---
title: Keep 'em Shooting - Their Lives Depend on You
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/keep-em-shooting-their-lives-depend-on-you-1942/
description: Landscape-format graphic of two large guns firing from the lower right, a gun crew in silhouette beside them, with the muzzle flashes crossing the white
section: Collection
---

1. [Home](https://propagandaarchive.org/)
2. [Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)
3. Keep 'em Shooting - Their Lives Depend on You

[![Keep 'em Shooting - Their Lives Depend on You, 1942 US poster: Landscape-format graphic of two large guns firing](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/keep-em-shooting-their-lives-depend-on-you-1942.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/keep-em-shooting-their-lives-depend-on-you-1942.jpg)

# Keep 'em Shooting - Their Lives Depend on You

Landscape-format graphic of two large guns firing from the lower right, a gun crew in silhouette beside them, with the muzzle flashes crossing the white letters of 'Keep 'em Shooting' over a red and blue blast. The line 'Their lives depend on you' tells the worker that the soldiers' survival rests on output (fear-appeal, an implied threat to the men at the guns).

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
KEEP 'EM
SHOOTING
THEIR LIVES DEPEND ON YOU
ORDNANCE DEPARTMENT U.S. ARMY
[signature:] Binder
[imprint:] U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1942—O—481962
```

[← "Keep 'em Flying" is our battle cry! First class fighting men needed](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/keep-em-flying-first-class-fighting-men-1942/) [Keep 'em Shooting! Your Army needs more metal for more guns and bullets →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/keep-em-shooting-your-army-needs-more-metal-1942/)

## More propaganda examples that use the same techniques

- [Miniature of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, Les Passages d'outremer (BnF Fr. 5594, fol. 19r)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/passages-doutremer-council-of-clermont-colombe-1474/) (France · 1474 · Testimonial, Fear appeal). Content note: Medieval religious imagery and a French text describing alleged killings and captivity of eastern Christians, as used to argue for the First Crusade; the text is shown as written.
- [Anacoana fut pendue sans raison (engraving in Le miroir de la cruelle et horrible tyrannie espagnole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/anacoana-hanged-miroir-tyrannie-espagnole-1620/) (Dutch Republic · 1620 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Engraving of a hanged, bare-breasted Taino woman, burning huts and people being killed by Spanish soldiers.
- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (Holy Roman Empire · 1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
- [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Kingdom of Great Britain · Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [Proclamation de Sonthonax en créole, Cap-Français (Proclamation of Commissioner Sonthonax in Creole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sonthonax-proclamation-creole-1793/) (France · Aug 29, 1793 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating). Content note: Colonial-era proclamation on slavery and emancipation in Saint-Domingue; speaks of slaves, whips and 'Nègues' in period terms.
- [Gazette of the United States, "The Jeffersoniad" no. VIII, 14 August 1800](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gazette-us-jeffersoniad-1800/) (United States · Aug 14, 1800 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered.
- [Brolej Žemajčiaj! (Brothers Samogitians!): hand-painted broken-cross poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/brolej-zemajciaj-broken-cross-1862/) (Russian Empire · 1862 · Fear appeal, Transfer)