Throughout the 1950s, U.S. policymakers actively encouraged Americans to participate in civil defense through a variety of policies. In 1958, amidst confusion concerning which of these policies were most efficient, President Eisenhower established the National Shelter Plan and a new civil defense agency titled The Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization. This agency urged homeowners to build private fallout shelters through print media. In response, Americans used newspapers, magazines, and science fiction novels to contest civil defense and the foreign and domestic policies that it was based upon, including nuclear strategy. Many Americans remained unconvinced of the viability of civil defense or feared its psychological impacts on society. Eventually, these criticisms were able to weaken civil defense efforts and even alter nuclear defense strategy and missile defense technology.

The Swedish civil defense during the Cold War Era was a well-developed and well-planned organization in comparison to many other countries. This caused civil defense ideas to come closer to individual citizens’ everyday lives and influence how they should adapt to the threat of nuclear war, thus creating a culture of civil defense. The purpose of this thesis is to elucidate what this militarization of everyday life looked like in Sweden during the Cold War and how it affected people’s everyday life. This is done through studying a civil defense journal between 1945-1975. The articles in the journal are analyzed by how they are portraying the day-to-day life in the context of civil defense. Partly through articles about propaganda and various civil defense courses and exercises, and partly through articles portraying the physical militarization of society, primarily fallout shelters and bunkers. Of particular interest is the contrast between the dark Cold War narrative and the narrative concerning the security and comfort provided by the welfare state. Finally, the thesis argues that the journal and its work can be seen in the context of militarization of everyday life. It tried to spread its militarizing vision in society, and did – incomparison to other countries – succeed in that pursuit. Militarization played a vital role in reaching out to the public, and in disseminating the idea of a welfare state that takes good care of its citizens, even during the hardest of times.

This creative thesis is a braided narrative in which I explore the promised lands of Utah through my travels in the summer of 2008, the Cold War defense industry, and the early career of writer Edward Abbey. America's domestic and foreign policy shifts in the first decade of the Cold War contributed to the rise of modern environmentalism and to the creation of countless new religious movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s. To illustrate the cataclysmic upheavals of this era, each chapter of this thesis has been organized according to anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace's schema of revitalization movements. In both an historical and personal context, I investigate the tensions between freedom and preservation, between defense and vulnerability, and, ultimately, between solitude and community.