I’m a post-nuke baby. By the time I started thinking about the world in the 90s, the Curtain had been pulled back and it was Russian ogligarchs, not generals, that seemed particularly fearsome. Our arsenal — and Theirs — seem kind of anachronistic. Silly, even. If I met one of our nuclear planners in front of a missile silo rising above us into the sky, I’d want to say, almost laughing, “You weren’t ever really gonna use these things, were you?”

And yet, maybe we were.

In writing about the history of energy, I’ve run across a lot of fluffy, black clouds left over from the time of nightly nuclear dreams and nightmares. One that particularly struck me is contained in this 1982 story by Judith Miller (yes, that Judith Miller) about the Postal Service’s 300 page plan to keep on keeping on after nuclear holocaust.

“The officials described an elaborate chain of command under which one of the five regional postmasters general would assume control if Washington was destroyed,” Miller writes. “The headquarters would shift first to Memphis, and then, if Memphis was destroyed to San Bruno, Calif.”

San Bruno, holding it down for the rest of America and the Free World. The Postmasters General commanding his blue shorted troops for the good of the motherland.

Psychiatrist Henry Abraham’s summary of the scheme (tucked into an article on nuclear war’s psychiatric causes and effects) highlights how ridiculous nuclear war becomes when placed inside conventional society.

“The admission of atomic fission into the conduct of contemporary statecraft has inadvertently opened the door to a condition of exfalso quolibet, in which an irrational premise (‘nuclear war is a viable political option’) is carried through to absurd conclusions,” Abraham writes. “Accordingly, the U.S. Postal Service has devised a 300-page plan which suggests, among other items, that shortly before a nuclear war individuals fill out emergency change-of-address forms to help with the mail following the holocaust.”

I, for one, am glad that the USPS was trying to save me the trouble of writing the following letter by providing an easy-to-use form with carbon copies attached for easy filing.

Dear Postal Service, Please forward my mail via this mutant carrier pigeon (see attached) until the end of the Holocast. In the event that roads are available for vehicle transport and/or the carrier pigeon becomes dangerously subversive and must be disposed of, I can be reached in Cave 4, Battle Ground, Washington.

Lee Clark calls plans like this one “fantasy documents” that served merely to soothe a population into thinking that nuclear war (or other disasters) could be managed by sound planning and administrative pluck.

“All such plans are tested against reality only rarely, since, for example, none of the following disasters were believed to be credible events by the organizations involved: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Bhopal, The Challenger, and Exxon Valdez,” Clark writes. “In addition to being untested, the accident mitigation or evacuation plans are likely to draw from a quite unrealistic view or model of organizations.”

An exchange between a Congressman and a Postal Service administrator hauled before a House committee to talk about the USPS nuclear war plan highlights the unreality of planning for disaster.

Congress member: How do you respond to the charge that the Service has no clear conception of an attack?
Planner: I don’t know that I can respond to that.
Congress member: What will you do if no one shows up for work, assuming anyone is left alive?
Planner: I have no response to that, sir.
Congress member: Can you tell us if this plan has ever been test in any way?
Planner: No, sir.

Now, there are supposedly more sophisticated ways to prepare for emergencies. War games, computer modeling, etc. But when a real disaster strikes…

Image: flickr/NateMatias