MAN ON THE MOON
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Clara's voluminous apron. As a boy I took shelter there from disasters
both real and imaginary. So did she. Often we were there at the same
time. Confronted with my Uncle Harry's mad folly on the 4th of July,
she would toss it like a hood over her head. A basic, and classic, tactic.
One from which we have never departed.
If
you can't bear the sight of
something, bury your head. In an age of operations we might call it
Operation Ostrich.
It is no accident, however, that therapy, not facts, is the substance
of our Civil Defense. Who wants to know the facts?
It
is the facts
from which we need . defense. The hundred thousand human beings
who died in the experiment to see how the bomb really worked, in–
advertently depressed-if nothing else-our celebrated lust for the facts.
Science-fiction now pleases us more, and serves us better.
Science-fiction, in case you've forgotten, is what we used to get
from H. G. Wells and Ray Bradbury. Currently, it is what we get from
many vocal scientists. It is a strictly scientific interpretation of the facts.
Sometimes known as the Father of H-bomb, scientist Edward
Teller in a recent interview, reassured his fellow men there was no
reason for panic. Just a plain but sensible cause for alarm. Perhaps to
counteract the prophesies of his fellow-scientist, Linus Pauling, who
spoke of a ninety percent loss of life, Dr. Teller reassuringly spoke of
a ninety percent survival. Maybe even more if we really hustled and
followed his suggestions. Dr. Teller would have none of this Doomsday
nonsense, and confidently said we would not only survive but that life
would be fairly normal-just the way it is now, that is-in three or
four years. Schools, factories, taxes and all of our cherished institutions.
Everything the sa,me. Including the same old prospect of nuclear war.
Mr. Teller didn't say that, but if we're going to be the same
after
this
next war as before it, you don't have to be a scientist to figure it out.
In that respect Dr. Pauling's prophesy held the most hope.
Another Nobel scientist, Dr. Libby, not only gave advice of a
constructive nature to counteract the defeatist tone of Dr. Pauling,
but went so far as to follow it himself. In a hillside near his home
in southern California he had built a shelter of sandbags and timber,
very suitable for ur-mensch, spate-mensch, and small fry taking shelter
from marauding Indians. We all saw it on TV. In it, snug as a bug
in a rug, Dr. Libby and his loved ones would weather the storm.
The problem of all those
other
people's loved ones raised its ugly
head on the same program. But that was a
moral
problem, not to be
carelessly filed under fission and fallout.
If
you have a fallout shelter
