PROGRAMS TO REDUCE URBAN VULNERABILITY Present Soviet urban planning places great emphasis on reducing the population density in the cities, limiting the danger from spreading fires, relocating some industry and improving the transportation system. Limitations have been placed on the size of major cities and on the construction of new factories in them. Instead, a substantial number of satellite towns are being built 30 to 50 miles outside the major cities (14 for Moscow, 6 for Leningrad). The new housing districts being built in the Soviet Union are designed to reduce the density of the population as well as the danger from fire. For example, the major streets are 300 feet wide, creating firebreaks, and there is also emphasis on creating belts of greenery, preventing the spread of fire. I do not know if the Soviet authorities have made any significant advances in the relocation and dispersal of industry. The implementation of all such measures requires, of course, considerable time to become effective and their value may be, at least in part, reduced by the increased area of destructiveness of new weapons. SOVIET SHELTER PROGRAMS The Soviet civil defense authorities have stressed the need for shelters and their construction program, which has been in effect for a considerable number of years, emphasizes public shelters rather than private or family shelters. The program comprises the construction in peacetime of permanent shelters in the cities which are to be supplemented in an emergency by simple fallout shelters to be built in the rural areas. All permanent shelters provide varying degrees of protection against blast and complete protection against collapsing buildings, radiation, fire, as well as against chemical and bacteriological agents. They are all designed for relatively long-term occupancy and are consequently provided with water, toilets, filter-ventillation units, heremetically sealing steel doors edged with rubber, light, heating, bunks, storage batteries, and some possibly with bottled oxygen. Food is stored in some but not all types of shelters. TYPES OF SHELTERS IN U.S.S.R. A variety of types of shelters are known to have been built: For special purposes there are very deep or heavy shelters designed to survive fairly near to the point of a nuclear explosion. They may be deep underground tunnels, tunnels in hillsides or bunker type shelters. They are designed to withstand at least 300 pounds per square inch and are equipped for long-term occupancy. The other ones are the bunker types with extremely thick walls and very expensive to build. They will probably be used to shelter select civil defense, military, governmental, and party personnel. (See figs. G-7 and G-8, pp. 275 and 276.) Detached shelters are completely or partly underground and are designed to withstand blast on the order of 100 to 150 pounds per square inch. They may have space for from 150 to several thousand persons and are equipped for long-term occupancy. They are to be used as industrial, public, and elite shelters. (See figs. G-9 and G-10, pp. 278 and 279.) SUBWAY SHELTERS The Soviet authorities have officially designated the subways as shelters and are believed to have adapted them for this purpose. There are at present subway systems in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev. The stations and platforms are in most instances over 100 feet deep. (See fig. G-11, p. 280.) I believe that many of the subway stations are equipped with sealing or blast doors concealed at the entrances to the station platforms. Here are some photographs taken by travelers of what I believe to be such doors. This is one type which is concealed in the floor at the entrance of the platform, and will lock in place behind these metal sheets, which are, in most cases, the only nondecorative part of the station, everything else being gilt and wrought iron. (See fig. G-12, p. 281.) |