More Ebola cases in the US, but the TinMan is prepared!

[Tinman]

I'm prepared for the worst:

[kwakers]

I see you are giving a salute to our politically correct fearless leaders who are in charge of the well laid out plan to keep Ebola from coming here to our shores Joe.... Ha It seems just as effective as their plan to control our border, and our 'undocumented workers' who are having their free passes printed as we speak....To be handed out AFTER the elections 10 days from now of course........Off to bed with a smile. Is that also your Gator hunting suit? One look at you in it will scare them right over to the East Coast and the Bikers and sharks in Daytona........kwakers

[Brad Pittiful]

always good to be prepared

i cant get ebola...i dont have health insurance...so im lucky

[Tinman]

Yes, that is indeed a one finger salute. That's a Soviet bio-warfare suit, it has a external filter canister and hose (unattached in photo) for the really bad stuff.

If you saw the movie "K-19 The Widow Maker," this is the same suit that was provided for the crew members who had to go into the reactor containment vessel. Unfortunately for the seven crew members (who died two days later from massive radiation exposure), these were bio/chemical suits and not radiation suits (they didn't have any radiation suits available when the sub made it's initial trail run). The suit I'm wearing (and the matching one the wife has) came from the same vendor who provided the suits for the movie.

Further going off topic (if there really is a topic), The submarine used in the movie was an actual Soviet Juliet Class sub which did carry nuclear warhead missiles. It's last active duty (right up untill the fall of communism) was to patrol off the Eastern Seaboard (of the US) between Washington D.C. and Key West Florida. It was brought to the Channel Side Shipyard in Tampa Florida to be modified to resemble the CCCP's first nuke powered sub. The wife and I went over to the shipyard to photograph and view the sub while it was being worked on in a floating dry dock.

When it first arrived, it was without question a sobering sight and had a large red hammer and sickle on either side of the conning tower. While it was being cosmetically reworked in the dry dock, it looked much like it did in the opening scenes of the movie (when it was in the Soviet dry dock during final construction). I have some great night time photos of workmen welding on the sub and working in earnest to complete the project (I've not yet digitized those pics).

Going over to see and photograph that Soviet submarine was part of a fascination I have with the Cold War Era. I was in Florida during the Cuban Missile Crisis and it was a very frightening time. To this day, I've never seen such massive military build-up and activity on US soil as occurred during that time. I lived in the flight path of McCoy Air Force Base which was headquarters for the Air Operations of the planned air strikes preceding the invasion of Cuba. The base was on high alert 24/7 and air traffic was constant in and out of the base.

It was a never ending stream of forward recon radar planes (a modified version of the old Connie airliner), KC-135 Stratotankers (modified Boeing 707's) and B-52 bombers. Mixed in were cargo planes, F-100 and F-105 tactical strike fighters. Some U-2's were moved here and all the Cuban U-2 missions, (including the one which took the now famous photos of the Soviet missile sites) took off and landed here.

The rails were jammed with constant trains moving military supplies, tanks, jeeps, trucks, personnel carriers, etc. The highways were jammed with military convoys day and night (no interstates here in those days). Everyone in the military reserves seemed to have been "called up" including my father. But, the most vivid and frightening sight I remember was seeing Nike Surface to Air Missile batteries (on mobile field launchers) placed all along the side of Highway US 1. My peaceful and slow paced Florida had become ground zero for World War Three and seemingly overnight it was transformed into something like a Banana Republic on steroids in the middle of some military coup.

Air raid sirens (they were in every community back then) were tested every day at 12:00 noon. We had "Duck & Cover drills at school and at work. The schools even had evacuation drills where convoys of parents showed up and actually hauled students to air raid shelters. They stepped up the Emergency Broadcast System tests on the radio and TV. I remember being extreemly unsettled one morning of the crisis when some moron at Norad put the wrong tape recording on during a radio test. Instead of the normal "this is a drill test" broadcast, the announcement was that it was NOT a drill and that the Emergency Broadcast System has been activated.

We were immediately instructed to tune to Norad or Conelrad (depending on what part of the country you lived in) for further instructions (those old CD triangles on your radio dial). At that moment, I was about as sure as anyone could be that The Bomb was on its way. It was about five minutes of sheer terror and wondering how soon before I saw the blinding flash of light followed by partial or complete incineration. The whole Duck & Cover thing just didn't seem to offer much protection against this ...

[muz54]

Fascinating and insightful followup post, Tinman. I can't imagine what it would have been like to have had to enact those drills. The worst we ever had in this country was earthquake drills which would have been about as effective as you've shown in your post.

[SMS88]

Suit looks fun to wear & appropriate especially for the ladies going to the mosque on a friday!
No need to worry about Ebola -its not airborne,its vaccine spread with only vaccinated persons infected so far..... so the wise wont accept any Bill Gates WHO freebies

[Idris]

I understand that during the Cuban missile crisis my parents actually started saying goodbye to their friends. I also know that RAF Cottesmore (in Rutland) permanently had four fuelled and nuclear-armed Vulcan V-bombers stood at the end of the runway with engines running and under strict "no recall" orders!

[mbox2000]

I remember the great Duck and Cover drills we had in grade school for Nuke attacks. Get under the desk, cover your head and kiss your *** goodbye.

[Tinman]

Fun times, fun times. It's hard to imagine that some piss ant backwards country with insane dictators like North Korea and Iran want to bring back this kind of thinking.

[motorman]

Hey Joe i guess that's your halloween costume taken care of!!