SESSION VI ‘ 335 parts of the state and representatives everywhere so that if something goes wrong anywhere he's immediately notified by direct telephone. HEMLER: To answer your question, there's a chain of command, both civilian and military, to take over under the appropriate conditions, UPTON: So in point of fact, during the blackout the proper authorities were in cormununication and it was decided that the plan need not be implemented on that occasion? AYRES: The President was in touch with the Director of the OEP and the Director of the OEP was working on various aspects of it, But there was no need for anybody to take over because there was no hiatus. HEMLER: And the national command centered in turn on the military side, were in complete communication with the civilian, TAYLOR: What do you mean by takeover? This is a semantic question, If you mean by taking over sitting at sort of a control center and giving orders, there are people set upto do that. What I mean by taking over is telling people what they should do, mouth to ear. I don't think these people are designated, EISENBUD: The first thing you would need is a system for damage appraisal, and I don't think it exists. AYRES: There is one. _ EISENBUD: I know; I've seenthem. For example, somebody asked how long it would take for a person to find out what the radiation situation is; I think it would take forever because in most large cities they depend on a few monitors of doubtful availability, on instruments which, from what I know, may not be ir working condition. AYRES: I think your doubts are well-founded. EISENBUD: Yes, and they are going to use systems of communi- cation which simply won't exist, as I say, with its twelve channels. corrected it now, in New York, for example, That was a few years ago; they may have but even if they have 40 or even !00 channels, that still isn't enough to get the information in from the hundreds of monitors to interpret the data and get it into a form in which you can make