320 DASA 2019-2 WARREN: One of the things that came out of many of the early discussions—and Ralph recalls this probably more vividly than I do— was the agreement from the studies made on these populations after the war. If there wag prompt leadership the situation could be quickly prought under control, bui with the lack of this leadership then chaos was aptto occur. The leadership could be indicated by the Civil Defense arm bands or some insignia, a visor cap or something that would indicate that the individual who took the authority under his wing did have the right to do so. There are manyillustrations of this even today, You've been ina traffic jam after a football game and there will be a crossroads with no signal lights and the cars get all fouled up. But if somebody, a civilian, happens to step out in the center and begins to put a little order in it, in a little while he's able to unsnar] it just because he did something logical and had shown some leadership. If this is built into the Civil Defense program all the way through, you have some chance of a normal reaction. So we need some plans, At one time we had a very good plan and organization with widesprea] community participation in comprehensive detail at all levels of community and government, Probably the peak of it was at the end of Mr. Peterson's tenure as Civil Defense Director, At that time I think we had the best capacity to mount a Civil Defense effort nationwide with a pretty good organization and thinking through of the problems of transportation and communication and food and medicines and what kind of shetters would be useful, Of course. computations of the fallout and the number of megatons used were very much less than now. Nevertheless, the principles and policies are still pretty sound. They need improvement and extensions. But the community participation has fallen away. AYRES: I would not argue with the implication that these have gone downhill. The amount of money available and morale may have, but I think there have been continuous improvements in the planning. WARREN: On the planning, yes, I would agree with that because the planning, after all, can be dene by a small group. But ina d:sseminated net of civil defense. . . , TAYLOR: I'm confused about one thing because during those _ days—I may have been in an unusual situation at Los Alamos—we had a civil defense program. Ther 2were bloc«x wardens and they had hats and arm bands and I had the impression that was true in the rest of the country,