WWD has long been a resource for retailers, reporting on the latest trends, designers, business acquisitions and so on. But how about a helpful how-to guide for surviving an atomic attack? That’s exactly what the paper published on Dec. 26, 1950. Today it reads almost campy — consider the headline: “You Can Survive An Atomic Attack!….” — but back then, nuclear threat was all too real. It was five years after Hiroshima and the Cold War was just rearing its ugly head. “The world situation is such today that retailers cannot overlook their responsibilities to their customers and employees,” began Read Jenkins, chairman of the Subcommittee on Civilian Defense of the National Retail Dry Goods Association, adding that while some defense programs may be lacking in funds “the retailer CAN DO SOMETHING.”
The suggestions are mostly obvious — locating stairways, elevators, and escalators; establishing a communications center, and providing emergency power are just a few examples. If all measures failed, Jenkins addressed this possibility, too. “Many people have adopted a completely fatalistic attitude in connection with an atomic attack,” he wrote. “Contrary to popular opinion, you can survive…. The bogie of the bomb, founded on reams of hysterical publicity and bolstered by misinformation, may cause a panic which might be far more deadly than the blast itself.” Which isn’t to say Jenkins was an entirely glass half-full kind of guy. “It is true,” he continued, “that if your store should be the direct target or within an approximate radius of one-half mile of the point at which the bomb falls, all planning will have been in vain.”