Michael Katz Hyman sends along this brilliantly funny manual, NSRB DOC. 130 Survival Under Atomic Attack (1950).
Remember kids, “Beyond 2 miles, the explosion will cause practically no deaths at all.”
The atomic age inspired all sorts of “you can survive” silliness, including this story from Friend of Wonk Stephen Schwartz:
My favorite story concerns the tale of Willard Libby, the former Atomic Energy Commission chairman who opposed public funding for shelters and insisted they could be constructed cheaply. To promote his cause, Libby wrote a 15-part newspaper series titled “You Can Survive Atomic Attack,” featuring a less-than-$30 “poor man’s shelter” he had built in West Los Angeles out of railroad ties, old tires, and bags of dirt. “Libby’s argument for the viability of the poor man’s shelter was undercut somewhat when this structure was subsequently destroyed in a brushfire.” When physicist and former colleague Leo Szilard heard about the fire, which occurred during the Cuban missile crisis, he said it proved not only “that God exists, but that He has a sense of humor.”
Indeed.