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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.