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That speech, delivered under the deepening shadow of crisis in Berlin, set off an incredible surge of U.S. interest in civil defense—a subject long scorned or ignored. Civil defense agencies were swamped with requests for pamphlets and questions about survival. Thousands of U.S. citizens have actually begun digging in. But the nation remains far from the day considered inevitable by one of the most experienced of its civil defense officials : Virgil Couch, 54, industrial specialist of the Office of Civil Defense in Battle Creek, Mich. Says Couch: "Civil defense must be part of the normal way of life. Like smallpox vaccination, we've got to get used to it and build it into the normal fabric of our lives. In the old days, for instance, outhouses sat in the backyard; now the bathroom has moved inside. Garages used to sit on the edge of the lot; now many garages have been built into the home. The next room to follow this pattern is the family fallout shelter."
The Critical Questions. Despite the new sweep of concern about civil defense, despite all the talk and even the action toward shelter building, the U.S. remains dangerously ignorant and misinformed about that most critical of all human questions; survival. Just what would be the effects of an all-out atomic attack on the U.S.? What protective measures can be taken, and how much good will they do? What would underground life be like?
If a thermonuclear attack were to achieve complete surprise, the first warning would be the blinding flash, visible for hundreds of miles, of the bomb itself. Within an area of up to one mile from ground zero, everything would be vaporized; destruction and death, even to those in the deepest shelters, would be certain. Initial heat radiation would be released in two separate pulses within a few seconds and would incinerate virtually everything within a five-mile radius. Although fog or industrial smog would greatly decrease the effect, exposed persons would suffer third-degree burns out to ten miles and blistering out to 15. Within seconds after the heat would come the blast wave; reinforced-concrete buildings might remain standing within five miles of ground zero, but conventional frame structures would probably be wrecked up to ten miles away. Flying shards of glass and other debris could kill thousands; even human bodies, catapulted by the blast, could become deadly missiles.
Finally, after the heat and the shock waves, would come the most deadly of all the bomb's effects: radioactive fallout.
When the bomb first burst, it would suck up millions of tons of earth and other debris, carrying them to over 100,000 ft. into the air and saturating them with more than 200 species of radioactive particles. Depending on wind and other conditions, these particles would fall back in lethal quantities over an area extending perhaps 150 miles from ground zero. As a rough rule of thumb, lag between the bomb's flash and the beginning of fallout might be figured at one minute for each quarter-mile from ground zero; thus, at 30 miles it would be two hours.