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At the local level of government, the shelter program is moving faster. Progress can often be measured in proportion to the community's strategic vulnerability. Cheyenne (which has a circlet of nearby Atlas bases) and Tucson (ringed by the sunken silos of Titan missiles) are bristling with shelters, bustling with civil defense activities. Probably the communities with the best-laid shelter programs are those towns where the hydrogen bomb is best understood. Oak Ridge, Tenn., Los Alamos, N. Mex., and Livermore, Calif.—all overpopulated with scientists who know their neutrons—are all in the midst of elaborate and expensive shelter programs, right down to the last IBM census of skills. Says Los Alamos Laboratory Worker Don Young: "Nobody plays games with gamma rays here. This shelter plan just extends the safety program to another area of our lives."
Still, vulnerability and special knowledge are not requisite to farsightedness, as witness the case of tiny (pop. 296) Glendo, Wyo. Last month, when the cold war started to heat up, the townsfolk pooled their resources, bought a vast potato cellar on the town's outskirts, and equipped it with water and sanitary facilities for 1,000 people. "We can not only put the entire population of the town inside in under 20 minutes,'' says one proud citizen, Roy Amick, "but they can drive into it in their cars." After Glendo's example, Minneapolis is surveying a labyrinthine cavern under the city as a possible natural refuge, and Detroit is considering an empty salt mine. At least one individual family—Mrs. Mary R. Herschend and her two sons, daughter-in-law and three grandchildren—has set up housekeeping in Marvel Cave, Mo., in a fully equipped shelter under 300 ft. of solid rock.
The Difference. If the U.S.'s federal, state and local governments, its industries and its citizens, were all to work for reasonable survival goals, then the prospects for the future might be far more tolerable. Death and destruction would still be beyond rational belief. But upon emerging from their shelters, most Americans would not find scorched earth; more than 95% of the nation's land would still be green. Only two days after the thermonuclear attack, many adults might start emerging from the protection of their shelters for brief periods (children—and young people who are planning to have families—should remain behind shielding for at least two weeks to avoid the hazard of radiation-created mutations in future generations).
With information gleaned from radio reports and radiation-detection devices, with trousers tucked into sock tops and sleeves tied around wrists, with hats, mufflers, gloves and boots, the shelter dweller could venture forth to start ensuring his today and building for his tomorrow. He would find that much of the food left in his kitchen was still edible. Fruit and vegetables should be washed and peeled; packaged and canned goods should be washed and opened carefully. Waste from the shelter should be buried outside. Many of the fallout particles in water would be filterable, and household water softeners would be effective as purifiers.