# Where can I find old civil defense films? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 10, 2001, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-i-find-old-civil-defense-films/92697 "2001-11-10T23:02:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![red\_dragon60](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ce73a5/32.png) [@red\_dragon60](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/red_dragon60)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2001, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-i-find-old-civil-defense-films/92697/1 "2001-11-10T23:02:43Z")
I am looking for the campy cartoons that had the duck&cover thing going, or anything like that. Any ideas for places online, or what to look for on file-transfer programs? I am also looking for movies of atomic blasts. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2001, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-i-find-old-civil-defense-films/92697/2 "2001-11-11T04:02:10Z")
Heh. I love the Internet. Google, “cold war civil defense films”. Hit #1. [http://www.wps.com/products/films.html](http://www.wps.com/products/films.html) Hit #5. [http://www.conelrad.com/conelrad100/short\_subjects.html](http://www.conelrad.com/conelrad100/short_subjects.html) Enjoy! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2001, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-i-find-old-civil-defense-films/92697/3 "2001-11-11T04:07:40Z")
There’s a movie/documentary thing called _The Atomic Cafe_ that has a lot of such things. Look for it at your video store. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2001, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-i-find-old-civil-defense-films/92697/4 "2001-11-11T06:18:37Z")
I’d definitely check out the _Atomic Cafe_ documentary that **Max Torque** suggested - it’s great. If you want stuff on the bomb itself, may i suggest a documentary entitled “Trinity and Beyond”, which looks at the US atomic weapons project from the 1940s to the mid-1960s. It has some amazing footage of a whole heap of tests, including those in Nevada in the early days, and those in the Pacific. The latter have incredible shots of old US warships being purposely blown-up. Much of this old footage has been converted from B+W to colour, and looks spectacular. [This site](http://www.vce.com/trinity.html) gives you more details on the film. And the original soundtrack is great. ---
**Author:** ![CnoteChris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/278dde/32.png) [@CnoteChris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CnoteChris)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2001, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-i-find-old-civil-defense-films/92697/5 "2001-11-11T15:08:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by mhendo \* > **Much of this old footage has been converted from B+W to colour, and looks spectacular.** Not to take away from an otherwise dead-on post (The documentary is truly stunning in it’s detail and overall thoroughness), but I believe that above comment is wrong. I saw the behind the scenes on the making of this documentary (I’m still waiting for the behind the scenes of the making of the behind the scenes of the original. It’s coming, I’m sure) and it doesn’t say a thing about taking black and white footage and turning it into color. What is does talk about is the lengths the producers of this documentary went in obtaining and cleaning up the color footage already in existence for this film. Some of it was classified, and some of it was already out there and been seen by millions before. But none of it, for all I know, has been altered that dramatically- it’s original in content. Again, it’s an amazing piece of work- it’s along the lines of the breathtaking ‘For All Mankind’ in its scope and execution, and is definitely worth seeing- but I doubt it resorted to colorization of black and white footage to get it’s point, and beauty, across… it didn’t need to. \*Just a slight nit-pick, but an important one to note. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2001, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-i-find-old-civil-defense-films/92697/6 "2001-11-11T15:18:20Z")
Whooooooops… **CnoteChris** is exactly right, and i didn’t read the website closely enough. The colour was _restored_ and not _added_ to the film.