The Technical Validity of Civil Defence Against Nuclear Weapons

Before turning, in Chapter 3, to a consideration of the political rationales for civil defence, some account should be given of the central arguments about its technical effectiveness. There is no consensus about just how much civil defence can credibly claim to do. Some, such as President Ronald Reagan’s Deputy Undersecretary of Defense T. K. Jones, have stated publicly that, with a civil defence network of home-built earth-covered shelters, ‘Everyone is going to make it’.1 At the opposite extreme, British historian E. P. Thompson in his booklet Protest and Survive notes that ‘if war commences, everything is already lost’.2 The range of professional disagreement is staggering, and is characterised by its extremes: ‘everyone’ is going to make it or ‘everything’ is lost. Neither seems to represent a likely outcome.