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PAGE FOUR Shadow Of The Bomb BY RON KENYON O one knows how many fallout shelters are being built in Ontario but it must be a fair 'number. Last month the provincial government 'alone was taking up to 50 calls a week from people who had started building shelters or who said they intended to do so. Usually, these people want to know things like: "How do you attach the what-not to the whose it in order to hold up the thingamajig?" One man asked whether he couldn't use water as a filler for his walls instead of concrete. In theory, water is a good shield against radia- tion, admitted a provincial government engineer, but in practice "I couldn't tell him because we haven't tried it." I had made an appointment with the engineer but a hurried man from Woodstock' nipped in ahead of me. I had to wait. It seems the man from Woodstock wanted to know how te build a communal shelter for 75 people living in a subdivision. Aside from the do-it-yourselfers, there are the professional builders and contractors. The blacker the headlines about Berlin on the front page, the bigger and blacker are the ads to build fallout shelters inside the paper. One quite small contracting firm reported it 'already had 15 orders for fallout shelters and was receiving new ones at the rate of one or 'two every week. IALLOUT shelters are exactly what their name implies: they are designed to pro- tect against fallout alone, not from blast. The least expensive one recommended by the fed- eral government would consist of concrete blocks built into a corner of the basement (not dug underground). It would cost at least $260 for materials if you build it yourself and about $500 if built by a contractor. The concrete blocks must be solid, not 'hollow (you can fill hollow blocks with new concrete) and the external walls must be 16 inches thick. The celling should be eight inches thick. Plans for this type of shelter are provided by the federal government and can be obtained through your local Emergency Measures Orga- nization or the provincial government. . You're expected to carry food for two weeks 'into the shelter with you. You can cook on ONTARIO TODAY kerosene stoves, ventilation and air being pro- vided through vents in the side of the shelter. Toilet arrangements are a bit sketchy but then this. is the cheap shelter: you're expected to keep wastes in polyethylene bags which, as the government rightly observes, should be tied tightly at the neck. ROM this brief account it would seem that there is nothing simpler than building a fallout shelter. Yet in truth, it's not quite so simple as it sounds. We have described only the least expensive type. Actually, the federal government has already approved at least a dozen types and is passing on more kinds all SATURDAY. NOVEMBER 4. 1961 the time. Which type of shelter do you need? To figure this out you really need an up- to-date spy system in the Kremlin so that you'll know how big a bomb will be dropped, whether it will fall near you and whether it will be fused to explode in the air or on the ground. Lacking such a spy system, the Western governinents have been trying to second-guess the Kremlin in this matter (if they have no better luck this time than in the past the results may be melancholy). At present, the assumption is that a bomb of five megatons will be dropped. Why five megatons?