Be Prepared

Thinking about what to write for this post I thought about the changing ideas of danger. During the Cold War, there was a valid reason to be afraid, Mutually Assured Destruction ensured that even a mistake could trigger a global catastrophe that would end life for many and change life for whomever survived. As an average citizen, there wasn't much to be done, maybe build a bunker, make sure you could duck and cover, and hope for the best. The military though, as one of the sides that held the keys, could prepare themselves, had to prepare themselves and be in a state of constant vigilance 24 hours a day for years.

I think it was looking at a mug from one of the guard houses that I realized how much emotion an object from history can convey. Of course objects can convey emotion, looking at a well worn book or a guillotine or baby shoes, many people, even without personal experience are going to experience similar emotions. With personal experience the connection can be even greater, people don't but kitschy souvenirs the worldover because they love snowglobes and giant Señor Frog glasses. But to me, seeing the emotion of a period in a MIL-SPEC mug was strange. MIL-SPEC, also known as military specifications or a United States Defense Standard, is the standard technical requirements for things specifically made for the military or significantly altered commercial products. They ensure that military property and gear is safe, durable, usable, logistically compatible and a meet a variety of other standards.  Most everything that is at the Nike Missile site was MilSpec for the time which gives it a certain look. The use of concrete and steel makes everything look like it will last forever. It's also interchangeable, unpersonalized, standard. All the buildings, the uniforms, right down to the coffee mugs, it's all built to withstand the worst. As one of our guides said, this cup would still be around after a hurricane.

I don't like to plan for the worst, it seems like pessimism, which maybe is why when I look at the mug I see the fear and apprehension, a time when you would need a mug that you not only drop and not break but also beat violently on the floor. But also there is a determination and will to survive, that if the worst happens, we still might be worried about what we are going to drink our coffee out of. Granted a lot of what I could see in the mug can be explained by not wanting to replace coffee mugs, but I have mugs from IKEA that have survived a beating, surely MIL-SPEC designs for far harsher of a beating than Swedish children. Designing things, I don't consider that maybe it will need to survive a nuclear holocaust or that thousands of lives depend upon it. Maybe that's because of what I design or maybe it's the emotional environment. It's hard for me to picture a life where the threat of nuclear attack is an ever-present reality. Where I might take the orange terrorist threat alert seriously, where I have an everyday fear worth being afraid of.

I feel that now that the presence of danger in our lives is increasingly overemphasized. Just check out the google news results for danger and you can see that we are in constant peril from digital billboards, dirty houses, strangers, syphilis, children crawling under cars at the beach. The fears of the cold war left us with artifacts of spy satellites, smoke detectors, and bunkers. I'm trying to imagine what will be our products of fear, child leashes, portable blacklights and antivirus software?

Sidenote:
And what will our MIL-SPEC reveal to the future archeologists? Maybe the effects of globalization and contracting of defense work, counterfeit military equipment is on the rise so an increasing amount of our stuff isn't MIL-SPEC at all.