A Sheltered Life

A world famous philosopher began the annual Herman F. Kahn lecture series last night with a speech on "Myth and History." Professor Brandon Homer devoted the major portion of his address to the renowned Homer-Smith theory of Underground Migration, propounding that mankind had, at one stage of pre-history, lived on the Earth's crust. Homer said that evidence supporting the theory exists in many branches of study, and offered an example of "linguistic evidence" by analyzing such phrases as "green plant" and "starry night," still common in primitive dialects.

Outlining the hypothetical process by which man migrated downward toward a more natural and less harsh environment, Homer termed the threat of nuclear war "an extrinsic, fortuitous factor." With military leaders planning attacks on all sides, he observed, survival shelters had to be constructed in the name of defense. As these "civil defense" programs grew and grew, the shelters assumed ever-increasing importance.

The early bomb shelters, Homer theorized, were located in metros (sites of "underground" transportation). At some point in the second half of the twentieth century an extensive shelter construction program was initiated, which first revealed to man the obvious advantages of underground living. The West, in order to keep the Family (a group of people preventing others from living with them) intact enacted laws forbidding citizens to work or reside other than one mile from their shelters.

The process accelerated. All entertainment and cultural activities were proscribed outside of a small radius, and logically, the facilities of the shelter expanded enormously. Restaurants, theaters, recreation centers, and almost all aspects of social existence ultimately became shelter-oriented.

The most recent scientific ventures to the surface, according to Homer, indicate that in fact a war did take place. "This is still a moot question," he noted, since the Underground Migration supposedly occurred at a stage when all crust life was extraneous.

Professor Homer set forth a brief analysis of how the modern historian employs mythical research element. Distinguishing between scientifically stimulating myth" and "improbable religious myth" he scoffed at the folk tale of all the animals descended from a male and female of each species set aside in a special bomb shelter during these prehistoric times. He also questioned the religious doctrine that the basic freezing, and radioactive crust represents God's place of punishment.

In concluding, Homer recounted some of the major questions raised by crust-stage like which will confront the new University Research Center devoted to the field.

"Already, the ancient belief that man's stature exceeded four feet at some point in history," the philosopher told his amazed listeners, "has stimulated important research in the physicology of growth and shrinkage." Another intriguing question which must be studied, according Homer, is whether, during the brightly over-mined crust stage, man had any sort of optic organ.