Cold War Culture: The Nuclear Fear of the 1950s and 1960s

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Topic spans: 1955 - 1975

Cold War Culture: The Nuclear Fear of the 1950s and 1960s

With superpowers in the east and west testing powerful new weapons, the Canadian race for self-preservation took off in the early 1950s. The rising of the Iron Curtain intensified the threat of mass destruction, as communication between the Americans and Soviets came to a screeching halt. In this volatile new world, Canadians fretted about fallout shelters and the government prepared to go underground.

Photo of Diefenbunker nuclear fallout shelter near Ottawa courtesy of Chris Iwanowski

8 television clips

11 radio clips

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'Nuclear warfare can be fun'

Broadcast Date: Nov. 9, 1961

Stuff cotton wadding into your ears, hide under the kitchen chair, throw yourself under a pile of leaves — that's CBC humorist Max Ferguson's advice in the event of nuclear war. Ferguson pokes fun at the Tocsin B exercise, the Emergency Measures Organization evacuation test. Don't worry, he advises in this radio broadcast, nuclear warfare can be fun.

'Nuclear warfare can be fun'

• The fallout shelter symbol of a black circle with three yellow triangles positioned in a pinwheel formation was designed at the University of California at Berkeley's Radiation Lab in 1946. The symbol deviates slightly from the radiation icon of three propellers spinning from an atomic centre.

'Nuclear warfare can be fun'

Medium: Radio

Program: Rawhide

Broadcast Date: Nov. 9, 1961

Guest(s):

Host: Max Ferguson

Duration: 14:05

Photo: National Archives PA-111381

Last updated:
Nov. 10, 2010

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