Report: Bring Back Civil Defense

The ongoing war in Ukraine has reawakened old fears, long dormant and largely unspoken. The specter of war in Europe –with its ever-present social media videos of urban shelling and other horrors, the vision of nuclear-armed adversaries in conflict, together with stories of Ukrainian communities coming together in a spirit of volunteerism amidst hardship– resurrects memories of a past when Americans took seriously the notion that conflicts abroad could come violently home, and in the most catastrophic of ways. This has led some to harken back to the old “duck and cover” drills and other memories of the civil defense capabilities of the Cold War.

Harrowing, if implicit, Russian threats of nuclear weapons use, together with growing concerns of cyberwarfare–which provides an additional strike capability together with some plausible deniability– should lead us to readdress America’s capability to protect and secure its citizens here at home.

A PDF of the report can be viewed below or here.