A Better Way to Beat the Bomb

by PHILIP WYLIE

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AMERICAN city-dwellers are inquiring with rising anxiety what stops they should take to defend themselves in the event of a third world war. Many ideas have been put forward by Washington. The Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy has held hearings on civil defense at which the mayors of several frightened cities, the mayors of sanguine cities, scientists, members of veterans’ organizations, and others have had their say. A booklet on civil defense has been issued by the government. Architects have drawn up and published designs for new cities to be built in “ribbons.” A scheme for spending billions upon billions on exit highways, hospitals, fire departments, bomb baffles, and the like has recently been suggested. And almost nothing elective has been done.

Since the first A-bombs came into existence we have been aware that a radar screen around the natron, backed by enough supersonic fighter planes, ready to take off twenty-four hours a day, would help to frustrate an atomic attack by hostile planes. But the cost of that was regarded as prohibitive: in any case, exam such fabulous measures would not surely stop all bombers from reaching their targets.

We have surmised that atomic weapons could be discharged into our coastal cities from submarines and we have admitted that we lack effective means to locate and destroy modern submarines. We have guessed that formidable atomic instruments could also be brought to our shores or set as mines in our harbors by foreign ships; but we have no adequate means to inspect such ships. And we have at least wondered if atomic weapons could be smuggled piecemeal into the United States and assembled secretly for detonation here; our history of smuggling suggests that such a thing is conceivable.

Finally, we know that it is theoretically possible to construct a rocket which can carry an atomic warhead; we know that guided, long-range rockets can be made because we are making them; we know that German experts captured five years ago by the Russians were planning a transatlantic rocket; and we know that there is no way now to intercept such missiles. There are many further possibilities; but those listed make it plain that our cities could be successfully attacked with atomic weapons.

It is a contingency that has existed for more than five years. Yet the suggestions for civil defense, whether grandiose or minor, have generally been impractical. The earliest idea, recommended by city planners, engineers, and various scientists soon after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was to “decentralize and put industry underground.” That concept involved the partial abandonment of many cities and the moving of tens of millions of Americans to other, currently nonexistent locales. It involved the construction of thousands of gigantic subterranean factory areas. Financially it was unthinkable, for such an effort might have doubled the national debt. Politically it was also out of the question. “How,” a Senator from Connecticut was asked at a Congressional hearing, “would you feel about voting in the Senate to move the aircraft industry and its people out of your state?” Politics and decentralization did not mix.

The next concept, that of the “strip” or “ribbon” city, also involved the reconstruction of urban C.S.A. Obviously, cities built in a narrow line instead of a clump would be less vulnerable to atomic explosions. But, obviously again, such a measure was fiscally and politically impossible. It is said that the Soviets have put many of their vital plants underground and have decentralized much of their industry. All we have done is to bury a few critical machines and products and to help a very few industries in ultravulnerable locations construct duplicate plants inland.

Yet the demand for civil defense increased even though the American people were unwilling to take those vast steps which might have furnished a considerable measure of real safety. This demand was aimed at the government.

Washington has set up a civil defense authority in response. Instructions have gone out for the formation of local defense units of the World War II type, with extra data on atomic hazards. Restricted lists of likely target areas have been issued and kept secret by local authorities, most of whom insist their areas are prime targets — to abet defense recruiting. Evacuation plans have been sketched vaguely for all cities. States and cities have been urged to keep evacuation and rescue in mind when planning new roads, bridges, hospitals, and the like. The public has reacted with confusion.

Some cities are already building air raid shelters underground which will serve in peacetime as parking yards. Other cities, unlikely targets, are frenziedly recruiting huge defense organizations to deal with A-bombs that probably will never arrive in their area. Ground has been broken for many new hospitals and fire stations. One unofficial scheme envisages a huge, national construction program as a sort of New Deal economic backlog in case peace is tentatively stabilized in the years ahead and the “pump” again needs “priming” with the waters of deficit-spending.

But certain aspects of that last scheme are open to very serious question. The gravest, of course, is the time element. It will require several years to build the roads, shelters, hospitals, fire-fighting equipment, and immense anti-blast walls. War could overtake us long before such defenses were ready.

On the other band, our potential enemy may already have caught up with or surpassed us in the matter of atomic weaponeering. In that case, it is quite conceivable that he might possess atomic explosives capable of destroying so large an area that the thickest blast walls would crumble and the peripheral roads, bridges, hospitals, would be wiped out in the astronomical fury of his attack. It is also conceivable that his choice of atomic weapons might not be the one anticipated. Instead of bombing us with explosives, such an enemy might “cropdust” cities with radioactive isotopes, or explode offshore bombs designed to sweep huge areas with radioactive clouds of sea steam, and so on.

Such possibilities are foreseeable with the atomic know-how we already possess; they have been described and discussed repeatedly by the competent men. And many extraordinarily able scientists, Albert Einstein and Norbert Wiener among them, have pointed out the most cogent fact of all: we are only at the beginning of atomic discovery; the weapons we (and all men) may be able to build three years from now, and five, and ten, will quite likely make present weapons obsolete. The way Einstein put it was simple enough. We are approaching the day, he said, at which man may well he able to wipe out all life on the planet if he wishes to do so; it may happen even if he grows reckless.

That talk is not idle. It is not intended to create panic. It is designed to make men think. Science has never stood still; it has leaped ahead at a const antly faslor pace.

Measures which might suffice for defense today will certainly be futile in a short time. And hero, it stems to me, is the fatal fault in the present basic plan of our government for urban defense. It is designed to cope principally with the devastation, the casualties, and the physical sequelae of attacks by uranium or plutonium bombs. But such bombs may be obsolete even before we could carry out the program. We would be stupid indeed to make huge preparations to save ourselves from weapons that will quite possibly be dated before our defenses are ready.

It begins to sound as if the only recommendation to be made would be fatalism, the counsel of doing nothing and waiting supinely for the worst. There are, however, two aspects of civil defense which, so far, have been slighted and which, it seems to me, embrace areas in which we can defend ourselves.

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MOST of those persons who have discussed civil defense have thought of it in local terms. The Mayor of San Francisco ardently begged the Congressional Committee for a plan which his city could put into effect. Certain Congressmen were inclined to believe that the adoption of any plan would be perilous to San Francisco. A plan, the Congressmen pointed out, would include a public admission that there were few exits from that city, that its bridges were vulnerable, that an atomic bomb in its Bay might deluge it with radioactive steam and sail water (like the Bikini ships), that the city occupied a congested headland, that it was industrially important and hence a natural target —and so on. Public notice of those facts, the Congressmen argued, would cause businesses to leave the city and prevent new businesses from establishing themselves there.

San Francisco’s mayor, a more realistic gentleman than some of his auditors, pointed out that every man, woman, and child in his city already knew those facts and that any businessman thinking of locating in Frisco would hear them in a day. What he wanted from his federal government was a sagacious scheme for defense. Many other mayors, state officials, and members of the American Legion begged at the same hearings for a nationwide, standard, federally financed plan.

The idea that every city ought to have identical civil defenses is a fallacy; but the fallacy suggests what ought to be done. It is a fallacy for three reasons. First, because of location and because of the industries they contain, cities are not all equally liable to enemy attack; second, because of their physical differences they would be differently affected by many sorts of atomic attack — a flat city situated on a deep salt-water harbor would have different defense problems from a hilly inland city; and third, preparing every city equally would spread defensive equipment thinly, irrationally, and at a huge, perhaps prohibitive, cost.

There is an additional, probably fallacious, element in the nation-wide eagerness for a single plan, everywhere applied. It assumes that what we should prepare for is the defense of each city by itself. Each city, that is to say, wants to be readied by the federal government not merely to shelter its inhabitants in the event of an air raid warning, but to deal afterward with its own dead, its injured, its fires, its contaminated areas, and so on.

During the Congressional hearing on the subject, the Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, expressed what would more likely be the true state of affairs. His city, he said, was small and did not think of itself as a suitable atomic target; nevertheless if hit, he said flatly, Providence would be unable to deal with the results, and help would have to come from the outside.

That, in all probability, will be the case anywhere and everywhere if atomic weapons strike American cities. Some military men have tried to minimize the effect of atomic weapons. Some propagandists and even some scientists, afraid that nuclear facts will frighten the American people, have tried to say that atomic blasts and radioactive poisons are exaggerated perils. But what should be borne in mind is the opposite: the weapons grow more terrible, and no one could exaggerate the possible peril of radioactivity — not when the world’s leading scientists agree it may very soon be made intensive enough to wipe out all life on the planet. Hence it may be safely assumed — it should be assumed — that any city struck by atomic weapons of whatever sort in a future war will be dealt such a blow as not necessarily to annihilate it, but to make it utterly unable to deal with the situation, no matter what its preparations.

Here the inadequacy of the present schemes for local organization and local equipment becomes apparent. It has already been pointed out that in a future war, whether it should come soon or late, atomic weapons might wreck or render useless any number of hospitals, fire-fighting stations, and the like, ringing any city. Air raid shelters would perhaps be useful if deep enough and if there were warning. But no amount of road-building would ameliorate the situation. Indeed, the very concept of road and bridge construction (except for rescue squad use) seems to me to show a poor grasp of the probabilities. It presumes that after an atomic attack most survivors would flee any city and therefore that new roads to flee on are necessary.

The universal congestion of Sunday drivers indicates the folly of such an idea for defense. Multiply the heaviest traffic any city has ever seen on any holiday by five. Put every slow truck and every jalopy in the imagined exodus. Conceive of the drivers as being moved by that hysteria and panic which always accompanies flight. For every stalled car, every car out of gas, and every wreck, imagine fifty. Then imagine the highways around any bombed city, even though there were three times the present number. And suppose some main bridges were down or tunnels flooded or some other principal escape-arteries were made impassable by the bomb itself.

Next, suppose that a million or two million (or more or fewer) survivors could get out of a city hit by atomic weapons. Where would they go? How would they eat? In winter, how would they keep from freezing to death? How could they be controlled or policed? What would the criminal element of every city do in such a mob? And, most important of all, if the population fled — as it will flee so long as “evacuation” is an official keynote — who, in the days following, would be left to man those industries which had survived the attack and were vital to the war effort ?

A city hit by atomic weapons probably could not care for itself. Mass exodus from such a city might be more horrible and devastating than an A-bomb. And as long as any part of a city remains viable and productive the people who survive will be needed in their city to carry on. It would be the utmost folly to abandon, say, Pittsburgh, because a quarter of it was wrecked and radioactive. Yet the plans now officially adopted include just such evacuation or rout as has been described.

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WHAT, then, is practical?

It is practical to arrange for the best possible air or other raid warning and the best possible shelters. It is practical to set up, with existing personnel and facilities, at once, in every city, the best possible organization of hospitals, doctors, nurses, their aides, air raid wardens, Geiger men, decontamination squads, fire-fighters, and so forth, to act on the scene in the event of any sort of attack. It is practical to organize the environs of every city — the schoolhouses, hospitals, and other public places — for emergency uses.

But what is even more practical and necessary, it seems to me, is to organize and to train all these experts for swift mobilization to go to work elsewhere. If every city is trained and ready to do what it can for itself, or mainly itself, and if some cities are then attacked, the vast majority of the American people will be confronted with a dreadful situation, one in which they sit helplessly at their radios, unharmed, hoarding their supplies and trained crews, while other cities rock and glare and surge in helpless debacle.

If, say, Chicago is sorely struck, the civil defense organizations of a dozen other near-by cities ought to he ready and trained to go forthwith to the aid of Chicago. For the struck cities will need everything. They will need it instantly. And their own facilities may be hors de combat. They will need trained police in thousands. They will need thousands of fire-fighters. They will need dynamite experts. They will need hundreds of teams who can measure radioactive contamination. I hey will need tons of drugs, thousands of doctors and nurses, trainloads of food, and systems for evacuating the wounded, set up in areas peripheral to atomic damage. They will want to save as much as possible of their industries and plants from fire and other postbomb damage. They will want to save all the injured that can be saved. And they will want to stay in operation so far as possible and to restore operalions wherever possible and as soon as possible. All such problems will doubtless be unsolvable by themselves and by their pre-attack organization.

Hence, in my opinion, while one function of every city’s defense organization naturally should be to care for its own and itself, it is equally important that the civil defense organization of every city should be trained and ready on a moment’s notice to rush to live aid of any neighboring city. The final and critical fate of an atom-blitzed city may depend not upon its own preparations, organizations, and equipment, but upon the speed and the ability of a hundred forms of outside aid.

And it will not do, after atom bombs or other weapons have been used, to recruit the civil defenders of other cities and send them via hastily rigged transport to the damaged areas. Only those crews already trained and prepared to go to and act in certain cilies will be effective. Thus the civil defense personnel of, say, Charleston, South Carolina, should be as ready to deal with an atomic blitz situation in, for example, Atlanta, Birmingham, Jacksonville, and Norfolk, as with a home situation. And Charleston people should also have a good general idea of how to be of use in or around Washington, Philadelphia, and New York. San Franciscans will depend, if atom-assaulted, on Angelinos and people from Seattle, Denver, and Spokane — perhaps far more than upon themselves. For such interlocked and mutual missions we Americans can and should prepare at once.

It will be far less expensive to organize the personnel, provide the portable supplies, and train the technologically-minded for such events than to start building roads and gigantic shelters — to be ready by 1954. And a nation in which the civil defense personnel and equipment are ready to move anywhere, instantly, will be a far better prepared nation than one which is locally instructed and equipped to the last detail for local operation only.

Here, then, is a practical project, the enactment of which would not be extremely costly and could be commenced today. It would involve millions of lay specialists, police, National Guardsmen, all fire departments, railroads, air lines, bus lines, nearly everybody—in some way. It would be excellent for national morale and for the relations of the people with each other. And it could set up the one form of civil defense which would best cope with all probabilities, not years from now, and not in a form that might become obsolete, but right away and on a perpetually effective basis. And if all cities were organized to help not just themselves but wherever help was required, the inhabitants of cities would enjoy a sensation now conspicuously absent: the feeling that, should worst come to worst, the whole nation was set and ready to aid.

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IN this connection it should be pointed out that one other scheme advanced for the defense of cities, that it be put in charge of the military, is completely unfeasible. If cities are atomically assaulted a war will be in progress, and that war will demand the full attention and effort of all service branches. There will not be men enough or time enough or any inclination to divert perhaps hundreds of thousands of troops to the rescue and policing of Ini cities. Furthermore, if military control is the only last-ditch plan we have made, and if atomic attack occurs, it will be found that the shock and hysteria of unprepared civilians will not be amenable to soldierly discipline. Should millions stampede, no amount of martial law, no roadblocks, not even machine guns chattering at family cars, will stern the tide. It will be too late then.

And that brings up the aspect of defense which has been sorely neglected and yet is cardinal: fortitude. Whether atomic attacks of our cities result in rout and utter disaster or in a brave and orderly dealing with the facts will depend first and last upon the morale of the people in the cities — all the cities. For, as things stand and as they probably will stand in the long years to come, if we become involved in war if will be atomic war: and to win an atomic war we shall depend upon ihe manning and maintenance of our cities along with the industries and plants which they contain.

We are going to have to stay in our cities, no matter what.

It has often been said that if’ two or three cities in America are hit by even the old-style A-bombs, the populations of the rest of the cities will leave. I don’t believe it. The simple fact is that, even should we lose ten cities completely, the necessity’ of remaining in the rest would merely be increased manyfold. For the machine tools and the production lines and the supplies, resources, and stockpiles of the remaining cities would become that much more vital to our cause. Some nonessential people might he removed from all cities, as in England in the last war; but the cities themselves — again, as in England —would have to go grimly on, manned, serviced, running at full blast.

To think that Americans, once they visualized that fact, would quit their cities is to underestimate American character and courage, in my opinion. All through World War II the citizens who remained in London existed day and night, year after year, beneath the threat of instant death. At first it was from bombers, and refuge was possible. But, with the coming of the V-2’s, no refuge could be taken. Month after month every Londoner knew that he could be cut down anywhere, at any moment, awake or asleep, by a weapon against which there was no defense, the approach of which he could not see or even hear. Not only that, but. every day he did hear, somewhere in his city, the dull wham of those weapons going off and killing his fellow men and women. Yet the Londoners stayed; and to think Americans would quit under a somewhat similar personal threat is to judge Americans poorly, provided they are ready in their minds to take such personal risks.

Fortitude is involved here. But fortitude does not arise in a people under any and all conditions. A city that has been led to expect to evacuate, should atomic weapons strike, but that finds it cannot do so after the blow, will not necessarily behave bravely or wisely. A group of people who have trained themselves to help themselves and then suddenly find their self-help is dead or cut off, and that no further plans for rapid aid exist, will not be a steady and reliable group. People led to make ready only for one form of blow, who are struck by another, may not react well. A city that has accepted federal or military assistance and does not get enough, or the right sort, at the crucial time, may stampede. And people who have been led to underrate atomic weapons, or to imagine such weapons will never strike their eily, or who have prepared their minds for A-bombs but who are unready for hot isotopes, or fogs of bacteria, will not respond with intrepidity. Minds, to be brave, must be ready.

There has beam a widespread tendency to blame our present unpreparedness on two factors: the “secrecy that surrounds the atom” and “government lethargy and inaction.” Of both, there has been an imbecile overabundance. But the truth is that we have remained unprepared for other reasons, in the main. Some have been recorded here, such as the political and financial impossibility of rebuilding the nation to make it a less vulnerable set of targets. The leading reason, however, is the failure so far of the average citizen to assimilate what has been told, to infer what that means, and to deduce what might happen and what he could be ready to do that he could arrange rapidly and could pay for.

Nothing said in this article is “secret.” The prosped for cities, especially big, industrial cities, in any future war is grim indeed, and grows steadily grimmer. It may be that our potential adversary does not yet have in his stockpile even a single practical uranium bomb. But we cannot count on that, It may be that he already has hydrogen bombs or that he has rockets with atomic warheads which could be fired over hundreds of miles from his submarines without warning tomorrow. That is the kind of possibility for which vve should prepare our cities and, even more, our minds.

The psychological compensation for such blows as this nation might be struck would be twofold, or should be: the knowledge of each city-dweller that his survival chances were backed up by an alerted, trained nation: and the knowledge that whatever catastrophe might or did strike him was being duplicated and multiplied among the cities of his enemy. In the end, even atomic warfare is reduced to that simple and individual equation. If Englishmen in World War II had deserted their cities because each Englishman know his death might, come there at any moment, England would have lost the war. That, in essence, is the situation vve Americans would face in any future war. Preparation of the private mind and will to meet it anywhere, any time, in any form, is the fundamental requirement not just for the defense of cities but for victory.

What the circumstance amounts to, for the urban dweller, is this: from the day of the declaration of another war, or the season of imminent war, he will be a front-line soldier. His conduct, as much as that of troops, will determine the outcome.

In preparing himself to stand by bis city he will find that courage which does not and cannot exist in defense or evacuative schemes. Furthermore, in readying his city to aid other stricken cities, and in knowing that they have the training to help his city, he will have a second bolster to his determination. These are active, offensive, humanly positive, and characteristically American attitudes and ways of behavior. In an atomic war, everybody’s philosophy will have to be, “Damn the torpedoes, go ahead!” Above all else, a suitable plan for civil defense should inculcate that spirit now and implement it with feasible organizations and practical equipment.

For the problem, from the standpoint of citydwellers, will not be what to try to avoid, or how to escape, but how to endure and how to return any kind of blow until the foe yields.