Civil Defense - Can Nostalgia Be Educational?

The Civil Defense Museum, located here:


http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/index.html


Is a very interesting look at the preparations that our country and states have provided in our past, back when it was still understood that nuclear war was a real possibility. In my opinion, the historical study of what we used to do not all that long ago can be very instructive for the future. l'll take a look, and expand upon what I see.


H/T to Weps at Timebomb2000:


http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?490002-North-Korea-fires-submarine-launched-ballistic-missile-23-April-2016&p=6030709#post6030709

The Dangers of Small Men

The recent news of North Korea should be unsettling to anyone. Kim Jong Un now has Sub-Launched Ballistic Missiles that actually seem to work from the submerged position. There has been a lot joking generated by some about the backward state of North Korea's technological base, and not much credence has been put into the idea that the Norks might be anything other that a regional threat. To be fair, I think the Western powers and media have started to wake up in the past year, but like the story of the tortoise and the hare, it now may be too late.

What now exists in North Korea is the rise of a credible submarine force that may soon be, if not already, equipped with a nuclear package. The Norks know that they have our attention now, which gives rise to power plays like this:

Stop War Drills and We'll Stop Nuclear Tests, North Korea Tells US After Missile Launch

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/23/north-korea-launched-offshore-ballistic-missile-says-the-south

The issue here is that we have a world leader in North Korea that is very akin to Saddam in attitude and ruthlessness, combined with an actual nuclear weapons program that may already be operational. And given that our nets have lost Kim's subs in the Pacific more than once, that operational program may get parked off any coast in the Pacific Rim.

We need a revitalized Civil Defense, and we need it NOW.

Everything Has to Start Somewhere

I have been concerned with the dismal state of civil defense in this country, both on the personal level and on that of our government. The former is getting better, with a recent surge in a revitalized prepper community, and hopefully that continues and won't stall. The latter, however, that's pretty shameful.

For decades, the US government has essentially ignored a Civil Defense (CD) role to protect The People. Many of our allies around the globe have kept up a CD tradition, as have a number of our enemies. The Russian efforts in particular have been historically and are presently better than our own. For all the talk of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine, the Russians don't seem to be convinced that the destruction is necessarily mutual, or assured. The building and upgrading of their CD infrastructure would make no sense if they believed that nuclear war wasn't survivable.

With that in mind, I thought I would start this blog to discuss the things that are on my mind regarding CD, and to start reaching out to rebuild at least a strong network of private-sector CD organizations. The goal is to generate an infectious reconnect of government CD, if we can.

My final inspiration today was a very interesting video on YouTube that originally aired in Great Britain 36 years ago. What struck me was the similarity of England's CD woes of 1980 to our present day apathy. Take a look: