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Show Let's Stop the Fallout Shelter Folly The fallout shelter is on and with it an explosion of controversy. con-troversy. William L. Shirer, writing in Good Housekeeping, says, "Let's stop the fallout shelter folly!" The massive propaganda to induce Americans to burrow underground like worms is misleading on one fundamental count above all others. It threatens to delude the American people into a false sense of security. It tends to encourage, perhaps, a ludicrous "let's get the thing over with" psychology in the minds of millions of frustrated people. It promotes a reckless, dangerous war psychosis. It we can be goaded into believing that most of us will survive a shower of megaton bombs unharmed, won't we tend to go along with the lunatics who urge us to risk nuclear war over the most seondary issues?" Are follout shelters worth building at all? Among some of our most well-informed leaders doubt persists. Take one f example, that of former President Eisenhower. He "simply didn't know" he said with his usual candor last October 17, "the right answer to give the people" on whether to build fallout shelters. This is the man who was president of the United States during the years that saw the deadly refinement of the nuclear bomb and the means of delivering it. Dr. John C. Wolfe, director of biology and medicine of the Atomic Energy Commission, and perhaps our greatest authority author-ity on our chances for surviving an all-out nuclear assault says, "The effects of nuclear war on man and his envoronment are awesome to contemplate. Thermal and blast effects, and concomitant con-comitant radiation, would create vast areas that would be useless to the survival of man. Fallout shelters in many areas seem only only a means of delaying death." 1 In summing up his article Shirer says, "Our hysteria of bur--row building is aimless and shameful. We must avoid serving our enemies, be courageous, and meet the real challenge of this nuclear age. It is far better, far nobler, and much more practical to dedicate our lives and th life of the nation to this than to building flimsy shelters of uncertain worth to cower in if we ; should lose the peace. The bombs need not fall. To make sure ; that they don't, let us mobilize the best that is in us to make our ; free society so strong and so just that no nation will dare to be tempted to let them fall." 1 |