In Indiana: Poised for Catastrophe

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Curiously, the real thing, nuclear war, was mentioned hardly at all. Federal Signal Corp. did push its big civil-defense sirens ("The wavering sound," explained Salesman Jerry Koster, "is when there's an actual attack"), but / only Walter Murphey came to Indianapolis eager to talk about war. Murphey, 73, is executive director of the American Civil Defense Association, an 800-member group that agitates, without much success, for federally funded bomb shelters. "That's our hang-up," he said. "Our reason for being is nuclear attack." Despite a voice just like Jimmy Stewart's and an utterly genial manner, Murphey sat alone in his exhibition booth almost the whole time he was there. "People aren't too interested," he admitted. "If we could just harness some of the enthusiasm that these folks show for natural disasters for civil defense . . ."

But no. "We have no capacity whatsoever to deal with nuclear war," said Reutershan of the Public Health Service, sounding offended by a chaos that beggared his means to cope. Indeed, for prac- tically everyone in the convention hall, nuclear war would be the ultimate professional frustration, not the ultimate challenge: With suffering and death so vast, whom to rescue and whom to mend? Where to erect the police barricades? Theirs is not so much a fascination with disaster as it is a half-religious, half-martial hankering to see what they can do to help. Nuclear holocaust would be too big to handle. Murphey, for all his quixotic zeal, understands perfectly the indifference to his brand of civil defense. "The idea of a huge disaster, a war -- that just floors people. They really won't think about it. But a fire, a flood, a tornado . . . Well," he said, "there you've got something you can work with."