Loading summary
Transcript14 lines
- [00:01]
Host (likely the main podcast narrator, possibly named Atomic Hobo)
Welcome to Atomic hobo. To get ad free listening plus bonus episodes, visit patreon.com Atomichobo
- [00:11]
Sponsor Voice 1 (Grow Therapy and other ads)
the pressure to have a summer worth posting about is real. So is financial stress, social exhaustion, and the anxiety that sneaks in right when things are supposed to feel good. Grow Therapy can help with that. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th, grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent, licensed therapists across the US Offering both virtual and in person sessions, nights and weekends. Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow Therapy is here to help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growththerapy.com acast today to get started. That's growththerapy.com ac acast growtherapy.com acast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
- [01:11]
Sponsor Voice 2 (Progressive Insurance)
You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average 12 month savings by $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary.
- [01:47]
Host (likely the main podcast narrator, possibly named Atomic Hobo)
Sometimes life will get you stressed out. Lucky you can always count on text now. Free talk, free text, free 5G and
- [01:54]
Sponsor Voice 1 (Grow Therapy and other ads)
they'll never shut you off.
- [01:55]
Host (likely the main podcast narrator, possibly named Atomic Hobo)
Cause like I said, it's free. Text Now's got your back nationwide. No long term contracts but all they nervous about losing service. Text Now's got your back. That's their sense of purpose. What comes next? You've got free talk and text with the TextNow app.
- [02:12]
Sponsor Voice 2 (Progressive Insurance)
Wireless plans require the purchase of a sim card.
- [02:14]
Host (likely the main podcast narrator, possibly named Atomic Hobo)
Visit textnow.com for terms and conditions. Our first book club video is out. I'll be doing these videos once a month. They'll be unscripted and on my Patreon page each month we choose a nuclear war themed book, fiction or non fiction and I will do a video about it. So the first one is out now and I've made this one free for everyone. But of course each subsequent video will be for Patrons only. So take a look@patreon.com Atomichobo if you want to join our Doomsday Library. And the video you'll find there is about the Chrysalids by John Wyndham. That's a novel which is set in 2000 years in the future after a nuclear war. And next month we'll be looking at the novel Alas Babylon by Pat Frank. Now, I'm not going to discuss Alas Babylon here, that's of course for our next book club video. But I can say that the novel is set in Florida. And by coincidence, I've been reading another nuclear war novel recently, Fiscadoro by Denis Johnson, which is also set in Florida. And yes, with both of them, it's been weird to read about nuclear war happening in a sunny setting by the coast, because to me, nuclear war takes place surely in a gray ruined landscape such as we see in Threads or in the Road. But in Fiscadoro, for example, they're often down on the sun kissed beach greeting fishing boats. And in Alas Babylon, I was discomfited, I must admit, by the characters. And this is after nuclear war, remember talking about getting the neighbors round for a barbecue? Now, don't let that detail put you off reading Alas Babylon. I don't mean to trivialize it. The suggestion of a neighbourhood barbecue actually made sense because the power has gone. So the freezer, of course had packed in and all their big juicy steaks were defrosting. And so to avoid it all going to waste, a barbecue is suggested. They can cook with flame, can't they? And we can't possibly eat all of that stockpiled meat, so it makes sense. But at the same time, can you imagine Mr. And Mrs. Beckett getting the neighbours round in the sunny back garden in Threads for a little post apocalyptic get together? Well, no, you can't. And the main reason for that, of course, is nuclear winter. No one in Sheffield would have been tempted out into the miserable irradiated greyness for a barbecue. But in Florida, in Alas Babylon, it's a lovely sunny afternoon because the novel was published in 1959, and that's of course a long time before the theory of nuclear winter arrived. So we must forgive them their post nuclear Florida sunshine, as with Fiscadoro, which was published in 85, so let's assume the author wrote it before nuclear winter arose to spoil everyone's fun in the sun. But nonetheless, we have two Florida nuclear war novels which feature frolicking in the sunshine. And yes, it was Very jarring to read such scenes, even though the logical part of my brain was saying, give the authors a break. Nuclear winter wasn't on the table when these were written. And even if it had been, well, novelists can use their imaginations, can't they? So why shouldn't they imagine nuclear war in splendid sunshine? You could even say it could be a deliberate move to make the reader feel discombobulated. Most of us surely associate Florida with sun and fun and Disney and a relaxed lifestyle. And so to press a nuclear holocaust onto such a landscape, well, that could easily mess with your head. It's like watching a horror film which is set in daylight in a modern building. It's unsettling because it seems so unexpected, so inappropriate. Or the film backrooms, which I saw last week at the cinema. That's weird and unsettling because it's a million miles away from being set in a typical gothic castle on a mountaintop in a thunderstorm with creaking doors and quivering shadows. So it's the unexpected setting. So, yes, it is discomforting. And that's what gives, I think, Alas Babylon and Fiscadoro a lot of their power. Nuclear war in glorious Florida sunshine. But anyway, let's talk no more about the novel because that is for our next book group video for the Domesday Library. So if you want to join us for that, get a copy of Alas Babylon by Pat Frank and then head over to patreon.com Atomichobo and as mentioned, the first book group video where we look at the Chrysalids by John Wyndham is there right now, and it's free for everyone to view. But for today's podcast episode, I thought we'd look at the newspaper archives for Florida and see what the local papers were saying about their preparation for nuclear war. I'll narrow it down to 1959. That's the year that Alas Babylon was published. Because if the novel had characters being sometimes a bit too relaxed, at least in the first third of the novel, what was the reality in Florida in 1959? What were they doing and saying about nuclear war in that era? The novel is set in the fictional small town of Fort Repose, which was based on the real town of Mount Dora, which lies to the northwest of Orlando. So that's where we'll focus our search. Orlando and its surroundings in 1959. Firstly, 59 was quite a year in the Cold War. This was a period where Khrushchev was threatening to cut off Western access to West Berlin. Kennedy started going on about the so called missile gap, which was later shown not to exist. But it certainly did its job in frightening the American public, who were already shaken up by the launch of Sputnik two years before. And this was also the time where the horror of fallout was prominent in public discourse about nuclear war. And the local paper, the Orlando Sentinel, made it clear that nuclear tensions were high, telling its readers in June 1959, if there's a war in the not far distant future, decisions made in the next three weeks can bring it on. This article was about an upcoming summit in Geneva between America, Soviets, Britain and France, and warned against appeasement of the enemy at this summit, such as we saw in 1938 at the famous Munich conference. At this Geneva summit, the foreign secretaries of each of the four powers would meet to discuss the ongoing Berlin crisis, that is angry Khrushchev's threat to cut off western access to the western sectors of the city. This was the second Berlin crisis of the Cold War, the first being that of 1948, which led to the famous Berlin airlift, where the Allies had shrugged at petulant Stalin, who had been like his successor, trying to cut off our access to the city. Well, the Allies said, you want to cut off our road access to West Berlin and hope to starve the West Berliners into submission? Fine, do your worst. We'll simply supply the city by air. But in this new Berlin crisis, where there was yet again the threat to cut off Axis, John Lewis Gaddis, in his book the Cold War, reminds us that the Allies couldn't this time around simply repeat that magnificent operation where cargo planes had been landing and taking off every few seconds to keep West Berlin fed and warm and with the lights on because the city had simply grown too big, West Berlin's very success had made it vulnerable. And of course, that success and its obviously superior living standards and opportunities made it very tempting to East Berliners, thousands of whom were crossing the city's open border into the west, into freedom. And that is what provoked this second Berlin crisis. East Germany, and therefore the whole communist bloc were being humiliated by seeing so many of their own people, over 1 million of them by 1956, ditch them for the capitalist West. And so they tried to force the Western powers out of the city. And when that failed, they resorted two years later to building the Berlin Wall. But before resorting to the Wall, Khrushchev had been fuming and raging and issuing ultimatums to the West. And this was what the Geneva summit was for. The foreign secretaries of the Big Four would sit down and try to sort things out. And the Orlando newspaper for one was warning of tensions which could explode into war, but at the same time it was warning of appeasement. Don't let Geneva 59 turn into Munich 38 what I love about newspaper archives is how you you'll have columns and articles about nuclear war, about threat to civilization and to life itself, placed alongside, in this case, adverts for TVs and radios. So on one side of the page, threat of annihilation and on the other, unmissable bargains. On an RCA Victor TV or a Fedders radio, number one choice in America, it says, why wait? Think of your comfort. Why wait indeed. Is that a subtle nod to the nuclear war tensions across the page? Why wait? Later in the year 1959, the same newspaper had the headline Scientists say Atomic War Probable and in another story, Nuclear War Not Ruled out by Eisenhower. Now these three stories were all syndicated, that is they were dished out to the big regional papers across America. So they're not unique to Florida. So let's dig down further and try and get something which is particularly Floridian.
- [13:24]
Sponsor Voice 1 (Grow Therapy and other ads)
The pressure to have a summer worth posting about is real. So is financial stress, social exhaustion, and the anxiety that sneaks in right when things are supposed to feel good. Grow Therapy can help with that. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th, grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent, licensed therapists across the US Offering both virtual and in person sessions, nights and weekends. Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow Therapy is here to help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growththerapy.com acast today to get started. That's growththerapy.com academy growtherapy.com acast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
- [14:23]
Sponsor Voice 2 (Progressive Insurance)
You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little ca back Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average 12 month savings by $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary.
- [15:02]
Host (likely the main podcast narrator, possibly named Atomic Hobo)
But first, why Florida? To me, in my ignorance, Florida is sunshine and oranges and theme parks, and it's where old people go for a nice retirement. Surely such a happy place couldn't have been bristling with nuclear targets. But think again. As the novel Alas, Babylon shows us, the biggest nuclear target for Orlando was McCoy Air Force Base, which is now Orlando International Airport. But in the 50s, McCoy was a huge Air Force base hosting nuclear bombers, and that, of course, made Orlando a huge target. Now remember what I said about seeing nuclear horror in the newspapers alongside adverts for tea sets and radios and pretty polka dot dresses? We get a similar thing when I look through the Orlando papers for stories about McCoy Air Force Base, expecting serious stuff, I see a weekly column in the Orlando Sentinel about the goings on at the Officers Wives Club. It was bridge and lunch at Louise Phillips on Tuesday when a group got together to celebrate Mary Lou Hudson's birthday. In another story from September59, McCoy Air Force Base threw open its doors to host a kids day where local children could check out the planes, hear the engines roar, gawp at missiles and rockets, and view a judo demonstration. And another story, again trying to portray McCoy Air Force Base as just a great barrel of laughs, shows an airman slumped against a plane with his cap over his face, fast asleep. But don't worry, says the caption, he's not really asleep. He's just acting up for the cameras. Oh, what japes, what japes and fun at McCoy Air Force Base. This photo was taken to show how tired the airmen were after participating in the annual Strategic Air Command bombing competition. So yes, the Orlando papers were full of stories about McCoy Air Force Base, which featured competitions, airmen larking for the camera, kiddies days out and wives enjoying bridge games at the base. So yes, the presence of that huge Air Force base, that huge military target, it was often portrayed in the local papers as a place of hijinks and fun. In reality, of course, it made sunny Florida, specifically Orlando, a huge nuclear target. And isn't it funny how things turn out? Because that same military target is now Orlando International Airport, which surely handles most of the Disney tourists. So it has indeed become a place dedicated to fun and high spirits, dedicated to serving the so called happiest place on earth. Other targets in Florida in the 50s were the Martin Marietta Aerospace plant, which is now Lockheed Martin. And then, looking further afield in the state we had Cape Canaveral and Miami International Airport. Regarding Cape Canaveral, we might associate it with the space race, of course, but in the 50s, the era we're looking at here, it was a major site for missile testing. And some of the Cold War's most crucial missiles were tested here, including the Atlas, the Titan, Polaris and the Minuteman. Indeed, so many missiles were being tested on the Cape that this stretch of the Florida coast acquired the nickname Missile Row. So let's ditch the idea, which I certainly have, and which I assume many European listeners might have, that Florida is all about sun and holidays and fresh orange juice. In the 50s, it had some thumping military targets and there was no Disney World. Indeed, the state itself might have been seen by many as a bit inhospitable, being very hot and humid and swampy. It wasn't until aircon and insecticide came about and major roads began to be built that Florida really opened up. So forget the Florida of Mickey Mouse and orange juice. In 1950s Cold War Florida, well, things were entirely different. Think mosquitoes and missiles rather than Mickey Mouse. Think devastation rather than Donald Duck. Think firestorms rather than the Fairy Godmother. Think bombs rather than Bambi. Well, you get the idea. So let's get back into the Florida newspapers. One civil defence issue which caused a lot of fuss was the question of evacuating Orlando children from school. A huge evacuation drill was held in April 1959, involving 30,000 school children. The plan was that the sirens would sound at 9:30am and the scenario was that McCoy Air Force Base was going to be the target. And so all kids, that's 30,000 of them who were within a 15 mile radius of McCoy, were to evacuate. School buses and any cars belonging to teachers were brought into use for the evacuation, and parents were also asked to volunteer and lend their cars. The plan was that parents would wait at home to hear the siren and then they would leap into their cars and head for the school to help in the evacuation effort. But of course, many parents, being perhaps overprotective or maybe wanting to outshine the other mums and dads, didn't wait at home. They waited in their cars around the corner from the school and then zoomed into the playground two seconds after the sirens started. So this was never going to be an authentic reflection of what a real evacuation of the schools would look like. So 30,000 kids were to be bundled into cars and buses and, and evacuated out to a designated point. This point was Sanford Naval Air station, which lies 20 miles north of Orlando, so that According to Google maps, puts it 30 miles north of the target McCoy Air Force Base. Now, you might question the value of evacuating your nippers a mere 30 miles north. If McCoy is going to be obliterated, is there much value to be gained in hanging around a mere 30 miles north? Another criticism of the evacuation drill was the choice of Sanford Naval Air Station as some kind of safe place. Aren't you leaping from the frying pan into the fire? Why on earth would you seek safety in war at another military site? Sanford may also be a target. Or as an angry letter from a parent made clear in the paper, can we trust the Russkies not to confuse Sanford with McCoy? And also the letter writer said, wouldn't a slow moving column of school buses and cars full of kids make a tempting target for any Soviet fighter plane overhead? So there were lots of parents in Orlando who objected to this evacuation drill. Others of course objected on the grounds of politics. I don't agree with civil defence, therefore my child will not be participating and I will not be participating in that. I won't volunteer and let my car be used. So lots of parents refuse to sign the permission slip to let their child participate and of course refuse to contribute their cars. So some schools on the day of the drill found that they simply didn't have enough vehicles to transport all of their children. So some pupils had to be left behind on the school premises and were marked down as casualties for the purposes of the exercise. The local paper said this happened at Mark Street Elementary. There weren't enough cars because of objecting parents and so 60 first graders remained at the school and as nuclear war casualties. Whereas at Memorial Junior High who had 950 pupils, only 32 parents turned up in their cars. So it simply wasn't possible to evacuate the whole school. So the pupils simply gathered in the playground when the sirens went off and then went back into class. Other schools took a half hearted approach to the drill, summoning the kids out into the playground, bundling them onto the waiting cars and buses and then unloading them and sending them back inside. But other schools went all the way, taking the kids, zooming along the freeway, up to Sanford base, then turn around and drive back again. The whole operation was observed from the air by the local civil defence who happily reported no traffic congestion despite 30,000 kids being out on the road. But of course, again, this is nothing to boast about because the drill didn't in any way represent an authentic evacuation. A lot of kids didn't participate, as we said. A lot of them stayed behind at school and the drill happened at 9:30am, which is of course after the rush hour. So most men would be in their offices in the city and most women at home in the kitchen. It's the 50s, so it would not have resembled in any way a full scale evacuation of the county, to which you could also add the element of panic. So instead, this evacuation drill was just like a kind of half hearted school trip. A little ride along the road to Sanford Air Base, then we turn around and back to school. So who's going to complain about that? Well, Civil Defense did complain about the parents who refused to participate. Then it urged them to think again and next time around, sign those permission slips and volunteer your cars. And now let's check out another story. Let's go to the opposite extreme. Let's go from innocent little school children to mean tough motorcycle gangs. I found a few stories from 1959 Orlando about the Brevard Motorcycle Club. And you might think if you think back to popular culture of the 50s, motorcycle clubs in the 50s would be rebels without a cause, dangerous guys in their leather jackets out to cause chaos. But no, in this case, the Brevard Motorcycle Club were very keen to offer their services to the cause of civil defense. So Marlon Brando, forget it. These guys were, it seems, very civic minded and wanted to help their community. So there, yet again, we have to alter our opinion of 1950s Florida and also of 1950s motorcycle gangs. The Brevard Motorcycle Club met every Wednesday at the Harley Davidson motorcycle shop at Merritt island opposite the drive in theatre. And they said that they were interested in joining Civil defence in a way which made use of their bikes and of their skills. So some local civil defence bosses met them at the Harley Davidson shop and by good fortune, one of the local civil defence guys, Ron Terry, had been a member of the so called Blue Devils, who were a motorbike dispatch rider gang in World War II in England. So he knew very well how useful a motorbike club could be in war. So the gang were welcomed into local civil defence and they did an exercise to prove their worth. They rode 75 miles over rough ground and were forbidden from using paved roads. This was done to show that their bikes could handle rough terrain and debris and rubble, such as they might find after a nuclear attack. They had to zoom past checkpoints on the route where they would be monitored and timed. And the winner of the exercise was Robert Beam, who was awarded a trophy and a turkey. I was initially puzzled by the award of a Turkey. But then I saw the race had been held in late November, so I assume this was of course a Thanksgiving thing. So we've looked at children and at scary motorcycle gangs, or at least a scary motorcycle gang who actually turned out to be a very nice bunch of lads. So let's end with beer. A local fireman from Orlando, Mr. C.A. brown, who volunteered with Civil Defence in his spare time, told the Orlando Sentinel of a great idea he had for surviving the bomb. Make sure you always have an excess of safe drinking fluid on hand. Now that sounds like standard advice. We've heard that a thousand times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, have some water on hand. But he wasn't saying water. He said safe drinking fluid. So he wasn't actually talking about water. No. Mr. C.A. brown suggested always having a six pack of beer stashed in the boot of the car. He explained his thinking to the journalist. I doubt if Civil Defence will ever adopt it because some people would object. But look at it this you can have a safe and nourishing supply of liquid to replace water. You can even cook with it. And if you don't like the taste of beer, you can open the can and let it sit until it goes flat. Now, this does sound initially like a joke, you know, like the guy's looking for an excuse, any excuse, to carry a six pack around and tuck in. But there is some sense in what he's saying. It's a popular belief that back in medieval times, it was safer for people to drink beer than water, because at least beer had gone through a brewing process which might kill off some of the baddies. Whereas water straight from a river could easily be dirty, the beer had at least been treated in some way. There was also the belief that beer, rather than plain water, would provide you with a bit of sustenance too. So if you are hungry, poor, starving, as you might expect to be after a nuclear attack, beer may also give you a bit of sustenance. And that's why beer again back in the old days was often known as liquid bread, because you're getting a little smidgen of a meal out of it too. So, yes, this guy was advocating for people to carry six packs of beer around with them. And when everyone began to tut and shake their heads and disapprove, he had his arguments ready for why beer is liquid bread and would sort you out nicely after nuclear holocaust. So I hope you've enjoyed that quick look at some nuclear war stories from Florida, 1959. Certainly these stories, plus the two novels that I've recently read have changed my perception of Florida, reminding me that it's not always been about sunshine and Mickey Mouse. So if you want to read a novel about Florida in 59 facing nuclear war, as I said, the next book in our Domesday Library book club will be Alas Babylon by Pat Frank. You will have to be a patron to see that. But our first one, as I said earlier, I've made it free for everyone to view, so go to patreon.com Atomichobo and the video is there, I think it's about 55 minutes long and I haven't scripted it. That's the thing about the book club. I wanted to have a different flavor from the podcast. The podcast is scripted, although this bit you're hearing just now isn't. I'm just rambling here. So I want the book club videos to have a different flavor, different style, be a bit more casual. So yes, it's 50 minutes of unscripted chat about the novel the Chrysalids by John Wyndham. That one is set in the north of Canada, 2,000 years after nuclear war. And the whole idea behind the Chrysalids, if this novel is new to you, is that the people in Labrador, up in the north, they want to try and claw their way back to the society which existed before the bomb. And one of their ways of getting back to that so called ideal world is to be physically perfect. So they don't tolerate any genetic mutations of which there are many because of the radiation. They also don't tolerate any mutations in plants or in animals. So it's a very rigid society. It has a flavor of the puritans. They don't tolerate any difference at all. And those who are different, or animals or plants which are different, are destroyed, are burned, are killed, or are exiled out to the radioactive wastelands. But then running alongside that there is the thinking that why do we want to claw our way back to society of the so called old ones when that is the society which gave us the nuclear holocaust in the first place? So they weren't that great, were they? They managed to destroy everything. So why on earth do we want to claw our way back to that? So anyway, those are the big themes in the book. Brilliant novel, I loved it. So there's a 50 minute video free for everyone to view at patreon.com Atomichobo and if you like it and want to join our book club, you can sign up there and then
- [33:35]
Sponsor Voice 1 (Grow Therapy and other ads)
keep your wellness routine going strong all summer. Cachava's new travel packs help you stick to your daily ritual even when you're on the go. Just one packet of Cachava's all in One Nutrition Shake provides complete nutrition wherever you are with 25 grams of protein so 6 grams of fiber, greens, adaptogens and more simplify your daily ritual. Go to cachava.com and use code smoothie for 15% off. That's K A C H A V A.com code smoothie Oregon parks make an Oregon summer But what makes an Oregon park? Well, Oregon Lottery Gameplay helps no matter the game. Megabucks Video Lottery or Keno funds from lottery games helps support parks projects across the state, ensuring they stay safe, accessible and open for all. In fact, Discover State Park Scratches are in stores now. It's the perfect way to put a little bit of Oregon's parks in your pocket. The Oregon Lottery Together we do good things. Must be 18 or older to play. Lottery games are based on chance and should be played for Entertainment only. This year's girls trip to Telluride was the best. We one upped ourselves with my Sapphire Preferred card and with 5 times points on Chase Travel plus 3 times points on vacation homes with top brands, we got this incredible cabin. It was a mansion. And with three times the points on dining, we ordered a Wagyu steak dinner and that pistachio gelato was too good. So where should we go next year?
- [34:56]
Host (likely the main podcast narrator, possibly named Atomic Hobo)
I've got ideas.
- [34:57]
Sponsor Voice 1 (Grow Therapy and other ads)
Chase Sapphire preferred the card that's preferred for a reason. Cards issued by JP Morgan, Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval terms apply.