WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
AND WHAT YOU SHOULD DO

 How to survive attack and live
 for your country's recovery

    The purpose of this booklet is to help save lives if a nuclear
 attack should ever come to America.  The foreign and defense
 policies of your Government make such an attack highly un-
 likely, and to keep it unlikely is their most important aim.
 It is for this reason that we have devoted so large an effort to
 creating and maintaining our deterrent forces.  However,
 should a nuclear attack ever occur, certain preparations could
 mean the difference between life and death for you.
   The need for preparation-for civil defense-is likely to be
 with us for a long time, and we must suppress the temptation
 to reach out hastily for short-term solutions.  There is no
 panacea for protection from nuclear attack.  In a major attack
 upon our country, millions of people would be killed.  There
 appears to be no practical program that would avoid large-scale
 loss of life.  But an effective program of civil defense could save
 the lives of millions who would not otherwise survive.  Fallout
 shelters and related preparations, for example, could greatly
 reduce the number of casualties.
   President Kennedy, speaking on July 25, 1961, put it this
 way: "in the event of attack, the lives of those families which
 are not hit in the nuclear blast and fire can still be saved if they
 can be warned to take shelter and if that shelter is available.
 We owe that kind of insurance to our families and to our
 country."

   The President was talking about shelter from radioactive
 fallout.  The blast, heat, and fire of a nuclear explosion are
 appallingly destructive.  But radioactive fallout could spread
 over thousands of square miles, covering a much greater area
 than the area endangered by fire and blast.  Fallout would
 be a potential killer of millions of unprotected persons, but it
 also is a hazard that individuals and communities can prepare
 for through reasonable programs and actions.  A fallout shel-
 ter program is one of these.  This booklet contains information
 about a shelter program-what the Federal Government in-
 tends to do, and how State and local governments, and indi-
 vidual citizens can work together to bring it into being as a
 sound measure of national preparedness.
   There is much we can do together, and perhaps the first step
 is to take a clear look at nuclear warfare and what it could mean
 to the world as we know it today.
   There is no escaping the fact that nuclear conflict would
 leave a tragic world.  The areas of blast and fire would be
 scenes of havoc, devastation, and death.  For the part of the
 country outside the immediate range of the explosions, it
 would be a time of extraordinary hardship-both for the Nation
 and for the individual.  The effects of fallout radiation would
 be present in areas not decontaminated.  Transportation and
 communication would be disrupted.  The Nation would be
 prey to strange rumors and fears.  But if effective precautions
 have been taken in advance, it need not be a time of despair.
   These are somber subjects, and they presuppose a catastrophe
 which can be made very unlikely by wise and positive policies,
 pursued with imagination and faith.  Still, realistic prepara-
 tion for what might happen is far more useful than blindness,
 whether from fear or ignorance.  A sane and sober person can
 assume that, whatever comes to pass, he would draw on his re-
 serve of courage and intelligence-and the unquenchable will
 to live-and begin to build again.
   The experience would be terrible beyond imagination and de-
 scription.  But there is much that can be done to assure that it
 would not mean the end of the life of our Nation.
   There are no total answers, no easy answers, no cheap answers
 to the question of protection from nuclear attack.  But there
 are answers.  Some of them are in this booklet.



WORDS TO KNOW

 A-BOMB AND H-BOMB.  Popular terms for what should cor.
 rectly be called nuclear weapons.  An atomic or A-bomb
 explodes through the fission (splitting) of atomic nuclei; a hy.
 drogen or H-bomb is called a thermonuclear weapon because
 tremendous heat is needed to start the fusion process.

 KILOTON.  The power of nuclear weapons is measured in
 equivalents of the explosive energy of TNT.  A one-kiloton
 weapon has the explosive equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT.

 MEGATON.  The explosive equivalent of one million tons of
 TNT.  In this booklet, a five megaton nuclear weapon ex.
 ploded at or near ground level is assumed as a basis for describ-
 ing explosive effects.  There are much larger weapons which
 could do more damage, but the damage from larger weapons
 does not increase in direct ratio to the size of the weapons.

 GROUND ZERO.  The surface point at or above which a nu-
 clear weapon detonates.

 FIREBALL The large, swiftly expanding sphere of hot gases,
 producing brilliant light and intense heat, that is the first man-
 ifestation of a nuclear explosion.  After about a minute, the
 fireball fades into the atmosphere

 BLAST (SHOCK) WAVE.  The near-solid wall of air pressure
 produced by a nuclear explosion.  Beginning at more than 2,000
 miles per hour, its speed decreases rapidly with distance.

 BLAST WIND.  Ile wind gust which travels with the blast
 wave and may be of many times hurricane force.

 ROENTGEN.  A unit for measuring an amount of radiation
 exposure.

 INITIAL (PROMPT) RADIATION.  The burst of gamma
 rays and neutrons sent out from the exp losion during the first
 minute after detonation.  Initial radiation is most deadly within
 about two miles of ground zero.

 FALLOUT.  The radioactive debris of a nuclear explosion
 which eventually falls to earth in particles.  The amount of
 fallout is enormously greater if a weapon detonates on or near
 the surface than if it explodes high in the air.  Large amounts
 of earth are drawn up by the fireball.  High in the sky, radio-
 active elements are incorporated into the earth particles, which
 are scattered by winds and in time fall to the ground.

 FALLOUT RADIATION.  The radiation emitted by fallout
 particles.  Each particle of fallout gives off radiation as though
 it were a miniature X-ray machine.  This radiation consists
 chiefly of beta rays (dangerous only if fallout particles touch
 the skin or are swallowed or inhaled) and gamma rays.  Gamma
 rays, like X-rays, are very penetrating, and create the need for
 protective shields (fallout shelters).

 EARLY FALLOUT.  The fallout that returns to earth during
 the first day.  This booklet is mainly about early fallout.  The
 radioactivity of such fallout decreases rather rapidly at first,
 and more slowly as time passes.

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