David F. Krugler

Seeing as I live in the Washington, DC area as an employee of the federal government, I found this examination of an earlier form of "security theater" quite entertaining; particularly since you'll get the most out of this book if you're familiar with the region. Besides how civil defense was the stepchild of policy and how the anomaly of there even being a District of Columbia tended (and still does) to short-circuit regional planning, Krugler's main topic is how the assorted proposals to evacuate and/or disperse the government and the population have impacted current population patterns.

While the civil defense proposals of the Fifties faded out due to the sense of their futility in the likelihood of the use of massed hydrogen bombs, Krugler does deal with the events of 9/11 (and to a lesser degree Hurricane Katrina) in his epilog. If nothing else the lessons remain that regional emergency planning needs to be truly regional, plans need to be kept as simple as possible, continuity planning needs to be taken seriously and there needs to be official honesty about what can be practically achieved.… (meer)