Shelters and Survival

Report Outline
Revival of Emphasis on Civil Defense
Conflicting Aspects of Shelter Policy
Basic Priorities in Civil Preparedness
Civil Defense in European Countries

Revival of Emphasis on Civil Defense

President KENNEDY's call for a new start in the nation's civil defense program is an integral part of the administration's over-all plan for meeting the current Berlin crisis. The apparent strategy behind the revised civil defense policy—spearheaded by a request for a tripling of federal appropriations for this purpose in fiscal 1962—is to convince Soviet leaders that Americans are ready to risk nuclear war, if necessary, to protect rights of access to West Berlin.

Congress on Aug. 10 granted the full $207,600,000 asked by the administration for a start on a national fallout shelter program. This sum was in addition to $86,550,000 already approved by Congress. The President on Aug. 14 requested another $73,200,000 for food and medical stockpiling programs. Still uncertain is congressional reaction to any long-range program of fallout shelter construction which may be submitted at the next session.

Frank B. Ellis, new director of O.C.D.M., is known to favor a five-year federal-state-local shelter program to cost up to $20 billion, about half of it to be supplied by the federal government. President Kennedy himself has not made a decision on the advisability of such an extensive shelter program. No less in doubt than the reaction of Congress to a national shelter program is the reaction of the general public to current and future exhortations to take individual measures for self-protection. Past experience is not encouraging to advocates of stepped-up civil preparedness. A survey by a House Government Operations subcommittee last year showed that only 1,565 home fallout shelters had been built in the 35 states answering inquiries from the subcommittee.