Purpose
After nuclear weapons were developed (the first having been developed during the Manhattan Project during World War II), it was realized what kind of 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.
This signaled the beginning of the nuclear stage of the Cold War, and as a result, strategies for survival were thought out. Fallout shelters, both private and public, were built, but the government still viewed it as necessary to explain to citizens both the danger of the atomic (and later, hydrogen) bombs, and to give them some sort of training so that they would be prepared to act in the event of a nuclear strike.
The solution was the duck and cover campaign, of which Duck and Cover was an integral part. 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."
Read more about this topic: Duck And Cover (film)
Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“Art for art’s sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves a purpose which is not its own.”
—Benjamin Constant (1767–1834)
“Nowadays, if New York has a heart, it might be the Garden. Almost everyone goes there, for one purpose or another. There are dog shows, and Sonja Henie and mass meetings.”
—In New York City, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Our purpose in founding the city was not to make any one class in it surpassingly happy, but to make the city as a whole as happy as possible.”
—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)