The People: Ready to Act

Nikita Khrushchev's war of nerves was plainly having an effect on the U.S. citizenry. Across the nation last week, there was endless conversation about the threat of nuclear war. There was apprehension and an edge of sadness as men and women looked at their children and wondered about their chances of survival. There were the usual neurotics. In Chicago, public officials received a spate of calls from women complaining that their hair curlers were radioactive, from men suspicious of the olives in their martinis (Chicago Psychiatrist Milton A. Dushkin named the ailment "nucleomitophobia"—fear of the atom). A motorcade of 30 food faddists set out from New York to find new, safe homes in the northern California town of Chico—blandly ignoring the fact that a Titan missile pad, which would presumably be a prime Soviet target, was less than seven miles from their sanctuary.

But the total impact of Khrushchev's rocket-rattling offensive upon Americans was precisely the opposite of anything the Soviet dictator might have desired. For the vast majority of U.S. citizens remained resolved to face Communist pressure without yielding an inch—and many were preparing, in their own individual ways, to meet Khrushchev's worst.

Digging In. Much of that preparation was a matter of just plain digging in. The U.S. was preparing for a gopher existence, if necessary, and the national bestseller was a 32-page Department of Defense pamphlet, The Family Fallout Shelter. Until August, monthly requests for the free booklet had averaged 260,000 copies. But during the next four weeks, 2,400,000 copies were distributed, and in the first half of September, even that rate doubled.

Detroit's Kelsey-Hayes Co. got ready to step up shelter production from 100 to 250 units a day. In Cincinnati, the Bendix Corp. reported a 1.000% increase in orders for its "Family Radiation Kits"—fallout-detection devices. In California's San Fernando Valley, Joseph Nathanson, a Los Angeles public relations man, gravely watched a flatbed trailer truck thunder down Sepulveda Boulevard carrying a giant, tar-coated concrete cylinder with apertures for vent pipes and doors. "It gives you a jolt, seeing that shelter going down the road," he said. "A year ago I'd have snickered."

Entire communities were moving into action as never before. The Kingston, N.Y., common council called for bids to equip 15 acres of limestone caves, in which mushrooms are presently grown commercially, as atomic shelters. The city council of Livermore, Calif., voted to build seven giant shelters, enough to hold all of the town's 17,250 citizens. In Washington

State, Governor Albert Rosellini ordered food-rationing cards for some 750,000 heads of families, to be used in the event of war. Milwaukee Real Estate Man Dick Bourgignon was in the midst of a land boom in two Wisconsin summer resorts where urban residents were buying up property to use as retreats from the target cities.