CONCERNING THIS BOOKLET
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW AND WHAT YOU SHOULD DO
How to survive 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 unlikely, 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 or death for you.
The need for preparation – for civil defense – is likely to be with us for a long time, and we must supress 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 prgram that would avoid large-scale loss of life. But an effective program of civil defense could save the lives of millions who could 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 shelter program is one of these. This booklet contains information about a shelter program – what the Federal Government intends to do, and how State and local governments, and individual 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 fo 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.
There are no total answers, no easy answers, no cheap answers to the questions of protection from nuclear attack. But there are answers. Some of them are in this booklet.
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WORDS TO KNOW and SOME BASIC FACTS