The same firefighting techniques which apply to nuclear weapons apply here too. And a box of sand that you put on the roof to put out an incendiary bomb is sort of secondary matter. The same thing for blackout measures.

SOVIET CIVIL DEFENSE WARNING SYSTEM

Mr. ROBACK. What can you tell us about tactical warning devices? Do you have any information on which warning techniques they use, and how they will communicate to the public?

Mr. GOURÉ. Well, normally, they use three sources for a city, that is in communication: the radio, which is on a wire system. There is the loudspeaker system in the streets as well as the loudspeaker outlets in appartments, which are just rented, or people have, and it is based on a wire system where the radio can function even during the attack without serving as a beacon.

So they communicate over the radio by saying, "Citizen, alert." Mr. ROBACK. They are not worried by conelrad problems?

Mr. GOURÉ. NO. Then they have the sirens and they supplement the sirens with factory whistles and train whistles and this sort of thing. It is also part of the training and obligation of every citizen to make sure that his neighbor is aware of the fact that it is an alert and the civil defense personnel also spread the warning.

Now, this system is tied in to the air defense command and they get their warning from the local air defense command or from the wider area defense command, and they are tied in. And there is a service, a warning-communication service, whose job it is to communicate, to receive the warning from the staff and communicate it to the population.

As far as I know, in a few tests that I heard of, the siren tests, I believe showed that they are heard.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Gouré. If you will stand by for a little later call we will appreciate it.

STATEMENT OF SIDNEY G. WINTER, JR., RAND CORP.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Mr. Winter, will you please take the witness stand? Please give the committee a biographical sketch of your background and your professional qualifications?

Mr. WINTER. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

I have a B.A. from Swarthmore College in economics and a master's degree from Yale University in the same subject.

I have been a consultant to the Operations Research Office at Johns Hopkins University, research fellow of the Brookings Institution here in Washington, and since 1959, a member of the Economics Department of the RAND Corp.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. It is too bad you were not graduated from Harvard, as you would be on the White House staff.

Now, you may proceed.

ECONOMIC RECOVERY FROM THE EFFECTS OF THERMONUCLEAR WAR

Mr. WINTER. Mr. Chairman, discussion of civil defense over the past few years has been focused primarily on the problems of protecting the population from the various effects of nuclear weaponsin particular, from radioactive fallout. This emphasis has been natural, since it is obvious that other problems of national recovery from a thermonuclear war are quite irrelevant unless the question of the feasibility of immediate physical survival can be answered in the affirmative, and it is quite likely that other problems can be handled if immediate survival can be assured.

Nevertheless, as this committee stated in its report on last year's civil defense hearings, immediate survival is not enough. Unless the survivors of a war could escape death from starvation, exposure, and disease, and then go on to rebuild the Nation, their "survival" would have little meaning. The possible obstacles to recovery resulting from the effects of the war on the physical environment in which recovery must occur will be discussed in the testimony of Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Hill.

I have been asked to discuss the economic aspects of the recovery problem. There are, also, important social, political, and psychological aspects, which I, as an economist, am not qualified to discuss in detail.

But I will mention them when they impinge on the economic issues in an important way. Owing to the complexity of these problems, and to the fact that many of them are very inadequately understood, I can do no more than provide a rough orientation on the subject.

Before I proceed, I would like to say that I am speaking as an individual, not as a representative of the RAND Corp., or the U.S. Air Force. The views I am presenting are my own personal views, but I should mention the fact that much of my statement is based on information developed by my colleagues, and by individuals in other research organizations and in the Government.

This is a necessary consequence of the fact that I am presenting a general survey and orientation in the whole problem of economic recovery, rather than a detailed examination of any specific subproblem.

DIMENSIONS OF THE PROBLEM

Let me begin by trying to give a reasonably complete outline of the whole problem of recovery from the effects of thermonuclear war, to emphasize its complexity and to provide a framework for my discussion of the economic aspects of the problem. First let me set forth the major questions to which we would like to have answers.

If the United States is involved in a thermonuclear war,

(1) Can population losses be held essentially to those caused directly by the war?

(2) Can the Nation recover its prewar achievements in

(a) political organization;

(b) human welfare; and

(c) production?

LIMITING POSTWAR CASUALTIES

The first question may be regarded as asking whether the sorts of casualty estimates that are conventionally made the losses from blast, thermal, and radiation effects, and the long run medical consequence of radiation-are really the whole story, or whether they yield a substantial underestimate of the population losses resulting from the war.

Note that I said substantial, and I mean substantial in comparison with the war itself. It is quite possible-in fact I would say it is virtually certain-that factors such as disease, starvation, and a lower general standard of life will produce effects on the population that are large by the standards of peacetime.

The question is whether they are large in relation to the direct consequences of the war, since policy choices are unlikely to be much influenced if they are not. Of course, if the difficulties of the recovery problems are to be judged in comparison with the consequences of the war itself, it goes without saying that these consequences must themselves be judged. It is important not to confuse the statement that recovery is feasible with the statement that the consequences of the war are in any sense "acceptable." In logic, though probably not in fact, recovery might be feasible after a war whose consequences were unanimously agreed to be totally unacceptable.

RECOVERY TO PREWAR STANDARDS

The second question goes beyond mere physical survival. It asks whether the society that emerges from the war can recover to the point where, judging by the standards of our present relatively free and comfortable existence, it would be an acceptable place to live. Can democracy survive? Can the moral values of our society survive? Can the economy recover to the point where something approaching our present standards of living are possible? Will the psychological scars produced by a nuclear holocaust make a relatively normal and happy existence impossible?

Many persons who are skeptical about the value of civil defense are troubled by these questions, rather than by any issues relating to the technical performance of shelter systems. Their concern is justified, for, over much of the range of possible wars, the answers to these questions are far from obvious. The issues are too complex to be fully understood, and consequently there is no possibility of providing answers that are beyond reasonable challenge.

This does not mean that attention to these questions, and research devoted to answering them, is without value. When decisions are made on important issues of national security policy in a world in which nuclear war is an ever-present possibility, some answers to these questions are necessarily implicit in the decisions made.

By giving attention to these problems, we can at least avoid basing our decisions on answers which reflect some gross misconceptions about the workings of our society. But no amount of research is likely to alter the fact that decisions will finally have to be based on a large measure of faith in, or skepticism about, the basic strength and resilience of the people and institutions of our Nation.

RESULTS OF VARYING WAR SITUATIONS

Continuing now with the outline of the problem, let us examine the range of situations covered by the phrase "If the United States is involved in a thermonuclear war."

Mr. Kahn has discussed the point that the range of situations is very wide. We should not think of any single alternative as constituting the only kind of thermonuclear war that can occur.

The range of situations:

Differences in:

A. Military and civil defense postures

B. Circumstances of outbreak of the war

C. Strategies

Produce different levels of:

D. Casualties

E. Destruction of wealth

F. Organizational breakdown

G. Postwar defense burdens

H. Postwar assistance or interference by other nations Depending on military and the civil defense postures on the two sides, the circumstances of the outbreak of the war, and the strategies employed by the two sides, almost any level of casualties, destruction of wealth, organizational breakdown, postwar defense burdens, and postwar assistance or interference in our recovery effort by other nations could be produced by the war.

Let me indicate briefly the significance of some of these points. Obviously, the military and civil defense postures on the two sides set the whole context in which the war occurs. Depending on the delivery capabilities, stockpiles, and so on, on the one side, as against the civil defense preparedness of the other, very different levels of casualties and physical destruction can result. Since the postures of potential combatant nations can change significantly in rather short periods of time, almost every statement that is made must have the time period of its alleged validity attached before its validity can be judged. But it is much simpler to refer vaguely to what is likely to be true for the next few years.

BACTERIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL WARFARE EFFECTS UNKNOWN

I should mention that throughout my talk I am neglecting some important possibilities in the range of military postures, particularly the possibility that bacteriological and chemical weapons might play a significant role. The reason is simply stated: ignorance. I believe this ignorance is widely shared, and I doubt that the possible effects of bacteriological and chemical weapons are known with sufficient. accuracy to permit an evaluation of how important their effects might be on the recovery problem.

INITIATION OF WAR

Next, there is the important issue of how the war starts-whether, for example, it starts with a surprise attack, or as a result of some crisis leading one or both sides to preempt, as a result of escalation from a limited war, or any of several other ways.

The circumstances of the outbreak of the war have an important implication for the amount of warning the population receives. One can visualize circumstances of the outbreak of the war in which the population would be thoroughly warned. It may be days or weeks in advance.

One can also visualize circumstances where they would be warned hardly at all, and these, obviously, have different implications for the level of casualties. In addition, I should mention that the time of year the war occurs has a great bearing on recovery problems. It affects, for example, the possibilities for evacuation, the fate of homeless refugees, and the level of food stocks.

The enemy's choice of targeting strategy, whether he launches attacks on population, on strategic forces only, or attempts to paralyze our economy temporarily or permanently, will obviously pose quite different problems of recovery. I will provide some indications of just how different the problems can be later in my talk.

I cannot go into further detail on these questions now, but it will suffice to say that given almost any specifications of the consequences of the war, it is possible to construct plausible assumptions about the war itself that will produce those results. At least, this is true if one considers the possible changes in military postures and strategic doctrines that could occur between now and, say, 1970. And this is true even for low levels of casualties and physical destruction.

CIVIL DEFENSE AS INSURANCE

The important conclusion to be drawn is that it is almost meaningless to ask whether given civil defense preparations "will work" or whether recovery "is possible." It is clear that within the next decade or two, wars could occur where any particular type or degree of preparation might be (1) not needed; (2) helpful but not essential; (3) essential for the avoidance of substantial additional population losses and for social recovery; (4) worthless, because hopelessly insufficient.

In deciding whether any given measure of preparation should be undertaken, we have to ask whether making the preparations will affect the probability that they will be needed. Depending on the measure and the way it is carried out, I believe that this effect can go either direction.

If it is a substantial magnitude, this consideration will probably dominate. Otherwise, we must ask whether the measure is a good buy considered as insurance. This means asking whether the range of situations for which the measure would be helpful or essential is sufficiently broad to justify the expenditure. It does not mean asking whether the measure will be valuable in every conceivable war that could occur, or whether a war in which the measure would be valuable is certain to occur; no insurance policy pretends to cover every contingency.

RECOVERY REQUIRES BOTH PEOPLE AND RESOURCES

Let me now relate the consequences of the war to the problems of recovery.

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