Science: Operation Doorway

The Federal Civil Defense Administration has had the thankless job of trying to make civilians take precautions against the effects of atomic bombing. Civilians have not been responsive, chiefly because of a widespread conviction that no reasonable precautions will do much good. This attitude might be changed by persistent, frank discussion of the ways of atom bombs. Last week FCDA began distributing an elaborate booklet called Operation Doorstep, which is less than frank.

The booklet describes FCDA's sketchy tests held last spring at Yucca Flat, Nevada (TIME, March 30). Two "typical" frame houses, densely populated with department-store dummies, were exposed to the heat, radiation and blast of an AEC "nuclear diagnostic device" on a 300-ft. tower. In their basements and dug into nearby desert were various shelters, also inhabited by dummies.

The explosion crushed the nearer house (3,500 ft. away) into kindling wood. The farther house (at 7,500 ft.) was badly damaged, but left standing. In both houses, the dummies huddled under wooden basement shelters were still in good dummy condition. The FCDA's conclusion, urged strongly in its booklet: wooden basement shelters will give enough protection to justify their modest cost.

What actually happened at the test was less reassuring. Just after the explosion, a cloud of radioactive dust settled over both houses. Three hours later, the farther house was still so radioactive that it could be entered for only a few minutes. Since this kind of radioactivity decays rapidly at first, its intensity must have been enormously higher just after the dust fell. People huddled in the basement shelters would certainly have been killed by this silent, insidious force.

This point is not made clear in the FCDA booklet. In other ways, the test was not realistic. The houses were painted white to reduce the effect of the explosion's heat. They had no electric wiring, gas pipes, oil burners or other equipment that might make them catch fire. Except for outside chimneys, the houses contained no masonry, which might have crashed into the basement, crushing the wooden shelters.

FCDA is correct in saying that its shelters will protect some people, who happen to live in wooden houses at the proper distance from an explosion that does not set the houses on fire or spray them with radioactivity. Not all atom bombs will conform to such conditions.