History Symbols on radios between 1953 and 1963

Found out something that I never knew until recently. Just thought I would share in case there was others like me that had no clue what the symbols meant on car radios between 1953 and 1963.

Copied this from another site: By law, radio sets manufactured between 1953 and 1963 had these two frequencies marked by the triangle-in-circle ("CD Mark") symbol of Civil Defense

 

Started in 1956, not 1953 ... Civil Defense would give instructions on how to survive the inevitable atomic bomb attack Russia was going to unleash on the US ...

 

That was for "Conelrad", a set of government frequencies (I think they were 640 and 1240 AM) to be used in case of nuclear attack or other disasters. In such a case, we were supposed to tune to them for special instructions.

From Wikipedia : CONELRAD (Control of Electromagnetic Radiation) was a method of emergency broadcasting to the public of the United States in the event of enemy attack during the Cold War.

 

This is exactly correct. Home radios had them too. Hell some of us had bomb shelters in the basement back then.

 

When I was in grade school we would have drills. You would bend over and put your head between you knees under your desk.
We later found out from hoodlums that that was so you could kiss your ass goodbye.

 

My grade school in San Francisco still had blackout curtains. We had regular bomb drills as well as earth quake and fire drills. For the bomb drill I was one of the kids that had to jump up and close the shades. As if closing the shades was going to help.

In defense of the people who made up the procedure I suppose that the shade would slow down the glass shards.

 

There was, throughout the land, dark green poles about 6 inches by maybe 8 feet tall. at the top was a flared and dome covered horn. The sides of the flare had vertical vents for sound to exit. During the test drills a loud siren would blare, nonstop for a number of minutes. Can't recall how long, but long enough that you would not say 'gee I missed it'. That was the cue to head for cover and tune in to Conelrad.

 

Some of those sirens were Chrysler Industrial powered.

 

It is amazing that the public bought into that obvious nonsense, but I guess we are still buying what they sell us.

 

This was a cold war deal and it made people feel safe.
Please try and not get political that is what Fb is for we are not interested.

 

Just for the modern folks information, There were several CIVILIAN communication systems in place during and after WW2. These were designed to function in case of nuclear attack where normally used higher frequencies would be useless because of radiation. Most of the systems operated on frequencies below the broadcast band and used Morse code. These low frequencies are not affected by radiation.
The systems were the WERS. War Emergency Radio Service.
AERS. Amateur Emergency Radio Service.
RACES. Radio Amateur Communication & Emergency Service.
Conelrad.
Some of these systems are still in place and working.

Should there be some sort of nuclear attack, your cell phones and all vhf radio communications will be useless.
Your best bet will be smoke signals.

 

One has to remember that that was all the communication a lot of folks had in those days. A lot of folks didn't even have a TV in the mid 50's when it was a luxury item.
I remember those drills in the mid 50's even though our school was four miles out of town. I didn't know anyone who'd dad had built a bomb shelter though.

 

I heard cars with points ignitions will be the only cars that run..

 

Had a friend in junior high (upper middle class neighborhood),the parents said - you can have an in ground swimming pool or a bomb shelter. The KIDS decided that they wanted a bomb shelter! It was a 8' dia. X 10' long steel tank buried in the ground with 4 sleeping platforms and not much else. Those people had a lot more money than brains.
Tom

 

The Conelrad system was designed to at least make aerial bombardment of the continental US and key targets somewhat more difficult. Keep in mind this was the time period prior to intercontinental ballistic missiles that were pre-programmed for specific targets. They were worried about air attack by planes. When listening to Space Patrol you'd hear a PSA encouraging you to volunteer to be a member of the Civilian Aircraft Spotter Corps., spending a few hours scanning the sky in case the Reds attack. There were lots of gaps in the radar and DEW sites. And, as every schoolboy knows, dawn is when the French and Indians attack. Probably the Boshies too! So keep a weather eye out, boys and girls.

I haven't seen it mentioned it yet, the way it worked, if the balloon went up all radio & TV stations etc., were expected to immediately shut down their transmitters and go off the air completely.

The reason for this was because the individual broadcast station antenna farm locations and their specific assigned frequencies were well known and could be used to great effect for navigation. Soviet bombers could use two or more radio broadcast frequencies and triangulate or verify their location with greater accuracy.

The stations that were assigned the two Conelrad frequencies were only supposed to come on for 10 minutes every hour (or something like that) in staggered rotation.

I don't really know how effective this strategy would have worked. Not very assume. The had detailed maps of the U.S. and their pilots knew how to use them.

 

Large heavily constructed buildings like schools and banks used to have these signs on them. Some had capacity numbers as to maximum number of people it could accommodate.

Designed as a safe place to survive a USSR nuclear detonation. Many also had stores of survival food in them.
Fat chance that any building would survive a local nuclear blast but it made people feel safe along with their own personnel bomb shelters. Old NIKE Missal sites were also set up around heavily industrialized areas and government seats. They were supposed to be able to intercept incoming ICBM's. A few of these sites are still around but long ago abandoned by any missal equipment.

 

I live across the road from a Nike missile complex. Actually, there is nothing left except for a few low concrete foundations. It was the "control center" and motor pool that supported the missiles and silos. They are scattered all around the SW area of Kansas City and the closest silo is about 4 miles from here.

When I was a kid we used to ride bicycles up to the sites and pull on the wire. In about 10 minutes a helicopter would show up with folks that did not think it was funny.

 

We had those air raid drills in school. I remember the teacher telling me to put my head between my own legs and not Becky Peterson's.

Mick

 

They used to test the Conelrad system twice a year "This is a test, this is only a test, in case of a real emergency..." They would play a loud rising hum over the air for a few seconds. Don't remember when they did the last of these, must have been the late sixties or early seventies?

 

I'm pretty sure my new, OT car radio has zombie symbols at those 2 frequencies.

 

In Australia, if you heard a siren go off, it meant that the pub has just run out of beer.

 

Yup, hemi powered Big Red air raid siren.

I also remember visiting the local Nike missle site when I was a Cub Scout in the late 60s.

Sent from my SM-G950U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Last Friday of the month at 11:00 am they would test the sirens in Orange County. .. Stopped about 20-30 yrs ago.

 

Sometime I’ll tell you the story of how I inadvertently ran the emergency instructions tape over the air when it should have been just a test of the system. Almost cost this teenaged DJ his job. But that’s a story for another day. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming…

 

Now the Emergency Broadcast System is mostly used to report old farts like me on the loose (Silver Alert)! As a side note, I can't get into the new genre` of Zombie stuff....looks too much like my class reunion!

 

When you're a kid you listen to and do what the adults say.
I never considered it dumb then and still don't now.
Being that the threat was and is very real all along, I suppose that you have better "nonsense" to teach us?.
Tell us, Oh, Mr. Nonsense, have you had the chance to have first hand knowledge of this "nonsense"?
I don't mean to be nasty but I always have to say something when someone makes fun of what we had to do in the 50's and 60's about duck and cover procedures.?

Sent from my SM-G973U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Possibly not.
There are three shock waves of a nuclear blast.
The initial blast shock wave...the return shock wave and the EMP (ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE ) wave.
The EMP will destroy electrical components.

Sent from my SM-G973U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Yeah, it wasn't as dumb then as it might sound today, to some degree. The game changer was the widespread deployment of hydrogen weapons, deliverable by intercontinental missiles. No defense against those really, and fallout shelters weren't much use. Watch some of the declassified south pacific test shots to see why.

Civil Defense stuff has some "collectability" now, for a long time ya couldn't even give it away. Most of it was eituer thrown away a long time ago, forgotten about at best. Tins of wretched "biscuits" and hard candies, radiation detectors, canned drinking water and other fun stuff. At least in those days the government hadn't declared us all persona non grata yet.

 

When I was crawling under my desk (early '50s), N-bombs were relatively new, and no one knew the overall lasting effects of blast waves, fallout, etc. All of that knowledge was just being developed. Our 20/20 hindsight is great, but at the time, framed in then-current technology, the Civil Defense system made sense. Now... not so much. Kind of like the thinking at the time that leaded gas and asbestos were OK. Live and learn, but don't criticize if you weren't there.

 

Growing up in Detroit in the 50's we used to play baseball in a park we called the "Army camp". Called it that because next to it was a group of Army barracks for what I believe was a Nike missle base. As the 50's ended they closed the camp but you could crawl around the concrete missle pads. Place was near the Ford complex at the Detroit/Dearborn boundary. Huge commercial area now, you wouldn't recognize it.