Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow: Atomic Age Exhibit

[gwb123]

Before Kix were for Kids, they were giving away Atomic Bomb rings...

[gwb123]

The ultimate present to find under your 1958 Christmas Tree...the Atomic Train, complete with Atomic Cannon, Missile Care, Nuclear Reactor car, and a command center caboose. The gun turret mounted on the engine is pretty special as well.

[gwb123]

For all of the seriousness of the times, those pesky teenagers just did not seem to take things seriously...

[gwb123]

This comic book cover seems a bit ironic, given our current relations with North Korea.

 

(In my eye, they look suspiciously more like WWII Japanese characters...)

[gwb123]

If this exhibit was not bizarre and disorienting enough on it's own, it was accompanied with an art exhibit where the artist was inspired by views of Las Vegas and the Doom Town mock village during the atomic testing...

[gwb123]

I hope you've enjoyed this quick tour of the Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow exhibition.

 

It is kind of a shock to the system to see some of these things as museum pieces when you can remember seeing some of them back in the day when they were new and relevant.

 

Hopefully this exhibit will appear again in another venue for more people to enjoy, learn from, and use to remember when this was a very real part of our culture.

[gwb123]

I live in Lincoln and there was a SAC B-47 base here then and when Kennedy finished his TV speach on the Cuban Missile Crisis some practical joker trigger the air raid sirens. About three blocks from my house during the cold war was a Fallout Shelter and Communications Center. It was the Irvingdale Shelter and if you search on the web you can find all sorts of interesting information, like a dairy with a fallout shelter for it's cows. My wife and her sister spent a weekend in it with their dad, a cop, on a shakedown test when they got it done. It would have made a great Cold War museum, but the city emptied it out and it is used for storage by the parks department. It had a garage door so they could store a "radio car" inside to go out and check the radiation.

 

All these preparations made sense back then... and so many of these facilities, built at great expense now are abandoned and derelict. I like to find them when I can... like the Atlas launch site at Mead. They are everywhere if you know where to look.

[vintageproductions]

Cool stuff. I've had a few of the items shown but I really like the radio....

 

[m1ashooter]

For The Alert Force, For The Alert Force Klaxon Klaxon Klaxon.

 

Thanks for the trip through a safer time in our history.

[RustyCanteen]

Very interesting, Thanks for the photos.

 

I think C-D stuff is a great area for collectors, not only is much of it reasonably priced; but there is a lot of variety to be encountered.

[Rakkasan187]

This is one of the greatest Civil Defense displays that I have ever seen. Very detailed and organized.

 

Gil, Thank you for sharing these pictures with us.

 

Leigh

[12thengr]

One of those helpful manuals.

[12thengr]

With this nice letter that came tucked inside.

[12thengr]

Another handy publication. Notice that these are from the mid 60's.

[12thengr]

Inside the second piece. Thanks LBJ for the clear warning.

[12thengr]

And just send the attached postcard for more info.

[SergeantMajorGray]

I have one of those civil defense barrels I'm posting it in the homefront section if anyone wants to see it.

[Jack's Son]

Those of us who lived through it have this chapter of our history burned into our memory. Thank you Gil for the trip through this museum.

[zotig111]

Gil,

Great photos, thanks for sharing. I do remember the collective sigh of relief that we all felt when the wall went down. It also coincides with most Americans realizing that they really did have to save for retirement!