From Await­ing Armaged­don: U.S. paral­y­sis on civil defense could be cred­ited to an inabil­ity to face the prospect of nuclear war or sim­ply to a sense of futil­ity. … Intel­lec­tu­ally, Amer­i­cans knew the haz­ards of nuclear war, but Amer­ica was not ready [dur­ing the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis] … The United States sim­ply had refused to accept […]