This is how easy it is to lost track of stuff you thought you could never lose.
A cache of emergency war supplies, to aid in survival efforts in the event of nuclear attack, was discovered in a Cold War bunker found in the masonry of the Brooklyn Bridge.
But no one in the Department of Transportation knew anything about it. Nor apparently did anyone else.
Like a time capsule, the cache revealed.
Some containers were marked with two dates notorious in the annals of the Cold War: 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into space, and 1962, the year of the Cuban missile crisis when the two superpowers may have come closest to war.
Sarlin said one of the containers was marked, "To be opened after attack by the enemy."
The stockpile included empty water drums and boxes of medical supplies, such as tourniquet bandages and an intravenous drip. Also, there were cans of high-calorie crackers with instructions to consume 10,000 calories a day per person. The instructions said the crackers should be destroyed after 10 years, but they were mostly intact.
I imagine most people would focus on the age of the supplies, the out-datedness of the stock.
I'm thinking of the person or persons who put this cache together. How frightened yet responsible they were in 1957 and again in 1962, the date written on the containers.
In 1957 the Soviet Union launched the world's first satellite. The total surprise of Sputnik so galvanized the nation that even students like me, in the sixth grade, felt responsible for studying harder to close the Sputnik gap and beat the Russians. In 1962, the Cuban missile crisis had a lot of us thought it was possible that there would be a nuclear war.
Some group thought to prepare for the future in case the worst happened.
Today, My pal Ray stops me and makes a very good point:
"So here were talking about a losing a fixed-in-place Cold War bunker in the middle of New York City, one of the most populated cities in North America. Worse, the bunker is literally in the Brooklyn Bridge, a prominent city landmark... Lost, just completely lost it - For 50+ years.
Yet everyone on the left is constantly screaming that we didnt find Saddams WMD's in Iraq?. Hell, we cant even find our own stuff here at home!"
Posted by Jill Fallon at June 5, 2006 11:13 AM | Permalink