The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) is widely considered to be a dry and unemotional document. Published by the Department of Transportation, it outlines the basic specifications of all the street signs you could expect to see out on roads and highways across the United States. Most are familiar, but if you dive deeper into its pages, you can find some unsettling relics from darker times.
Back in the mid-20th century, America was tangling with the realities of nuclear war. Top generals contemplated targeting strategies, while engineers mused over whether there was anything to be done top stop a torrent of enemy missiles falling across the nation. These superweapons seemed to promise destruction on an overbearing scale, threatening the very existence of human civilization itself.
Against this bleak backdrop, government administrators turned to the concept of Civil Defense. The idea was to do whatever could be done to protect the citizens of the nation from the horrors of nuclear war and its immediate aftermath. In turn, the Department of Transport worked up some rather depressing road signs to help people get where they needed to be in these bleak and trying times.
Flip open the 1961 edition of the MUTCD, and you’ll find an important section on Civil Defense. It featured a handful of designs for traffic management in a post-nuclear world. Perhaps most interesting was the “MAINTAIN TOP SAFE SPEED” sign, designated CD-4. It’s purpose was highly unique:
The “MAINTAIN TOP SAFE SPEED” sign may be used on highways where radiological contamination is such as to limit the permissable exposure time for occupants of vehicles passing through the area. Since any speed zoning would be impractical under such emergency conditions, no minimum speed limit can be prescribed by the sign in numerical terms. Where traffic is supervised by a traffic regulation post, official instructions will usually be given verbally, and the sign will serve as an occasional reminder of the urgent need for all reasonable speed.
Basically, if you saw this sign, you’re supposed to be gunning it as fast as you can while still staying on the road. The intention is to limit your exposure to radiation as much as possible while traveling through contaminated areas.
The 1971 edition of the MUTCD expanded further on the Civil Defense section. The DOT had by this time developed a standardized sign for marking directions to fallout shelters, where citizens could wait out radioactive contamination falling from the sky after a nuclear attack. The document also specified a sign for decontamination centers, where those suffering radiation exposure might be treated by experienced personnel.
Further signs in this series include the “AREA CLOSED” sign used to designate areas of high radiological or biological contamination that are too unsafe for travel. The DOT also specified a blue “Evacuation Route” sign marked with the Civil Defense logo. It was intended to guide citizens to safety along pre-planned routes.
Ultimately, the Department of Transport prepared these signs for when things really hit the fan. Thankfully, the worst fears of the Cold War never came to pass, and these signs weren’t needed in any major emergency situation.
And yet! Some of these signs persist in the MUTCD standard to the day. The most recent edition still includes some of these signs—like EM4-1b ‘FALLOUT SHELTER’—but now places them under the category of Emergency Management signs. The bleak term of “Civil Defense” is no longer very relevant in government administrative circles.
Us car enthusiasts do like driving fast. Still, when the government has put out a sign telling you to floor it, you know the situation has to be dire. In the end, most of these signs have never been put to use, and that’s something we can all be thankful for. Regardless, the Department of Transport stands ready with signage prepared to deal with whatever might happen down the line.
Image credits: Department of Transport, top shot logobom/depositphotos.com
There should be a franchise about the brave couriers and their lead-lined underpants doing risky speed runs across the blasted radioactive wasteland that still has inexplicably well-maintained road infrastructure.
You should write it!
Here’s your get-out—there’s way less wear and tear on the road network with reduction in traffic numbers, post-apocalypse.
You can do some hand-waving about a more stable weather system too if you want to get around the “BUT WHAT ABOUT GROUNDWATER AND SNOW” people
Good ol’ MUTCD. The newest edition is one big monolithic bastard of a tome.
only seen the web version, would kind of love a copy of the hefty real thing
It’s quite heavy. We have an enormous shelf with all of the previous editions. They grow larger with each update!
Road Signs (spaced every few hundred feet) from WWII:
Let’s make Hitler
…And Hirohito
…Feel as bad
…as Old Benito
…Buy War Bonds
…Burma-Shave.
I remember seeing Burma Shave signs as late as the 90’s.. I can assume they were restored and maintained by locals, IIRC one in Maine said: In this world, Of toil and sin, Your head grows bald, But not your chin.
I have a very long driveway. I’m thinking some MAINTAIN TOP SAFE SPEED signs are in order.
how radioactive is your driveway
4-8 micro-rem/hr
War. War never changes.
~
player.modav carryweight 10000
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Oh, and the road could even be radioactive! (Like in FloriDUH)
“12/23/24 05:11 PM ET
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved a pilot project that would allow a company to build a small road made out of a radioactive fertilizer byproduct”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5054335-epa-approves-phosphogypsum-road-florida/amp/
(I only chose that article since it was the most recent)
I would just get a flying Delorean (or train), ha ha
“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need ROADS!”
Yeah, I actually remember when Montana had no speed limit in the late 90’s and thought that was so awesome. I still remember seeing the signs and they were just covered (It would have been a waste to go around removing all of them especially since it was temporary)
Really, it didn’t matter much since even outside of that time period you could go 90 and would still get passed
while those are USA specific signs, I remember signs on the autobahn sides and major roads that were for military convoys. ( we also had some in eastern France, but they were more obvious on West Germany )
It would be interesting to do a deep dive into weird signs on both sides of the pond.
you mean the yellow round signs? They are called MLC and are from the NATO and were nearly on all Bridges. Nowadays you will find them on older bridges
yes those.
Major chops Lewin for being familiar with the MUTCD, which I just consulted yesterday at work while calculating material quantities for a street capital project. Yes it is dry, probably more so than an insurance seminar. But imagine life on the road without it!
Maybe not as safe…but probably much more whimsical!
Thank you! I’m even on some MUTCD Facebook groups, good to stay informed
Indeed, especially getting his hands on a historic version. I just referenced a minute ago for the right curve warning sign number. It is amazing that despite a “Uniform” document, each state still adapts it and CA writes up its own. Also, that states are allowed to turn their signal heads sideways, color blindness be damned.
Usually that’s only done if there is a sightline + clearance issue, like under a bridge.
I’m old enough to remember Fallout Shelter signs all over the place, but not quite old enough to have experienced “duck and cover” drills in school. And I did grades K-4 on an Air Force Base that would have been a premo first strike target. And thankfully too old for Active Shooter Drills. Which are a premo sigh of how comprehensively fucked up this country is.
I still have my govt issued dog tags from when I was 5 and lining in Portsmouth Va
I suspect we are about the same age. I think we still had duck and cover drills in elementary school. I’m late Gen X.
56 – I’m an earlyish GenX, ’69 model year. Born just before men walked on the moon. <eek>
Bicentennial baby here. There were still fallout shelter signs on public buildings in our town and I recall a few duck and cover drills into the early 80’s
Lived just outside a major city (Pittsburgh) so it was more kiss your ass goodbye. Probably the better option to be honest.
It’s either really odd or really telling that the schools on base never bothered with the drills… Definitely fallout shelter signs all over though.
Kiss your ass goodbye on a major base.
Exactly! Even the somewhat minor one that was Pease AFB in NH in the ’70s. KC-135s and FB-111s. And of course, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard right next door was a big fat Soviet target too.
I don’t remember duck and cover drills in school, but I remember hating “the Ruskies”. I started elementary school 1983 or so.
I grew up in California doing earthquake drills where we would hide under our desks. Equally as pointless as duck-and-cover nuke drills. But there was still an air raid / nuke siren on a public building near by. Never heard it go off.
Early in my travelling for a living career I was in some random town in Iowa when all the tornado sirens went off. Being a New England lad that scared the ever-loving-poop out of me. At which point you find out very quickly that they give tornado warnings by county, but if you aren’t FROM there you will have no idea what county you are in. I got in the habit of asking when I checked into hotels…
Good times! Growing up in Maine, the volunteer fire fighters were called out by LOUD horns on the two town fire stations. Which they also blew at noon and 6pm as both tests and time markers for everyone. But that sound was nowhere near as terrifying as those wailing tornado sirens!