In the studio:

 

Mythology is a system of images that endows the mind and the sentiments with a sense of participation in a field of meaning. The different mythologies define the possible meanings of a person’s experience in terms of the knowledge of the historical period,  as well as the psychological impact of this knowledge diffused through sociological structures on the complex and psychosomatic system known as the human being. – Joseph Campbell

Public Emergency Radio

Public Emergency Radio

Operating 24 hours a day on a longwave frequency of 179 kHz from Chase, Maryland, USA, WGU-20’s programming consisted of pre-recorded announcements and time checks. The broadcast had the mechanical sound of early speech synthesis systems but the message could be clearly understood, with time ticks in the background and a continuous announcement akin to the Speaking clock: “Good evening. This is WGU-20, a defense civil-preparedness agency station, serving the east central states with emergency information. Eastern Standard Time seventeen hours, twenty minutes, twenty seconds. Good evening. This is WGU-20, a defense civil-preparedness agency station, serving the east central states with emergency information. Eastern Standard Time seventeen hours, twenty minutes, thirty seconds. Good evening. …” (The recording was changed to “good morning” or “good afternoon” at the appropriate times of day.)

Utilizing the world’s first all-solid state, 50,000 watt, radio transmitter built by Westinghouse, the signal covered much of the eastern seaboard; reception reports (from as far away as Texas) were sent a special QSL card featuring Paul Revere on a horse, raising the alarm.

The station was quite a mystery for a while, with thousands of ham radio operators and radio hobbyists speculating about the nature of the station, until a small news article in Popular Electronics magazine outlined exactly what WGU-20 was.

 

Decision Information Distribution System

WGU-20 was originally designed to be part of the Decision Information Distribution System (DIDS) that would be used to alert the public of an enemy attack (along the same lines as the then-current Emergency Broadcast System). As originally envisioned, many home devices, including radios, TV and even smoke detectors, would have inexpensive longwave receivers built into them ensuring the that attack message would get out. A longwave frequency was chosen because the extended groundwave signal it produced was supposed to be relatively immune to the effects of a nuclear detonation.

Built for $2 million in 1973, WGU-20 was the prototype of ten DIDS “distribution stations”. These were to operate 50 kW at 167, 179 and 191 kHz with 700-foot towers. Besides the Maryland site, candidate sites for distribution stations were Maynard, Massachusetts; Mount Joy, Pennsylvania; Gray, Maine; Morristown, Tennessee; Starke, Florida or Chiefland, Florida; Mazomanie, Wisconsin; Carthage, Texas, Marshal, Texas or Seagoville, Texas; Alcova, Wyoming or Riverton, Wyoming; Mendota, California or Selma, California; Winslow, Arizona; Hermiston, Oregon; and Wallula, Washington.

These ten stations were to cover the 48 contiguous states. Alaska and Hawaii were to have special, unspecified arrangements. All DIDS stations would be partially below ground level and protected against blast and electromagnetic pulse effects.

The distribution stations would be activated by two “control stations” at 61.15 kHz, in Ault, Colorado and Cambridge, Kansas. These two stations would run 200 kW from 1,260-foot towers. Federal authorities would send the “go” signal by microwave and landline to the control stations. The ten distribution stations would then sign on and play taped messages to the public.

The DIDS system was never implemented and the job of attack warning in the US remained with the EBS (now the Emergency Alert System). However the 179 kHz frequency range was used by the government’s Ground Wave Emergency Network (GWEN) which, instead of notifying the public of a war, was supposed to be a (nuclear war) survivable communications network linking various military installations. 

Individual Action: Family Shelters

You Can Protect Yourself From Fallout Radiation

 

The National Academy of Sciences concluded: “Adequate shielding is the only effective means of preventing radiation casualties.”

You Can Protect Yourself From Fallout Radiation

Any mass of material between you and the fallout will cut down the amount of radiation that reaches you. Sufficient mass will make you safe. Concrete or bricks, earth or sand are some of the materials heavy enough to afford protection by absorbing radiation. There is about the same amount of shielding in eight inches of concrete, for instance, as in twelve inches of earth, sixteen inches of books or thirty inches of wood. In most of the country, everywhere except in areas hit by the heaviest fallout, these thicknesses would give ample protection for a basement shelter.

 

Why Prepare A Shelter Now?

Fallout can threaten more people than a blast and heat in a nuclear attack. We do not want a war. But we do not know whether there will be a war. But we know that forces hostile to us possess weapons that could destroy us if we were unready. These weapons create a new threat-radioactive fallout that can spread death anywhere. That is why we must prepare. No matter where you live a fallout shelter is necessary insurance. It will not be needed except in emergency. But in emergency it will be priceless- as priceless as your life.

The Family Fallout Shelter

 

 

Mythology and The New Testament

“Mythological talk and the individual motifs may be easily traced to the contemporary mythology of Jewish apocalypticism and of the Gnostic myth of redemption. Insofar as it is mythological talk it is to men and women today for them the mythical world picture is a thing of the past. Therefore, contemporary Christian proclamation is faced with the question whether, when it demands faith from men and women, it expects them to acknowledge this mythical world picture of the past.”  – Rudolf Bultmann

 

 

“There are two fundamental ways in which man can exist. His existence can be authentic or inauthentic. An inauthentic existence is one which the self is lost and scattered in its immediate concerns with the world and in which its possibilities are decided for it by the collective depersonalized mass of mankind – “das Man”, (the masses). The individual’s responsibility is taken away from him, he is deprived of his potentiality for Being, he is alienated from his genuine self. Resolutely accepting his “thrownwess”, (thrown into a situation) man takes upon himself responsibility for his existence, is liberated from the tyranny of things and of “das Man”, and projects himself upon his genuine possibilities.”  – John Macquarrie on Bultmann’s philosophy and theology in thought.

 

 

 

 

“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.”  – Henry Miller

 

Mi brother, mi Pessoa

 

 

“The whole of human tragedy is summed up in this tiny example of how the people we think about are never the people we think they are.”    – Fernando Pessoa

 

 

“Your ships, Lord, didn’t make a greater voyage than the one made by my thought, in the disaster of this book. They rounded no cape and sighted no far-flung beach – beyond what daring men had dared and what minds had dreamed – to equal the capes I rounded with my imagination and the beaches where I landed with my ….. thanks to your initiative, Lord, the Real World was discovered. The Intellectual World will be discovered thanks to mine. 

– Fernando Pessoa