ABSTRACT
Being able to assume a planetary, as opposed to a global, imaginary is a surprisingly recent phenomenon. A planetary imaginary includes globalities of every kind but also geology, atmosphere, glaciers, oceans, and biosphere as one totality. Proliferating forms of globality including the specific visualizations of science, finance, and environment both achieve ultimate scale and are unified at the level of the planetary, which raises an important question about how collective problems and security can, and should, be imagined. Part of a larger Cold War recalibration of American society through nuclear danger, the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) campaign attempted to shift responsibility for injury from the security infrastructures to the individual citizen, now positioned as properly informed about everyday risk via civil defense programs and expected to be both alert and resilient in a minute-to-minute confrontation with nuclear war.
