Dear Ann Landers,
Tell the goose that people who fail to take every rea-sonable precaution are stupid fools. A country wide open to attack makes a delicious target. I happen to be one of those optimists who believe Ivan will never push the button because he knows we've got a button, too. But all the same, I strongly advocate preparedness. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

Dear Readers,
Recently, a mother from Flint, Mich., wrote and asked me to settle a family argument. The question: Should they go ahead and spend $800 on a recreation room, or should they invest in a fallout shelter instead? I sided with the wife, who felt that parents have a moral obligation to protect their children as best they can against accident, sickness or death-whether it means keeping a bottle of poison out of reach, inoc-ulating children against smallpox and polio or protecting them against the devastating effects of nuclear warfare. President Kennedy has urged Americans to provide shelters as a nu-clear war deterrent. The president argued that a country that is ill- prepared makes an inviting target for the enemy. 2 3 2/ ANN LANDERS Heated reactions to my advice have been spouting forth from every state. The mail is fascinating, and it is enlightening. And 90 percent of the writers are in sharp disagreement with me. Here are some samples of the most provocative letters received by this writer in the six years she has been turning out this column. From Lima, Ohio: Your advice to the Flint family to invest in a fall-out shelter was unrealistic and foolish. The only people who will bene-fit from shelters are manufacturers and salesmen. They will rake in the shekels from gullible and ignorant saps who believe what the ads say. Chicago: I love your column, but I wish you wouldn't get involved in matters of defense strategy. Chills ran up and down my spine when you advised that Michigan family to invest $800 in a fallout shelter. If our own beloved Chicago should be a target, the enemy would not aim for the Prudential Building or the Sun-Times. The Russians are too smart for that. They would attempt to paralyze the city industrially and then come in later and take over. Their best bet would be to drop the egg right in the middle of Lake Michigan. The tidal wave would be about 14 feet high. That's all, brother. Los Angeles: Bless you for advocating shelters. Prudent preparation can help diminish the feeling of panic and hopelessness. Minneapolis: The fallout shelter racket is an unconscionable scheme to part fools from their money. It is the lousiest fraud ever perpetrated against a nation of sheep. Shame on you for falling for it. Detroit: So you hide in a hole for two weeks. Then what? You have to come up sometime. What's left above the hole where you hid? Con-taminated water. Contaminated cattle. Contaminated vegetation. How long could you live, anyway? Cleveland: Most fallout shelters, particularly the do-it-yourself types, would be death traps. If President Kennedy believes we should have shelters, the government should build them and not let a lot of blood-suckers get rich. So, my dear readers, this is what my week has been like. And now I will do something I have never done before. I will tell you why I would not take my own advice. In the last six years, I have demonstrated the temerity, or the inno-cence, to dispense advice on every imaginable type of problem-both in the newspapers which carry my column and through the mail. I am not so foolish or so naive as to pretend to know all the answers. Nobody could. Had I been blessed with the wisdom of the prophets, I The IIest ii f Ann L a n ii e ii s I 233 could not pull out of my hat the solution to all the problems put to me in a single day. But when I don't know the solution, I never hesitate to call on an au-thority, in whatever field the problem may be, in an attempt to provide my readers with the best possible answer. I believe in the advice I give because I know it is carefully weighed and measured-although at times the light touch may betray the hours of research. When that Michigan mother asked if she and her husband should spend $800 on a recreation room, or if they should build a fallout shel-ter instead, I consulted the experts and read bales of material on the subject. The key question has not been answered-at least not to my satisfaction: "Will a shelter do any real good?" Some authorities claim that if a nuclear war should be unloosed on the world there would be no place to hide. They point out that in Au-gust 1945, a single U.S. plane dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. It killed an estimated 100,000 people. In 1952, the United States carried out a test in the Marshall Islands. We exploded an H-bomb of 15 megatons. It vaporized a 12-mile island and left in its place a hole in the ocean floor one mile long. That single 15-megaton bomb was equivalent in explosive force to 15,000,000 blockbusters. Today, the Russians are talking in terms of a 100-megaton bomb. Others claim that the nuclear war would last less than 24 hours- that 90 percent of the population could be saved with adequate prepa-ration, that survivors could come out of the shelters within 10 days, "wash things off' and go on living. To me, however, the most persuasive of the experts are those who refuse to make flat statements on either side. They say, "There are many imponderables. It depends on the enemy's target, possible aim-ing errors, size of the weapon, type of burst, weather conditions, and the possibility of interception or advance warning." Many readers-among them scientists, teachers, clergymen and po-litical experts-have denounced fallout shelters as a racket. One reader said: "It's the lousiest fraud ever perpetrated against a nation of sheep." Hundreds of readers damned the shelter builders for cashing in on the greatest scare in the history of mankind. I advised the Michigan family to build a fallout shelter. In the light of all the evidence I could gather on both sides of the question, I would ANN LANOFIIS do so again. I would do so because I feel that the race should not allow itself to commit mass suicide. We must make an effort, no matter how slim the chances of survival may seem, to save ourselves and our young children. I believe in this advice, but I would not take it myself. I would not take it because I have no desire to survive in a world of maimed and sick people. Nor would I wish to be confronted with the decision of whether to shoot my neighbor if he tried to get into my shelter because he had none of his own. I would prefer to stay above the ground and try to live each day with dignity-and take whatever comes. Even though talk of bomb shelters petered out, the idea of nuclear war loomed ever larger. This letter from 1982 sums it up pretty well: