HOW TO BE A SURVIVOR
HOW TO BE A SURVIVOR
The Art of Staying Alive in the Atomic Age
Thought about your life insurance lately?
Wait a minute-sit back down! We don’t want to sell you any insurance.
Let’s put it another way: How’s your pioneer blood these days? Reflexes in fine shape? Muscle tone good? Or do you take a taxi to go six blocks?
How are you at catching rabbits? The old recipe goes, “First, catch the rabbit — ” Suppose your supper depended on catching a rabbit? Then on building a fire without matches? Then on cooking it? What kind of shape will you be in after the corner delicatessen is atomized?
When a committee of Senators asked Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer whether or not a single attack on the United States could kill forty million people, he testified, “I am afraid it is true.”
This is not an article about making the atom bomb safe for democracy. This is an article about you-and how you can avoid being one of the forty million knocked off in the first attack in World War III. How, if worst comes to worst, you can live through the next war, survive the aftermath, and build a new life.
If you have been reading the newspapers you are aware that World War III, if it ever comes, is expected to start with an all-out surprise attack by long-dis tance atomic bombing on the cities of America. General Marshall’s final report included this assumption, General Arnold has warned us against such an attack, General Spaatz has described it and told us that it is almost impossible to ward it off if it ever comes. Innumerable scientists, especially the boys who built the A-bomb, have warned us of it.
From the newspapers you may also have gathered that world affairs are not in the best of shape-the Balkans, India, Palestine, Iran, Argentina, Spain, China, The East Indies, etc., etc. — and the UNO does not seem as yet to have a stranglehold on all of the problems that could lead to another conflict.
Maybe so, maybe not-time will tell. Maybe we will form a real World State strong enough to control the atom bomb. If you are sure there will never be war again, don’t let me waste your time. But if you think it possible that another Hitler or Tojo might get hold of the atomic bomb and want to try his luck, then bend an ear and we’ll talk about how you and your kids can live through it. We’ll start with the grisly assumption that the war will come fast and hard, when it comes, killing forty million or so at once, destroying the major cities, wrecking most of our industry and utterly disorganizing the rest. We will assume a complete breakdown of government and communication which will throw the survivors-that’s you, chum! — on their own as completely as ever was Dan’! Boone.
No government-remember that. The United States will cease to be a fact except in the historical sense. You will be on your own, with no one to tell you what to do and no policeman on the corner to turn to for protection. And you will be surrounded with dangerous carnivores, worse than the grizzlies Daniel Boone tackled-the two-legged kind.
Perhaps we had better justify the assumption of complete breakdown in government. It might not happen, but, if the new Hitler has sense enough to write Mein Kampf, or even to read it as a textbook, he will do his very best to destroy and demoralize us by destro~ing our government-and his best could be quite efficient. If he wants to achieve political breakdown in his victim, Washington, D.C., will be his prime target, the forty-eight state capitals his secondary targets, and communication centers such as Kansas City his tertiary targets. The results should be roughly comparable to the effect on a man’s organization when his head is chopped off.
Therefore, in this bad dream we are having, let us assume no government, no orders from Washington, no fireside chats, no reassurances. You won’t be able to write to your congressman, because he, poor devil!, is marked for the kill. You can live through it, he can’t. He will be radioactive dust. His profession is so hazardous that there is no need for him to study up on how to snare rabbits.