Michael Loewinger

And then we learned little by little that FEMA's mission was really, really going to be to get ready for the big nuclear attack from the Soviet Union.

In the early 80s, Leo started to hear whispers about classified programs at the agency.

Every day on his trip up the elevator at FEMA HQ, he'd ride by a secret fifth floor manned by a security guard.

Mostly, he rolled his eyes at all the Cold War theater, wishing FEMA would focus more on preparing Americans for natural disasters.

But he still wondered, what were they doing in there?

the majority of its funding.

Garrett Graff.

And about a third of its workforce was actually hidden in the nation's classified black budget, the special budget that Congress oversees that protects our most secret programs and capabilities.

And FEMA on a daily basis is in charge of tracking the whereabouts of everyone in the presidential line of succession.

So that in the event of a nuclear war, it knows where all of those people are, how to get them to secure relocation sites like the Mount Weather Bunker, and who would be best positioned to be the person who takes over as president of the United States in the event of a nuclear war.

I wonder if this classified continuity of government planning helps explain why there was so little media about FEMA when it was first created.

I think the feds just didn't want to draw attention to their secret plans.

That said, the coverage did pick up when the agency launched a controversial new initiative.

A mass evacuation program.

There was sort of this sense of, well, if you could just get 20, 30, 50 miles away from a major city, you would at least have a chance to survive the initial blast from the nuclear weapons and then live into nuclear winter.

Government officials estimated that in the worst case, 60 million Americans could survive an attack.

Can you imagine all those urbanites swamping small towns and rural areas?

News reports at the time featured a mixture of fascination and incredulity.

My God, you're going to have modified anarchy after that sort of thing.

How in the world are you going to coordinate the recovery and putting leadership back into place?