=Than
"pre-atomic thinking."
The idea which must be driven home above all else is
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that a military establishment which is expected to fight on after the nation has,
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undergone atomic bomb attack must be prepared to fight with the men already
mobilized and with the equipment already in the arsenals.
The cities will/be'vast, catastrophe areas,
-
and the normal channels of transportation and co
able confusion.
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tree
must be in caves in the wilderness,
And those arsenals
fcations “will be in unutter"94
The rural areas and the smaller towns, though perhaps not
struck directly, will be in varying degrees of disorganization as a result of the
collapse of the metropolitan centers with which their economies are intertirined.
Naturally, the actual degree of disorganization in both the struck and nonstruck areas till depend on the degree to which we provide beforehand against
the event.
A good deal can be done in the way of decentralization and reorgani-
zation of vital industries and services to avoid complete paralysis of the
nation.
More will be said on this subject later in the present chapter.
But
the idea that a nation which had undergone days or weeks of atomic bomb attack
would be able to achieve a production for war purposes even remotcly comparable
in character and magnitude to American production in World War II simply does not
make sensc.
The war of atomic bombs must be fought with stockpiles of arms in
finished or semi-finished state.
A superiority in raw matcrials Will be about
as important as a superiority in gold resources was in World War II though it
was not so long ago that gold was the cssential sinew of war.
All that is being presumed here is the kind of destruction which Germany
actually underwent in the last year of the Second ‘lorld Yar, only telescoped in
time and considerably miltiplied in magnitude.
If such a presumption is held to
be unduly alarmist, the burden of proof must lie in the discovery of basic errors
in the argument of the preceding chapter.
The essence of that argument is simply
that what Germany suffered because of her inferiority in the air may now well be
suffered in greater degree and in far less time, so long as atomic bombs are
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