WVHo will help the physicians and nurses care for the injured persons after a community has been attacked with a hydrogen or atom bomb? This was the question that those planning for Medical Civil Defense of the New York State Department of Health asked themselves. Knowing that many thousands of injured persons would require care at the same time, this group attacked the problem of how to train civilian volunteers to assist the medical groups. They realized that doctors, nurses, and skilled workers would need volunteers to help them carry out many duties, techniques, and procedures which normally they would perform. It was agreed that to give even minimal care to the greatest number of people within a short period of time, the highly skilled groups should perform those procedures that only they could do, while trained volunteers could carry out simple medical and nursing procedures under supervision. This idea posed many problems. How were these volunteers who had full-time jobs going to be trained? How would training programs be organized in New York State? Should volunteers be trained for specialized work, or should the training be broad in scope so that they could do a variety of tasks? Who was going to train them? What kinds of training guides would be needed? These were some of the questions that the medical defense leaders endeavored to answer in planning the training program for volunteers for emergency medical service.