Vulnerabilities of Social Structures - The Black Vault

tools and findings that come out of the analysis point to broad categories of requirementsand constraints on any generally comprehensive social countermeasure systemthat might be proposed.nuclear attack ---Granted all the problems in making inferences about the social effects ofwhat should civil defense planners and administrators do now,to be guided by the findings in this book? Looking beyond the kinds of illustrative,specific systems proposed throughout the book, and especially in Chapter VII, thereappear to be a number of implications for policy and action in both the methods anofindings developed here. If these implications were to be stated in the form ofrequirements for policy and action, the foilowing seven statements wouli probablybe the most important "findings" from this book:1. The term "social effects" has a necessarily broad meaning.a meaning which underlies a broadened and comprehensive civildefense mission. The social effects and dimensions of nuclear attackmust be understood to include effects which have often, bytradition or convenience, been considered as isolated classes.Ameng these effects are "economic" effects, "political" effects,"cultural" effects, "psychological" effects, and "demographic"effects.2. Civil defense systems must be evaluated in terms of theirsocial and societal effects. The most important analytic and planningrequirement is for the development of new and comprehensivesocial criteria for establishing the ranges and meanings of attackeffects and for projecting and evaluating the performance of anyspecific, proposed civil defense social countermeasure system.Such a system of social criteria would require using a society-wideframe of reference, and its uses would reach far beyond the designof civil defense and other national security systems and policies.In the case of the shelter concept, for example, it is nolonger meaningful to evaluate the "cost-effectiveness" of alternativeshelter postures in terms of "number of additional livessaved" or "number of additional lives saved per increment offunds" (see Chapter I, pp. 154-161, esp. pp. 160-161).3. New techniques for assessing the "social cost-effectiveness"of civil defense systems are therefore needed. The development ofthese new criteria and techniques implies the need for developingnew, non-economic "social cost-effectiveness" methods for evalu..ating civil defense and other national security systems.xxi