MUST WE HIDE?

With probably the most authoritative authorship of any book yet to appear in the atom bomb, this is by a nuclear physicist, who was a key member of the Manhattan Project, scientific adviser at Bikini, and now serves in an advisory capacity for the army, navy, and air force on the technical aspects of the bomb. Now, believing that the real story of Bikini has not been told, and that the people are not informed, R.E. Lapp has written a book for the general public- a non-alarmist and in many ways a reassuring book, for if there may be no one complete defense against the bomb, there are still a number of effective measures which may be taken. He discusses the faulty exaggeration of our concepts of a superblitz and push-button warfare; the effects of radiation, both immediate and genetic; the air burst atomic bombs; the Bikini tests and residual radioactivity (which he claims much less potent and longlasting than did Bradley- No Place To Hide ); the delivery problem of the bombs; the atom bombing of Japan- which was not as destructive as the Tokyo fire raid; a prospective air burst over Manhattan, and vulnerability of the skyscraper city. Lapp contends here that the decentralization of cities, and dispersion the country over is our greatest assurance of protection. This the long range defense; the more immediate countermeasures in the event of war will be intelligence interception, physical interception, and the destruction of the enemy's long range bombers and bomber bases. With none of the personal, literary quality of Bradley's ""diary of contamination"", this offers the refutation to that book with cool, scientific material, does not disparage the danger of the bomb but equalizes the chances of survival...With an original printing of 20,000, and an advertising appropriation of $15,000-this book will have full support.