Against the Silent Killer

The U.S. war plan assumes that the U.S. will suffer the first blow in any major nuclear war. It counts on the expectation that the nation will not only survive the first onslaught but will have the military strength to launch a massive counter-strike and the morale to get the nation back on its feet. Yet, despite the urgent recommendations of the Gaither report, the Rockefeller defense report (TIME, Jan. 13, 1958) and most civil-defense experts, not a single city or state in the nation has a realistic nuclear-bomb shelter system--a system that on a national scale could save many millions of lives and perhaps make the difference between defeat and survival.

Last week New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller became the first elected official in the U.S. to come out for a compulsory statewide fallout-shelter program. Defying warnings that he was dealing with political poison. Rockefeller announced that he would urge the state legislature at its next session to back up the recommendations of his Special Task Force on Protection from Radioactive Fallout.

Among the recommendations:

> A campaign to tell New York's 16,000,000 citizens about fallout dangers and what can be done about them.

> A state law making fallout shelters mandatory in all new buildings, including private homes, and requiring owners of existing buildings to "provide fallout protection for their occupants" by a "specified future date."

> A state program to develop a cheap "survival kit" including a water container (ten gallons a person), a two-week supply of dehydrated food, candles, a battery-powered radio and a toilet container. Urgently needed, said the task force, is another survival item "not yet in existence": a cheap, accurate, simple radiation-detection device. Radiation "cannot be seen, touched, tasted or felt," and if people in shelters had no reliable way of testing whether radiation had fallen to endurable levels outside, fear and doubt could wreck their morale and impair the nation's capacity to rebound.

Critical Fortnight. The New York task force, made up of nine high state officials under the chairmanship of Manhattan Lawyer Oscar M. Ruebhausen, based its recommendations on two fundamental facts: 1) in a nuclear attack upon U.S. cities, fallout radiation, the "silent killer," could cause three or four times as many deaths as the blast and heat from exploding nuclear warheads; 2) inexpensive fallout shelters would provide a "very high degree of protection" against fallout radiation. "Although thermonuclear war would be a major disaster," said the task-force report, "the magnitude of the disaster can be markedly limited by protective measures . . . A successful fallout protection program can give assurance of survival to millions who might otherwise die or be seriously crippled from radiation sickness."

A six-person basement shelter on a design recommended by the Federal Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (see diagram) could be built by do-it-yourself homeowners for as little as $150, reported the task force. It could be built by a contractor for less than $500. At a small additional cost, perhaps as little as $7 per person, the shelters could be prestocked with enough survival supplies to last through a critical fortnight. Since the intensity of fallout radiation diminishes rapidly, survivors in hard-hit areas could start coming out of their shelters after a fortnight and set about the task of reconstruction.

Better Deterrent. What any serious fallout-shelter program is up against was evident in the jeering reception that the task force's report got from much of New York's press. "Ridiculous," cried Long Island's Newsday. "Smells of defeatism," muttered the New York Daily News. In rare agreement, the Wall Street Journal and the Fair Dealish New York Post cried that deterrent power, not shelters, is the only safeguard against nuclear attack.

But these criticisms missed the essential point that deterrent power will deter only to the extent that the enemy is convinced of the U.S.'s willingness to use it --and the willingness would be a lot plainer if the nation's citizens had the protection of fallout shelters. Said the task force: "The physical ability of families to survive even the most terrifying nuclear attack is, in the ultimate reckoning, a fact of crucial importance to our national security. The will to survive, coupled with the ability to do so, ranks next to military power in the nuclear age as the best deterrent to aggression and the best assurance of final victory over any enemies who might attack us."

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