Omdahl: Crackers in the capitol basement
At one time in my checkered careers, I was a contract writer for the North Dakota Civil Defense Survival Project, a federally-funded undertaking in 1958-59 to save the country in case of nuclear attack by the Russians.
This was launched only four years after Congress added "one nation under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. However, the thinking in the Pentagon was that this may not be a sufficient defense against those Godless communists so they wanted a backup plan, God notwithstanding.
Our first planning assumption was that the Russians would bomb the Air Force bases at Minot and Grand Forks. Bismarck and Fargo protested because they thought they were as important as Grand Forks and Minot and deserved the honor of being targets, too.
In North Dakota, it is our culture to resolve objections by taking complainers into the all-inclusive boat. So we added Fargo and Bismarck as targets without checking with the Russians.
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