Evening star., 1949-10-17
Civilian Defense and the Atom

Presumably, as head of the Nays
Aviation Ordnance Branch, Commander
Eugene Tatom is an expert in his field.
But he has gone off the deep end in telling
the House Armed Services Committee that
people would be safe if they stood at one
end of the National Airport's 6,855-foet
runway while an A-bomb exploded at the
other. Not in long time has there been
such an absurd effort to belitt1e the
preternatural destructiveness of the atom.
To lend some authority to his statement,
Commander Tatom has quoted from a
medical report of the United States Stra-
tegic Bombing Survey, which found, in its
study of the Hiroshima explosion, that
radiation effects seemed to decline sharply
at point beyond $500 feet from where
the bomb went off and that only II out OF
more than 1000 school children were killed
In an area between 6,562 and 8,202 feet
away. 1t is silly, however, to cite such
phenomena as evidence that an atomic
blast is not so bad, after all. The fact is
that it is almost indescribably terrible,
and nobody should be misled by testimony
to the contrary.
Thus, despite Commander Tatom's at
tempt to minimize the atoms power, the
facts stand as follows: Cd In Hiroshima,
one A-bomb dropped by one plane caused
virtually total destruction within radius
of one mile from the bursting point, with
heavy damage extending an additional
two miles, and with lighter damage
hitting in every direction for three or
four miles beyond that. And (2) a ghastly
>f aael L,,. r% 1<f4
secondary fires and lethal radiation killed
about 10000 japanese and injured another
10000 within matter of seconds-casual-
ties adding up to approximately two thirds
of the city's total population.
It Is because of this unprecedented
deadliness of the A-bomb (and the type
being produced at present is considerably
more devastating than the one dropped
on Hiroshima) that dark question mark
hangs over the future of civilization. It is
because of it, and because the Russians
apparently are now able to make the
weapon on their own, that the Senate
House Atomic Energy Committee has
scheduled hearings on the problem OF
civilian defense. Ever since the first atom
blast, that problem has been with US, but
there is little evidence that we have made
much progress in dealing with it, even
though our concentration of big industrial
cities makes us one of the most vulnerable
countries in the world
In this connection, according to the
Strategic Bombing Survey, the central fact
to be kept in mind is that "the overwhelm-
ing bulk of the buildings in American
cities could not stand up against an atomic
bomb bursting mile or mile and half
from them" Further, because relatively
few of our industrial structures are blast
resistant and because many of our great
metropolises are more crowded than urban
Japan, an A-bomb attack on us could
cause casualties far greater than Hiro-
shima's and Nagasakis. Accordingly
given the kind of world we have, with the
atom uncontrolled and with war an ever
present possibility, the problem of civilian
defense is an urgent one for the Nation.
Unfortunately, however, the solution is
elusive. To begin with, we would have to
spend hundreds of billions of dollars and
disrupt our society if we tried to go under
ground or carry through a mass dispersal
of our cities. In a practical, economic and
social sense, we can do little more than
decentralize certain facilities on small
scale, seek to locate new industrial con-
struction in non-crowded areas, fireproof
the interiors of otherwise strong buildings,
set up a nationwide network of civilian
shelters, and work out long-range life