Five years ago, our civilization was believed to be on the verge of annihilation due to nuclear war. Today, the continuing crisis has not abated. The perceived threat has simply changed.

Americans can now view Soviet nuclear weapons on television and hear a reassuring commentator say that there is no evidence that any weapons have been stolen. (There is also no evidence that a single Soviet nuclear warhead has been taken apart, according to the ROA National Security Report 4/94.) The US government has felt so reassured that even rudimentary national civil defense has apparently been discontinued.

Foreign threats receive little attention. Indeed, the greatest peril probably does come from within: moral decay, loss of integrity in our science, and erosion of the capital base of our industry. Yet these problems are of even less concern to the public than nuclear proliferation. Instead, our nation is preoccupied with the earth's atmosphere and homeopathic doses of chemicals or radiation.

The real and perceived threats being diverse, the defense of our civilization must be carried out on many fronts. At the twelfth annual meeting, DDP will bring together a stellar faculty of physicians and scientists who are on the front lines.

The meeting will focus on how enemies of American technology have turned trivial risks and pure speculation into pretexts for destroying industry. It is a simple mathematical fact: a very small number turns into a very large one if it is multiplied by a number approaching infinity. For example: A tiny risk times a catastrophic outcome results in Apocalypse Now. Or a vanishingly small probability of radiation-induced cancer times the population of the world gives a large number of cases.

Replacing Nuclear Winter, the new apocalyptic threat is Global Warming. Frederick Seitz, Past President of the National Academy of Sciences, will discuss the reliability of computer weather forecasts-and the importance of neglected, highly relevant factors such as the brightness of the sun. Robert Balling, director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University, has posed these questions: If our future is cloudy, is that because models ignore clouds? If we don't know the temperature, just what do we know?

One of the villains of Global Warming, carbon dioxide, also happens to be the basic raw material for the bodies of living things. Sherwood Idso will report experimental results on how carbon dioxide affects plant growth.

Radiation is the best understood environmental agent, yet the answer to a basic question remains controversial: Is low-level radiation harmful, or beneficial? T. Don Luckey, author of a massive compendium of experimental results (Radiation Hormesis), and Bernard Cohen, author of The Nuclear Energy Option, will discuss low-level radiation. Confronting an issue that has recently attracted much media furor, DDP President Howard Maccabee, a radiation oncologist, will review the early studies on radiation effects in human subjects.

Edward Krug will explain his perspective on the Environment Betrayed (the title of his excellent new newsletter). ``As the late great Oxford University historian, C.S. Lewis, observed, the greatest evils are committed by perverting virtue, be it peace (Pax Romana of the Roman Empire), equality (the `Human Face of Communism' of the Soviet Empire), or nature (the `Perfect Natural State' of the rising New Green World Order).''

How shall we advise the public to respond on environmental issues? Given the rising tide of scientific illiteracy, the best we can do is to promote skepticism, according to Jay Lehr, editor of Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns. ``It will take at least a generation to undo the educational damage inflicted on today's students,'' he stated.

Will we have a generation to work on these problems? Disturbing moral and ethical trends in medicine will be discussed by Joseph Scherzer, MD, coauthor of The Holocaust Museum: Lessons for American Medicine. It is worth remembering that one of the early symptoms of National Socialism was the publication of bad physics in prestigious German journals.

External threats, even if forgotten, are certainly not gone. Conrad Chester, expert on nuclear-chemical-biological weapons of mass destruction, will update us on exotic future threats. Sam Cohen, inventor of the neutron bomb, will describe the ultimate portable and undetectable terrorist weapon, ``The Threat of Red Mercury,'' a follow-up to his recent article in National Review. Ed York will give a historical perspective based on his participation in the Trinity test.

Although the federal government may have withdrawn totally from civil defense, proliferating threats have sparked increased interest at the grassroots level. A museum in Boston actually distributes Kearny Fallout Meters, according to KFM inventor Cresson Kearny, author of Nuclear War Survival Skills. At this meeting, Mr. Kearny will focus on more mundane preventable causes of death, such as drowning, from his forthcoming book Jungle Snafus, which is based on his extensive experience in jungle warfare.

Additional speakers, including Edward Teller, remain to be confirmed as we go to press.

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The meeting will be held at the Embassy Suites Hotel, just outside the Tucson Airport, on August 27-28. Call 602-573-0700 to make your reservation, or mail the enclosed card. The special conference rate is $65 per night. All rooms are suites, and the parlor has a hide-a-bed. If you are interested in sharing a suite, call us and we'll try to match you up with someone else who would like to economize. Discounted airfares are available on Delta Airlines: call DDP for information.

There will be a welcome reception on Friday evening, August 26. We are also planning a tour of the Titan Missile Museum on Friday afternoon. This is all that remains of the Titan missile silos that once ringed the city of Tucson. There will be a nominal charge ($4 group rate for the museum plus transportation). You must be able to climb 55 steps. The number of visitors is limited: call DDP (602)325-2680 to reserve a place.

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In response to our March, 1994, issue, Neil Seldman, President of the Institute for Local Self Reliance, sent materials intended to show the myriad benefits of recycling. While nearly 15,000 residents of Washington State lost manufacturing jobs in the past few years, scrap-based manufacturing added 2,050 jobs. The figure shows that recycling is the least efficient method of handling garbage.

``Forced recycling is interactive propaganda,'' stated Access to Energy editor Arthur Robinson. Dr. Robinson will speak on ``The 98% Fact-Free Diet'' at the DDP meeting.