Survival Under Atomic Attack

Back in February my wife & I were visiting Los Angeles. After spending our first morning on the west coast getting used to the time difference, gawking at the old neighborhood where I grew up and checking out just how much the place had changed in the twelve years since I’d been there, we hooked up with my aunt and uncle. My grandmother had passed away not too long ago, and they were over at her house in Long Beach cleaning it up and getting it ready to go back on the market. There were many books among the items that were left in the house, and one of them was this fascinating relic of the Cold War, a nearly sixty year old booklet entitled Survival Under Atomic Attack.

To be honest, the first thought I had when I saw this was “Holy crap, I can’t wait to share this with ScruHoo readers!” So I finally got around to scanning the booklet and uploading it for general consumption. More, including a PDF file containing scans of the booklet itself, after the jump.

Click here to download PDF (6.73 MB)

Survival Under Atomic Attack was published by the Government Printing Office in 1950, and subsequently reprinted by other state and local agencies throughout the country. This particular version was distributed by the Office of Civil Defense of the State of California (“Earl Warren – Governor” – many people forget that was his job before he was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Eisenhower). To put things into perspective, 1950 was approximately a year after the then-Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear device. 1950 was also a banner year for Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had earlier in the year famously waved his “list of 205″ in front of a Republican women’s club in Wheeling, WV.

This booklet was particularly famous for its pull-out center section, which advised readers to “Remove this sheet and keep it with you until you’ve memorized it.”

It’s likely that the advice given in this booklet was written based on what was known about common sizes of nuclear munitions at the time, which were still measured in kilotons – megatonnage wasn’t too far off, as displayed by the 15 MT Castle Bravo test at Bikini Atoll only four years later, but hadn’t really entered the picture yet. Because of this, a good deal of the advice given in this handbook may seem silly or quaint if not flat out false. It’s difficult to tell whether the government was intentionally downplaying the real dangers in order to keep any panic on top of the perceived threat of Communism in check, or if some of the tips actually would have worked, assuming that the bombs that would be dropped weren’t any bigger than, say, 20 kilotons. Maybe a little of both?

I’m quite certain that many households throughout America, especially those in large urban centers, near military facilities or defense plants, had a copy of this handbook, which contains some classic nuggets, like these:

Beyond 2 miles, the explosion will cause practically no deaths at all.

If you have no basement, look around your immediate neighborhood for a nearby shelter you can get to quickly in an emergency. Such a shelter might be a culvert, a deep gully, or another building within easy reach. If you live in rolling country, there is probably a hill close to you.

If there is a radiological defense man handy, have him check you with his meter after you’ve finished your clean-up. Should he find your body still radioactive, again scrub yourself from head to foot. Then do it a third time if necessary. You can remove practically all of the radioactivity if you keep at it.

Atomic bombs hold more death and destruction than man ever before has wrapped up in a single package, but their over-all power still has very definite limits. Not even hydrogen bombs will blow the earth apart or kill us all by radioactivity.

And regardless of all you may have heard or read concerning the dangers of radioactive clouds, after the first minute and a half there is actually little or nothing to fear from those produced by high-level bursts. While most of the radioactive materials swept up into the sky eventually fall back to earth, they are so widely and so thinly spread that they are unlikely to offer any real danger to humans. Thousands of bombs would have to be set off in the air before serious ground contamination would be found over really large areas.

I’m only just a little surprised that they didn’t suggest plastic sheeting and duct tape.

My favorite part of this booklet appears on the last page, under the heading “PLEASE NOTE”:

In reproducing this booklet, advertising, promotional material, art work, and typographical styling should conform to the tenor of the text.

In other words, don’t reprint this using a typeface like Comic Sans, Wingdings or Cyrillic.