Beginning on this day in 1962 and concluding at the month’s end just weeks before the Cuba Missile Crisis, Exercise Spade Fork was part of a US federal emergency preparedness plan to mobilise and 
reconstitute the government in the aftermath of a nuclear attack (see previously). In this scenario, run parallel to the military exercise codenamed High Heels II, America was hit first with a pre-emptive, decapitation strike targeting the presidential retreat and childhood home of Jacqueline Bouvier, Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island. Comprised of a force of seventeen hundred civil servants, an “Executive Reserve” received specialised training to maintain command and control and manage resources. Subsequent strategic doctrine, however, has superseded such a sequence of events, since taking out another power’s leadership is prone to failure and backfire as the easiest contingency to prepare for and without the central authorities in place, belligerents lose the ability to negotiate and put the decision to retaliate in the hands of rogue elements. Midway into the drill, plans were modified in order to provide cover for the mobilisation of army units to deploy to Mississippi in order to enforce the ruling of desegregation of public schools when the governor refused to honour the court order to integrate the state university.
synchronoptica
one year ago: a banger from The Jam (with synchronoptica), Keith Haring’s computer art plus a musical number about medication from Ginette Garcin
seven years ago: assorted links worth revisiting
eight years ago: Powers of Ten, The Great Fire of 1666, colonising Venus, discarded shopping lists plus a tree house in Stuttgart
nine years ago: more links to enjoy, a more accurate tree census, Aloha attire plus an antonym for omnipresent
ten years ago: the life of Caesar, the new temperance laws plus common misconceptions
