EVENTS happen, but news sometimes has to be discovered. And frequently the kind of trend that to each community seems merely a local manifestation takes on a different importance when seen as part of a national shift in sentiment. Such is the subject of shelters--a year ago the disdained preoccupation of a few earnest civil defense types; then the subject of morbid jokes (betokening an increased preoccupation) and now increasingly a topic of lively dinner table concern. This week TIME'S cover story is devoted to shelters, an impressive piecing together of a nation's bewildered discussion and preparation for what it once thought too horrible to contemplate. The horror is no less, but it at last is being contemplated.

The Salt Lake City civil defense director told TIME: ''Some get right to the point; others hem and haw, but they all want to know--what do we do when we want to get to the toilet? At least people want to know something about life in a fallout shelter. A few months back they couldn't care less." The sheriff of Bade County, Florida, finds the county, including Miami, "totally unprepared for a nuclear attack," but now willing at least to listen to an occasional speech on the subject. ''They sit there for a half hour and look scared, and then they forget everything you've said. But you do get a nice letter from the program chairman." TIME'S story is based on such human touches gathered from its 13 correspondents and 12 stringers (part-time correspondents) around the U.S.

The story was written by Richard Oulahan Jr. and edited by Champ Clark. Oulahan was so full of the subject at home that he discovered one of his seven children piling up boards in the basement, all set to start building. He is now resolved to put up a "poor man's shelter" of his own. TIME'S own nuclear defense preparations in New York City, also just getting under way, will be part of the shelter program developed by Rockefeller Center (the TIME & LIFE Building is the newest building in this skyscraper complex). The Center hopes to provide a haven for its 38,000 tenants and as many as possible of the 160,000 visitors a day who enter the area. Here, as elsewhere, the shelter story is the same: belated interest, many obstacles, much to do.

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