Nation: All Out Against Fallout

In the past decade, the U.S. has spent only $619 million—or 34¢ per year per person—on a limping civil defense program that has been received with public indifference. Last week President Kennedy proposed to spend half that ten-year total in a single year. "To recognize the possibilities of nuclear war in the missile age," said he, "without our citizens knowing what they should do and where they should go if bombs begin to fall, would be a failure of responsibility." To guard against such a failure, the President asked Congress to tack a $207.6 million appropriation on to the $104.2 million...