Civil Defense Quotes

If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things -- praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts -- not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They might break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

Who are the militia, if they be not the people, of this country...? I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.

You saw on your TV what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The Reserves or National Guard are usually the people we use for those national emergencies. They weren't here, they were over in Iraq, and so we were less protected.

If, instead of hiring half-baked revolutionary planners to fill our college undergraduates with ingenious schemes to disperse populations, split up big cities into little ones, go underground or into distant places to escape bombs and congestion, abandon large urban areas in favor of roadside villages, we were to publish reliable, simply written, common-sense information to control the building boom, what a country this would be!

Nuclear terrorism is possible - it may be probable - but is survivable.

The first duty of any government is to protect its citizens, whether the threat is a domestic one or from abroad.

Our overbuilt cities with their congestion, their trend to high office buildings and apartments, their complete indifference to the most elementary principles of civilian defense, their slums representing past neglect and greed, can to a considerable extent be rebuilt on better principles if we are smart enough to look the facts in the eye and brush off the Babbitts who hold that wherever the dirt flies there is progress. On the other hand, cities can not be revolutionized and turned into garden villages or green belts. In the suburbs and near-by country, however, we still have a chance to do the right thing without stultifying compromises....

Hell, this isn’t a pinochle party we’re having. It’s war.

In the event of fire in any of the public buildings troops would be of vast service in the protection of public property, and should insurrection break out the protection of life and property would be more safe guarded by our company of regulars, than by the whole City.

So long, Mom I'm off to drop the bomb So don't wait up for me But while you swelter Down there in your shelter You can see me On your TV

Stand firm ... Carry on ... It may easily be some weeks before the invader has been destroyed.

When I was growing up, I actually went through, in New York City, blackouts when we had to close the windows and worry about air raids. I don't know whether or not those were realistic worries or not, but as a kid, when we all had to run around pulling down the drapes and turning the lights off; it was a very frightening experience.

The possibility of endangering Nevadans will never happen under my watch. I will do everything I can to protect the safety and welfare of our citizens.

The quest for homeland security is heading ... toward the quasi-militarization of everyday life ... If danger might lurk anywhere, maybe everything must be protected and policed.

A great nation assailed by war has not only its frontiers to protect: it must also protect its good sense. It must protect itself from the hallucinations, injustices, and follies which the plague lets loose.

When I was a kid, I was like everyone else: afraid of getting nuked. We had drills in school - Sweden was very close to the Soviet Union. There was definitely a lot of tension.

Homeland defense doesn't generate any force requirements beyond having enough National Guard to save lives in natural disasters and to baby-sit nuclear power plants on Code Red days.

And they will tell you unequivocally that if we have a chemical or biological attack or a nuclear attack anywhere in this country, they are unprepared to deal with it today, and that is of high urgency.

Panic is rare, looting is essentially insignificant, people are not terrified and trampling each other to flee from a disaster scene, but in fact are trying to manage a situation. We may in fact revert to some sort of primordial civility.

Survival Under Atomic Attack

The National Guard has served America as both a wartime force and the first military responders in times of domestic crisis. Hundreds of times each year, the nation's governors call upon their Guard troops to respond to fires, floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

My childhood was marked by the great fear of nuclear holocaust. We practiced our Civil Defense Drills, lining up in hallways, curled to the floor, but we knew we'd die or, worse, survive only to suffer radiation and slow death.

It makes me crazy to think that somebody might attack my city or any other city.

My paternal grandmother drove ambulances during the regional Blitz, in Birmingham.

Growing up during the Cold War, I remember the seemingly imminent threat of nuclear war. In primary school we were taught to 'duck-and-cover' for protection. But even as children hiding under wooden desks, we recognized the inadequacies of this strategy.