Step Right Up, Folks

The great U.S. public, which had so happily sponsored perpetual motion, Coueism, beauty mud, monkey glands and the double-knobbed electric revitalizer (with storage batteries), was off again. It has developed a fevered interest in almost anything that promises to forestall atomic disintegration. Last week the Civil Defense Administration was having about as much trouble with pamphleteers and crackpot inventors as with the problems of preparing for the Big Bang.

Thousands of citizens (with the help of knowing contractors) had already constructed backyard shelters guaranteed to withstand anything short of Judgment Day itself. The CDA, which is doing one $75,000 research job on shelters, isn't sure yet what is really needed, but is certain that many a home-made job might well broil its occupants to a crisp or squeeze them like grapefruit.

Many a publisher of books and booklets on atomic survival was gaily leading the citizen astray also. One advises shaving cats & dogs to prevent their fur from becoming radioactive; another advises the citizen to throw his money and jewelry away to avoid added problems if it should become contaminated.The most dangerous suggestion: that atomic burns be covered with vaseline or some patent anti-atomic ointment (recommended treatment--covering burns with only a sterile bandage until a doctor arrives).

But it was the basement inventor who was lending real color to the struggle. One offered a drawstring bag to be yanked over the head and cinched up tight in times of peril. A patent-medicine mixer gave the public "U-236 Atomic Shock Cure" for a while, but the Public Health Service frowned--it consisted of table salt, bicarbonate of soda and water.

Meanwhile other thinkers produced a variety of other life savers, among them a suit of aluminum pajamas, a lead foil brassiere to protect "mammary projections" and a lead girdle (which would be valueless unless it were six inches thick) to protect the spleen. All were gently but firmly discouraged. So was at least one man who was peddling perfectly valid information--the inner four pages of the CDA's 10-c- official survival book. He was reselling the pages for a dollar.

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