Major Calamities, Mail Surveys, And Possible Halo Effects

Abstract

On April 26, 1986, one of a cluster of Russian nuclear power plants at Chernobyl exploded and caught fire.  Subsequent publicity was massive.  By sheer happenstance the authors had just put into motion a study in which an existing nuclear power plant in the western United States was one of four items being investigated as a nontraditional tourist attraction.  This unplanned and unforeseeable upheaval in the macroenvironment produced some unusual results.