Level 7

by Mordecai Roshwald

Today P is cross with me because I turned down her suggestion that we should meet in the psychology room. I said I wanted to listen to the ‘Know Other Levels’ talk. I did not mean to annoy her, but for once I wanted to have my own way, because these talks interest me. They bring something new into my life each day.

  MAY 18

  Levels 5, 4 and 3 form a group quite distinct from the military group of Levels 7 and 6. They are all civilian levels. But this is not the only thing they have in common. All three are set aside for the élite of the civilian society. And the more important the civilian, the deeper he will descend and the safer he will be.

  Level 5 is reserved for 20,000 of the country’s top citizens, the real pick of society. It consists of four independent units, in different parts of the country, and each unit will shelter 5,000 people at a depth of 1,500 feet. Their population will consist of top administrators, scientists, politicians, ex-generals (who count as civilians now) and their families.

  Of course, there have to be a few technical experts on Level 5 too, people who do not rank high in society but are there simply to help run the place. In principle, however, the top élite is to look after itself with as little help from outsiders as possible. I dare say they will be willing to accept this when the only alternative is for Level 5 to hold less of them.

  Each of the Level 5 units is located near one of the country’s administrative or scientific centres, so that, when the moment comes, the privileged among its inhabitants can reach their shelter in time. Once down, they will not need to draw on the surface for any of their needs, for Level 5 is self-sufficient. They will not be quite so well off as we are in this respect, though: there will be relatively few auxiliary experts to help them along—less doctors and nurses, for example, even though they may have a greater need of them. Still, the space is precious, and one more expert means one less VIP. Teachers and children’s nurses will not be provided either, and for some reason I like to think of the élite having to do these jobs themselves. They will also need to learn how to handle sewage, keep the place clean, and so forth. It may be hard on them, but it will keep them busy.

  Apart from that, they will have the same services that we enjoy on the military levels. Air and food will be supplied in the same way. So will energy, but not for such a long time: their supply is calculated to last for 200 years only.

  MAY 19

  Today X-107 and I discussed the advantages which the two military levels have over Level 5. He seems to derive some satisfaction from the fact that, judging by our lower level, we are rated as more important than our country’s élite.

  “Of course,” he said, “this doesn’t mean we’d have been above all those politicians and ex-generals and so on if all of us had stayed on the surface. But our military function makes it necessary for us to be given the most privileged position down here. The final victory—which means their welfare as well as ours—depends on us.”

  What X-107 had said made me think of the position of the captain on a big liner. Though some of his passengers may be eminent scientists or important statesmen, men of far more consequence, it is the captain who usually has the best-situated cabin. Of course, the importance of Level 7, or even Level 6, relative to Level 5 is far greater than that of a captain to his passengers.

  “I imagine,” I said, “that the people of Level 5—who include our policy-makers, after all—would have put themselves on Levels 6 and 7 and us on Level 5 if there had been enough room for them down here. But they must have decided that getting a large number of themselves sheltered on a fairly deep level was better than having too few of them on Levels 6 and 7.”

  X-107 thought not. He said that whatever size the various levels had been, we should still have been allocated space on the deepest one because of our job.

  Well, for one reason or another, the armed forces now find themselves in the safest place in the world, not in the front lines. Quite a change from the days when a soldier had to advance into a machine-gun volley and a pilot was forever expecting something to blast him out of the sky. Today we, the soldiers of our country, are shielded by an earth crust 3,000 or 4,400 feet thick. No warrior’s armour-plating ever compared with that.

  For once let the civilians tremble while the soldiers feel secure.

  MAY 20

  Levels 4 and 3 are designed on the same principle as Level 5. They have similar equipment and they are to house important people—though not so important as the élite of Level 5. The higher the level, once you get above the military units, the lower the social status of its prospective inhabitants.

  Level 4 is sub-divided into ten independent and self-sufficient units, each holding 10,000 people. They are dispersed throughout the country, about 1,000 feet deep, and their food and energy supplies are planned to last about a century.

  Level 3 is higher, about 500 feet deep, and has twenty-five units which will contain 20,000 persons each. So it will shelter in all half a million people. It has enough food and energy for about twenty-five years only.

  The construction of Level 3 was in a way a harder task than that of Levels 4 and 5, simply because of the size of the units. Each must contain everything necessary for the life of 20,000 people, and though they will be more crowded and less convenient to live in than the units of Levels 4 and 5, not to mention Levels 6 and 7, the sheer magnitude of the building operation gave the designers some severe headaches.

  Incidentally, the analogy of a ship was used by today’s speaker, though rather differently from the way I used it. Levels 5, 4 and 3 correspond, according to him, to the first, second and third classes on a boat. Each is bigger than the preceding one and accommodates more passengers; and it is not quite as comfortable or well equipped.

  I am sure the speaker was understating the facts. If he had to use a naval analogy, it would have been nearer the mark to compare Level 5 to the cheapest third-class berths, Level 4 to the deck of an immigrant ship, and Level 3 to the hold of a cattle boat or one of those hulks sailed by the old slave-traders. To start with first class was ridiculous. Even we. Level 7 personnel are no more comfortable, by and large, than tourist-class passengers on a not very luxurious ship.

  Besides, the analogy breaks down, as most analogies seem to below ground, unless you turn one half of it on its head. Whoever heard of a ship with the very best cabins at the bottom of the hold?

  MAY 21

  The talks about the different levels still hold their fascination for me. P cannot understand why, and it is useless trying to discuss such things with her. X-107 is the right sort of person for that—he always has been—and I am really lucky to have him as my room-mate.

  The talks have tended to dwell on the differences between Levels 5, 4 and 3, which makes one forget that, in a sense, they form one very distinct group. I was reminded of the fact by X-107, who pointed out not only the similarity of their equipment and facilities, but also their basic social unity. “Despite the distinctions you may make between the élite of 20,000, the group of 100,000 and the mass of half a million people,” he said, “they add up to only 620,000. This sounds a lot if you think of the difficulty of housing them all underground, but very few if you remember the size of the nation.”

  He was perfectly right. With a nine-figure population to take into consideration, 620,000 is a mere drop in the bucket.

  “So,” he went on, “to be picked for these levels is a real privilege. To be included in Levels 3 and 4, let alone Level 5, you’d have to belong to the pick of society—or else be married to the right person or have the right parents. Then if people are going to bring their families down with them, I suppose they’ll want to stay together and live something like a normal civilian life.” X-107 shook his head doubtfully. “That’s not nearly as orderly and rational as our system. I’m sure there will be awful complications.”

  I smiled at his seriousness and said, with some mischief: “But what will an élite do when it’s all on its own. If an élite hasn’t a crowd to contrast itself with, what will
happen to it? I think living by themselves may prove hard for our select civilians—and not only the honoured few on Level 5.”

  X-107 thought this might indeed be an interesting sociological problem. He suggested that, under the pressure of seclusion, each group would develop new fine grades of social distinction within itself, so that before long each underground unit would form a little social pyramid of its own.

  I found this idea fascinating. “Who do you think would come out on the very top in a cave of, say, 5,000 top people?” I asked. “It couldn’t be the statesmen, because down here there won’t be much in the way of international politics.”

  X-107 disagreed: he thought that international matters could be negotiated from the caves by means of radio.

  “Even if that’s so,” I retorted, “they won’t have so much national politics to talk about. There will surely be very little going on the international sphere after an atomic war. Radioactivity will keep everybody below ground for a long time, and they won’t have a chance to build more atomic rockets to replace the ones we’ve fired. No more rockets, no more wars. There will be no point in making alliances either. No alliances, no wars—politics won’t be politics any more.”

  “There’s still something else they can do,” X-107 replied a little wistfully. “They can abuse each other over the radio.”

  “If they’re not too busy washing their grandchildren’s diapers,” I added.

  This made X-107 laugh. “Maybe this will be the new social yardstick on the civilian levels,” he said. “The person who proves to be most useful, best adjusted, cleverest at improvising things and solving day-to-day problems—he’ll rise in status. The rest will go down.”

  “Not down,” I replied jokingly. “To be down is the greatest privilege. Look at us!”

  MAY 22

  Today P persuaded me to join her again in the little room in the psychology department, as we both happened to be free at the same time. I was not eager to go, but I could think of no excuse on the spur of the moment and so I agreed.

  I lay down on the couch as usual, while P took the chair behind me and started to chatter. I hardly listened and really had no idea what she was saying, for my mind was moving around Levels 5, 4 and 3.

  I was wondering how closely the enemy’s underground shelters resembled our own. The shelters for civilians, I mean. There seemed little doubt that the deepest levels would be reserved for the push-button military forces, as ours were. Ways of life and ideologies might differ, but bottom-level priority for the armed forces was an obvious military necessity.

  But how about the civilian levels? What were the differences there? It seemed to me again that the enemy’s arrangements were probably very much like ours: who was more likely to be on their lowest civilian level than the politicians, administrators and retired generals? As for the other levels, there might be the difference that in one country the rich got better shelter, and in another country the mighty.

  But was this really such a big difference? I wondered. The rich were mighty and the mighty were rich. And atomic scientists and technicians and engineers fitted both categories: nowadays they were well-off and influential in any part of the world.

  Taken all in all, I decided, whatever the differences in ideology on the surface, the inside might look very similar. (I mean the surface and the inside of the earth, of course. Or do I?)

  I became aware that P was trying to get me to answer a question. She repeated it several times until I grasped it: “Which do you like best, our official privacy room or this one?”

  Still only half with her, I answered: “Oh, they look much the same.”

  MAY 23

  The ‘Know Other Levels’ talks have reached Levels 2 and 1.

  These form another group, distinct not only from the military levels but also from 5, 4 and 3. They are to house ordinary civilians, not an élite. Eventually there will be enough shelters on these levels for everybody, but that goal is still some way off.

  The technical arrangements on Levels 2 and 1 are different from those on all the previous levels.

  To begin with, fresh air will be drawn down from the surface, not supplied by plants. It will pass through filters, of course, but how effective they will be in the event of a full-scale atomic war remains to be seen. Even the speaker did not sound too optimistic about that. “To supply so many people with air by means of plants was technically impossible—certainly in the time at our disposal,” he said. “It will be a stupendous achievement if, by the time the war starts, the entire population has been provided with shelters of any sort.”

  The energy for Levels 2 and 1 is supplied by conventional generators and not by atomic reactors, which are too few to go round and which would have to be supervised by experts. The conventional generators, which are much easier for non-specialists to handle, will be fed by pipes from fuel reservoirs. Some of these are underground, but most of them are on the surface. In the event of a near hit the latter sort will be destroyed, and then the dependent shelter, even if not damaged itself, will be in a fix. But this cannot be helped.

  Food for the top levels will be supplied just as it is lower down. But there will not be much of it: enough for six months on Level 2 and only enough for one month on Level 1.

  “This may surprise you,” the speaker said, “but I think you will see how pointless it would be to make provision for longer periods—even if the storage space were available. Levels 2 and 1 are too close to the surface to resist an all-out enemy attack: 100 feet deep in the case of Level 2, and ten to sixty feet deep in the other. They may perhaps survive blast effects, provided the enemy uses no thermonuclear bombs of the underground-bursting type. If the war should be conducted in such a limited fashion, and if there is no excessive residual radiation, then after a month or so people may be able to go back to the surface without disastrous results. But if total war is waged, there will be so much physical destruction and air pollution that most living creatures so near the surface will not be able to survive. Possibly some of the Level 2 units, or even Level 1, will be lucky, if they are far enough away from an underground explosion. But this is not at all likely.”

  The outlook seems grim; but one must agree that there is little point in giving shelters enough provisions to last for years if they are not physically strong enough to withstand the explosion of an underground-bursting multi-megaton bomb.

  It is clear that people on these levels stand a very slim chance of surviving unless the war is a fairly limited one. But it is not likely to be. It strikes me that Levels 2 and 1 must have been built more for their psychological effect than for any other reason. They will mislead the safety-seeking masses into supposing they can find it from ten to a hundred feet underground!

  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 b
ooked 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.