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a five or sixemonth period in which no instructions were forthcoming, no information was forthcoming. The people were trying to do
something and it ended up with pretty much chaos.
By the time the
governmentacted and was able to get the instructions out, the interest
had died off.
Also during that time I remember n eetings.
I know I attended one
PTA meeting where a speaker had beet. asked to talk on nuclear effects.
Unfortunately, he was one nf those experts who become expert by hearing and reading auch things as On The Beach, and he
managed to terrorize the audience, I got up about half-way during
his talk and started trying to «:k him questions that [ hoped would
bring the thing back into perspective. but it was a losing battle all
_ the way. Later on in our area we did put out speakers, people who
could talk about the effects to some degree. But we were talking
earlier in this conference about not giving out any information. This
was a case of not telling the people the problem or the facts early and
in detail, This was a case where we gave out the basic fact that a
nuclear war could occur too early and without any information to pro-
vide guidance for people.
Since that time there has been apathy with respect to the Civil
Defense program even though the Government in fact, as I said,
came out with instructions later on, It just died off. I worked with
the Illinois Civil Defense people alter that and it was very difficult
to bring the people, the public, back to the point again because the
impetus was no longer coming from Washington. The instructions
were there and had been put out, but there was no push to use the
instructions,
FREMONT-SMITH: Did any of you see the article in Progressive
magazine at about that time entitled, "It's a Problem," a satire?
TAYLOR: Yes, I did.
FREMONT-SMITH: I think it's one of the best I've ever seen and
I really think it points up exactly every single issue that came up.
A man put up a Civil Defense thing in this smali town and a friend
of his learned of it through a plumber because nobody else knew about
' it, and he took his ll-year-old-boy over to see what his friend had
made and then he asked him a series of questions. He said, ''What
do you do about air and what do you do about a filter and what do you
do about your neighbors coming in?" At each question the man who
was building the defense thing contempiated 11 and ended up, "Well,"
he said, ‘It's a problem!"
Pera ee
SESSION VI