushchev, saying, young people in America are still making plans for college and career, and there's no sign that people are choosing not to have babies and old folks are saving for a comfortable retirement. So the survey suggested no nuclear jitters, and this was uniform across the nation. But the one aspect where people did differ was in shelter building. It said that in some communities, such as Rochester in New York, there had been a flurry of shelter construction, with 40 to 50 being built per week. But if you looked at, say, San Francisco or Cleveland, then there was no such flurry and shelter building. The editor of a local paper in San Francisco said this might be to do with the fact that San Franciscans have long lived the threat of earthquakes, and the local children are used to emergency drills in schools. So they have perhaps reacted with a bit more of a shrug. Down in Texarkana, the editor of the local paper there, the Texarkana Gazette, says locals were mildly apprehensive, but he thought that fallout shelters wouldn't catch on in his area unless they acquired some kind of glamour and became a status symbol for the home, like having a swimming pool. Moving across to Memphis, the word there was that people talk about fallout shelters at cocktail parties, but no one is actually willing to part with the cash to build one. They quoted a local psychiatrist, Dr. Harvey Reese, who said that his wife had suggested they build a shelter on the property line with their neighbours lying directly between both houses so that both families could crawl there when the bomb drops. But Dr. Rees told them, I just don't think we could live with you folks for a week. Instead, Dr. Rees's plan, if the bomb dropped, was, I'm going to get me a Big orange pop. I go down to Maine and Madison and say, drop it right here. And that really does seem to sum up the feelings of the majority, certainly in North Carolina, if it happens, it happens. So even though we had two of the big spikes in nuclear tension of the Cold War in the early 60s, we had Berlin and then Cuba the following year. And even though with both of those crises, JFK addressed the nation warning people of the increased threat of war, and even though there were civil defense offices around the country who were tasked with educating the public about this and what needs to be done. Despite all of that, the majority still had, as one of the papers said, no nuclear jitters. And of course we might wonder the reasons for that. One might be, oh, it will never happen. One might be, well, if it does happen, there's not much I can do about it. And another reason might be, as mentioned in the podcast here, simple expense. Do you have that money? Do you have the space in which to build that shelter? Because you need a house with basement space or with a garden. We don't all have that. So despite local civil defense efforts, despite Kennedy, despite somber addresses to the nation, despite two of the most notorious and scary incidents of the Cold War, most people just shrugged and got on with it. Or as Dr. Harvey Rees planned, they would get themselves a big orange pop and go down to Main and Madison and, and say, drop it right here. Now, I hope you like that quick look at the nuclear jitters, or lack of, in North Carolina in the early 60s. And before I go, please let me tell you that I'm starting a nuclear book club on my Patreon. It's called the Doomsday Library. And once a month I will record a video, not, not a podcast, but a video discussing a book about nuclear war. Now, it's going to be a mixture of fiction and non fiction, and we're starting the first one with a novel set 2,000 years in the future after a nuclear holocaust. It's the Chrysalids by John Wyndham. And on the 1st of each month, there will be a video on my Patreon page discussing the book. And then there'll be a thread underneath, of course, where everyone who's part of the Domesday Library can leave comments and discuss the book and nominate what our next month's reading will be. So if you want to join that, take a look at the video. I've put a video up on my Patreon page, put up last week, explaining how it will work. And that's free for everyone to view, you don't need to be a member. So take a look@patreon.com Atomichobo and the video is there. And I hope you'll consider joining the Domesday Library. And as I say, the first book is going to be the Chrysalids by John Wyndham. And let me thank my newest patron, Ewan Tristan Booth. Thank you, Ewan, for joining up. And I'll be back next week.