Lapp Cites Need For Realistic Shelter Plan

A physicist and former Defense Department adviser last night criticized the Kennedy Administration's new fallout shelter program as "policy headed in the wrong direction," and called upon the government to make public the full facts about the effects of nuclear attack.

Speaking at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston, Dr. Ralph E. Lapp questioned the value of designating makeshift shelters in the central cities and stocking them with food and water. Such a policy fails to give any protection against the blast or its heat wave, he declared. Without such protection, the chances for survival within six miles of the blast are very small.

"It's not true that you cannot survive nuclear attack," Lapp maintained. Nevertheless survival depends on a realistic, quantitative assessment of the effects of fallout. "Once a nuclear war breaks out, radioactivity may well become the great dictator of human behavior," he stated.

Lapp charged that political and economic considerations--the attempts of Congressmen to provide "lunch buckets" for their constituents--have resulted in the construction of missile bases near metropolitan areas, where they become "lighting rods" for attracting enemy weapons.