In the early 1960s, Donald Kaplan, a practicing psychoanalyst, the poet Armand Schwerner, and Louise Schwerner, a scholar and wife of the psychoanalyst, created the The Domesday Dictionary: Being an inventory of the artifacts and conceits of a new civilization.  The Domesday Dictionary is a brilliant and artful compilation of summary definitions for the Atomic Age, which is defined as:

"The period of history beginning December 2, 1942 (3:25 P.M., Chicago time), when the first self-sustaining chain reaction releasing nuclear energy was achieved by the scientist Enrico Fermi and his colleagues in a converted squash court under the grandstands of an athletic field at the University of Chicago.  The Atomic Age was toasted in by the small assemblage present that Wednesday afternoon with Italian red wine doled out in paper cups and was announced by a coded telephone message to an absent associate: 'The Italian navigator has landed in the New World."

Most of the dictionary's definitions relate to the planning for the effects and aftermath of a nuclear explosion: Fallout, Firestorm, Mushroom Cloud, Survival Biscuit.  Some explain concepts of military strategy: Blunting Mission, First Column, Preemptive Attack.  Others entries describe specific human conditions such as Counterphobia:

"A compulsion to perform an activity which one actually is afraid of.  The compulsion is a symptom of an anxiety about fear. ... Counterphobics are people who engage in pursuits which normal people are not afraid to be afraid of."

Also, Kaplan, Schwerner and Kaplan describe strange governmental planning, including Free Postwar Postage:

"Free franking privileges instituted for the use of survivors of thermonuclear attacks.  In the event of some disruption of communications due to blast, fallout, fireball, radiation, firestorm, unexpectedly large bombardment, food poisoning, poor water distribution, the government of Canada, for instance, has stockpiled postage-free postcards to be used for change-of-address notifications."

A year after the Domeday Dictionary was first published, Sidney Lumet's film "Fail-Safe" was released.  The film was based on a novel by the same name.  The Domesday Dictionary tells us: "In a Fail-Safe military operation, bombs are instructed not to go beyond a certain point unless they receive positive confirmed orders to do so." 

"Holy Mother of God."

Notice the use of Domesday not Doomsday in the Domesday Dictionary.  Kaplan, Schwerner and Kaplan were tipping their collective hat to the compilers of the Domesday Book, which was commissioned in 1085 by William the Conqueror. The Domesday Book was a compilation of land and resource surveys created for tax purposes. William wanted to tax property to fund his mercenary army.  Like the Domesday Book, the Domesday Dictionary reflects the convergence of economic and military activities.  In the Domesday Book, the term "wasted" refers to land and property destroyed by William's army.

The Domesday Book was written in Latin and created by scribes. The book was originally called the "King's Roll" but later was called  the Domesday Book, in reference to Domesday (old English for Doomsday), the biblical Day of Judgment.  Like God's judgment at the Day of Judgment, the King's Roll could not be appealed and was the final word.  Its surveys were very precise.  Here is a survey translated into English:

"Roger de Lacy his son hold Tom , and William and Osbern [hold] of him.  In demesne they have 2 ploughs, and 4 Welshman 2 sesters of honey, and they have one plough.  There they have 3 slaves and 2 bordars.  The land is worth 20s."

Today, we hear the term "fallout" used with respect to the current economic crisis.  As Paddy Hirsch of Marketplace explains, fallout in economic terms is the ripple effect after the knocking out of investment banks, insurance companies, and commercial banks at the financial area of the world.  It is job loss, auto-makers begging for federal bailouts, and businesses unable to grow. It is also what cannot be seen.

As described in the Domesday Dictionary, the U.S. government  created plans to keep the the banking system going in the event of a nuclear disaster. It also planned to implement Loss Sharing, a process by which the "government would guarantee to pay, eventually, a percentage of the insured losses of individuals" after a massive nuclear attack.  Protection from fallout.

And as President Obama plans more economic stimulus and talks of nuclear disarmament, some people look for fallout shelters to protect against the mess of institutional carelessness. Others game survival in Wasteland. Here is a montage trailer of the online video game Fallout 3, set in the late 22nd Century in Southern California, where the protagonist lives in a fallout shelter known as Vault: