Of Science & Shelters

One of the most authoritative voices to speak up about the danger of growing Soviet scientific superiority over the U.S. belongs to Budapest-born Nuclear Physicist Edward Teller. 49, associate director of the University of California's Radiation Laboratory and "the father of the H-bomb." Last week Teller's friends in the Pentagon were pointing glumly to his prediction in last April's Air Force magazine: "Ten years ago there was no question where the best scientists in the world could be found--here in the U.S. ... Ten years from now the best scientists in the world will be found in Russia." His reasoning: the Russians treat science as a religion, and Red scientists are highly honored. In the U.S. both scientists and teachers are relatively underpaid and underrespected, he wrote, and there are few incentives for the brightest youngsters to take up scientific careers.

Teller has another fear pertinent to the day of H-bomb attack: that the U.S. is overlooking one of the best methods of discouraging attack. Such preparation, he wrote in This Week, lies in building underground air-raid shelters deep enough to withstand the impact of the heaviest bombs. "They would be expensive but. . . I believe we could save the lives of most of our citizens. In out-of-the-way places we should build other shelters to protect food supplies and our industrial resources. We could store weapons for our armed forces. We can make sure that we retain the potential to strike back not only to hurt an enemy that attacks us, but to destroy him."

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