This is the third part of my book review of: Graff, G.M. 2018. Raven Rock. The Story of the U.S. Governments Secret Plan to Save Itself–While the Rest of Us Die. Simon and Schuster.

This book stresses that a full nuclear attack might destroy civilization at best, and drive humans extinct at worse.  So to spend hundreds of billions to strike back with even more nuclear weapons, as well as continue Democracy and the Non-negotiable Way of Life of America is bizarre, preposterous. America will have gone from amber waves of grain, a fruited plain, and purple mountain majesties to a vast radioactive scorched earth and nuclear winter.

The plans to carry on as usual are the Continuity of Government (COG), Continuity of Operations (COOP), and the most top secret level, Enduring Constitutional Government (ECG).

Here are just a few of the responsibilities government agencies will have after a nuclear apocalypse.  They range from the Truman administration to today, so some of these plans may have been discontinued or the responsibilities transferred d to the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA.

Defense Resources Act: This lays out a new structure and roles for how the government will function after a national emergency that suspends the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  In includes rationing, price controls, media censorship, property confiscation, the creation of emergency government agencies, the seizure of private industries, and other powers considered too politically toxic ever to be discussed in peacetime.

Department of Agriculture: distribute rationed food.

Department of Health, Education, and Welfare: handle civilian refugees from the war zone

Emergency Food Agency: vast powers to dictate the production and distribution of foodstuffs

Emergency Transport Agency: They were to seize control of all of the nation’s merchant vessel fleet and all of the nation’s highways—dictating who could drive on what roads when.  In addition local governments could supplement local stockpiles from any retail store.  And much more, the plans were hundreds of pages long.

FBI: attorney general’s always had an emergency briefcase nearby full of documents about the Emergency Detention Program, which included sections on the “Alien Control Program,” “Internment of Diplomatic Personnel of Enemy Nations Program,” “Handling of Dangerous Non-enemy Aliens Attached to International Organizations,” and much more. These documents gave the FBI the power to arrest, search, detain, and deport thousands of people.

Federal Civil Defense Administration (now FEMA).  Although the FCDA may no longer exist, perhaps their solution to the problem of not having enough medical aid to support attacked areas for more than three days is still in place.  They believed that unscathed states needed to be forced to help, by military force if necessary.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC): seize and shut down all the nation’s broadcasters.

FEMA, now a part of Homeland Security, would help the nation rebuild from regional bunkers in places like Denton, Texas, and Maynard, Massachusetts. Although the public believes their main role is aid after natural disasters, much of their budget goes to COG – the Continuation of Government — by tracking the 20 government officials in the presidential line of succession around the clock, and the helicopters and staff to whisk them away.

Highway Transport Division: coordinate the nation’s 10 million commercial vehicles in an attack.

Interior Department: ensure fuel supplies for attacked areas and restore electrical service to damaged cities.

Internal Revenue Service: After studying how taxes could be levied from the 1960s to 1980s, the IRS and treasury concluded it would be very hard to levy taxes after a Soviet Strike.  Aside from taxpayers being dead, finding W-2s for those still alive would be impossible, and it was unfair to assess taxpayers on the pre-attack value of their property, many of them reduced to ashes or other damage.  The IRS calculated that over $2 trillion in property might disappear after a large strike, and recommended that the government assume the underlying mortgages to keep the banking system from collapsing.  In the end, the only way to get taxes would be a national sales tax as high as 24 percent.

National Park Service: run refugee camps.

Pentagon and FEMA: alert the nation if a Soviet attack is underway, though as a civil defense expert pointed out, the people who hear the warnings will run into a building and still be turned into sand seconds later. FEMA attempted to rate how disastrous the aftermath would be and estimated about one out of six Americans would face the worst scenario known as BOS #9, HIRAD HIFIRE, which means severe radiation and uncontrollable fires.

Post Office: register the nation’s dead, and develop a national registration program to determine who was still alive, where refugees were located, and registering foreign aliens so government agencies could round up anyone who might be subversive.  In 2009 they were assigned the additional duty of distributing vaccines after a biological attack.

Private citizens: during the Eisenhower administration nine men were chosen to remake the private sector by seizing assets across the nation and starting new bureaucracies to control every aspect of American life until a recovery was made.

Selective Service System: mailing letters after a nuclear attack so the military could draft 84,600 new recruits within 30 days

Wartime Information Security Program (WISP) formerly the Office of Censorship: this agency would have a Press Division to oversee censorship of newspapers, magazines, books, and other publishers, a Broadcast Division to censor radio and TV, a Telecommunications Division to censor telephones and telegraph systems, and a Postal and Travelers Division to censor the mail, and the Special Analysis Division, which would be in charge of collecting and determining what information should be censored in the first place.  One of the Watergate burglars, James W. McCord Jr, worked with the Office of emergency planning to draft a national watch list of troublesome Americans.

Raven Rock parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Alice Friedemann   www.energyskeptic.com  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, Peak Prosperity , XX2 report