Radiological Defense (1961)

★★★★★ · Still dead nuts on in terms of facts. · jgruszynski · 2009-12-03

I never quite get the reviews of these older films. Folks are simply too young or too isolated from reality maybe. There is nothing whatsoever in the film that incorrect or implausible in terms of fact or scenario. It's all pretty much still true. The way folks worked in the 1950s was pretty close to what is shown. It's all pre-calculator and pre-PC computers so, yes, this really is how they did things. Look up what a slide rule is. The tone? If you don't think a nuclear attack is a likely possibility, then yeah, it's strangely urgent and overly dramatic. But if such an attack did occur…

★★★★ · Be very afraid... · trafalgar · 2004-03-19

Great nuclear fallout scare film (which is not to say that nuclear fallout isn't scary). Made much like a sci-fi film, with it's hyper-dramatic narrator, intense musical stings, and crazy-cool atomic graphics (see the thumbnails). The first half is the real keeper, as people on the street are shot through a red filter to indicate contamination, a man is shown dying in a hospital bed (close-up of his hand going limp), and we are told that "ALL of us live within fallout range of a likely target!" The second half drags a bit, with the standard descriptions of civil defense procedures, but all in…

★★★★ · Comparison with the UK Civil Defence · Steve_Cook · 2013-01-06

I commenced radiological training in the UK Civil Defence Corps, only 3 years after this film was made. This film mirrors what was happening in the UK, with certain exceptions. First a lot of this stuff was classified, as members of the Corps we weren't supposed to talk about a lot of it. Radiac monitoring was done at several levels, locally the Civil Defence Corps, nationally the Royal Observer Corps, plus the Ministry of Agriculture. In the UK there was virtually no talk of civilian fallout shelters, although there were shelters for government purposes, known as Regional Seats of Government…

★★★ · "I may be incenerated, but i'll be damned if anything happens to my golf clubs" · Spuzz · 2004-04-18

Somewhat entertaining film which deals about all the bad old atom bomb, and the aftereffects that it could cause. The main focus of the film is about fallout, it can travel quite fast (so fast a group of engineers stand around a big map that has a "Fallout Situation" in front of it, marking up the board like crazy. a lot of this film is of course, dramatized, but a lot of it is TOO overly so. Are we really to believe that a group of experts are locked in a room in a top secret room and the only thing they talk about is how long fallout lasts?? wouldnt they know that??? (love the panning shots…

★★ · Advertisement for Big Government? · JayKay49 · 2011-12-18

I get the distinct impression that the whole raison d'etre of this film is to advertise and sustantiate all these government agencies and somehow (ineffectively in this case) show how important and vital they are. The bomb shelter and steps for individuals seems stuck on at the end - like an afterthought - perhaps to leave the viewer with the thought that in fact this is a film on how to protect yourself from fallout.....but if that was true, the preceding part of the film could have been completed in 4 minutes - max. Not one of the better films on civil defense....but I always enjoy the…