So it went—fire, blood and turmoil, death, epidemic and ruin.
Only Russia maintained, for a little while, the mask of order. No obscenity in its skies was able to break the disciplined ranks of the proletariat. But this calm—this grimly enforced maintenance of socialІ decorum—was ultimately shattered. On the 3rd of September, while the Kremlin exulted over the downfall of each and every empire and democracy, there appeared, almost experimentally, over the city of Kiev the phrase:
јІЕНИН ДИСИВД
No mere exposure of lewd words could faze the Soviets; but the hideous violation of the proprieties represented by the simple statement that "Lenin deceived" sent consternation whistling from the Baltic to theҪИ Black Sea. The next day, the sky of Moscow reported that Stalin had lied methodically; and the day after that, the people of Ordzhonikidze were informed that the Kremlin feasted, the party guzzled, the people starved. Russia rose against its government and Politburo heads were carried from city to city on stakes. Exodus followed. From the hot wheatfields of the Ukraine to the cool timberlands of Siberia, the panoply of death began.
Last to enjoy the fruits of organized society, perhaps, were the atomic scientists and their families at Los Alamos. These persons, impounded by a series of fences and protected by guards trained not only to mistrust rumor, but to bear silently all knowledge of however weird a nature, and to shoot without asking questions, were protected through the precedents and methodologies of what is called security. The town and its laboratories were stocked with food and water against possible air attack and resultant isolation by radiation. Hence the planetary debacle, while it became known to the scientists, did not greatly affect the local status quo. The guards were ordered to destroy such bands of wandering refugees as made their way across the deserts to the vicinity. This was done.
Meantime, the scientists took measures to study and if possible to arrest the universal disintegration of humanity.
It is the custom of journalists (and it is the habit in fiction) to depict scientists as impractical, dreamy men, absent-minded, innocent, and not competent to deal with simple situations—men forever in need, like infants, of overseers. Nothing could possibly be further from the truth. Indeed, it may fairly be said that, had the people of the world understood this fallacy about scientists, they might themselves have been more scientific—which is to say aware—and so prevented their catastrophe. Actually, it was known—known statistically—even before World War II, that scientists as a group were possessed of an all-round superiority over their fellows. They were not merely precocious, but like the precocious everywhere, they had on the average larger physiques, more strength and endurance, quicker reflexes, greater athletic ability, and better looks than common Homo sapiens. However, although this fact had been published a thousand times and proved in a hundred ways, the people preferred to cling to the myth that scientists were inept in all but their métier—naïve, absent-minded, and rather foolish.
That but affords another index of the general foolishness.
New York's tragedy convinced the farsighted physicists, chemists, biologists, and others at Los Alamos that the nation and possibly the world would be swept with unprecedented panic. The steps anent local guards which have been already described were immediately taken. Under Xerxes Cohn, the scientists organized research parties; in fifteen planes, they took off to study the situation at first hand. Within forty-eight hours they had assembled a full report of events in a dozen urban areas and of the gory melee in progress everywhere in the countryside. (They had, naturally, all the information available on the Words from Calk's first account in the Chicago papers, through Cummings's initial survey, to the latest military data—as well as reports of many great savants made before their own flights from various cities of the earth.)