Elements of a war-survival policy for the United States

The Soviet Union has been vigorously pursuing a war-survival policy for several years, whereas the United States has relied entirely on deterring nuclear war. This has resulted in a situation in which the U.S. population is of the order of ten times more vulnerable to nuclear war than is the Soviet population. Increasingly wide-spread perception of the disparity in vulnerability could undermine credibility of the U.S. deterrent forces and leave the United States in a very poor bargaining position in a confrontation. A program recommended to reestablish parity in vulnerability consists of the following: (1) make national survival in the event of nuclear war explicit policy, (2) develop crisis relocation plans for the population of all potential target areas, (3) teach a course in nuclear-war survival in high school, (4) assign to Minuteman and/or B-1 the role of preventing the reloading of Soviet pop-up silos, (5) reinstitute air defense in the United States if the Soviets continue to deploy the Backfire bomber, (6) continue policies encouraging relocation of population and industry outside cities, (7) avoid the development of new target concentrations especially in the new synthetic liquid fuel industry, and (8) develop and encourage integration of blast and fallout protection into new energy-conserving construction