Bracing for Armageddon
Bracing for Armageddon

Author: Dee Garrison

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2006-03-30

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0198040407

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In Bracing for Armageddon, Dee Garrison pulls back the curtain on the U.S. government's civil defense plans from World War II through the end of the Cold War. Based on government documents, peace organizations, personal papers, scientific reports, oral histories, newspapers, and popular media, her book chronicles the operations of the various federal and state civil defense programs from 1945 to contemporary issues of homeland security, as well as the origins and development of the massive public protest against civil defense from 1955 through the 1980s. At a time of increasing preoccupation over national security issues, Bracing for Armageddon sheds light on the growing distrust between the U.S. government and its subjects in postwar America.

Bracing for the Apocalypse
Bracing for the Apocalypse

Author: Anna Maria Bounds

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-04

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 1351846337

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Increasing American fear about terrorism, environmental catastrophes, pandemics, and economic crises has fueled interest in "prepping": confronting disaster by mastering survivalist skills. This trend of self-reliance is not merely evidence of the American belief in the power of the individual; rather, this pragmatic shift away from expecting government aid during a disaster reflects a weakened belief in the bond between government and its citizens during a time of crisis. This ethnographic study explores the rise of the urban preppers' subculture in New York City, shedding light on the distinctive approach of city dwellers in preparing for disaster. With attention to the role of factors such as class, race, gender and one’s expectations of government, it shows that how one imagines Doomsday affects how one prepares for it. Drawing on participant observation, the author explores preppers’ views on the central question of whether to "bug out" or "hunker down" in the event of disaster, and examines the ways in which the prepper economy increases revenue by targeting concerns over developing skills, building networks, securing equipment and arranging a safe locale. A rich qualitative study, Bracing for the Apocalypse will appeal to scholars of sociology and anthropology with interests in urban studies, ethnography and subcultures.

Bracing for Armageddon
Bracing for Armageddon

Author: Dee Garrison

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2006-03-30

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0199924082

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In Bracing for Armageddon, Dee Garrison pulls back the curtain on the U.S. government's civil defense plans from World War II through the end of the Cold War. Based on government documents, peace organizations, personal papers, scientific reports, oral histories, newspapers, and popular media, her book chronicles the operations of the various federal and state civil defense programs from 1945 to contemporary issues of homeland security, as well as the origins and development of the massive public protest against civil defense from 1955 through the 1980s. At a time of increasing preoccupation over national security issues, Bracing for Armageddon sheds light on the growing distrust between the U.S. government and its subjects in postwar America.

Understanding the imaginary war
Understanding the imaginary war

Author: Matthew Grant

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2016-09-01

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 1526101335

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This collection offers a fresh interpretation of the Cold War as an imaginary war, a conflict that had imaginations of nuclear devastation as one of its main battlegrounds. The book includes survey chapters and case studies on Western Europe, the USSR, Japan and the USA. Looking at various strands of intellectual debate and at different media, from documentary film to fiction, the chapters demonstrate the difficulties to make the unthinkable and unimaginable - nuclear apocalypse - imaginable. The book will be required reading for everyone who wants to understand the cultural dynamics of the Cold War through the angle of its core ingredient, nuclear weapons.

Raven Rock
Raven Rock

Author: Garrett M. Graff

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-05-02

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 147673545X

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Now a 6-part mini-series called Why the Rest of Us Die airing on VICE TV! The shocking truth about the government’s secret plans to survive a catastrophic attack on US soil—even if the rest of us die—is “a frightening eye-opener” (Kirkus Reviews) that spans the dawn of the nuclear age to today, and "contains everything one could possibly want to know" (The Wall Street Journal). Every day in Washington, DC, the blue-and-gold first Helicopter Squadron, codenamed “MUSSEL,” flies over the Potomac River. As obvious as the Presidential motorcade, most people assume the squadron is a travel perk for VIPs. They’re only half right: while the helicopters do provide transport, the unit exists to evacuate high-ranking officials in the event of a terrorist or nuclear attack on the capital. In the event of an attack, select officials would be whisked by helicopters to a ring of secret bunkers around Washington, even as ordinary citizens were left to fend for themselves. “In exploring the incredible lengths (and depths) that successive administrations have gone to in planning for the aftermath of a nuclear assault, Graff deftly weaves a tale of secrecy and paranoia” (The New York Times Book Review) with details "that read like they've been ripped from the pages of a pulp spy novel" (Vice). For more than sixty years, the US government has been developing secret Doomsday strategies to protect itself, and the multibillion-dollar Continuity of Government (COG) program takes numerous forms—from its potential to evacuate the Liberty Bell from Philadelphia to the plans to launch nuclear missiles from a Boeing-747 jet flying high over Nebraska. Garrett M. Graff sheds light on the inner workings of the 650-acre compound, called Raven Rock, just miles from Camp David, as well as dozens of other bunkers the government built for its top leaders during the Cold War, from the White House lawn to Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado to Palm Beach, Florida, and the secret plans that would have kicked in after a Cold War nuclear attack to round up foreigners and dissidents and nationalize industries. Equal parts a presidential, military, and cultural history, Raven Rock tracks the evolution of the government plan and the threats of global war from the dawn of the nuclear era through the War on Terror.

Armageddon and OKRA
Armageddon and OKRA

Author: Lewis Frederickson

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2020-12-02

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1922387584

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The dispatch of an Ottoman Army by Australian-led Imperial air power in the Wadi Fara on 21 September 1918 occurred just five years after the advent of military aviation in Australia. In 1914, the fledgling Australian air service operated the flimsy Bristol Boxkite; four years later it was flying the far more advanced Bristol F2B Fighter. This leap forward represented a profound progress in technology that has typified the technical development of aviation, particularly in Australia ever since. Ironically, on 21 September 2014, 96 years after the events of the Wadi Fara, Australian squadrons were again deployed to the same part of the world where they would remain for more than three years on operations against extremist terrorism. Armageddon and OKRA contrasts these events, a century apart, in the context of the development of Australian air power. The book tracks the history where Australia has maintained a balanced air service compelling high technical, logistics and engineering standards, and effective training and command and control systems, for more than 100 years. These processes were as applicable a century ago as they are today. By examining these operational events, the author establishes the connection that access to the technology associated with air power is intrinsically linked to Australia’s enduring foreign and defence policy – more so, that military power is a means to an end, and never an end unto itself.

Acts of Conscience
Acts of Conscience

Author: Joseph Kip Kosek

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 0231144199

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In response to the massive bloodshed that defined the twentieth century, American religious radicals developed a modern form of nonviolent protest, one that combined Christian principles with new uses of mass media. Greatly influenced by the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi, these "acts of conscience" included sit-ins, boycotts, labor strikes, and conscientious objection to war. Beginning with World War I and ending with the ascendance of Martin Luther King Jr., Joseph Kip Kosek traces the impact of A. J. Muste, Richard Gregg, and other radical Christian pacifists on American democratic theory and practice. These dissenters found little hope in the secular ideologies of Wilsonian Progressivism, revolutionary Marxism, and Cold War liberalism, all of which embraced organized killing at one time or another. The example of Jesus, they believed, demonstrated the immorality and futility of such violence under any circumstance and for any cause. Yet the theories of Christian nonviolence are anything but fixed. For decades, followers have actively reinterpreted the nonviolent tradition, keeping pace with developments in politics, technology, and culture. Tracing the rise of militant nonviolence across a century of industrial conflict, imperialism, racial terror, and international warfare, Kosek recovers radical Christians' remarkable stance against the use of deadly force, even during World War II and other seemingly just causes. His research sheds new light on an interracial and transnational movement that posed a fundamental, and still relevant, challenge to the American political and religious mainstream.

The Government of Emergency
The Government of Emergency

Author: Stephen J. Collier

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-11-30

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0691199280

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"In the middle decades of the twentieth century, in the wake of economic depression, war, and in the midst of the Cold War, an array of technical experts and government officials developed a substantial body of expertise to contain and manage the disruptions to American society caused by unprecedented threats. Today the tools invented by these mid-twentieth century administrative reformers are largely taken for granted, assimilated into the everyday workings of government. As Stephen Collier and Andrew Lakoff argue in this book, the American government's current practices of disaster management can be traced back to this era. Collier and Lakoff argue that an understanding of the history of this initial formation of the "emergency state" is essential to an appreciation of the distinctive ways that the U.S. government deals with crises and emergencies-or fails to deal with them-today. This book focuses on historical episodes in emergency or disaster planning and management. Some of these episodes are well-known and have often been studied, while others are little-remembered today. The significance of these planners and managers is not that they were responsible for momentous technical innovations or that all their schemes were realized successfully. Their true significance lies in the fact that they formulated a way of understanding and governing emergencies that has come to be taken for granted"--

Handbook of Public Pedagogy
Handbook of Public Pedagogy

Author: Jennifer A. Sandlin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-07-29

Total Pages: 712

ISBN-13: 1135184194

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Bringing together scholars, public intellectuals, and activists from across the field of education, the Handbook of Public Pedagogy explores and maps the terrain of this burgeoning field. For the first time in one comprehensive volume, readers will be able to learn about the history and scope of the concept and practices of public pedagogy. What is 'public pedagogy'? What theories, research, aims, and values inform it? What does it look like in practice? Offering a wide range of differing, even diverging, perspectives on how the 'public' might operate as a pedagogical agent, this Handbook provides new ways of understanding educational practice, both within and without schools. It implores teachers, researchers, and theorists to reconsider their foundational understanding of what counts as pedagogy and of how and where the process of education occurs. The questions it raises and the critical analyses they require provide curriculum and educational workers and scholars at large with new ways of understanding educational practice, both within and without schools.

The Double Game
The Double Game

Author: James Cameron

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0190459921

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How did the United States move from a position of nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1960s to one of nuclear parity under the doctrine of mutual assured destruction in 1972? Drawing on declassified records of conversations three presidents had with their most trusted advisors, James Cameron offers an original answer to this question. John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon struggled to reconcile their personal convictions about the nuclear arms race with the views of the public and Congress. In doing so they engaged in a double game, hiding their true beliefs behind a fa ade of strategic language while grappling in private with the complex realities of the nuclear age. Cameron shows how, despite reservations about the nuclear buildup, Kennedy and Johnson pushed ahead with an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system for the United States, fearing the domestic political consequences of scrapping both the system and the popular doctrine of strategic superiority that underpinned it. By contrast, the abrupt decline in US public and congressional support in 1969 forced Nixon to give up America's first ABM and the US lead in offensive ballistic missiles through agreements with the Soviet Union, despite his conviction that the US needed a nuclear edge to maintain the security of the West. By placing this dynamic at the center of the story, The Double Game provides a new overarching interpretation of this pivotal period in the development of US nuclear policy and a window onto current debates over nuclear superiority, deterrence, and the future of American grand strategy.