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An article on rural Civil Defense during the Cold War. From the 19 November 1960 issue of The Farmer Magazine.

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As a farm family, you may one day be faced with this situation:

Bombs have fallen. At least one has struck St Paul-Minneapolis. Another has exploded above the Great Lakes port of Duluth-Superior. Air force [sic] bases at Grand Forks, Rapid City and maybe Minot have been hit. So have other areas.

Quite a few people, according to fragmentary radio reports over Conelrad, evidently left metropolitan areas and are finding refuge in rural communities, although none have yet some this far.

Here, there is nothing to do now but wait. Radioactive fallout, if it isn't already here, will be filtering down within the next hour or two. Heaviest concentration will be between the next 6 to 12 hours, with no one daring to leave the family fallout shelter. Tomorrow, it may be safe to run to the barn long enough to check on livestock. Not all animals couls be gotten under cover, but the producing cows and most valuable breeding stock are inside.

That hasn't happened. It is hoped that it won't. But it could. With a world power armed with nuclear weapons and committed, by its own proclamation, to a goal of world domination, such an attack is possible, whether by miscalculation, deliberate intent, or accident.

If it comes, to, as a resident of rural America, will have from one to six hours to get your house in order — your family into a well-dielded shelter, together with enough food, water, bedding and other necessities for a two-weeks stay; your livestock, feed and crops protected as best you can.

Your danger will not be from direct attack, but from odorless, tasteless, seldom-seen radioactive dust, thrown up and charged with alpha, beta, and, worst of all, gamma rays by bombs falling on more than 200 prime targets scattered across our large cities, industrial complexes and military installations.

Because you don't live near a large city does not mean you are safe from danger, nor that you have no obligation in case of attack. Radioactive fallout can drift for hundreds of miles, then sift silently down, burning, contaminating, destroying.

You can protect yourself and your family from that fallout by preparing a shelter with a thick enough covering to prevent, or safely reduce radioactive penetration. A properly stocked root cellar is ideal. You can also do much, when properly instricted, to reduce radioactive danger to your livestock, crops and soil. Do those two things and you put yourself into position to discharge your greatest obligation — to fight back after an attack with rural America's greatest weapon, its productive ability.

"If this nation is ever involved in a nuclear war, its ultimate victory will depend heavily on ability of our rural people to survive, to sustain themselves, then to provide the while nation with food and other tings needed for its survival and recovery." That statement, by Leo A. Hoegh, national director of the Office of Civil and Defence Mobilization, encompasses the job to be done NOW by farm families.

To help you prepare your defenses, rural civil defense officials now have kits explaining the radiation threat and protection against it distributed to rural counties all over the United States. Farm organizations, the Land Grant Colleges and many similar groups have endorsed the program. The Agricultural Extension Service has been pledged to help with the educational job.

A statewide program to bring the story of rural civil defense to farm families in every county is this week being kicked off in Minnesota. Meetings have already been held in parts of Minnesota, North and South Dakota. Many groups are active. More will be. You, if you haven't yet, must become active. Learn what is to be done, and DO IT, for your own and your nation's protection.

Editor's Note: This is the first of several articles on rural civil defense, which will appear in The Farmer in coming months. Its author, Managing Editor Robert G Rupp, is a member of both the Minnesots Rural Civil Defense Education Advisory Committee and the National Advisory Council on Rural Civil and Defense Mobilization. End.