"This Is Only a Test: How Washington D.C. Prepared for Nuclear War" by David F. Krugler

This book tells the history of nuclear age urban planning, civil defense, and continuity of government programs in one of the nation's most critical Cold War targets: Washington, D.C. Spanning the years 1940 to 1962, This Is Only a Test uses Washington's often conflicting identities–capital, city, and symbol–to explore the connections between the attempted dispersal of vital government offices to distant suburban sites, the District's Office of Civil Defense, and the creation of the secretive Federal Relocation Arc.





Measures to protect the federal government resulted in a widening gap between capital and city, while the failures of the city's local program symbolized federal ambivalence toward civil defense. This Is Only a Test shows how the Cold War affected Washington and its racially divided population.

Contents
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
Acknowledgments
Introduction
A Nuclear Weapons Primer
1 By the Bomb’s Imaginary Light
- Civil Defense under the Roosevelts
- Washington and the Postwar National Security State
- Slouching toward National Civil Defense
- Washington and the 1948 "War Scare"
2 The Promise and Politics of Dispersal
- Planning to Plan
- Imagining the Emergency Capital
- Imagining Long-Term Dispersal
3 The District Defends Itself
- "Some Kind of Border Incident"
- Attempting Dispersal
- The DCD Gets to Work
- The District and the Federal Civil Defense Administration
4 Downtown, Out of Town, or Underground?
- The Showdown Over Dispersal
- The Mysterious Mountain
- The Phoenix of Pennsylvania Avenue
5 Apathy and the Atom
- "The Showthat May Save Your Life"
- Understanding the Failure
- The Federal Relocation Arc
6 The Eisenhower Way
- Exhuming Dispersal
- The Federal Relocation Arc and Continuity of Government
7 Practice Makes Perfect
8 Capital Confusion
- "Get Out"?
- "Dig"?
- Disperse?
9 Land of the Blind
- Testing the Arc
- Eisenhower Gets His Way
- Going Regional
- The Arc Underground
10 The Satchel Has Been Passed …
- Washington and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Postscript
- Washington on 9/11
Source Abbreviations
Notes
Index