Two Minutes to Doomsday: "Get out of Hell Free" Card, 1957. Armageddon and All That...

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 402

This letter, written in 1957  by Colonel Leslie S. Moore of the U.S. Biological Weapons Program at Fort Detrick, Maryland, to a member (whose name I've removed) of the "A.S."("Atmospheric Sciences")  division, was basically a get-out-of-hell-free card for its bearer in the case of devastating nuclear attack.

"In the event of a mass destruction attack on Fort Detrick with the resulting loss of Biological Warfare physical facilities, it is anticipated that it will be necessary to re-establish the BW activities at some other location."

"In order to accomplish this in the most expeditious manner, the availability of certain designated personnel...is deemed essential."

The "letter serves as notification that you have been selected as a member of this group which is to be evacuated"  to get the biological weapons program up and running again.  As you can read in the clickable version of the document, there are directions about what top do and when to do it.  There is no mention of family.  My read is that this is Endgame stuff, end of civilization as we know it, and that this was the Darwinian sweep of necessary people.  Or is it Dr. Strangeloveian?  I get the two confused.

Suffice to say that Fort Detrick, which had been established in 1943 (constructing and delivering anthrax bombs by 1944) as Camp Detrick, already had a fairly full career before it was up-named to "Fort" in 1956.  It was the recognized home/collecting node  for the American Chemical and Biological Weapons programs until Richard Nixon, of all people, disbanded that capacity at Detrick in 1969.

It is interesting to note that the person to whom this letter was addressed was actually in aerolized particle release, and at the time, in 1957, was working on Operation Large Area Concept, which simulated and studies a very large airborne attack over thousands of mile of land.  It was an obvious two-sided study about how-to and how-to react to a mass scale biological attack.

1957 was about the height of the Cold War. According to the ticking Doomsday Clock of the venerable Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the minutes-to-midnight--with the stroke of midnight being the Big One, the ultimate attack, the carnal release of all nuclear power, The End--was set at about two (two minutes to midnight) from 1953 to 1960.  The clock admittedly was set very close to that mark anyway, starting out life at seven minutes to midnight in 1947, but it was probably accurate at how close we all were, our toes stuffed into  Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove’s bitterly polished shoes, to walking (finally!) towards the explosive closing roll of the movie.

I might have been overstating the "Get out of Hell Free" aspect of this letter.  Probably it was a "Survive Many Aspects of Hell at Not-Understandable Personal and Societal Costs” card , but it doesn't have the snap of the former, though it is more factual.

The letter tells the recipient to keep it on his person at all times for use in an emergency.  I don't think you'd need to be told that twice. 

Comments

[Rick]

The staggering level of hubris necessary to pretend such orders would even matter makes me shake my head in utter disbelief.

The old maxim about war plans and their survival upon meeting the enemy (they don't) says it all.

Take that reality and the slim chance of knowing much of anything as to an expected outcome, and then cube that tiny number--and I'm being generous, as it is probably much less knowable--and you get...well, who knows what you get?

[John F. Ptak]

Rick--there was a guy, whose name I forget now but is on a piece of paper in a folder in a box somewhere, who in around 1984 was the Last Person Standing in the evacuation office of the old Office of Emergency Preparedness. I tracked his office down by a loose phone number in an old directory that was owned by a sub-chief of that place, a guy named Joseph Coker, whose library (or part of it) I purchased in that year. The phone number led to a number that led to an operator at the Old Executive Office Building who got me to This Guy, a guy who was responsible for getting info out to those who requested it about how to get out of DC when the Big Ones were screaming their way in. There was a pamphlet and a map showing the way out; the plan was something like two even numbers on your car plate would go north; two odds would be south, and so on. Of course there are really only 4 main arteries into (and in this case, out of) DC: 66 (W), and 95 north and south (and 270, but nothing moves on it), and 50, which went east but you didn't want to do anyway. 66 would get really bad at 4 on a workday, and 95 was goofy at almost all times. There was still the beltway to contend with too, which can sometimes be a metal blanket. So here was this guy, with a pamphlet, a map and a plan for getting everyone out of DC in 90 minutes (or less), a left-over guy from 1958, like someone just forget to tell him to go home when JFK was inaugurated, and he just stayed.
So, I do agree with you RICK, that perhaps the greatest of these sins is to fool people into believing that they could survive.

[Jeff]

It's a version of "Too Big to Fail."

[John F. Ptak]

I agree, JD: that's why I am gaining AS MUCH WEIGHT AS POSSIBLE to secure myself against all failure.