This poster came out in 1956 as an advertisement for National Civil Defense Week. I finally got one of these with the "National Civil Defense Week" title at the bottom. It features the same "guys" all of the Civil Defense posters from the era have. This really isn't a "nuclear" CD poster. It shows the natural disaster rescue service side of CD. Artist's signiture is "Hugh Brown." Date in bottom corner is 1956. The print at the very bottom says "Distributed as a Public Service by the Boy Scouts of America."

NOTE: 05-2005 These posters have been showing up on ebay since the death of former President Reagan as "Ronald Reagan Civil Defense Poster." Some ebay sellers have said that Reagan was "the poster boy for Civil Defense" in the 1950's and that this is Ronald Reagan on the poster. I had never heard of this in 20+ years of collecting CD stuff. I believe it's just a load of hooey to try to cash-in on Reagan's death. I may be wrong but it's funny that these were never advertised as such before Mr. Reagan passed away. In fact the first ebay listings for these as "Ronald Reagan Civil Defense Poster" showed up about 2 days after the funeral. Oh Brother.

NEW UPDATE: 03-2006 After an e-mail inquiry about this poster from someone who had read the above note I called the Reagan Museum and Library and spoke with the audio/video archivist. He had no knowledge of Ronald Reagan ever doing any posters or being associated with Civil Defense. After speaking with him this settles the matter for me of this allegedly being Ronald Reagan on the poster. During our conversation we agreed that if Reagan had indeed been the "poster boy" for Civil Defense he would have appeared on other Civil Defense related material and his name would have at least been used. It certainly would have been more than one poster that just happens to look like him.