National Affairs: Modest Beginning

Girding itself in nuclear armor, the U.S. has devised such costly weapons as supersonic aircraft, attack and defense missiles, continent-wide radar-warning screens and atomic submarines. But it lags in a weapon that the Rockefeller Report last January warned would become "an increasingly important deterrent," i.e., fallout shelters in which the U.S. populace could wait out nuclear attacks. Last week the Administration took a halting step toward improving that deterrent. Appearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense and Civilian Mobilization Director Leo Hoegh outlined his program for public education on radiation, asked a modest $13,150,000 to get a prototype shelter program going.

Of...