DOF
SURE.
pore te ROG
NH beSe Oaks:
(1) Whether the President could continue to conduct the affairs of
the United States in the absence of a shelter program; (2)--a phil-
osophical question--whether it was the duty of the Federal Government to guarantee the protection of individuals against disaster.
Mr. Gray said he was deeply concerned by the Gaither Re-
port, which had recommended fallout shelters, with a delay in blast
shelter construction. This recommendation presented great difficulties; it was tantamount to asking the Federal Government to say that
protection would be provided for the countryside, but not for the
cities. He was also deeply concerned by the fact that little was
now known about the behavior of people in a shelter situation--whether people would live for two weeks in shelters with 10-20 square
feet per occupant.
Mr. Gray said he had examined various alternatives to the
_ recommended shelter program. For example, he had inguired into the
' possibility of contributing the two million tons of surplus aluminum
' 4n our stockpile to shelter construction. He had found that aluminum was an effective substitute for other materials, but that contribution of our surplus aluminum would cover only one-third of the
cost and might not be a sufficient incentive. He had also thought
about the possibility of a War Damage Equalization scheme to obtain
revenues for shelters, but did not think such a scheme should be
adopted now--but it might have to be adopted in the future.
Mr. Gray then indicated that he was not impressed by the
argument that the United States should adopt a shelter policy because
NATO had such a policy. It was true that the literature of the NATO
Senior Planning Committee contained a shelter policy approved by the
North Atlantic Council, but the principle of shelter had not actually engaged the specific attention of the heads of govermments.
Mr. Gray felt that the people should be told that evacuation is not the answer to the fallout problem; that protection re-
quires shelters.
It did not follow, however, that the Federal Gov-
ernment should undertake a full-scale program for shelter protection.
Mr. Gray beileved the Gaither recommendations were not sufficiently clear and did not include a financing program. He would
recommend (1) adoption of the concept of shelter; (2) frank commni-
cation to the people; (3) initiation of a research program to provide
information on the kinds and types of shelters (such research to in-
clude blasting shelter prototypes with large bombs) and on siting
(which the Gaither Committee did not deal with).
Mr. Gray thought
we should be willing to spend substantial suns on full-scale research.
In the military services, funds expended for research and development
on Weapons systems, though substantial, were a small percentage of
the cost of the operational systems. Applying this principle to shelters, we might well spend for shelter research and development one
percent of the estimated cost of a completed shelter program.
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