Duck and Cover (film)

Duck and Cover is a 1951 American civil defense animated and live action social guidance film that is often mischaracterized as propaganda. It has similar themes to the more adult-oriented civil defense training films. It was widely distributed to United States schoolchildren in the 1950s, and teaches students what to do in the event of a nuclear explosion.

The film was funded by the US Federal Civil Defense Administration and released in January 1952. At the time, the Soviet Union was engaged in nuclear testing and the US was in the midst of the Korean War. It was written by Raymond J. Mauer, directed by Anthony Rizzo of Archer Productions, narrated by actor Robert Middleton, and made with help from schoolchildren from New York City and Astoria, New York.

The film is in the public domain and widely available through Internet sources such as YouTube, as well as on DVD. It was screened on Turner Classic Movies' Saturday night–Sunday morning film showcase series, TCM Underground.

In 2004, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Plot summary


The film starts with an animated sequence, showing Bert, an anthropomorphic turtle walking down a road while picking up a flower and smelling it. A chorus sings the Duck and Cover theme:

Bert is shown being attacked by a monkey holding a lit firecracker or stick of dynamite on the end of a string. Bert ducks into his shell as the charge goes off and destroys both the monkey and the tree in which he is sitting, making it out safe because he ducked and covered.

The film then switches to live footage, as narrator Middleton explains what children should do "when you see the flash" of an atomic bomb. It is suggested that by ducking down low in the event of a nuclear explosion, such as crawling under desks, children would be safer than they would be standing. It also explains some basic survival tactics for nuclear war, such as facing a wall that might lend protection.

The last scene of the film returns to animation, in which Bert the Turtle (voiced by Carl Ritchie) summarily asks what everybody should do in the event of an atomic bomb flash and is given the correct answer by a group of unseen children.

Purpose
After nuclear weapons were developed, with Trinity having been the first nuclear weapon to be developed through the Manhattan Project during World War II, it soon became clear the danger they posed. The United States held a nuclear monopoly from the end of World War II until 1949, when the Soviets detonated their first nuclear device.

Soon after, the nuclear stage of the Cold War began; as a result, strategies for survival were thought out. Fallout shelters, both private and public, were built, but the government deemed it necessary to teach citizens about the danger of atomic and hydrogen bombs and give them training to prepare them to act in the event of a nuclear strike.

The solution was the duck and cover campaign, which Duck and Cover was an integral part of. Shelters were built, drills were held in towns and schools, and the film was shown to schoolchildren. According to the United States Library of Congress, which declared the film "historically significant" and inducted it for preservation into the National Film Registry in 2004, it "was seen by millions of schoolchildren in the 1950s."

Other media
The song "Bert the Turtle (Duck and Cover)", performed by Dick Baker, was released as a commercial recording by Coral Records and accompanied by a color campaign pamphlet. It sold three million copies.

Accuracy and usefulness


Many historians and the nuclear disarmament public at large have generally sought to mock and dismiss civil defense advice as mere propaganda, including Amy Cottrell, who argues the film was made primarily as an American red scare political tool, to remind children of the dangers posed by the Soviet Union and communism.

Detailed scientific research programs lay behind the UK government civil defense pamphlets of the 1950s and 1960s, including the advice to duck and cover, which has made a resurgence in recent years with new scientific evidence to support it. While these kinds of tactics would be useless for those at ground zero during a surface burst nuclear explosion, it would be beneficial to most people, who are positioned away from the blast hypocenter. Recent scientific analysis has largely supported the general idea of sheltering indoors in response to a nuclear explosion. Staying indoors can leave roads clear for emergency vehicles to access the area. This is known as the shelter in place protocol, and along with emergency evacuation, are recommended as the two countermeasures to take when the direct effects of nuclear explosions are no longer life-threatening and protection is needed from coming in contact with nuclear weapon fallout.

Historical context
The United States' monopoly on nuclear weapons was broken by the Soviet Union in 1949 when it tested its first nuclear explosive (Joe-1), causing many in the US government and public to realize that the nation was more vulnerable than before. Duck-and-cover exercises quickly became a part of Civil Defense drills that every American citizen, from children to the elderly, practiced to be ready in the event of nuclear war. In 1950, during the first big Civil Defense push of the Cold War and coinciding with the Alert America! initiative to educate Americans on nuclear preparedness, the adult-orientated Survival Under Atomic Attack was published, containing "duck and cover" advice in its Six Survival Secrets For Atomic Attacks section. ''1. Try To Get Shielded 2. Drop Flat On Ground Or Floor 3. Bury Your Face In Your Arms ("crook of your elbow")''. The child-orientated film Duck and Cover was produced a year later, in 1951, by the Federal Civil Defense Administration.

Education efforts on the effects of nuclear weapons proceeded with stops-and-starts in the US due to competing alternatives. In a once classified war game that examined varying levels of war escalation, warning, and pre-emptive attacks in the late 1950s to early 1960s, it was estimated that approximately 27 million US citizens would have been saved with civil defense education. However, at the time the cost of a full-scale civil defense program was regarded as less effective and less cost-efficient than a ballistic missile defense (Nike Zeus) system. As the Soviets were believed to be rapidly increasing their nuclear stockpile, the efficacy of both would begin to enter a diminishing returns trend. When more became known about the cost and limitations of the Nike Zeus system, in the early 1960s the head of the Department of Defense determined once more that fallout shelters would save more Americans for less money.

The production of Duck and Cover in 1951 by the Federal Civil Defense Administration occurred during the height of the Korean War (1950–1953) and coincided with the first Desert Rock exercises in the Nevada desert, which were designed to familiarize the US military with fighting alongside battlefield nuclear weapons. It was feared that a resolution to the Korean War might require the theater of operations to first expand across the border into the People's Republic of China and nuclear weapons to end it.

Appearance in other media
The 1982 satirical collage documentary film The Atomic Cafe uses footage from Duck and Cover. Both films were eventually inducted into the National Film Registry.

The video for "Weird Al" Yankovic's 1986 song "Christmas at Ground Zero" features footage from the film, mostly during an instrumental break. Bert the Turtle is shown in time with the lyric 'I'll duck and cover/ with my Yuletide lover'.

The video for Peter Gabriel's 1980 song "Games Without Frontiers" features footage from the film at the end of the song.

The 2015 film Bridge of Spies features a prominent scene in which grade school children watch Duck and Cover in their classroom.

In the 1997 South Park episode "Volcano", South Park's residents are urged to "duck and cover" by a volcano safety film which loosely parodies Duck and Cover. This proves ineffective, as the people who follow this advice are subsequently disintegrated by the lava from the volcanic eruption.

The 1999 film The Iron Giant, which is set in 1957, features a social guidance film titled Atomic Holocaust, the style and tone of which parodies the film. Near the end of the film, Kent Mansley suggests they duck and cover into a fallout shelter after the USS Nautilus mistakenly launches an offshore nuclear SLBM Polaris missile at their position. However, the other male adults claim this would be inefficient, convincing bystanders and Hogarth to not evacuate to shelter.

RiffTrax also spoofed this film in 2015.

The Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies episode "You Can't Just Walk Out of a Drive-In" shows a group of teenagers being shown the film.

The Quantum Leap episode "Nuclear Family" shows two children watching the film on television.