EDITORIAL
CORRESPONDENCE Soap Bubb/es Saratoga Springs, N.Y. To the Editors: I read with delight Peter Steinfels's piece on Soap, mutterin& Amen, Amen, between each sentence [Sept. 30]. I would...
...Herman Kahn, for one, lists more than a dozen scenarios by which a nation might be drawn into thermonuclear war...
...In one essential respect those groups cannot be faulted: the primary challenge is not in surviving after doomsday, but in eliminating the very possibility of a nuclear-weapous doomsday through the dismantling of nuclear arsenals...
...000 0 0 @ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 THE WORLD OF SURVIVAL A paradox of the nuclear-weapons age is the way the United States goes about advancing war capabilities while negotiating arms treaties, at the same time--unlike adversary superpower Russiammaking minimum effort to prepare the general public for life in a post-nuclear-war environment...
...Now he sees the r e a s o n . It was, however, Attorney-General Griffin Bell who 25November I977:740...
...MARK TAYLOR (Continued on page 765) NEWS dk VIEWS: ?38 CORRESPONDENCE: 7~3 EDITORIAL: 739 W4~IIlNGTON IlEPOIlT: I l e l m s m e n , What Quarru...
...However, until disarmament is a reality, the unfortunate question of surviving possible use of The Bomb cannot be ducked...
...Forget the politics and invest in Heinekens--for less money...
...Clayton challenges two popular myths: the assumption that somehow the arms race will be brought to an end short of nuclear weapons ever being used, a delusionary idea, in his opinion, given the historical proclivity of nations to apply to war the weapons at hand...
...and the assumption that nuclear war will mean the utter destruction of the warring powers and a high Commonweal: 739 probability of the extinction of homo sapiens--the socalled no-survivors myth...
...There are occasional unofficial articles and books, notably Herman Kahn's, which remind that nuclear war is not synonymous with human extermination, that there will be life after The Bomb, and that people would be prudent to be preparing now for surviving the unthinkable...
...So, too, the Soviets, their preparations involving evacuation of large urban centers, underground, relocation of industry, and extensive shelter and food-storage systems...
...therefore, in an age of planning no planning is necessary for what, God forbid!, could be the greatest disaster in history...
...41106...
...Catch as these might echoes of 15 years ago, and threaten as they might more such nonsensical responses as then, they are serious topics...
...It wasn't Agnew at all, it was Richard "Killer" Helms "leaving courthouse," as the caption said, after being socked with a $2,000 fine and two years suspended but on probation and, worse, forced to agree to tell the truth at upcoming trials and investigations into the interesting activities he and his colleagues indulged in when he was cape d/ tutti capi of the CIA...
...Lost a little weight since last seen...
...I would like to add a comment on an unmentioned feature of ABC's defense more repellent to me than all the others...
...Who was it said-why, it was Jimmy Carter accepting his party's nomination--"I see no reason why big-shot crooks should go free while the poor ones go to jail...
...The impulse, however, is to debunk the Kahns and proceed on official levels as though the unthinkable were impossible...
...is in...
...I picked up the Times with a start that Saturday morning...
...Right now, whether out of blind ignorance or blind trust, the public is disturbingly passive on the consequences of nuclear war--with only a handful of exceptions: Philip Berrigan, Elizabeth McAlister and other small groups such as theirs...
...A public aware of the alternatives to nuclear disarmament just might become the force necessary to help bring disarmament about...
...Foreign $19...
...To the Editors: Regarding Raymond A. 8chroth's review of The Taster's Guide to Beer [16 September 1977]: Adolph Coors's support of "right-wing causes" may well be extravagant, but it's hardly necessary to deplore the man's politics in order to dislike his beer, probably the most overrated potable on the market...
...The Swiss are working in this direction...
...So Orwellian is the situation that some policymakers actually regard a comprehensive nuclear-survival civilian defense plan as a negative factor threatening the fragile balance of terror...
...The fact is, says Clayton, that "barring some totally unknown mechanism, the effects of total warfare today . . . would be unpleasant in the extreme but hardly terminal...
...Other questions for study might be crop resistance to ultraviolet exposure, the advisability of deep-soil farming, radiationproofing of houses, and the amounts and kinds of food to be best stockpiled...
...It is the situation the U.S...
...Specie/ two-Fear rate $29.50...
...Mtcre4|ms from Vet...
...5-/ TRE TIME TIIAT WAS T I l E SIXTIES: William B. Hixson, Jr...
...However, because a national nuclear-defense program was botched then does not mean that a sane, sensible plan should not be developed now for surviving in what will undoubtedly be an acutely radioactive or high-level ultraviolent environment for years, more likely generations, should nuclear war eventuate...
...For that matter, there is little doubt that ff that poor old ordinary citizen had told comparable lies and been found out he would have been up on perjury like a rocket, probably contempt as well...
...It could be tactical as well, for by catching the public up in discussion and education on the hews and wherefores of survival, arms control and disarmament might be made more of a possibility...
...The foolhardiness of not planning for the day after doomsday is scored by Bruce Douglas Clayton in a recent Bulletin o] Atomic Scientists, the journal with the clock in its masthead warning that the world, figuratively speaking, stands at nine minutes to midnight, nuclear doomsday...
...S/sg/o copy 7So...
...As long as these arsenals exist, there is the threat of their use, whatever the pledges and noble intentions, whatever the careful checks and balances...
...Natioaal Serials Data Program No.: ISSN 0010-3330...
...Clayton's advice is discomforting, and difficult to dismise even though it opens doors once again to the extremes of the fallout-shelter experience of the early 1960s and those hysterical debates about the sanctity of one's shelter and the morality of gunning down neighbors who might intrude and overcrowd it...
...There was Spire Agnew again, one-column head shot at the top of column one, microphone in front of him~ mouth open to show the bottom teeth, querulous, complaining expression, as of one suffering from hemorrhoids...
...Second c/ass postage paid at New Fork, N.Y...
...WAHHIHGTON REPORT HELMSMEN, WHAT QUARRY...
...JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN Lager, rhfthmB South Nyack, N.Y...
...1001'6 Telephoae: |312} MU 3-2042 A review et hb/Ic Ah/rs, L/toratore and tko Arts...
...What could the old nabob be nattering about now...
...The civilian population, it seems, must be held vulnerable and uninformed about coping in a post-doomsday world lest the nation be suspect of plotting a preemptive attack...
...Who wants to live in a wasteland...
...300 N. Zecb Read, Ame Arbor, /dick...
...Shock and horror...
...I don't know to what Degree of Aesthetic Acrobats this raises one who can hunt with the hounds and run with the hare, eating his cake and having it, while balancing water on both shoulders, but it has got to be a very special one...
...the son, no longer in drag, but with a perfectly weU-cut suit, and a girl of his very own...
...His point: the United States should institute programs of survival research aimed at preserving life and making it more possible for people to cope in a hostile post-nuclear-war environment...
...These groups are discounted, lampooned and worse, but they deserve credit for seeing the gravity of the problems and for trying to do something...
...For instance, it may be necessary, says Clayton, to switch to nocturnal farming and to adopt Arab-like protective clothing...
...Frank Getlein ?40 CAPITAL PUNISll~IENT---OR SUICIDE?: Lois Spear 742 TOIITUM AGAIN: Abigail McCarthy -/43 ON LEAVING IlOME: .tames V. Schall ' / 4 4 ~POilTEil AT TigE VATICAN: Desmond O'Grady ? S l GOVEIINMENT BY" WHAT PEOPLE?: Peter Stein/els -/5@ T i l e SCIlEEN: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...Printed In the USA and pub//shod b/-weok/y by Commonweal Publishing Co...
...Salut...
...Griffin Bell's Justice Department, as it is amusingly called, had agreed to try the Killer on a couple misdemeanors instead of the perjury charge that his lies to the United States Senate seem to the ordinary citizen to have richly merited...
...Cepyri~t O. lg77 Cemmeawee/ Psb//sblRg Co., Inc.--US and Canada: $17 a year...
...Certainly they are not lightly dismissed by Bernard T. Felt, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin...
...And for some four dollars a six-pack, too...
...Well, that was hard cheese on Dickie, all right, but he couldn't complain that the government hadn't done its best to carry out its part of the deal...
...In a note accompanying Clayton's article he remarks that serious students of international affairs believe that building nuclear weapons without an equal emphasis on how to survive their effects "is like test flying an untried plane without a parachute...
...Planning for survival after nuclear doomsday is in fact humane and practical...
...Foreign S33.S0 Commo~voel Is Indexed In Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Catholic PoriedJca/ Index, and Ihwk Review D/geol...
...I read the cutline...
...One of the ABC oMcials, whose name I have fortunately forgotten, managed to combine his passionate appeals for aesthetic creativity and freedora, with the sanctimonious assurance that, in the long run, (and long run seemed his mot iustr "no one who did anything wrong would be shown to profit by it...
...Sll MOOIKS: Barbara Mutkoski, Walter Arnold, Claire Hahn, Henry Warner Bowden, Thomas E. Quigley, John Deedy ?59 ILL4[]STIIATIONS: on ]rent cover and with articles about Rome, courtesy o] the Italian State Tourist Department JAMES O'GARA: Editor JOHN DEEDY: Managing Editor EAYMONO A. SCHROTN: Associate Editor ANNE M. RO|ERTSON: gd/toriet Assishset COLIN L. WESTERRBCK, JR.: Mov/es JOHN FANDIL: Poetry FRANK GLrTLEIN: Wasblngton BRIAN WICKER: @~ Erita~ ALAIN WOODROW: Paris HENRY TEN KORTENAAR: Rome DESMOND FISHER: Dub/In EDWARD S. SKILLIN: Pnb//skor RUTH E. TAYLOR: Advertising Manager Star: IJNDA F. KAYLER, PAMELA J. FITZGERALD, HARRIETTIE BALSKY COMMONWEAL 23| MADISON AYE., NEW YORK, N.Y...
...g24, to date available tkroogb Ueivor~ty M/crealms...
...Having thus uprooted the Green Bay Tree with one mighty wrench and prompted the Lord, this dextrous executive assured us we would see, before the end, for example, the unfaithful wife suffer from her infidelity...
...It just takes hanging in there for a few more episodes, while the ratings tick by...
Vol. 104 • November 1977 • No. 24
