Nuclear War: "Our Cities Must Fight" 1951 U.S. Federal Civil Defense Administration

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Hot war training in the Cold War. 'Civil defense film admonishing U.S. city dwellers to stay and fight in case of enemy invasion, rather than evacuate. Filmed in New York and other cities... A plea for American cities to be prepared to deal with enemy attack. Many images of mass evacuation. Some footage of devestated war torn European cities. Entrance shot of Holland Tunnel and Penn Station.'

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_civil_defense

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

United States civil defense refers to the use of civil defense in the history of the United States, which is the organized non-military effort to prepare Americans for military attack. Late in the 20th century, the term and practice of civil defense fell into disuse. Emergency management and homeland security replaced them...

The new dimensions of nuclear war terrified the world and the American people. The sheer power of nuclear weapons and the perceived likelihood of such an attack on the United States precipitated a greater response than had yet been required of civil defense. Civil defense, something previously considered an important and common-sense step, also became divisive and controversial in the charged atmosphere of the Cold War. In 1950, the National Security Resources Board created a 162-page document outlining a model civil defense structure for the US. Called the "Blue Book" by civil defense professionals in reference to its solid blue cover, it was the template for legislation and organization that occurred over the next 40 years. Despite a general agreement on the importance of civil defense, Congress never came close to meeting the budget requests of federal civil defense agencies. Throughout the Cold War, civil defense was characterized by fits and starts. Indeed, the responsibilities were passed through a myriad of agencies, and specific programs were often boosted and scrapped in a similar manner to US ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems with which it was seen as complementary.

In declassified US war game analyses of the late 1950–60s, it was estimated that approximately 27 million US citizens would have been saved with civil defense education in the event of a Soviet pre-emptive strike. At the time however the cost of a full-scale civil defense program was, in cost-benefit analysis, deemed less effective than a BMD system, and as the adversary was increasing their nuclear stockpile, both programs would yield diminishing returns...