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I found John Holton’s blog today on CONELRAD (for C in the A to Z Challenge) absolutely engrossing. Maybe that’s because I actually have some memory of it all. Please take the time to stop by his blog and have a read. For those who have never heard about it, you’ll find it interesting. For the rest of you, it may bring back some kind of scary memories of school drills! 😀

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CONELRAD

Last year, my theme was portmanteau words, words that are formed by mashing together parts of two other words to make a new word, such as “dramedy,” a combination of “drama” and “comedy.” Words like CONELRAD are also portmanteaus, and they are also acronyms. CONELRAD expands into CONtrol of ELectromagnetic RADiation. It was a way of alerting the public in the event the Russkies were flying over here to drop an atomic bomb on us, AND it was a way to confuse said bomber if it tried to use radio transmissions to find the place to bomb.


The CONELRAD logo. Source: Wikipedia

After World War II, when the United States used the first two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union figured out how to create an atomic bomb, and the Cold War between the US and the USSR began. Obviously, the…

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