89 Silent Facts About The Cold War Few Americans and Russians Know

Due to Cold War A-Bomb attack fears, some school children in NW Indiana were given blood-type tattoos as a "walking blood bank" program

77. During the Cold War, the federal government planned for a scenario known as Plan C, which would have instituted martial law, arrested those connected to “subversive” organizations, implemented a censorship board, and prepared the country for life after nuclear attack. There was no Plan A or B.

78. During the Cold War, the secret city of Zheleznogorsk made plutonium for atom bombs. One reactor generated heat and electricity for the local populations and could not be turned off. So it continued to produce enough plutonium to make a new bomb every three days until it was shut down in 2010.

79. Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech that first recognized the Cold War was delivered to a college in Missouri in 1946. Mikhail Gorbachev gave a speech there in 1992, declaring the end of the Cold War.

80. During the cold war, Urho Kekkonen (the former president of Finland) negotiated with Soviet officials in the sauna, raising the temperature until he got what he wanted.

The US developed a portable recoilless gun for firing a small nuke 2-4km during the Cold War

82. During the Cold War, MI5 planned to use gerbils at airports to help detect terrorists, secret agents, and subversives.

83. During the height of the cold war, the US launched a hydrogen bomb into space resulting in the "greatest man-made light show.."

84. During the Cold War, most records were banned in the Soviet Union. This spawned an era of bootlegging in which the music was recorded onto x-rays films and smuggled in.

85. 750,000 bunkers were built in Albania during the Cold War one for every four inhabitants. They were a drain on the economy and almost never used.

Project Pluto was a cold war era program to develop a nuclear-powered ramjet cruise missile which would have an unlimited range. One of its drawbacks was that it would spew fission material as exhaust.

87. During the cold war, America sent Romania 20,000 Bibles, which the Romanians subsequently turned into toilet paper because they had a shortage.

88. During the cold war, the Soviets would feed their soldiers an explosive feedstock as a dietary supplement to keep them warm.

89. During the Cold War, West Berlin was isolated from the European power grid; several small coal power plants had to supply the Western sector