Part 14 (1/2)
”Got some dope for you, Joe. Relocation orders-I was appointed an emergency deputy, you know.”
”Hadn't heard, but glad to hear. Come in and sit down and tell me about it. How do the orders read?
We stay, don't we?”
”Can't come in-thanks. I've got twenty-three more stops to make tonight. I'm sorry to say you don't stay. Your caravan will rendezvous at Ninth and Chelsea, facing west, and gets underway at noon tomorrow.”
”What!”
”That's how it is. Sorry.”
”Why, this is a d.a.m.ned outrage! I put in to stay here-with my home town as second choice.”
The deputy shrugged. ”So did everybody else. But you weren't even on the list of essential occupations from which the permanent residents were selected. Now, look-I've got to hurry. Here are your orders. Limit yourself to 150 pounds of baggage, each, and take food for three days. You are to go in your own car-you're getting a break-and you will be a.s.signed two more pa.s.sengers by the convoy captain, two more besides your wife I mean.”
Joe Public shoved his hands in his pockets and looked stubborn. ”I won't be there.”
”Now, Joe, don't take that att.i.tude. I admit it's kinda rough, being in the first detachment, but you've had lots of notice. The newspapers have been full of it. It's been six months since the President's proclamation.”
”I won't go. There's some mistake. I saw the councilman last week and he said he thought I would be all right. He-”
”He told everybody that, Joe. This is a Federal order.”
”I don't give a d.a.m.n if it's from the Angel Gabriel. I tell you I won't go. I'll get an injunction.”
”You can't, Joe. This has been declared a military area and protests have to go to the Provost Marshal. I'd hate to tell you what he does with them. Anyhow, you can't stay here-it's no business of mine to put you out; I just have to tell you-but the salvage crews will be here tomorrow morning to pull out your plumbing.
”They won't get in.”
”Maybe not. But the straggler squads will go through all of these houses first.”
”I'll shoot!”
”I wouldn't advise it. They're mostly ex-Marines.”
Mr. Public was quiet for a long minute. Marines. ”Look, Jack,” he said slowly, ”suppose I do go. I've got to have an exemption on this baggage limitation and I can't carry pa.s.sengers. My office files alone will fill up the back seat.”
”You won't need them. You are a.s.signed as an apprentice carpenter. The barracks you are going to are only temporary.”
”Joseph! Joseph! Don't stand there with the door open! Who is it?” His wife followed her voice in.
He turned to tell her; the deputy took that as a good time to leave.
At eleven the next morning he pulled out of the driveway, gears clas.h.i.+ng. He had the white, drawn look of a man who has been up all night. His wife slept beside him, her hysteria drowned in a triple dose of phen.o.barbital.
That is dispersion. If you don't believe it, ask any native-born citizen of j.a.panese blood. Nothing less than force and police organization will drive the peasants off the slopes of Vesuvius. The bones of Pompeii and Herculaneum testify to that. Or, ask yourself- will you go willingly and cheerfully to any spot and any occupation the government a.s.signs to you? If not, unless you are right now working frantically to make World War III impossible, you have not yet adjusted yourself to the horrid facts of the Atomic Age.
For these are the facts of the Atomic Age. If we are not to have a World State, then we must accept one of two grim alternatives: A permanent state of total war, even in ”peace” time, with every effort turned to offense and defense, or relax to our fate, make our peace with G.o.d, and wait for death to come out of the sky. The time in which to form a World State is pa.s.sing rapidly; it may be gone by the time this is printed. It is worthwhile to note that the publisher of the string of newspapers most bitterly opposed to ”foreign entanglements,” particularly with Russia, and most insistent on us holding on to the vanis.h.i.+ng ”secret” of the atomic bomb-this man, this publisher, lives on an enormous, self-sufficient ranch, already dispersed. Not for him is the peremptory knock on the door and the uprooting relocation order.
Yet he presumes daily to tell our Congress what must be done with us and for us.
Look at the facts! Go to your public library and read the solemn statements of the men who built the atomic bomb. Do not let yourself be seduced into a false serenity by men who do not understand that the old world is dead. Regularly, in the past, our State Department has bungled us into wars and with equal regularity our military establishment has been unprepared for them. Then the lives and the strength of the common people have bought for them a victory.
Now comes a war which cannot be won after such mistakes.
If we are to die, let us die like men, eyes open, aware of our peril and striving to cope with it-not as fat and fatuous fools, smug in the belief that the military men and the diplomats have the whole thing under control.
”It is later than you think.”
HOW TO BE A SURVIVOR.
The Art of Staying Alive in the Atomic Age
Thought about your life insurance lately?
Wait a minute-sit back down! We don't want to sell you any insurance.
Let's put it another way: How's your pioneer blood these days? Reflexes in fine shape? Muscle tone good? Or do you take a taxi to go six blocks?
How are you at catching rabbits? The old recipe goes, ”First, catch the rabbit-” Suppose your supper depended on catching a rabbit? Then on building a fire without matches? Then on cooking it? What kind of shape will you be in after the corner delicatessen is atomized?
When a committee of Senators asked Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer whether or not a single attack on the United States could kill forty million people, he testified, ”I am afraid it is true.”
This is not an article about making the atom bomb safe for democracy. This is an article about you-and how you can avoid being one of the forty million knocked off in the first attack in World War III. How, if worst comes to worst, you can live through the next war, survive the aftermath, and build a new life.
If you have been reading the newspapers you are aware that World War III, if it ever comes, is expected to start with an all-out surprise attack by long-dis tance atomic bombing on the cities of America. General Marshall's final report included this a.s.sumption, General Arnold has warned us against such an attack, General Spaatz has described it and told us that it is almost impossible to ward it off if it ever comes. Innumerable scientists, especially the boys who built the A-bomb, have warned us of it.
From the newspapers you may also have gathered that world affairs are not in the best of shape-the Balkans, India, Palestine, Iran, Argentina, Spain, China, The East Indies, etc., etc.-and the UNO does not seem as yet to have a stranglehold on all of the problems that could lead to another conflict.
Maybe so, maybe not-time will tell. Maybe we will form a real World State strong enough to control the atom bomb. If you are sure there will never be war again, don't let me waste your time. But if you think it possible that another Hitler or Tojo might get hold of the atomic bomb and want to try his luck, then bend an ear and we'll talk about how you and your kids can live through it. We'll start with the grisly a.s.sumption that the war will come fast and hard, when it comes, killing forty million or so at once, destroying the major cities, wrecking most of our industry and utterly disorganizing the rest. We will a.s.sume a complete breakdown of government and communication which will throw the survivors-that's you, chum!-on their own as completely as ever was Dan'! Boone.
No government-remember that. The United States will cease to be a fact except in the historical sense. You will be on your own, with no one to tell you what to do and no policeman on the corner to turn to for protection. And you will be surrounded with dangerous carnivores, worse than the grizzlies Daniel Boone tackled-the two-legged kind.
Perhaps we had better justify the a.s.sumption of complete breakdown in government. It might not happen, but, if the new Hitler has sense enough to write Mein Kampf, or even to read it as a textbook, he will do his very best to destroy and demoralize us by destro~ing our government-and his best could be quite efficient. If he wants to achieve political breakdown in his victim, Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., will be his prime target, the forty-eight state capitals his secondary targets, and communication centers such as Kansas City his tertiary targets. The results should be roughly comparable to the effect on a man's organization when his head is chopped off.
Therefore, in this bad dream we are having, let us a.s.sume no government, no orders from Was.h.i.+ngton, no fireside chats, no rea.s.surances. You won't be able to write to your congressman, because he, poor devil!, is marked for the kill. You can live through it, he can't. He will be radioactive dust. His profession is so hazardous that there is no need for him to study up on how to snare rabbits.
But you should- if you are smart, you can live through it.
Now as to methods-there is just one known way to avoid being killed by an atomic bomb. The formula is very simple: Don't be there when it goes off!