Lecture: Hope (1956)

 And man today is in a state of having developed something it cannot confront: atomic fission. It can’t confront it. You go into a theater, they show the motion pictures of Bikini or something of the sort, and you will find people toward the rear will sneak out of their seats and will walk out into the lobby. You find other people will duck their heads. Interesting phenomenon.

I had to study this phenomenon because I wanted to know whether or not it’d do any good to release a manual on civil defense. And we found out that there was no point in it. Nobody would have read it. In other words, at that time we were interested mainly in the dissemination of Scientology, and we wished civil defense to front for us a little bit on some of the things we could do. (That was only two or three years ago.) But we did not publish the manual.

The manual was a very factual manual of material taken out of the technologies used by military governments in war-torn areas. A very realistic view of the situation. It isn’t all going to be the way they say it’s going to be in the civil-defense (quote) “manuals” (unquote) which are issued by the government. These civil-defense manuals of today start this way, “You will have to get used to the idea that after the dropping of an atomic bomb, you will be on your own. There will be nobody to help you.”

Well then, who’s — what they sitting there for? What is this thing? Oh, I get it. It’s some sort of a racket by which you can collect some salary from the government before the bombs go off. Must be, because their manuals are…

Now, you think I’m just kidding you now, drawing a longbow. I’ve had people tell me many times that they thought I was drawing a longbow and being very exaggerated or something of the sort.

One chap who went over to Ireland told me this. And he said, “You know… you know, all through my HCA Course I thought you were exaggerating things a little bit. But you know the other day I looked up this fellow Wundt.” And he said, “That’s impossible, but it’s true!” He said, “I didn’t think such a man existed. I just thought that was one of your jokes.” Mr. Wundt did invent animal physical psychology in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany, and threw away all earlier psychologies. And this HCA student thought this was just my way of saying that it was kind of bad and we ought to do something about it.

So when I’m saying that we laid aside the civil-defense program or when I say the civil-defense program of the United States is not realistic, I’m actually not telling you a joke.

And when I tell you that they start their civil-defense manuals by saying “This is all very well up to the moment a bomb is dropped, but after that you’re on your own, ’cause nobody’s going to help you.” And if this is the basic, primary statement of civil defense, it says at once that there isn’t any. Because civil defense would be the prevention of ultimate disaster to a civil populace by reason of a bomb having dropped. This would be the only reason you’d have civil defense, you see? So if they say there’s nobody going to help you, they say they aren’t even there.

Well, I read in this morning’s paper about a multibillion-dollar program. It was the most beautiful headline I ever saw. It just… boy, was it meaningful! I said, “Man, somebody’s got on the ball here. Somebody’s going to get in and pitch. Somebody’s right there.” A multibillion-dollar program proposed by Icky… Ike, pardon me. I gave him the Russian pronunciation. And he says he’s going to have shelters. They’re going to have civil-defense shelters built all over the country, and they’ve lately been taking all sorts of surveys amongst industrialists to find out if they had enough concrete and iron and reinforcing materials, and so on, to build these shelters. And Icky — Ike is going to ask the Congress for a multibillion-dollar bill or appropriation in order to start this air-raid program.

And I thought it was the most wonderful thing. And I read down the line: “Next year,” it said, “only a few million dollars would be expended, more or less piloting the project. Just how long it would take this project to get under way, of course, is a matter for future decision. But many government experts believe this, and many government experts believe that…” An expert in what? What are these experts?

Well, they must be experts in being unaware, because if anybody is going to start on a civil-defense-shelter program that is only going to spend a few million dollars next year to find out how to build them, these boys aren’t living in the world of today. I’m not saying the atomic war is going to happen at all. But I’m saying that from a government viewpoint to leave a target wide open is to invite an attack. At no time when you’re boxing do you ever — particularly in championship fights — drop your gloves to your sides and say, “You see, I can’t hit back. Got a broken arm,” you know? At that moment your opponent says, “No kidding?” Pow! See?

So, to leave a country wide open with no planning, no adequate status for the populace if there is an enemy attack, is to ask the enemy to make an attack. The least they could do is to advertise the selection of another city as a second capital, a second command post. Instead of that they’re burrowing into the West Virginia hills. There’s a government department here and a government department there.

I was out on a long trail one day, and I came to a, you know, sort of dead end. And beyond that there were a couple of foxholes and so forth. And it said, “Defense Area.” I thought this is an interesting place to be until I realized that I was probably looking at a new government department. They’re being scattered down the length and breadth of the Appalachians and probably up and down the Rockies. You will see, undoubtedly, within a few months, some senator present a bill to get an emergency Senate, possibly in the Senate and House of Representatives. And he will propose that it be stashed away in Vermont or someplace.

This government is not acting to provide itself with a second command post. It is dispersing. And we have enough trouble in Scientology trying to keep communication up between downtown and the Distribution Center out in Silver Spring to realize quite adequately that if you were to put the White House someplace around West Virginia… There’s two or three towns down there that are very, very good places for the White House. One of them is Harlan County. Harlan County. That’s a very good place — they shoot everybody. And you have the White House there and the State Department is stashed up around Pittsburgh someplace, and then the communications office of the War Department is down in Georgia, and so on.

This will then be a government? Huh-huh! No, indeed. Couldn’t possibly. There isn’t enough communication centralization there in order to maintain its command of any given situation.¹

Notes