Vulnerabilities of Social Structures - The Black Vault

gi I c &Iczic urn1, it I I(c't- sa~i~ Ie (Ip) if' lwtt ate lil tomIsnA tra1 1t-VieW of so()tlLc atvdilable (cof(i ptual tchrniiquts for answ'ring these quest )t•i, itis concluded that to resol\eat heast tentatively the p)ro(l)etms (of hierarchical orderIng, (ho5sur(, and sj('ifipcation, a r)ugh mnodel of the general social systhmn shloifflhe (Ii lployed. This model should ,tipnhasizo, the ranges and liiits of p)hition( cna; apresent, it. is impossible to construct a model which strictly det ertmtines individualbehavioirs or social processes. One way of viewing the social systein model which.is used is to consider it as being at e.ast partially a inetapho r for society.In the second main part of the chapter, the properrti s of this m etapho'-model of the social system are used to outline the dimensions of society within whi.social responses to nuclear attack would be determined.While these actual responsescan be viewed only as visible behaviors or visible characteristics of groupand aggregates, they can be shown to be the result of a process of hierarchicalspecification.This process begins and ends in the situation of action. The key tounderstanding the way in which different kinds of social effects and responses fromnuclear attack would be manifested at different times after attack and on differentlevels of thc process(s which order social behavior is to be found in the varyingdegrees to which effects and, tesponses are "dependent' on the situation of action.Initial, visible social effects always occur in a specific, concrete situation ofaction.But social elfects represented in damage to individual and group patternsof behavior are translated to other levels of the total set of systems which determirsocial action.These other levels to which effects are translated include especiallythe level of social institutions, but they also include very general, major systemswhich maintain the fundamental characteristics of society.These general systemswhose maintenance functions may ultimately be affected, are the ecological systemand the cultural system.Implied in this total metaphor-model for viewing how social effects ofnuclear attack may be translated back and forth among levels of social ordering insociety is a new view of the basic framework within which civil defense policies an:syste ms should b)e evaluated. To define and understand the social effects of nuclealattack, it is necessary to take a societv -wi]d, perspective and to develop "societalcriterla". The whole set of processes and states of the social systeml becomles theiN