Summarize Mark's views on the United States' state of Civil Defense preparedness. Does the author seem to agree with him?

Mark's views on U.S. Civil Defense preparedness are
enlarged upon in the conversation Mark has with Randy in Randy's new Bonneville at the
virtually abandoned airfield, and his views have a most negative
tone.

The term "Civil Defense" has been replaced in recent
times with the terms "emergency management" and "Homeland Security." Civil defense
preparedness is the government authorized, non-military actions that are taken (or
planned) to prepare the civilian population for military attack (or for other
catastrophes such as the contemporary focus on asteroid collision or massive solar
flares and coronal mass ejections). Mark speaks rather succinctly to the civil defense
preparedness in the setting of the story when he says that tipping off the people is
"something Civil Defense should have done weeks--months ago."

In
summary, Mark's views of the country's Civil Defense
preparedness (in the setting of the story; the author's own views reflect Civil Defense
preparedness in the United States during the Cold War era) is that it suffers
form:

• secrecy; "[S]omebody says, '...Let's not
  alarm the public.' So everything stays [classified as] secret or
  cosmic."


• delay: "[E]verybody ought to be digging
  [shelters] or evacuating right this minute."


• reliance on
  the covert: "Maybe if the other side ... knew that we knew, they wouldn't try to get
  away with it."


• out-moded mentality: "Chevrolet
  mentalities shying away from a space-ship
  world."

Mark has a poor opinion of the
decisions made at the highest government level and at the top level of military command.
If Mark were in a position of authority, Mark would have approached Civil Defense by (1)
honestly and candidly informing the public of the mounting threats; by (2) instructing
the populace to immediately begin "digging" bomb shelters and stocking them with
provisions; by (3) making approaches to "the Russians" to lay out the intelligence that
was known (rather like the disclosure of information that later occurred in real life
with Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs); by (4) getting "Bold" "Impatient" "Rude men" to jolt
and invent and demand the country's way out of the "Chevrolet" mentality and into a
"space-ship world" mentality.

While trying to deduce an
author's views from the fiction that that author writes can
be tricky, it can also be said that, as with the poet of lyric poetry, the voice and
stance of the author can be assumed to be heard in the protests, warnings, views and
lessons of apocalyptic narrative. This was certainly true of The Riddle of the
Sands written in 1903 by Erskine Childers as a warning to the British about
their lack of invasion preparedness in England. Considering other apocalyptic and
post-apocalyptic literature, like Wyndham's The Chrysalids and
The Day of the Triffids, that the author speaks through his narrative
can further be asserted as a truth. Consequently, there is a firm argument for asserting
that Pat Frank expresses his own views about United States Civil Defense preparedness
through his narrative and, particularly, through the voice of Mark Bragg. Indeed, the
argument can be taken further to assert that Frank is, like Erskine Childers before him,
warning his country about its failures to be prepared, in this case, for Civil
Defense.