Level 7

MAY 24

Level 2 has room for about one million people. It is subdivided into forty units holding 25,000 each.

The social composition of its future inhabitants is peculiarly interesting. This level is destined to receive all kinds of maladjusted people: peace-mongers, extreme oppositionists, critics of society and other cranks.

“The idea behind this,” said the speaker today, “is to appease all the doubtful and subversive elements by giving them a more secure and privileged shelter level. It is better to adopt these measures than to resort to sheer force alone.”

The ‘alone’ was significant, I thought. I do not know how much force has been, or will be, necessary; but there are plenty of legal restrictions to protect the atomic means of protection from the assaults of all sorts of sceptics. These people must have been mollified by the promise of a deeper shelter. I say ‘must have been’ because I am guessing. I have no way of knowing what the effect actually was, because when I was up on the surface nobody knew about the seven levels. We knew that shelters were being built all over the country—that fact could hardly be bidden—but nobody even suggested that they might possibly be on different levels.

So the peace-mongers and other assorted cranks are fortunate to be booked for Level 2 and not Level 1.

In theory, anyway. In practice the difference will be negligible. Is a shelter 100 feet deep any use against a multi-megaton bomb which explodes underground to produce an effect like an earthquake? Even supposing such a shelter is far enough away from the burst to be safe, half a year’s provisions will only prolong life for a little while: the surface may be polluted for many years—the fall-out of underground bursts would be specially dangerous, not to speak of the ‘rigged’ bombs—and the only alternatives will be to die of starvation underground or be killed by radiation on top.

Even so, they may regard themselves as very privileged at the present moment, for the mass of the population has shelters closer to the surface. Moreover, half the population still has no shelters at all! Construction is going on very fast, but even so it will be at least six months before there is room for everyone. Whether the war holds off that long is anybody’s guess.

The shelters on Level 1 vary in size: some of them are designed to hold a million people, some as few as 10,000. One reason for this is the variation in density of population from one part of the country to another. Also, it has been necessary to exploit all existing underground space; which means that whereas one place may have big ready-made shelters in its underground transport system, another place may have to start from nothing and build smaller shelters where it can. Hundreds have already been built up and down the country, and every day more are being finished.

But there is no point in talking about Level 1 at length, and that goes for Level 2 as well. Unless the war is a very limited one, they do not stand a chance.