CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION

The Civil Service Commission was then in charge of all Federal Employees and performed the role that the Office of Personnel Management would later. In retrospect, this memo appears so ludicrous in that a nuclear attack, even in the early 1960’s would do so much damage that people would have a hard time finding a working post office if their office building had been destroyed and any transportation resources available would be used for food, water and medicine and not for civil servants forms to an agency that probably would have few remaining officials. However, at the time most people had very limited knowledge of the effect of nuclear weapons and those who did were only told about the Hiroshima type bomb and not the then new hydrogen nuclear weapons. The people who wrote and authorized this letter were not told how impractical their suggestions were given the lethality of the new ‘super’ bombs.

The Civil Service Commission was then in charge of all Federal Employees and performed the role that the Office of Personnel Management would later. In retrospect, this memo appears so ludicrous in that a nuclear attack, even in the early 1960’s would do so much damage that people would have a hard time finding a working post office if their office building had been destroyed and any transportation resources available would be used for food, water and medicine and not for civil servants forms to an agency that probably would have few remaining officials. However, at the time most people had very limited knowledge of the effect of nuclear weapons and those who did were only told about the Hiroshima type bomb and not the then new hydrogen nuclear weapons. The people who wrote and authorized this letter were not told how impractical their suggestions were given the lethality of the new ‘super’ bombs.