Civil Defense Of The New Frontier

...No wonder that the original hostility of key Pentagon officials to civil defense has evaporated so quickly...

...those who follow this felicitous suggestion will at least attain surcease without resorting to the drugs prescribed by the Rand Corporation experts...

...Such erratic associations will not be long tolerated...

...Sometimes both were urged in the same breath...

...If America is to have a civil defense program of any consequence, it is evident that Washington must do a good deal more than exhort the individual to take care of himself...

...Goure's ingenuity, however, is inexhaustible...

...Now is the time for commitment...

...The myth that Russia already has an enormous civil defense program in operation has been assiduously cultivated by those interested in selling shelters to America...

...The point is more subtle...

...There can be no further delay...

...Witness the response to a simulated attack on Chicago a few years back: After the CD Director ordered the radio audience to head for the prairies, the Mayor seized the microphone and told Chicagoans to stay where they were and take cover...

...That one or the other giant will take the step is a strong probability at the present writing...

...To those "hard-headed" enough to pay any price for physical survival, making an enormous investment in civil defense on the basis of these assumptions might make sense—if civil defense had no demonstrable bearing on the likelihood that a nuclear catastrophe will occur...

...In August a reporter made bold to poll every Washington CD employee he could find...

...Now the Air Force wants to sell the idea that there is a 'shelter gap.' " All of the lurid press reports about Soviet CD depend on the testimony of one "authority," a man named Leon Goure (who happens to work for the RAND Corporation...

...The most up-to-date item on the question comes from the November 11, 1961 New York Times...

...Nothing Kennedy said during these ten months represented a fundamental departure from this attitude...

...No emergency supplies were to be found in the buildings which housed CD employees in Washington...

...Either from fear of ridicule or fear of uninvited guests, some shelter owners keep the fact to themselves...

...There is never a hint of blood on these slick pages...

...Presidential, Congressional and public apathy inspired bumbling CD officials to actions that were sublimely ridiculous...

...if ten million or so of our sloppier citizens disappear as a result of their lack of ability or will to survive...

...If it is significant that the President is committed to civil defense in a way Eisenhower never was, it is equally significant that his first ringing endorsement reached its climax with these words: "Every American citizen and his community must decide for themselves whether this form of survival insurance justifies the expenditure of effort, time, and money...

...There is no assurance, of course, that Russia will not opt for a serious civil defense program in the near future...

...This grand scheme supposedly projected "the non-military defense of the Nation ten years into the future," taking into account "progressive changes in weapons and in defenses against them...

...For myself, I am convinced that it does...

...Current American CD measures are certainly not of a magnitude to alter the calculus of risks in favor of greater bellicosity...

...While the 1958 plan was somewhat ambiguous, it was essentially a triumph for the shelter option...

...What are the likely domestic and international repercussions of a massive program to move American society underground...

...Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, MIT, Penn and others have appointed committees to appraise schemes for carrying on the higher learning beneath protective sod...

...A shiny and expensive system of sirens nad been installed in the city, and cameras clicked as the national director of the Office of Civil Defense Mobilization stepped forward to sound the alert...

...but, in the words of an AEC official, "few knowledgeable, intelligent people need to be hurt seriously" by it...

...Then, according to the AP dispatch, "lie pulled a pistol from a large can of dehydrated food and said: `Get one of these and learn to use it.' " A series of further incidents compelled Governor Brown to assign wartime CD responsibility to the National Guard "to end talk of guerrilla bands threatening to shoot down people fleeing from cities under attack...

...Austin Betts has already complained that "somehow a vociferous group...

...Once it appears that your opponent has drastically cut his possible losses via civil defense, his threat to attack you becomes believable...

...It's really up to you, brother...

...I The main guidelines of the present civil defense program were laid down in 1958, with the promulgation of the National Plan...

...Reprints of the above article may be had by ordering from DISSENT, in minimum quantities of five or more, at ten cents a copy, prepaid...

...I. F. Stone notes that "when the Air Force wanted more money for bombers, it leaked stories about a 'bomber gap: When it wanted more money for missiles, it leaked stories about a 'missile gap,' which seem to have been equally exaggerated...

...Probably...

...Whichever does, another restraining thread will have snapped, and civilization will have moved still closer to the abyss...

...has managed to associate nuclear explosives with evil, great hazard to health and insecurity to world peace...

...The following item may be a grim portent of the future: "The 'Little Red Schoolhouse' of sentimental memory is all but gone from the contemporary scene, and the 'Fallout School,' with multi-purpose construction, protective features, and full usefulness as a community center, is here...

...if he does, your hardened or mobile retaliatory force destroys his urban population, inflicting losses so heavy as to be "unacceptable...

...Goure's fertile imagination finds evil potentially in the fact that the Moscow subways could provide shelter for two million people...

...The state of emergency preparations in Battle Creek were charmingly revealed in May 1960, when a national emergency civil defense drill was held...

...Large quantities by special arrangement...

...is to take hot tea...

...One thousand shelters are estimated for the entire state of California...

...Nobody knows with any certainty...

...The public, whether out of apathy or skepticism, seems already to have voted a resounding "NO" on the do-it-yourself program...

...It's just the same as not committing suicide...

...The Kennedy prescription for national survival in nuclear war, after ten months in office, was more of the same—and not very much more, at that...

...The volume of propaganda has been immense, and as early as July 71% of the public was reported "in favor of fallout shelters...

...There can be no equivocation...

...This may all be fantasy, since there is as yet no Look correspondent with cabinet rank, but there are many signs that the drift of things is in this direction...

...To survive a decade in which one or both of the major powers possess a credible first strike capacity is difficult to conceive...

...OCDM officials were proud to announce this Fall that two building permits for local shelters had been applied for within one week for the first time...

...Either you belong now—committed to your nation's defense—or you do not belong, and so stand `uncommitted.' Today, no commitment in this matter is an open invitation to party-line Communist penetration...

...No mention at all is made of the size of the projected attack...

...The best first aid for radiation sickness...

...We possess a "credible deterrent" when the enemy understands that we would prefer to sacrifice the unsheltered proportion of our population in a total war rather than acquiesce to his political demands...

...Fortunately, however, a serious civil defense race has not yet begun...

...Entrepreneurs with vision (and a scent for the fast buck) are following the lead of such pioneers as the Fox Hole Shelter, Inc., of Southern California and the Los Angeles Nuclear Survival Cor poration...

...Five thousand megatons would raise the total to 58%, and 20,000 megatons . . . 89...

...One embarrassed official, after trying the gambit "the fact that your doctor doesn't take good care of his body doesn't make you distrust his advice," confessed that Washington would be too hard hit for shelters to make any difference...

...What will this money buy...

...the flow of inquiries at OCDM, we are informed, has reached "tidal wave proportions...

...True, the Donald L. Rheem School is buried in the earth...

...A pamphlet recently published by the Nutley, New Jersey, Civilian Defense Organization may indicate the quality of life in the Fortress America of the future: There can no longer be any doubt in anyone's mind that Russian and Chinese Communist aggression is both virulent and brutally planned...

...Even if fireballs never again sear the face of the earth, how much cultural and political freedom will remain in any country totally mobilized for nuclear war...

...The school is a particularly inviting target for the advocates of a multi-billion-dollar program to put America underground...

...A deliberate attempt is made to link the shelter program with the pioneering tradition and the rural virtues...

...The argument, in official lingo, goes like this: We prove that we are "serious" about nuclear war and are ready to "resist nuclear blackmail" by protecting enough of our population to risk going to "the brink of war" in defense of "our rights...

...When one actually divides the total area of the Moscow subway system (7,500,000 square feet) by the U. S. OCDM minimum long-stay space requirements (20 square feet per person), the resultant figure is approximately one-sixth of Goure's estimate...

...We have narrowly escaped nuclear catastrophe triggered by accident more than once in the past decade...

...Frank Ellis (a man with an unerring instinct for le mot juste) proclaimed a great national "revival for survival...

...Power will inevitably gravitate to the military...

...Through at least November, 1961—more about the future below—we can say that the "new" civil defense program did remarkably little more than "encourage" the construction of privately owned fallout shelters...

...Fallout is definitely "unsanitary," something of a health hazard to the careless...

...Hydrogen bombs might almost have been created to give Mom an excuse to do some home-canning...

...Indeed, fallout appears chiefly as an excuse to do something which is rather fun—to climb into a cozy nest and attain some real togetherness...

...Shortly after, the CD Coordinator for Riverside County, California told a meeting of police reservists that refugees from Los Angeles might pour into the county through San Gorgonio Pass, seizing local water and food supplies...

...This will be only one of the "little "adjustments" which will have to be made if a colossal investment in civil defense installations is actually to save many lives...

...Employees said that their only attack instructions were to gather in the hallways and await orders from wardens...

...FEDERAL CIVIL DEFENSE AUTHORITY...

...The Russians are going to build "simple earthen shelters" just before they attack us—until then they really don't need them...

...An iron framework of control, with obedience made habitual by constant drill, must extend to every school, factory, office, church, and home in the United States...

...3) "some warning" has been given...

...After all, as Frank Ellis puts it with exquisite logic, civil defense is "the Christian thing to do...

...If the expenditure of newsprint be a gauge of anything, civil defense is the hottest subject of the year...

...The source of this reassuring estimate is never divulged...

...Second, a program to discover and mark "available community shelter space in existing buildings throughout the United States...

...a Roman Catholic priest affirmed (in the magazine America) that God might not look with disfavor on the use of a revolver to protect one's family from an unwanted and possibly radioactive guest...

...As of that date, there was one and only one "approved and completed private fallout shelter" in New York City...

...Such a system obviously could not depend on the volunteer "air-raid warden" or the local cop for enforcement...

...One might suspect Americans of not believing what they're told...

...Russia currently has an arsenal valued at 50,000 MT, and the U. S. 100,000 MT...

...I had already read the December, 1958 anouncement that "planning is underway to provide additional fallout protection at OCDM Operational Headquarters in Battle Creek...

...After 45 days, precisely five permits had been taken out by city residents, with two more in the entire county...

...VI The quest for superiority through credibility has, however, certain drawbacks...

...And if the public is told that "existing" shelter space will protect only one-quarter of the population, it shouldn't be hard to "discover" a mandate to use this knowledge to build shelters for the rest...

...One of the most convincing projections, done for the Institute for Defense Analysis, judges that given six months to build fallout shelters and get in them, the explosion of 1000 megatons would kill 22% of the American population...

...V Suppose that these conditions were met...

...And, as General Spaatz perceives, what better proof can a country give that it's so "serious" about nuclear war that it's about to start one...

...Civil defense is the key to avoiding nuclear blackmail and the only way for us to stop being a gutless nation.—WILLIAM NOYEs, CIVIL DEFENSE DIRECTOR, OMAHA, NEBRASKA...

...A few crackpots may believe this, but no responsible decision-maker could think that civil defense was foolproof...

...The President wants civil defense, Nelson Rockefeller wants civil defense, Barry Goldwater wants civil defense, and if any important politicos don't, they are keeping their reservations to themselves...

...But what about food and water, I ventured to ask...

...According to New York law, fallout shelters must be approved by the Building Department...

...Seeing Dillon's scowl, Kennedy is supposed to have remarked, "Fort Knox full of molten gold wouldn't do us much good after an attack, would it...

...A program to protect one's population, Herman Kahn and other theorists of the cold war have long realized, is the prime requisite for pursuing an aggressive nuclear strategy...

...It gives us a "credible first strike" capacity, and permits us to abide by the beguiling doctrine of "massive retaliation...

...That blast effects might instantly incinerate fifty million Americans, fallout shelters or no, goes unmentioned...

...Back in 1952, when no constructive use could be found for the abandoned Percy Jones Army Hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan, the huge building was turned over to civil defense bureaucrats as a national headquarters...

...Through efficient implementation of the National Plan we hope to prepare this Nation to withstand an all-out attack, and to recover and win...

...some of the birth pangs were eased "with the help of Time, Inc...

...Civil defense which is thought to be effective cancels the necessary condition for a "pure deterrent" balance between powers...

...If shelters had become public policy, they remained emphatically an individual responsibility...

...At this vibrant "nerve center" of America's civil defense operation, someone had forgotten to wire the sirens to the central control button...

...Chicago and Cook County received many plaudits when they speedily passed new building laws to encourage shelter construction...

...Another said simply, "I'll head for the country, I guess...

...As California's CD Director confessed, "we can't even get people out of San Francisco after a football game...

...The ghost of WilliamMcKinley might rest easily as long as the government's role was merely that of providing "the stimulation necessary for the American people to make preparations" for protection...

...True, it isn't exactly good for you...

...But now, since Berlin and the Soviet tests, civil defense has become a national obsession...

...However seductive the final product may turn out to be, who can believe that the sixty million copies of it which will be printed will spawn sixty million private fallout shelters...

...We're planning to do something about that...

...2) the public has "good protection...

...Clearly it is time to ask some basic questions about civil defense...

...But this is not the case...

...A "civil defense race," for all the rhetoric about "protection" and "insurance," is nothing less than a particularly "destabilizing"— hence a particularly deadly—form of the arms race...

...A hardy breed, those Muscovites...

...We must know "whether the Soviet Union is building civilian shelters for its people," declares a retired Air Force Chief of Staff...

...That, for all the hullabaloo, is about it...

...Furthermore, this "expert" does not find that the subway tunnels are stocked with food and water, usually thought helpful adjuncts to prolonged existence...

...Teller advises us that after two weeks of hibernation, we can emerge from our shelters to "clean up and rebuild our nation," and that "democratic institutions would function again...

...This can be one of the most significant indicators of its intentions, if and when it gets ready to launch a surprise attack...

...Look (December 5) goes so far as to claim that a definite decision to launch such a program "was made in the White House one day last summer...

...The "great debate" over the propriety of shooting your neighbors to keep them out of your shelter began in July, when a Las Vegas CD official warned that Californians would swarm into Nevada "like locusts" in the event of nuclear war and asked that the state militia be prepared to repel the invaders...

...odic manifestoes based on the insight that "the religious faith of church women provides a strong, normal motivation for home preparedness...

...This inspired the Boston press to headlines like the following: "SUPER SHELTERS FOR 50 MILLION WILL BE READY BY NEXT JUNE...

...These documents bristle with striking scriptural citations...

...They haven't the wit to understand that Western Civilization, human freedom and the dignity of man are on trial at the Brandenburg Gate...

...Aided by the President, who supplied a letter urging every citizen to do his duty and dig, Life managed to compress into a few pages the very quintessence of the current civil defense program at its most absurd...

...It would appear a sine qua non of a serious civil defense program that it be the immediate responsibility of the high military, and that it have the same unimpeachable status as the Polaris or Minuteman programs: this condition has already been partially fulfilled...

...Nothing happened...

...If the United States is to "stop being a gutless nation," gutless individuals must be silenced...

...The official checklist of equipment for The Compleat Shelter always includes a Bible and "other appropriate religious articles...

...If Russia does make a massive civil defense effort, the United States will either follow suit or resign itself to a substantially weakened strategic position: our likely choice is not difficult to predict...

...Where does the United States stand in this situation...

...In perhaps a year, this measure could save ten to fifteen million lives (McNamara) or three to eighteen million (OCDM).* Third, 126 million bushels of surplus wheat and tons of medical supplies can be buried in the vicinity of 191 fortunate cities...

...The Administration's major contribution to the campaign, a "definitive" hundred-page booklet packed with shelter lore, will be off the press by the time this article is published...

...One brochure opens brightly: "Remember grandma's pantry, its shelves loaded with food, ready for any emergency...

...Khrushchev, recent events suggest, may well have abandoned all interest in disarmament or even relative nuclear stability, and sees benefits in a murderous intensification of the arms race...

...Has the massive fallout shelter campaign had no other measurable impact on the country...

...From the city of Al Capone came word that a civil defense official was mounting a machine gun on his personal shelter...

...Men who believe with the Minutemen that "a lot of people in this country are Communists without knowing it themselves" will surely find this a hospitable climate...

...Governor Rockefeller has already picked up an appropriation which amounts to one-third of the current federal CD budget for his plan to "protect the young" of New York State, and it is not difficult to imagine other legislatures following suit...

...With warning time cut to minutes by the development of long-range ballistic missiles, mass evacuation became patently impossible...

...Not only an excuse, but also "storage space" in which to put the stuff...

...It is an illuminating experience to wander through the great halls of the OCDM building looking for possible hiding places...

...Secretary of Defense McNamara's national survey of "existing" shelter space in public buildings appears trivial in its immediate objectives, but suppose that its actual purpose is to gather information needed to plan an enormous public shelter construction program...

...Scientists do differ in their predictions as to the extent of possible damage from war of varying sizes...

...What kind of "protection" against nuclear war has been attained thus far...

...Enter John Foster Dulles...

...That this humanitarian was not thinking exclusively of criminals, prostitutes, and men without white skin is apparent from his observation that "many of these second-class human beings are the ones who are right now asking what the fuss is all about in Berlin...

...It seemed at first that a really dramatic departure was to be made by the Kennedy Administration in the area of civil defense...

...I1 The official literature on fallout shelters has to be read to be believed...

...most didn't know who their wardens were...

...Kennedy is not exactly audacious in treating potentially explosive issues, and we cannot yet be sure what his private views are...

...This must surely rank as the most viciously mendacious moment in the long history of the Luce publications...

...Upon a careful reading, it appears that the following assumptions have been made: 1) The attack is solely on "military objectives...

...remains finite, the most "rational" use of that power in attack is to concentrate on knocking out our nuclear bases, and this will leave some locales with no more than fallout to contend with...

...Early planning for nuclear survival had oscillated between evacuation and shelter measures...

...a stirring pamphlet titled How It Was Done quotes a Michigan housewife who reports "our training is fun for the children...

...My visit took place in September, 1961...

...IV Perhaps Kahn, Holifield, Teller and Co., have withheld criticism of the present feeble gestures because they have been privately assured that the Administration feels a massive federal CD program is essential, but considers it expedient to approach its objective with muffled oars...

...Add to this the highly cooperative behavior of the devotees of a massive shelter effort, and the curious failure to give tax exemptions for private shelter construction, and it becomes likely that a radical departure from the present program is in the offing...

...One is that the enemy will find your plan to protect your population so thoroughly credible that he will launch a pre-emptive attack before the shelters are completed...

...Nothing," according to the military, "could do more to convince Khrushchev that we mean business...

...But, as its designer points out to old-fashioned critics, "to prevent any shut-in feeling, large Kodachrome murals of mountain or seacoast views decorate classroom walls in place of the usual wall windows...

...At present, the Civil Defense Organization is the most obvious and most opportune instrument for recording each individual's committed stand on the question of appeasement or resistance to active, Party-Line Communism...

...Practicing for such an eventuality is a delightful game...

...The AEC's director of weapons development, Brig...

...The threat is then portrayed exclusively as the problem of radioactive fallout...

...Kennedy's "second State of the Union" address revealed his determination to push CD hard, and Congress was unusually accommodating...

...Perhaps, but how will the two hundred million-odd citizens not situated conveniently near a subway entrance survive to use these techniques...

...But even if one takes the more optimistic figures of the Holifield Committee or OCDM Life remains guilty of a statement so dubious as to impugn the position of the President of the United States—who knows better but lent his name to these sorry proceedings: "I urge you to read and consider seriously the contents of this issue of Life...

...Silence...

...How many Americans have actually built them...

...As long as the destructive power of the U.S.S.R...

...If the Russians abide by our canons of rationality, a gigantic shelter program might save millions of lives...

...The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testifies that "civil defense is an essential element of our over-all deterrent," while another general observes that "any nation that is serious about a nuclear war" must shelter its citizens...

...Nor do the subways offer satisfactory protection against blast and firestorm effects...

...Globe November 25...

...World War III may even restore some of Dad's patriarchal prerogatives...

...If you have good shelters, it is only prudent to tell people to get into them during a crisis...

...But there are some reasonable indices—most cities require building permits...

...James Reston and other inside-dopesters have reported this...

...It stands where you, the individual citizen stand—and "stand" each citizen MUST...

...Imagine the Congressional reaction to a request of a few billion for the boys in Battle Creek...

...the proud owner...

...It is highly important that each citizen participate actively in the Civil Defense Organization, now...

...Take Battle Creek, which is supposed to be some kind of "showcase" for the federal program...

...But, at least in the sixties, the enemy will not have the means to set the entire country afire or to make every inch of it fatally radioactive for more than a short period...

...This disease must be wiped from the face of the earth...

...YOU COULD BE AMONG THE 97% TO SURVIVE IF YOU FOLLOW ADVICE ON THESE PAGES...

...The official literature slides blithely over the problem, but in fact the training and disciplinng of the population to utilize facilities "rationally" will be an immensely difficult task...

...The twenty-billion-dollar figure is certainly a minimum for such a program—one expert on these matter sadvocates a long-term CD investment in the hundred-billion-dollar range...

...a columnist in Maryland even found certain "Darwinian" consolation in the prospect of nuclear war: "From a purely Darwinian point of view, it probably will not be calamitous...

...Could a civil defense effort of this magnitude protect a segment of the population from the most likely forms of nuclear attack...

...No creeping socialism here...

...A showdown must eventually come, or freedom shall be no man's privilege...

...Soon they will know...

...According to the "pure deterrent" theory, the enemy's population stands as a "hostage" to guarantee that he will not launch a nuclear assault...

...I was nervously assured by an underling that the basement of such a huge structure had a high "protection factor...

...In the age of Eisenhower, America's civil defense "program" was an amusing fraud...

...Vast areas of the country will be completely devastated, their inhabitants incinerated or suffocated almost to a man...

...Remembering that "the family that prays together stays together," the bureaucrats have relentlessly exploited the religious argument for fallout shelters...

...Psychologists who have pondered natural disasters and World War II experience tell us that an attack warning—if it is believed at all, another grave problem —will produce a calamitous national stampede...

...Nelson Rockefeller...

...Battle Creek's postmen are facing a challenge more awesome than rain, hail, or dark of night...

...Perhaps, but a close reading of the plans and a few fugitive press reports of people who actually tried it and ended up with "fall-in" shelters makes one wonder...

...We have already been besieged by propaganda which claims that the civil defense race has begun, and that the Russians are running far ahead...

...From foolishness and fraud it is but a short step to ugliness, and the shelter panic has revealed a sub-stratum of brutality in contemporary America which is terrifying...

...And fallout itself, in these pages, is conquered by abstraction...

...How then was it possible for Herman Kahn, who urges annual CD expenditures of $5 billion, to testify that Kennedy's plan is "the right way to get the business done...

...The other, more likely, possibility is that the enemy will start digging just as energetically, so that a "civil defense race" heightens the dangers of the arms race...

...The chief of the AP Moscow bureau writes that he has made "a sustained but unsuccessful hunt to find either a bomb shelter or anybody who has seen one in the Soviet Union," and correspondents from the New York Times and other papers confirm this...

...Here is a position of genuine nuclear superiority, and it is not surprising that the military metaphysicians have found it so tempting...

...But there are grounds for believing that he strongly inclines towards a Kahn-type "solution," and will eventually espouse it in the absence of significant political protest...

...in a sense it requires such a strategy...

...By altering the calculus of risks, a civil defense program which we believe makes a difference (even if this is a mistaken belief) allows us to take greater chances, and to extend our nuclear umbrella to Berlin, Laos, the offshore islands, etc...

...Far from the blast the well-sheltered may "survive," though many will certainly fall victim to the hostile environment which will await them...

...What might be achieved from more far-reaching programs in the future...

...In the world of the CD, ad-men, nuclear attack comes invariably at supper time or between midnight and morning, enabling the family to repair to the basement as a unit...

...Every loyal American should stand at the side of his neighbor, wearing an arm band of the Civilian Defense Corps, pledged to support and uphold the Constitution and the principles upon which our defense rests...

...Here is one sure refuge against the pressures which have disintegrated the modern family and sent Mom to the bridge club and the kids to the "peer group...

...This is not to suggest that America will joyfully embrace a total war because civil defense will render hydrogen bombs harmless...

...This document has been endlessly revised, we are told...

...Even the fortunate soul whose shelter has a built-in oxygen supply may starve be fore it is safe to come out...

...The neatly designed fallout school and fallout university, fallout church and fallout factory will be to no avail without a rigid system of central coordination and control...

...A massive federal program of blast and fallout shelter construction has been carried out, and Americans are habituated to march into the shelters in an orderly fashion...

...The discipline required would be the discipline of combat, and disobedience would have to be treated as summarily as desertion in the face of the enemy...

...The same grim logic will apply if America is the country which begins the civil defense race...

...The transfer of CD to the Pentagon is undoubtedly the most important step yet taken...

...This model city of 50,000 will be ready for the Russians in just 150 years, by my calculations...

...III These outbursts of viciousness, thus far, have been isolated instances...

...It is not contagious.—LIFE MAGAZINE...

...For the first time in a decade, an Administration request for a civil defense appropriation was approved without a cut: a total allotment of a third of a billion dollars...

...It seems unlikely, however, that a free society can even survive the preparations for nuclear war, much less the war itself...

...the Soviet Union, contrary to popular belief, is no better prepared...

...Frank Ellis had no shelter, nor Deputy Director Edward DcDermott...

...A survey of 40 states guesses that about 60,000 family shelters exist "or are under construction...

...The address .. . 810 Fifth Avenue...

...Kahn concedes this eventuality, but assures us that if we go underground without undue haste and keep our fingers close to the trigger, it shouldn't happen...

...Goure also believes that nationwide compulsory training courses in first aid, fire fighting, and rescue techniques speak volumes about Soviet intentions...

...Perhaps some have become unduly skeptical because the government so clearly fails to practise what it preaches...

...The President has repeatedly insisted that CD is nothing more than "insurance for the civilian population," but in fact a massive civil defense effort will have a crucial and dangerous effect on America's over-all nuclear "deterrent" strategy...

...Iri Nutley, during Civilian Defense Week, opportunity will be given to each person as a citizen to join the Nutley Civilian Defense Organization and thereby to commit himself or herself to defense of the American Way of Life—the way of freedom and liberty...

...The typical specimen hastily points out that nuclear war threatens the life of every American...

...Dad's primary duty as a pioneer is apparently to build the thing, no mean achievement for anyone who hasn't served an apprenticeship as a mason, carpenter and electrician...

...George McCarthy, the "Deputy Assistant Director for Shelters and Reduction of Vulnerability" has done nothing at all to reduce his own vulnerability...

...Occasional items directed at urban sophisticates stress that the shelter could do double duty as a wine cellar...

...First, expanded propaganda efforts to "educate" the public about nuclear warfare, producing "the stimulation and strengthening of the National Will" (Frank Ellis again...

...When one pieces together scattered figures buried in the back pages, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that, after an intensive selling campaign extending over many months, only a tiny fraction of the American population has chosen to invest in individual shelters...

...After confiding that the Administration really believes in a far more ambitious civil defense effort, one CD bureaucrat pointed out to me that "right now, we wouldn't know what to do with any more money than we have...

...A figure of $20 billion was mentioned as "the probable eventual cost...

...And when the government was forced to do something more than "stimulate," America would still be secure against Leviathan: "The action to be taken is for the local government executive to decide...

...You can recover from a mild case of radiation sickness just as you can recover from a cold...

...A civil defense program which gives us a "credible first strike" capacity not only allows us to opt for a strategy of massive retaliation...

...Perhaps impatient at a certain greyness which pervades even the most seductive OCDM appeals for fallout shelters, Life stepped into the campaign with a special issue in September...

...My argument that civil defense cannot be viewed sheerly as "insurance" finds interesting support in the universal American assumption that if they build shelters it could only be because they're about to attack...

...The model "fallout school" already exists at Moraga, California, near the GE Atomic Reactor...

...in the sketches he is shown in firm command of the symbol of the highest authority, the battery radio which brings in the mellow voice of CONELRAD...

...The official handbook on construction, The Family Fallout Shelter, declares glibly that "a basement shelter can be built with solid concrete blocks as a do-it-yourself project...

...OCDM has a Religious Affairs Office which issues peri • On November 24, it was announced that the survey was running six months ahead of schedule...

...The official CD publication, School Shelters, confesses that "the attempt to combine the ideal school and the ideal shelter creates a number of problems," but certainly the major hurdle will have been cleared once our children have learned that they can do quite nicely with sunlamps and a few murals from National Geographic...