In Event of Enemy Attack
Feb 3, 2016
In August 1951, this sign was posted along Roosevelt Boulevard in Northeast Philadelphia, near the main gate to the state hospital at Byberry.
The only time the highway was actually closed because of enemy attack was on 15 June 1955, when as part of a nationwide Civil Defense drill, Reading Terminal in Center City was designated a surprise target for a large atomic bomb. The mock bombing was said to turn most of Center City into a radioactive wasteland, as well as hypothetically killing one-third of the city's population; presumably, the other two-thirds were not allowed to drive on Roosevelt Boulevard for the duration.
Nationwide, the drill left 8.5 million Americans counted as dead and another 10 million deemed displaced. With results like those, it was hard to feel that the exercise was a resounding success, and nothing like it was attempted again.
Over the next fifty years, however, even without an atom blast in Center City, Philadelphia did lose almost as many people as were tallied in the civil defense drill. The city population in 1950 was greater than 2 million; the 2000 population was just a shade over 1.5 million. Suburbanization, of course, was behind the depopulation; no enemy attacks were necessary, but Roosevelt Boulevard itself was among the policy and infrastructure developments that were critical to the process.
Since the year 2000, Philadelphia has again started to grow. By 2014, the population had recovered to the level it first reached in 1910.
The sign was removed many years ago without fanfare.