This is the tank driving around in fast-forward at the beginning of the movie Tucker: The Man and His Dream.

Armored Tank Attains Speed Of 114 MPH.
AN ALL-WELDED armor-plated army tank which, it is claimed, can attain a speed of 114 m.p.h. over a level road and 78 m.p.h. over rough ground was recently demonstrated at Rahway, N. J. Invented by Preston Tucker, an armament manufacturer, the tank weighs 10,000 pounds, which is 2,000 pounds less than the present conventional type. Besides machine guns, it features an anti-aircraft cannon, which is mounted in a turret atop the rear of the armored body.

This is a pretty cool house, if you go for the woodland-critter, industrial-flintstones look. As far as I can tell the only real feature it has that is in any way associated with “atomic protection” is the bomb shelter. However, the fact that the bomb shelter must be entered by swimming through a tunnel in the pool gets them major James Bond points.
Oh, and am I the only one who would be terrified to try parking on that crazy cantilevered track thing?

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HOUSE FOR THE ATOMIC AGE

A swimming pool that becomes an automatic decontamination bath during an A-bomb attack is one of the features of a home that Hal B. Hayes, Hollywood contractor, is completing for himself. In the hillside next to the swimming pool he’s building an underground sanctuary that you reach by diving into the pool. His house is designed to “bring the outdoors indoors” for ordinary peaceful living, yet has a structure built to resist great destructive forces. Several of the walls are completely of glass that would be swept away by a powerful shock wave, but could later be replaced. A continuation of his living-room rug is pulled up to shroud the glass wall in that room when a button is pressed.

Other walls of the house have a fluted design to resist shock wave and a fireproof exterior surface of Gunite.

A garden growing in half a foot of soil on the flat roof provides insulation against extreme heat or shock. All exposed wood, inside and outside of the house, is fire-resistant redwood coated with fire-retarding paint. In addition to the underground sanctuary, equipped with bottled oxygen, there is a bombproof shelter in the house itself, consisting of a large steel-and-con-crete vault containing a sitting room and bathroom. Other features of the home include a three-story indoor tree. * * *

Pipe Is Effective Tear Gas Gun

TEAR gas guns have taken many forms in the past and now the weapon comes out in the form of an innocent looking pipe, which no one could possibly suspect of evil purposes. Fortunately its shape permits it to be held like a pistol. The stem does duty as a barrel to spray the smoke in the culprit’s face, while a small knob on the underside works as the trigger. The pipe may be carried in the same manner as its inoffensive brother. How it is held may be seen from the photo above.

Metalized Window Curtain Aids in A-Bomb Protection

Heavy canvas window curtains, specially treated, are designed to give partial protection from the effects of an A-bomb blast. The curtains are metalized with aluminum and lead. They will help protect persons inside a building from flying glass, radioactive dust and flash burns, according to the manufacturer. They are said to be effective at distances beyond 2600 feet of the explosion. When not in use, the curtain rolls against the upper part of the casement like a window shade.

That is some pretty amazing camouflage there. Why, I almost mistook them for trees. Trees with binoculars and handguns….

Soldiers Wear Camouflage
The men in the above picture are not inhavitants of Mars. They are only British soldiers, wearing camouflage in their helmets during a mimic battle.

Britain Demonstrates “Sombrero” Flame Thrower

Dubbed the “ack-pack,” Britain’s new flame thrower has an odd-shaped fuel tank that looks like a Mexican sombrero strapped to the soldier’s back. The weapon is shorter than most flame throwers of previous design. A length of flexible hose connects the fuel tank with the gun.

I’m not sure what’s scarier, the picture of children in gas masks, or the horse wearing one.
And I love that they insist that being exposed to mustard gas is really no worse then getting a bad sun burn.

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GAS MASKS FOR ALL

ENGLAND is manufacturing 30,000,000 gas masks for civilians at the rate of 250,000 per week. By the end of the year they will be stored at convenient centers available for instant use. Italy has decreed that every new house constructed must have a concrete anti-gas shelter in the basement in accordance with government specifications. Masks are sold in Rome on the installment plan.

French drug stores sell masks. Russia has devised special models for children and conducts gas as well as fire drills in schools. Germany and every other European country have provided masks and fume-proof shelters for civilians operating electric power plants and other vital services. A Czech manufacturer is marketing a mask with a telephone and microphone attachment for the conduct of business as usual in spite of gas.
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PROTECT YOUR LOVED ONES
Build a Small Atomic Shelter for your Family & Valuable Possessions

Write now for blueprints
Complete set $7.50
BLUEPRINTS FOR SURVIVAL
35 West 53rd Street, N.Y. 19, N.Y.

Needless to say, many of the predictions in this article didn’t pan out.

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Is Aerial Warfare Doomed?

Original Editor’s Note – Statements by aviation enthusiasts that airplanes will wipe out cities, destroy fleets and armies, and win the next war prompted this article by Lieut. Hogg, noted writer on military topics. In it he makes startling revelations about the effectiveness of the airplane as a military weapon. The observations and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and should not be construed as reflecting the official views or opinions of the United States Navy Department.

Startling Statements About Aerial Warfare

During the World War airplanes sank no battleships, destroyed no city, and failed in every attempt to bomb or gas an enemy out of a military position.

The first 30 days of any major war will see the complete elimination of air forces of belligerent powers.

No aviator entertains the thought that he is going to fly over the enemy anti-aircraft battery in time of war – and live to tell the tale.

Air raids over London and Paris during the four years of the World War destroyed less than $5,000,000 worth of property and killed fewer than 700 enemy civilians.

It would take 75,000 bombers to carry the load of bombs equivalent to the weight of shells carried by the 15 battleships of the U. S. Navy. The cruising radius of those bombers would be only 500 miles. A battleship can travel 15,000 miles, regardless of weather.

A shell will drill through heavy armor plate, or through concrete walls. It explodes inside to produce a shattering, internal explosion. A aerial bomb, having no such power of penetration pops off like a paper firecracker against whatever it hits.

It would take 28,000,000 pounds of phosgene to “wipe out” an area the size of New York City. To accomplish this the enemy would have to have 14,000 large bombing planes and 280 naval airplane carriers to bring the planes within striking distance of New York.
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Basically they are saying: “Choose the Army before the Army chooses you.”

This reminds me of mafia thugs demanding protection money and saying: “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.”

He just lost his chance to make a choice.

His induction notice caught him with his decisions down. He waited too long to choose Army.

If he had acted sooner, he would have had his pick of more than 300 jobs. And his choice would have been guaranteed in writing before he joined up.

So don’t wait. Choose your specialty and get the best training in the world. In an outfit you can be proud of. There’s no better way to become highly skilled. No better way to fulfill your military obligation.

Your future, your decision … choose ARMY.

This is pretty amazing. It’s a Scientific American Article from 1939 describing the splitting of the atom. It was written just after Einstien had written his famous letter to F.D.R and before the initiation of the Manhattan Project, yet it is obvious that scientists were well aware of the potential uses of atomic fission:

It may or may not be significant that, since early spring, no accounts of research on nuclear fission have been heard from Germany — not even from discoverer Hahn. It is not unlikely that the German government, spotting a potentially powerful weapon of war, has imposed military secrecy on all recent German investigations. A large concentration of isotope 235, subjected to neutron bombardment, might conceivably blow up all London or Paris.

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Two Elements For One

The Most Important Scientific Discovery of the Present Year is also the Biggest Explosion in Atomic History … Splitting the Uranium Atom

THE Fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics was sitting in solemn conclave when the news broke. Professor Nils Bohr of Princeton and Professor Enrico Fermi of Columbia rose to open the meeting with an account of some research going on in a Berlin laboratory.
Professors Bohr and Fermi are Nobel Prize winners both, and their names are as well known to scientists as Toscaninni’s is to music lovers. The Conference therefore expected something extra special. They weren’t disappointed.

It was January 26, 1939. A few wees before, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, Dr. Otto Hahn, a distinguished German physicist, had obtained an utterly unexpected result from some more or less routine experiments. Following the original example of Professor Fermi, Dr. Hahn and his co-worker, F. Strassmann, had for many months been bombarding uranium with neutrons and studying the debris left by this atomic warfare.

It would not have surprised them at all to find radium as one of the products. In fact, they had done so before, or thought they had. Radium and uranium are near neighbors in the table of elements, and it is nothing new for scientists to transform one element into another close to it in weight and electric charge.

But it was news, and big news, to discover barium among the debris — barium, which is only a little more than half as heavy as uranium. It meant that the neutron bullets had succeeded not merely in knocking a few chips off the old block, but in blowing the whole atom asunder with a terrific explosion.
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Devise Gas Mask for Baby

Designed for children under two years of age, the gas mask shown at right was developed by the British Government as part of its precautions against air raids. The helmet is slipped over the infant’s head and shoulders and strapped firmly around its chest so that the headpiece is sealed from the air. A small bellows, operated by the mothers hand as shown, supplies air to the helmet. The air is chemically purified of all poisonous gases before reaching the child.