Signs on building throughout New York City are all that's left of a widespread government effort to shelter millions of people from the fallout of a nuclear attack. Whether building basements would have succeeded in saving lives remains a matter of historical debate. But the hundreds — if not thousands of signs — that remain attest to a time when nuclear war threatened to break out at any moment. ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7scHLrJxnppdkr6p7z6ijoqyZmMBwvM6loK2hk6h6qbHRnqpmr5iuerW0xKucZpmimnqvwcKlnJqqXZuurbjOrqtmq5iaubWx0Waqop%2BeqHqwuoybrKKklJ67qL%2BMoqVmpqmYfLjG2aywsaA%3D

When we reach the dirt road leading to Drax Hall plantation, Esther Phillips suggests we stop the car. Phillips, 73, gets out and draws in a deep breath. There’s a faint, sweet smell of something akin to rum out here, about eight miles from the capital city. The dried remains of sugarcane, burned then harvested, flank the road. This is about as close as she can get. Drax Hall, a Barbados plantation where sugar has been reaped for nearly four centuries, was for so long just an ordinary part of what Phillips understood as her wholesome childhood.

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. If the Upper Midwest is the fail-safe for Democrats’ Blue Wall, then Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz may serve as a break-in-case-of-emergency tool. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris selected Walz, a popular former congressman and ex-high school civics teacher, as her running mate and will introduce him to the nation at a rally Tuesday evening in Philadelphia.

In recent months, state legislatures across the country have broadened efforts to subsidize private school tuition with taxpayer dollars. New proposals for these programs—collectively called school vouchers—have appeared in more than a dozen states and passed as major priorities for Republican governors like Kim Reynolds in Iowa and Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas. Since 2021, Arizona, Florida, Utah and West Virginia have also created or expanded voucher plans. Meanwhile, a handful states like Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Wisconsin have run voucher programs for years.

In the face of a disaster, are you prepared? Not unless your bra doubles as a face mask. Dr. Elena Bodnar, originally from the Ukraine, developed the Emergency Bra after being inspired by the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster. The bra is meant to be removed, separated into two cups, and turned into two face masks. According to CNET, the masks can filter out chemicals as harsh as the ones at Chernobyl.