Modest Beginning

Girding itself in nuclear armor, the U.S. has devised such costly weapons as supersonic aircraft, attack and defense missiles, continent-wide radar-warning screens and atomic submarines. But it lags in a weapon that the Rockefeller Report last January warned would become "an increasingly important deterrent," i.e., fallout shelters in which the U.S. populace could wait out nuclear attacks. Last week the Administration took a halting step toward improving that deterrent. Appearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense and Civilian Mobilization Director Leo Hoegh outlined his program for public education on radiation, asked a modest $13,150,000 to get a prototype shelter program going.

Of the funds sought, $1,850,000 would be used to survey existing buildings, tunnels, subways, mines and cyclone cellars. Reason: Nevada and Eniwetok Atoll tests have shown that radiation can be cut to one-five-thousandth of its outside intensity by 3 ft. of soil, 2 ft. of concrete or 2 1/2 inches of steel. Hoegh hopes to find many a shield of that size readymade. In addition he will finance architectural and engineering research on methods of incorporating more sophisticated shelters into new homes and buildings. He would also pick an underground garage, school or hospital under construction in each state, put up the extra cost of adding shelter facilities, then urge local governments and industry to emulate the example. All in all, in an age when missiles have become a real threat, Hoegh's plans represented a modest beginning to a national necessity. But they were, at least, a beginning.

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