As a way of easing fears while responding to several possible what-ifs, came the NEAR System (National Emergency Alarm Repeater) - a simple device that could be plugged into a normal AC wall outlet in homes or businesses. The system would detect a special frequency of AC current superimposed on the normal frequency and would sound the alarm - a buzzer contained in the "black box". The metaphorical meme "black box" - only recently coined and rapidly taking on meanings across many diverse fields - applied perfectly to the device both literally and metaphorically.
The NEAR program was intended to address perceived gaps in the Nation's warning systems, and was developed following the direction of Congress that 90% of the population be alerted in a timely fashion following the detection of an incipient Soviet nuclear attack on the U.S. There was quite a bit of confusion in the electric utilities regarding the infrastructure needed by each utility in order to address the receivers, costs, liabilities, and ownership.
The irony of this system was in its spin - the way it was demanded, developed, explained, and received in the midst of the cold war. When viewed from the present (2012) technologies of this sort seem
a paranoid and irrational response to a nebulous perceived threat, the
possibility of Soviet sneak attack. But the fear of attack was a product
of the system of Soviet demonization in the U.S. mass media that began creating
the boogie of international communism decades before. The brief respite
during WWII (following our declaration of common cause with Stalin) only served
as a backdrop for the strategic play of the late war as Soviet
"treachery" unfolded in Europe and Asia. The immediate turn
toward the USSR as enemy following the war provided a justifying
narrative that supported "big stick" defense policies (and the
creation of the military industrial complex in the 1940's and 50's) during a
period that should have been one of demobilization, disarmament, and reduced
defense spending. The drumbeat of anti-communist propaganda at home and
abroad became a self-fulfilling prophecy as the Soviets followed our lead (in
response not just to U.S. triumphalism but more reasonably to the history of
German aggression during the 20th century). It is difficult to calculate
the social and economic cost of what became the "cold war" - a war
that did not really exist in the sense of actual conflict - and histories of
the 20th century are yet to be written that set
aside this period as an analytical object, perhaps because it has not ended.
After 1989 (with the almost immediate pivot to threats in the Arab
world by the U.S. defense establishment) we have spent two decades waiting for
post-cold-war "demobilization" and "disarmament" in a
futile hope that somehow sanity would guide national policy - it never arrived.
Consider the recent claim by Romney that our principal geopolitical foe
in the world is Russia - the immediate response of gratitude for this remark by Putin is a reminder of the vested
and open interests in the illumination and redeployment of psycho-social structures of irrational fear still resident in the memories of
generations. So the NEAR system can be seen as a dorsal fin of a deep and
abiding fear, an ugly fear inscribed into our national character, sometimes not
visible but at other times surfacing and raising the goosebumps of our childhood,
saluted to by both parties each year in the senseless growth of defense/security appropriations in national accounts.
A little black box... Indeed.
