Ed Zuckerman

HUTCHINSON, Kan.–Six hundred and fifty feet beneath the Kansas prairie, in a mined-out section of a working salt mine, a man in a gray plaid suit sits at a telex machine typing out and receiving messages. This is only a test-the man comes to the salt mine two times a year for a communications drill. But if a nuclear attack had been launched against the United States, the messages he is sending and receiving would be devoted to re-establishing the services of the Federal Reserve Bank in the devastated country. Access to the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank’s underground office is through this salt-mine 650 feet below Hutchinson, Kansas. “A nuclear attack would be awful,” says John Nolan, the emergency preparedness coordinator for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, who is running the test in the salt mine. “But there will be survivors. We know that.” And the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, along with the rest of the Federal Reserve System, has made preparations to provide financial services for those survivors. “The