With the exposure of entire civilian populations to the destructive implements of modern war, new problems confront the medical and social sciences. Not the least of these problems is psychological vulnerability to the threat and actuality of bombing. This book is an instructive contribution prepared under the sponsorship of The Rand Corporation, as part of a research program for the U. S. Air Force, by Dr. Irving L. Janis of the Department of Psychology of Yale University.

The author attempts to identify the major reactive patterns of civilians to wartime dangers, and their modes of adjustment to attack. He devotes special attention to the psychological hazards of atomic bombing, as suggested by studies of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where complete unpreparedness for the attack increased the severity of the shock. The blast itself, the fact that every survivor was conscious of having just missed annihilation, the large numbers of burned and maimed bodies, were major sources