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Nuclear threats once again seem to be in vogue. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is threatening to test a ICBM that would allow him to send atomic weapons to the U.S. mainland. Just before Christmas, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump seemed to be calling for a renewed nuclear arms race with Russia.

And just after Christmas, a fake news story prompted Pakistan’s defence minister to take to Twitter to threaten nuclear war with Israel.

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But we’re still far from the hair-trigger madness of the Cold War, when the slightest misstep threatened to ignite nuclear armageddon between NATO and the Soviet Union.

Canada’s bunkers have been decommissioned, the civil defence corps disbanded and the sirens disconnected. Below, a gallery of rarely seen artifacts from when Canada stood ready to endure armageddon at a moment’s notice. Most items have been provided courtesy of the Edmonton-based Canadian Civil Defence Museum Association.

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War was not an abstract concept for the men and women who prepared Canada for nuclear conflict. The country’s civil and military administration was packed with Second World War veterans who knew full well what a ruined city looked like.

So there’s an uncomfortable accuracy to these illustrations, prepared by the Canadian Emergency Measures Organization, showing Ottawa turned into a ruin. Planning for nuclear war usually assumed that Canada would largely be hit by collateral damage; bombers getting lost or crashing on their way to nuke the United States.