most cities across the country required people to build and maintain fallout shelters.

This was formalized with the creation of the Council of National Defense on August 29, 1916. The British responded with an organized effort which was soon copied in the US.

Attacks on non-combat ships, like the Lusitania, presented another threat to non combatants. Strategic bombing during World War I brought bombing raids by dirigibles and airplanes, with thousands of injuries and deaths.

This was the first major total war, which required the involvement and support of the general population. World War I Ĭivil defense truly began to come of age, both worldwide and in the United States, during the first World War-although it was usually referred to as 'civilian defense'. For example, as early as 1692, the village of Bedford, New York, kept on staff a drummer, whose responsibility was to sound the town drum in the event of a Native American attack-a very early precursor to the wailing sirens of the Cold War. Nonetheless, there are some early examples of what would today be considered civil defense. Since ancient times, cities typically built walls and moats to protect from invasion and commissioned patrols and watches to keep an eye out for danger, but such activities have not traditionally been encompassed by the term 'civil defense.' The US has a particular lack of early civil defense efforts because it was seldom threatened with a significant attack. There is little known history of civil defense in the United States before the twentieth century. Emergency management and homeland security replaced them. Late in the 20th century, the term and practice of civil defense fell into disuse. United States civil defense refers to the use of civil defense in the history of the United States, which is the organized non-military effort to prepare Americans for military attack and similarly disastrous events.

Integrated Public Alert and Warning System.

Most cities across the country required people to build and maintain fallout shelters.