Human Wrongs Watch
By John Loretz, IPPNW*, 25 January 2013 – India now has its own T. K. Jones, although we may never know the name of the actual person in the Jammu and Kashmir Civil Defence and State Disaster Response Force who wrote an advisory on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack that was published in the Greater Kashmir newspaper this week.
Source: IPPNW
Jones, for those who didn’t get as far as the Cold War in high school history, was a Deputy Under Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, who preached that nuclear war would not be nearly as bad as people thought. (He was right. Most people, then as now, had no idea how bad it would really be.)
His infamous line — “If there are enough shovels to go around, everybody’s going to make it” — was adapted by journalist Robert Scheer for the title of a book debunking nuclear civil defense. [1]
T. K. Jones played only a small part in the civil defense cottage industry that churned out bucketloads (or should I say shovelsful) of misinformation and false assurances beginning in the 1950s.
Fallout shelter designs and supplies, Geiger counters, and air raid drills were part of the common experience of growing up for an entire generation or three.
A series of “educational” films offered instructions on how to behave in the event of a nuclear attack. The most iconic and ridiculous of these was Duck and Cover, with Bert the Turtle, which did little more than create a generation with persistent neck and back problems. You can watch it on YouTube.
