Civil Defense: The Sheltered Life

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In Miller’s Cafeteria, in downtown Denver, four young women met for the afternoon coffee break—and almost immediately began talking about what weighed heaviest on their minds. Said Louise Epperson, a bank clerk: “I’d just as soon be killed as come out of a shelter and see the country desolated.” Gail Pitts, an account executive with a public relations firm, felt differently. “I want to be around when it’s all over,” she said, “but I must admit I don’t care too much about the idea of a fallout shelter. Still . . .” The third girl, Barbara Walz, an oil company receptionist, had a specific concern: “It’s the children who give me the most worry. With my husband in one place and me in another, and the children at school, we really have no control.” Marion Booth, office manager for a public relations firm, has no children. “But,” she said, “I have to think about my husband and mother. We have a good basement in our house, and I’m thinking of fixing it up as a shelter.”

By then, Denver’s working girls were deep in a conversational subject that has taken over the U.S.—survival under atomic attack. At cocktail parties and P.T.A. meetings and family dinners, on buses and commuter trains and around office watercoolers, talk turns to shelters. Almost everyone—man, woman and child—has an opinion. Those opinions differ wildly. Many feel that blast and fallout shelters are cowardly. “They would convert our people into a horde of rabbits, scurrying for warrens, where they would cower helplessly while waiting the coming of a conqueror,” said Major General John B. Medaris (ret.), former chief of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. Others believe that other moral values are at stake. Said Rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath. president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations: “It is the morality of men and affairs which challenges us, not the morality of moles or other underground creatures, slithering in storm cellars.”

Partisans on the other side are equally outspoken. They range from Chicago’s Syndicated Lovelornist Ann Landers, an all-out advocate of home shelters, to President John Kennedy. Said Kennedy in a July 25 television speech to the nation: “To recognize the possibilities of nuclear war in the missile age without our citizens’ knowing what they should do and where they should go would be a failure of responsibility.” In the coming months, he said, the U.S. Government would undertake to “let every citizen know what steps he can take without delay to protect his family in case of attack.”

That speech, delivered under the deepening shadow of crisis in Berlin, set off an incredible surge of U.S. interest in civil defense—a subject long scorned or ignored. Civil defense agencies were swamped with requests for pamphlets and questions about survival. Thousands of U.S. citizens have actually begun digging in. But the nation remains far from the day considered inevitable by one of the most experienced of its civil defense officials : Virgil Couch, 54, industrial specialist of the Office of Civil Defense in Battle Creek, Mich. Says Couch: “Civil defense must be part of the normal way of life. Like smallpox vaccination, we’ve got to get used to it and build it into the normal fabric of our lives. In the old days, for instance, outhouses sat in the backyard; now the bathroom has moved inside. Garages used to sit on the edge of the lot; now many garages have been built into the home. The next room to follow this pattern is the family fallout shelter.”

The Critical Questions. Despite the new sweep of concern about civil defense, despite all the talk and even the action toward shelter building, the U.S. remains dangerously ignorant and misinformed about that most critical of all human questions; survival. Just what would be the effects of an all-out atomic attack on the U.S.? What protective measures can be taken, and how much good will they do? What would underground life be like?

If a thermonuclear attack were to achieve complete surprise, the first warning would be the blinding flash, visible for hundreds of miles, of the bomb itself. Within an area of up to one mile from ground zero, everything would be vaporized; destruction and death, even to those in the deepest shelters, would be certain. Initial heat radiation would be released in two separate pulses within a few seconds and would incinerate virtually everything within a five-mile radius. Although fog or industrial smog would greatly decrease the effect, exposed persons would suffer third-degree burns out to ten miles and blistering out to 15. Within seconds after the heat would come the blast wave; reinforced-concrete buildings might remain standing within five miles of ground zero, but conventional frame structures would probably be wrecked up to ten miles away. Flying shards of glass and other debris could kill thousands; even human bodies, catapulted by the blast, could become deadly missiles.

Finally, after the heat and the shock waves, would come the most deadly of all the bomb’s effects: radioactive fallout.

When the bomb first burst, it would suck up millions of tons of earth and other debris, carrying them to over 100,000 ft. into the air and saturating them with more than 200 species of radioactive particles. Depending on wind and other conditions, these particles would fall back in lethal quantities over an area extending perhaps 150 miles from ground zero. As a rough rule of thumb, lag between the bomb’s flash and the beginning of fallout might be figured at one minute for each quarter-mile from ground zero; thus, at 30 miles it would be two hours.

It has been estimated that a great majority of the deaths suffered in an atomic attack would come from fallout radiation—and it is against radiation that shelters can be most effective. Given between 30 minutes’ and an hour’s warning of a 150-city thermonuclear attack, an adequate national system of fallout shelters might well cut the death rate from 160 million to 85 million; add an effective blast-shelter system, and the number of deaths could drop to 25 million.

The Second Deterrent. If the casualties from an atomic attack could be so dramatically reduced, the U.S. could almost surely arise from the rubble, fight back, survive, put together a society again and, ultimately, prosper once more. That ability in itself might well serve as a deterrent second only to the nation’s retaliatory military might in preventing an aggressor from launching his attack. It is in that realization that the U.S. Government, after years of paying lip service to civil defense, has begun to move.

Shortly after his July speech, President Kennedy transferred the main duties of the Office of Civil Defense and Mobilization to the Department of Defense, leaving only a small advisory cadre, the Office of Emergency Planning, under the direction of Frank Ellis, former OCDM chief. An aroused Congress—which for years had regarded civil defense almost as a laughing matter and had annually cut its appropriations to the marrow—quickly gave the Administration the $207 million it requested for the revitalized program. In the Pentagon, the new Office of Civil Defense civilian staff was beefed up by engineers and technicians from the armed forces, and a vast new blueprint for safeguarding the U.S. public is being drawn up. Assistant Defense Secretary Steuart Pittman, 42, an ex-marine who was appointed chief of OCD, set the goals for the first phase: “It’s an opportunity for people to take part in a vital defense program, to demonstrate the will to face up to thermonuclear warfare. This program carries a message to our Allies, neutrals and potential enemies.”

Under Pittman, who has been on the job for less than two months, civil defense leaders last week were readying a program of surveying, marking and stocking every existing public building in the nation that could serve as a shelter. Merely marking and identifying these sites, said Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, “could, without additional effort, save at least 10 to 15 million lives.” Next month the first teams of trained experts will begin the eight-month survey.

The Federal Government has no immediate plans to build new public shelters. The emphasis on the invigorated civil defense program is to encourage, advise and assist state and local governments, private industry and individuals to build them. And the marketplace for shelters offers just about everything the customer can afford. In Philadelphia, a polyethylene shell is selling for $2,800. San Francisco’s Armco Steel Corp. is promoting a sectional shelter, with modular sections of steel, which can be assembled like an Erector set to any size the customer wants. The Lone Star Steel Co.’s standard shelter, made in Dallas ($2,550, plus freight and installation), contains a nicety to gladden the heart of any claustrophobe: a window painted on the wall, showing an outdoor scene, complete with a shade that can be pulled down at night. In Salt Lake City, Pat Smith, daughter of local Civil Defense Director Ben Smith, is painting a large mural of an outdoor scene on the walls of the family’s basement shelter—”It’s a shelter,” her father says, “with a picture window.” A Loudon, Tenn., photographer recently installed a Fiberglas shelter with accommodations for 15 people in his yard, and in Jacksonville, a local millionaire has a blast cellar equipped with an elevator, a pool table and a keg of wine. At the Texas State Fair in Dallas last week, an exhibit of prefabricated shelters outdrew the blue-ribbon cattle and the mid way rides as a popular attraction. One exhibitor estimated that 350 people per hour had shuttled through his shelter in one day. In Olympia, Wash., William Walker put a sign in front of his shelter. “He who lasts, laughs.”

“It’s A Moral Thing, Too.” Plenty of shelters are available for around $1,500. Example: an underground shelter 12 ft. long, 9 ft. 4 in. wide and 7 ft. 10 in. deep, enclosed in 8-in. concrete walls, which would provide radiation protection for six persons and is partially blastproof. Its appurtenances include a hand-cranked air blower, waterproofing provided by two layers of asphalt paint on the outside walls, two layers of roofing felt covered with asphalt. But such shelters are beyond the means of many U.S. families. Although the Federal Housing Administration will guarantee home-improvement loans up to 20 years for approved shelters, most banks are reluctant to risk the money. “At least 80% of the units we install,” says St. Louis Contractor Joseph Shannon, “are put in homes that cost from $50,000 to $100,000. We get plenty of calls from people building their own shelters, asking us for advice. We give them all the help they want. There’s no profit in that for us, but this isn’t just a business. It’s a moral thing, too.”

To bring the cost of shelters within the reach of most families, the Government next month will introduce blue prints for a simple backyard or basement shelter, constructed of steel, concrete, wood or earth, which can be built for $150 or less. It will be primitive indeed, with a ceiling just 4 ft. high, but it would be as strong a shield against fallout as some of the most elaborate custom-built contraptions.

Shelter dwellers should provision themselves with at least a two-week supply of both water and food. For drinking, one quart of water per shelter occupant per day is considered necessary; in addition, another daily half-gallon per person is recommended for washing and other sanitation purposes. Although water should be stored in plastic or metal containers—blast might break glass bottles—anything would do in an emergency. The food should be imperishable or long-lasting, and neither salty nor sweet, to inhibit thirst. Says Margaret Moore, nutritionist for the Louisiana Board of Health: “Keep a few canned vegetables you can eat cold, to conserve fuel supply. Decide which canned meats you like cold, remembering saltiness. Pickles will help ease thirst, and canned vegetables are an extra source of liquid.”

Basic to every efficient shelter are an air-intake-exhaust system, a first-aid kit, flashlights and a battery radio (the shelter may need an antenna; otherwise, the radio might be useless underground). Chemical toilets are available at reasonable prices; the minimum provision for disposing of human waste is a stock of plastic bags. Among other useful items: sanitary napkins (which can double as bandages), toothache pills, tranquilizers. deodorants and air purifiers, tight-lidded garbage cans, matches, a can opener, bunk beds with paper sheets, books and games for children.

Nobel prizewinning Physicist Willard Libby plans to take a large supply of sleeping pills into his own $30 did-it-him-self shelter, so that he and his family could doze out most of the ordeal. Several companies are selling prepackaged, high-protein emergency food supplies, and the Mormon church is distributing a two-week supply of emergency rations, packed in a neat metal cylinder, to all its members, along with the urgent suggestion that all good Mormons stockpile a full two-year supply in their larders. Others purvey all-purpose packages, such as the Bolton Farm Packing Co.’s “home survival kits,” containing 49 items, from canned water to playing cards. Perhaps the most ghoulish shelter article is the “burial suit,” a $50 polyvinyl plastic wrapper for” anyone who dies in a shelter. It contains chemicals “to keep odors down” and can be used as a sleeping bag by the living.

In some areas, special equipment is necessary. Underground shelters in New Orleans, because of the city’s high water table, should be watertight or equipped with water pumps. Since a nuclear blast would almost certainly wreck the Mississippi River levees and flood the city, “coning towers,” to assure ventilation above the floodline (and also periscope surveillance of the outside) are standard features of New Orleans shelters.

Curiosity Can Kill. In Los Angeles, and many other cities, “survival stores” have been doing a boom business selling shelter supplies. Shelter Equipment Corp., a Denver enterprise, is operated by Rolf M. Weber and John Scott, both German immigrants and veterans of the World War II air raids over Berlin and Hamburg. When their store opened officially last week, its shelves had already been swept clean by customers who had attended a two-hour preview the previous weekend. “The sandbags are a must,” says Weber. “We are also recommending periscopes. Lots of Germans were killed when their curiosity got the better of them and they had to go out and see what was going on. That’s the worst thing about being in a shelter—wondering what is happening outside.”

Controversy still storms over one possible item of shelter equipment; guns (TIME, Aug. 18). Many of the million or more private shelters already prepared by individual citizens are stocked with weapons, and many of the diggers are prepared to use them, if necessary, on intruders who might try to join them. The Rev. L.C. McHugh, an editor of the Jesuit magazine America, recently stirred the coals of the argument by declaring that people who attempt to storm their neighbors’ shelters are nothing more than “unjust aggressors” and should be “repelled with whatever means will effectively deter their assault.” Last week Washington’s Episcopal Bishop Angus Dun answered McHugh. “I do not see how any Christian conscience can condone a policy which puts supreme emphasis on saving your own skin without regard for the plight of your neighbor,” he said. “Justice, mercy and brotherly love do not cease to operate, even in the final apocalypse.” Most Christians would probably recall the Biblical parallel of the wise and foolish virgins—and draw their own inference.

As inevitably as fallout follows the bomb, so have come profiteers, pitchmen, manufacturers of products that prove ineffective. “Lifesaving kits” contain a salve supposed to cause radiation to ricochet harmlessly off the body; in fact, no salve, ointment or grease has the slightest value as a fallout protector (neither does any of several brands of “antiradiation pills”). Jerry-built shelters bear the slogan “CD-approved” or other meaningless legends; actually, the OCDM approved nothing, merely set the standard for shelters. A widely advertised “fallout suit,” selling at the rate of 500 a week for $21.95 each, actually provides no more protection against radiation than a raincoat. A promoter recently approached W. Dan Bell, head of Denver’s Better Business Bureau, with a man-sized plastic bag which, he said, provided complete protection against fallout. All the owner had to do was crawl inside and pull the Zipper. But how, asked Bell, could the bag’s occupant breathe? That, said the promoter, was something he had not yet worked out. Similarly, a Boston entrepreneur advertised a handy “shelter” for only $4.50; it turned out to be a crowbar, for use in opening manhole covers.

The Megabuck Projects. Parallel to the push for family shelters is the one to defend U.S. private industry. Industrial civil defense is enormously expensive. “It costs megabucks,” says Frank Jones of Chicago’s Bell & Howell Co., which has buried its vital records as a starter in its own civil defense program. But there is a burgeoning recognition of its worth. Scores of companies now participate eagerly in OCDM seminars, have conducted employee courses in civil defense. Many of the nation’s banks have buried their vital microfilmed records for safekeeping. Last month Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center announced one of the biggest non-Government shelter projects, to be sunk beneath the ganglia of Radio City, with an eventual population capacity of 200,000. In Kansas City, the Brunson Instrument Co. recently moved its precision-instrument factory, underground, to a vibration-proof stone quarry. Contracts have been let for a big (cap. 600), elaborate fallout shelter underneath Minneapolis’ Federal Reserve Bank, to be equipped with hi-fi music.

A showcase industrial shelter has been developed by Rohm & Haas, manufacturers of plastics and chemicals, at their Bristol, Pa., plant and at factories in Philadelphia, Knoxville, Tenn., and Houston. The reinforced-concrete shelters protect against blast as well as fallout. The Bristol shelter lies under 40 inches of radiation-resistant material, can house and feed 1.500 employees for two weeks. Water is drawn from underground wells, and a pulsating communications center is equipped to send and receive short-wave messages. The shelter can withstand blast and fallout from a 20-megaton bomb five miles away.

Like Noah. Most of the push behind industrial mobilization has been supplied by Virgil Couch. From his cluttered office in Battle Creek (soon to be transferred to Washington. D.C.), Couch has worked for the past ten years to coax big business into the civil defense program. The son of a Purchase. Ky., railroadman. Couch won prizes as a youngster for his wheat crops by carefully sifting the kernels through a fine sieve, so that only the plumpest grains remained. His efforts in industrial civil defense have been equally meticulous. One of his favorite maxims: “You’ve got to arrive at solutions in advance—like Noah did.”

Couch has been with civil defense since its very beginnings. In January 1951, when the Federal Civil Defense Administration was first organized. Jerry Wadsworth, then acting head of the new agency (later Henry Cabot Lodge’s chief deputy at the U.N.), offered him a job as deputy assistant administrator in charge of management. Later. Couch became executive officer of the training division, established most of the schools now in existence. One of his early works was a “rescue street” at the Olney, Md., school, where periodic “bombings” made a shambles of the buildings, and civilian students were trained in the techniques of rescue in a world poisoned by nuclear debris. In 1954 Couch moved with the headquarters of FCDA to Battle Creek and set up the industrial division.

But wooing the hard-nosed business community to a strange—and expensive —new cause was not easy, and Virg Couch decided that the best method to convince business leaders was in personal confrontation. He took to the road, speaking at Rotary Clubs, conventions, board meetings—any gathering of businessmen that would tolerate him. He still spends half his life traveling and lobbying. At a recent meeting of the American Society for Industrial Security, Couch was introduced as a man who “has not remained aloof in an ivory tower or vacuum as some Government officials are inclined to do … Because of this shirtsleeve working approach to his job, he has developed a program which is practical, down to earth, and workable.” Says Couch, of the industrial efforts now taking place: “What is happening in industry is a great thing to see. More and more employees are looking to industry to keep them informed on civil defense. And industry is preparing itself better every day to pass down solid information. It is taking on more responsibility and that’s the way it should be. It is better for industry to be paternalistic than for the Government to be.”

Setting the Example. Yet without being over-paternalistic, government at the federal, state and local levels has at the very least a responsibility for setting a civil defense example. So far, the show has been sorry. The White House, to be sure, is equipped with a yawning bomb shelter that dates back to Franklin Roosevelt’s day, and a stand-by Pentagon, tunneled deep under Maryland’s Catoctin Mountain, is equipped and ready for use as a wartime defense headquarters. More than 30 top Government agencies are prepared to evacuate to secret “relocation centers” in a 300-mile perimeter around Washington. A series of emergency laws is on file, to be invoked by the President, and a presidential succession list of twelve names—from Vice President Lyndon Johnson to Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg—is ready if death strikes the White House. Yet for all the urgent Administration talk, only one member of the Kennedy Cabinet—Postmaster General Edward Day—has a shelter in his home.

On a state level, the situation is worse. Only three states* have complete, blastproof underground installations where business can be carried on in relative safety. Just three others are under construction, including Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s model bunker in Albany, which can house 1,100 legislators and public employees, and sustain them with 14,000 special crackers that provide a complete, balanced diet.

Hard-rock miners have drilled a cavern 5,000 ft. under Cheyenne Mountain, near Colorado Springs, but three more years will pass before the underground headquarters of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), nerve center and central switchboard for continental air raid warnings, will move in. Even then, in many a community the communication lines to NORAD may remain perilously thin. In Miami, the main CONELRAD station is not equipped as a fallout shelter, and its link to the city’s civil defense control center is an exposed land wire.

At the local level of government, the shelter program is moving faster. Progress can often be measured in proportion to the community’s strategic vulnerability. Cheyenne (which has a circlet of nearby Atlas bases) and Tucson (ringed by the sunken silos of Titan missiles) are bristling with shelters, bustling with civil defense activities. Probably the communities with the best-laid shelter programs are those towns where the hydrogen bomb is best understood. Oak Ridge, Tenn., Los Alamos, N. Mex., and Livermore, Calif.—all overpopulated with scientists who know their neutrons—are all in the midst of elaborate and expensive shelter programs, right down to the last IBM census of skills. Says Los Alamos Laboratory Worker Don Young: “Nobody plays games with gamma rays here. This shelter plan just extends the safety program to another area of our lives.”

Still, vulnerability and special knowledge are not requisite to farsightedness, as witness the case of tiny (pop. 296) Glendo, Wyo. Last month, when the cold war started to heat up, the townsfolk pooled their resources, bought a vast potato cellar on the town’s outskirts, and equipped it with water and sanitary facilities for 1,000 people. “We can not only put the entire population of the town inside in under 20 minutes,” says one proud citizen, Roy Amick, “but they can drive into it in their cars.” After Glendo’s example, Minneapolis is surveying a labyrinthine cavern under the city as a possible natural refuge, and Detroit is considering an empty salt mine. At least one individual family—Mrs. Mary R. Herschend and her two sons, daughter-in-law and three grandchildren—has set up housekeeping in Marvel Cave, Mo., in a fully equipped shelter under 300 ft. of solid rock.

The Difference. If the U.S.’s federal, state and local governments, its industries and its citizens, were all to work for reasonable survival goals, then the prospects for the future might be far more tolerable. Death and destruction would still be beyond rational belief. But upon emerging from their shelters, most Americans would not find scorched earth; more than 95% of the nation’s land would still be green. Only two days after the thermonuclear attack, many adults might start emerging from the protection of their shelters for brief periods (children—and young people who are planning to have families—should remain behind shielding for at least two weeks to avoid the hazard of radiation-created mutations in future generations).

With information gleaned from radio reports and radiation-detection devices, with trousers tucked into sock tops and sleeves tied around wrists, with hats, mufflers, gloves and boots, the shelter dweller could venture forth to start ensuring his today and building for his tomorrow. He would find that much of the food left in his kitchen was still edible. Fruit and vegetables should be washed and peeled; packaged and canned goods should be washed and opened carefully. Waste from the shelter should be buried outside. Many of the fallout particles in water would be filterable, and household water softeners would be effective as purifiers.

As the days go by, the shelter dweller might come out for increasingly long periods. He could hose off his properties; he could start rebuilding. By the end of two weeks, civil defense, military, police and fire authorities should be back at work with fair effectiveness. Industries that have taken precautions should be moving back into business. This must necessarily be the most critical phase of the thermonuclear war—for the nation that can arise most quickly and strongly will be the nation that best survives.

Last Sept. 25. in his eloquent speech before the United Nations, President Kennedy posed a choice between disarmament and a planet turned into “a naming funeral pyre.” But the choice is not that stark, and John Kennedy has come to realize it. Last week, speaking in North Carolina, he said that it is “a dangerous illusion” to believe “that we shall soon meet total victory or total defeat.” Concluded the President: “We shall neither be Red nor dead, but alive and free.” But the difference between victory and defeat might well be the effort that Americans at all levels are willing to put forth for their own survival.

*Delaware, Maryland and Hawaii.