All Out Against Fallout

In the past decade, the U.S. has spent only $619 million--or 34-c- per year per person--on a limping civil defense program that has been received with public indifference. Last week President Kennedy proposed to spend half that ten-year total in a single year. "To recognize the possibilities of nuclear war in the missile age," said he, "without our citizens knowing what they should do and where they should go if bombs begin to fall, would be a failure of responsibility." To guard against such a failure, the President asked Congress to tack a $207.6 million appropriation on to the $104.2 million civil defense budget already requested earlier this year.

The President's request came just one week after a significant shake-up in U.S. civil defense plans. Under a reorganization pushed by the President and reluctantly accepted by Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization Director Frank B. Ellis, most planning and preparation was transferred from OCDM to the Pentagon. Ellis remains a presidential adviser, will supervise strategic stockpiling and minor civil defense preparations. Defense Secretary McNamara assumes the major responsibility for helping U.S. citizens survive a nuclear attack.

Water & Wheat Wafers. Defense Department plans are based on the grim realization that it is not merely hopelessly expensive, but tragically impossible, to protect 180 million Americans against the blast and flame of nuclear explosions; in a full-scale nuclear attack, as many as 50 million might die. What can be done, however, is to shield survivors from the deadly radioactive fallout that can drift down wind as far as 200 miles from a bomb blast. To protect against that danger, the $207.6 million requested last week will be spent mainly on a fallout shelter program.

The largest sum--$93 million--will be spent to mark existing community shelters in public buildings, underground garages, subway systems and the like. By late 1962, 34 million shelter spaces will be marked out and ready. Another $58.8 million will go for stocking a minimum supply of water and wheat wafers, first-aid kits, and tools for debris removal. Another $10 million is earmarked for modifying existing shelters; by adding forced draft ventilators, many can be improved to take care of more people. To get civilians under cover in time, $10 million will be spent developing the acronymously named NEAR (National Emergency Alarm Repeater), a buzzer alarm the size of a cigarette pack that would sell for $5 or $10, be plugged into home electrical outlets, and set off by special transmitters installed in local power plants. And to make sure that survivors do not leave shelters too soon after an attack, $9.3 million will be spent on radiation detection.

Beer & Britannica. No money has been set aside for home shelters. But by last week, the Berlin crisis and the Kennedy address combined to make more Americans than ever consider building their own. Day after the President spoke, civil defense offices across the country were flooded with demands for shelter information. In Denver, Home Builder Jack Hoerner quickly sold three new houses containing built-in shelters. A Virginia realtor put ads in Washington newspapers plugging "life and peace of mind outside the Washington target area" at Bull Run. In Chicago, Leo Hoegh, Eisenhower's civil defense director and now executive vice president of Chicago's Wonder Building Corp., reported a surge in sales. Wonder, which manufactures fabricated shelters, normally sells about 400 a month, last week took orders for 137 in two days.

Some cautious householders were already prepared with custom-built shelters. In West Los Angeles, Nobel Prizewinning Chemist Willard F. Libby proudly displayed his "poor man's shelter." Dug out of a hillside, it is protected with railroad ties and bags of dirt, is adequate for a 48-hour stay, cost all of $30. In Malibu, Missile Scientist and Electronics Manufacturer Bernard Benson, his wife and seven children had a $15,000 shelter built to withstand any bomb damage but a direct hit. Along with food and water, Benson has stocked his hideout with beer and a 1925 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. A nuclear attack, says he, will set civilization back at least one generation; with the 1925 Britannica to tell him how, he will start life over again at the national norm.

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