Managing Nuclear Terror

Abstract

Abstract In the early years of the Cold War, American national security planners arrived at an interpretation of the probable reaction of the American people to a nuclear attack on the United States. They argued that the public would respond to the prospect of nuclear war with expressions of panic or terror. Such a response, however, was inconsistent with the role that the planners had reserved for the American people in the contest with the Soviet Union. The policy of containment by means of deterrence required the public to exhibit credible expressions of determination to fight a nuclear war. Acting on this interpretation, civil defense specialists developed a plan to bring the public psychology into conformity with the requirements of national security policy. This plan was a comprehensive system of emotion management designed to sup press an irrational terror of nuclear war and foster in its stead a more pragmatic nuclear fear. Once the passage from nuclear terror to nuclear fear had been completed, civil defense organizations would be in a position to employ nuclear fear in their programs of human resource management. Properly channeled, nuclear fear would motivate the public to deliver the support regarded as essential to deterrence.