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For the most part, the West seems to have avoided significantly preparing the civilian population for a nuclear exchange, despite considering it a dangerously likely risk. It's understandable that continuity of government, command & communications were more urgent priorities, but it's shocking to me that nations such as France and West Germany made so few preparations, the latter especially. West Germany expected to become a battleground, and very probably one with widespread use of nuclear, chemical, and even biological weapons. But (from what I can tell) it seems to have had an apparently fatalistic attitude that if the balloon went up, they were all dead anyway.

Contrast this with Switzerland, which could expect to avoid being either a high priority target for either side or a focus of an offensive; and yet Switzerland developed considerably more shelter space than was required for its entire population. Or consider Israel, for an example in a more threatening environment.

Obviously not every nation can be Switzerland, even if they tried, but it surely can't be outside the realm of possibility for the NATO nations to have (comparatively) robust plans for civilian protection and survival. In the United States at least I could imagine such preparations also being used for disaster response and recovery. To be sure, a full-scale Cold War nuclear exchange would be difficult to survive even with Swiss-scale preparations, but it would increase the likelihood that there would still be a nation on the other side of it.

Is there an elegant POD that would ensure substantial and consistent investments in civil defense and civilian survival by Western governments in the Cold War?
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