Talk:National Emergency Alarm Repeater
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[edit]There is limited information on the internet about the N.E.A.R. device or the N.E.A.R. program but the information available is quite detailed. The limited availablity of the information is why a Wikipedia page is so important. Hopefully, as with other Wikipedia information pages, others will add more information.
some confusing dates and events here
[edit]the article states that "During her investigation Wright suggests that in the early 1960s the Cold War debate over civil defense policies escalated following the Berlin Crisis of 1961, initiating the age of fallout shelters and films like Duck and Cover." this is in a discussion of the program "history detectives". public debates over civil defense and the national movement for the construction of home and workplace shelters became extremely heated in 1953. following the inauguration of eisenhower there was a shift in civil defense policy from "stay and fight" to flee or dig. the new civil defense administrator, val peterson, became the tom ridge of the 1950's famously advising urban residents to "run, dig, or die". the event that made this real for americans was the soviet test of a hydrogen bomb in august 1953, an event that might be properly characterized as the trigger for subsequent CD and DOD policy over the next few decades. the article should be revised to reflect more accurate historical research rather than the (inaccurate) suggestions of a public TV host, a respected architectural historian.
the reference to the film duck and cover is telling as it was released during the truman administration in 1951. another less-publicized film of this era "our cities must fight" reflected the truman policy of staying in place and aiding with recovery after attack from hiroshima-sized fission weapons. larger and speedier "city-killing" weapons later in the 1950's would change this calculus. the NEAR System should be seen rather as a response to the dissonance and policy-shift that occurred in 1953 and the very public and well-documented debates in the mid 1950's around the questions of dispersal, evacuation, highway-building, and shelters.