The Tranquil Admiral

Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180 A.D.) saw the Roman Empire begin to crumble about him in war, invasion, pestilence and revolution. A great Stoic, he wrote: "Soon, very soon, thou wilt be ashes, or a skeleton, and either a name or not even a name . . . Why then dost thou not wait in tranquillity for thy end?" The U.S. Navy, contemplating the atomic age, last week achieved a comparable attitude.

Speaking to American architects in Houston, Tex., Rear Admiral William S. Parsons, Navy director of atomic defense, tore into the argument that men and cities should go underground to escape the terrors of the atomic age. Like an over-armored destroyer, said Parsons, overprotected cities would find themselves "safe" but paralyzed.

What to do? Just go on living, building, and waiting in tranquillity. Conventional protection against old-fashioned disasters like "tornadoes, fires and earthquakes" would do some good. "The sound approach," said Rear Admiral Parsons, "is to add atomic blast and radiation flash to the list of natural and man-made catastrophes which may at some time be encountered ... If we look ahead five or ten years we must consider the possibility of encountering atomic blast. This possibility may for some places be so small that it can be neglected. We should make every effort to add atomic facts of life--subtle and obvious, pleasant and unpleasant--to our folklore. [But] an attempt to provide complete (necessarily underground) protection against atomic attack at close range would cost so much, and would interfere so greatly with what we have come to regard as normal living, that it is unacceptable. The only alternative is to accept a 'calculated risk'--the military euphemism for taking a chance . . . Absolute safety has never existed this side of the grave."

The stoic admiral added: "There is nothing unusual about such a compromise with fate. We make these decisions each time we ride in a taxicab or go skating or skiing . . ."

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