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the meat. Eventually, the New York Times was compelled to interview half a dozen well-known physicists and obtain from each of them a statement that salami had no special virtues as a food in case of atomic attack. The reporter who obtained the interviews was recommended for a Pulitzer prize.
    Hardly had the salami furore died down than another, concerning alcohol, arose. Someone recalled that the United States Navy, in an experiment carried out on mice, had made the fascinating discovery that mice, fed enough alcohol to make them paralytic drunk, and then subjected to gamma rays in lethal concentrations, had come through the experience without as much as a hangover. The navy had arrived at two cautious conclusions as a result of the experiment. The first, that mice could hold, by comparison, twice as much alcohol as man without becoming intoxicated. The second, that a high percentage of alcohol in the bloodstream of mammals seemed to provide an uncertain but definite degree of immunity from the radiation released by atomic or other nuclear explosions.
    The run on bars and liquor stores, when the story gained circulation, exceeded even that which took place following the repeal of prohibition. A form of drunkenness christened “blitz plotz” by a copy-reader on the New York Daily News became acceptable in even the most rigid social circles. Millions took to carrying hip flasks as they had during prohibition. Elderly ladies and high-school students held it prudent to carry a snort of rye, bourbon, Scotch, gin, or vodka in their handbags, and “Have a life-saver on me” became a familiar and kindly greeting in business circles.
    The Herald Tribune, jealous of the salami service of the Times, undertook to expose the “blitz plotz” fallacy, but ran into unexpected and humiliating difficulties. In the first instance the public, once convinced that it was a patriotic and personally wise precaution to keep a pleasant buzz on all day and night, was loath to be persuaded otherwise. They liked the idea, and circulation of the Tribune commenced to fall off from the opening of the anti-blitz plotz campaign. Then the attempt to obtain forthright statements from scientists to the effect that alcohol provided no protection at all from atomic radiation was only partially successful. The scientists themselves were convinced that it was not so. The evidence of the mice was irrefutable, so far as mice were concerned, they pointed out. While this did not necessarily apply to man, the possibility that it did could not be ruled out. A close parallel between mice and men had been demonstrated in a number of other conditions. Not a scientist could be found who would go on record with a flat statement that intoxication provided no immunity for gamma radiation.
    In desperation, the editor of the Tribune himself called on Dr. Kokintz in the special laboratory established for him on the second floor of the administration building of Columbia University, and asked him bluntly, “Dr. Kokintz, would you yourself recommend being drunk during an attack by nuclear weapons?”
    Kokintz peered at him through his thick glasses and said, “What else? What else?”
    “But,” persisted the editor, “are chances of survival greater for the individual if he is intoxicated?”
    “With the weapons we have at the present time,” Kokintz replied gravely, “neither sobriety nor intoxication will make any difference. There are no chances of survival.”
    After thinking this statement over, the editor decided to wind up the campaign with a series of statements from the clergy and prominent social workers.
    That evening, he dropped in at the St. Regis and had one of their giant martinis in the King Cole Bar. It was, he reflected as he drank it, a completely subconscious reaction--the same kind of unreasoned and primitive urge that drives men to duck their heads when a building falls on them. He decided he would have another while he thought about the