Talk:Federal Civil Defense Administration

Untitled

This page is largely incorrect. The FCDA was actually created to protect the civilian populace, but was denied the funding needed to build its proposed public shelters. Continuity-of-government functions were the responsibility of another organization, the Office of Defense Mobilization. In 1958 the FCDA and the ODM were merged into a single organization, the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization. I believe that the Denton shelter was actually built after this merger. The famous backyard fallout shelter campaign was largely conducted by the OCDM- while home shelters appeared in FCDA materials in the early 1950s, they only became the focus of civil defense in 1958, with the appearance of the handbook "The Family Fallout Shelter." A few scholarly monographs have been written in recent years on these topics, including Laura McEnaney's Civil Defense Begins at Home. The best brief summary I've seen of the FCDA's history was in a 1962 book titled Civil Defense: Planning for Survival and Recovery, by Donald W. Mitchell. This page should be completely rewritten using these sources.

Disband?

When was the FCDA disbanded (or defunded or whatever you call it)? I assume it isn't still active. Federal Civil Defense Administration implies this administration, with the same initials, was ended in 1958. RJFJR (talk) 16:18, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

• RJFJR, you linked back to this same article, so that's not too informative. - Jmabel | Talk 05:55, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

WWII

In researching Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation, I ran across a reference to a "Civil Defense Administration" during World War II and was actually surprised to find that a redlink. Would there have been a similarly named operation during the war (maybe at state level)? - Jmabel | Talk 05:55, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Some additional possible sources

Internet searches for the book by Mitchell mentioned above brought up the following other sources, which may be reliable enough to be used (and cited).

• Civil Defense and Emergency Management Organizational History (United States) (Entry 0114) from The Electronic Encyclopaedia of Civil Defense and Emergency Management edited by Walter G. Green III

  This confirms the FCDA as existing from 1950-1958, and being renamed to the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (which was initially called the Office of Defense and Civilian Mobilization).

• Civil Defense: The Truman Administration (Entry 0113) from the same source.

  This confirms the statutory basis for the FCDA, and claims it was due to the USSR's nuclear test and the start of the Korean War, that it's head was Millard Caldwell, and that it suffered from confusion over goals and correspondingly insufficient budgets.

• Civil Defense: The Eisenhower Administration (Entry 0107) from the same source.

  This suggests that the reason for the renaming/merging was in response to the USSR's ICBM tests.

Hopefully these sources may be of some help. -- 63.251.123.2 (talk) 18:58, 11 July 2013 (UTC)