In the midst of the bloody Korean War and what would be decades of superpower warfare, the answers to unrivaled civil defense were ''duck and cover'' drills, bomb shelters and mass food storage. But for northern Utah in the early 1950s, desperate times called for even more desperate measures.

Today, many of the Cold War survivors who lived in Cache or Rich County in 1951-52 live with a permanent reminder of the angst surrounding fears of nuclear war: a small blood-type tattoo hidden beneath his or her left arm on the rib cage. For this disappearing generation, their fading tattoos symbolize the fading facts and records surrounding this local piece of Cold War phenomena.

After a couple of notices in The Herald Journal of May 1951 (excluding a guest commentary to the newspaper in 1998 by T.C. Skanchy), no historical information on the tattoos given to so many northern Utahns was discovered through any health department, medical association or archive. The records lie in the decades-old recollections of those who took part in this undying measure of civil defense, whether as medical professionals or school-aged children who simply did what they were told.

''It won't hurt! And it may save a life,'' proclaims the front page of The Herald Journal on May 22, 1951. A photograph of ElRay Christiansen, president of the Logan temple, receiving his blood-type tattoo from Omar Budge, chairman of the blood-typing committee, accompanies the encouraging statement.

At that point, four days into the civil defense campaign sponsored by the Cache Valley Medical Association of which Budge was district coordinator, the committee had already tattooed 120 Logan business, government and church leaders. The call was heard loud and clear.

''The purpose of this campaign is to have readily available the type and Rh factor of an individual to help protect him in case he is injured during a wartime period of any disaster which may necessitate the immediate call for blood,'' Budge announced. ''In the event of disaster, large amounts of blood could be made available on a moment's notice to be shipped to neighborhood areas who may be the victims of such a condition.''

By the end of 1952 when the program's popularity diminished, every resident of Cache and Rich County who wanted one from toddlers on up was sporting a blood-type tattoo that varied in size, but usually measured an inch or two in height and width.

With special approval of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for members to receive the tattoos, and the social pressures of patriotism in all its forms, one of the few surviving doctors of the time said the permanent imprints were ''questionable but never questioned.''

''We went along with this because we were asked to do it first of all, and second, we were all afraid the Russians would bomb us,'' said Merrill Daines, of Logan. ''But this wasn't some sort of national civil defense push. My guess is it was some eager beavers in the local defense unit that thought this [blood-type tattoo] would be easy to sell because it's the patriotic thing to do.''

''We were really swimming against the tide here,'' he said. ''No one in their right mind would trust a tattoo to determine someone's blood type.''