Vaanathai Pola 41
On September 15, 1961, millions of Americans who subscribed to Life magazine pulled the latest issue from their mailboxes and beheld something remarkable inside: a letter from President Kennedy addressed to them. But if the fact of the letter was a pleasant surprise, the glow wore off quickly: JFK’s news wasn’t good. “My Fellow Americans,” he wrote, “nuclear weapons and the possibility of nuclear war are facts of life we cannot ignore today.”
Kennedy went on to explain that the federal government would soon begin a program “to improve the protection afforded you in your communities through the civil defence.” A national survey was in the offing, one that would identify “all public buildings with fallout shelter potential,” and mark them accordingly.
In other words, the federal government was devising a way for 50 million Americans to survive a nuclear war by scurrying to the nearest basement. The National Fallout Shelter Survey and Marking Program had begun.
It’s the stuff of nostalgia now. Kennedy’s letter and the shelter program he announced happened 56 years ago. It’s a Cold War footnote, a misty memory lost in the era of bouffant hairdos and Gunsmoke.
Or perhaps not.
With North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, pointed west and President Trump’s atomic sabre-rattling, fears of nuclear war have crept slowly back into the public consciousness. If the headlines rekindle some of the old unease about air-raid sirens and mushroom clouds, they’re also an occasion to consider a singular relic of the period that, oddly enough, never left us—the fallout-shelter sign.
General V.K.Singh and Raman were picked up from the hotel in a black Mercedes and the single bodyguard assigned to them sat in the front seat along with the driver.
Raman and V.K watched as the vehicle drove around and finally after nearly 30 minutes drove into the basement parking of a large office building.
Then, they stopped briefly outside an entrance to what appeared like a private garage to both Raman and V.K.Singh and they watched with fascination as the metal shutter slowly but smoothly rolled up and granted them passage.
Four heavily armed men looked at their pads and at the faces of all four inside the vehicle and scrutinized them closely and then one of them waved his hand and another metal shutter rolled up and allowed them to pass through.
Raman remarked, ' they are pretty serious about their security arrangements, boss.'
The vehicle came to a halt outside a glass door which had six elite armed commandos standing guard in front of it and in front of them, stood Dr.Otto Hauptmann, the head of Mossad, dressed casually in faded jeans and a sweatshirt.
He greeted both of them with the standard Hebrew greeting ' Shalom' and they, in turn, said ' Shalom.'
(Shalom also spelt as Sholom, Sholem, Sholoim, Shulem is a Hebrew word meaning peace, harmony, wholeness, completeness, prosperity, welfare and tranquillity and can be used idiomatically to mean both hello and goodbye.)
Opening the glass door he led them into a large elevator and pressed the button ground floor and the elevator instead of going up dropped down and Raman whistled loudly and observed, ' Guess, this station can also work as a nuclear fallout shelter.'
' Yes, Mr.Raman but this is not just a station that is deep underground but Mossad itself and this is the nerve centre from where we run all our operations around the world.'
The elevator door opened and they stepped out into a very normal and cliched looking office world but one where hundreds if not nearly a thousand people were hard at work.
Raman quickly peeped back into the elevator prompting Dr.Otto Hauptmann to comment, ' We are nearly 300 feet underground and far removed from the world above and work is going on elsewhere in this complex where we are going down even further.'
Raman smiled, ' that means only the CERN built Large Hadron Collider is deeper than this construction at nearly 575 feet.'
(CERN French pronunciation derived from the name Conseil européen pour la recherche nucléaire, is a European research organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, the organization is based in a northwest suburb of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border and has 23 member states. Israel is the only non-European country granted full membership.CERN is an official United Nations Observer. It is officially and widely known as The European Organization for Nuclear Research.)
(The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider and the largest machine in the world. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories, as well as more than 100 countries. It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference and as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva.
Dr.Otto Hauptmann raised a finger and wagged it and said, ' Sorry, Mr.Raman, but as always and boringly so, the Chinese have done it again and have gone deep, very deep into the earth below us and have built the Jinping Underground Laboratory at a depth of an incredible 7,900 feet (2.4 kms) under a mountain in western China – the equivalent of seven Empire State Buildings stacked on top of one another.'
Realizing that they had lost V.K.Singh in their discussion, Dr.Otto Hauptmann clapped his hands softly, ' Okay V.K., me and Raman will chat later and we will return now to the matter at hand and the one that has brought you to our land all the way from India. Come, my team is ready with the information that you seek and we will talk more in the situation room.'
Financial markets and global economy
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
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