 The Success postulate of contraction requires that all non-tautological beliefs are retractable. This is not a fully realistic requirement, since actual agents are known to have beliefs of a non-logical nature that nothing can bring them to give up. In shielded contraction, some non-tautological beliefs cannot be given up; they are shielded from contraction. Shielded contraction can be based on an ordinary contraction \(\div\) and a set \(R\) of retractable sentences. If \(p \in R\), then \(K-p = K\div p\). Otherwise, \(K-p = K\).