JF Ptak Science Books Post 457

Sylvian Kindall’s Total Atomic Defense (published by a very severly right-wing publisher in 1952) is one of a series of books made for a deceived American population, offering the general reader both fear and hope, often from the same, exact source. But Kindall has a  somewhat diffident approach, offering his belief that the country and its population can largely  survive an all-out nuclear war–intact.  Of course the “intactness” is dependent upon massive internal change of the social and industrial fabric of the country, which would have to transform in ways as to make it largely unidentifiable from that which we would quickly recognize.  A quick look at the table of contents tells the story in miniature, with the exception of the solution to the problem, which was generally to build underground.  (The neutron bomb would soon complicate this solution.)  Suffice to say that Dr. Strangelove would approve of the publication of such a work though would hardly believe in any of it for himself.