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Challenge to survival
Everything within a certain distance of a nuclear explosion will be totally destroyed. Even people living outside this area will be in danger from the heat and blast and what comes after: the fall out.
Heat and Blast
The heat and blast are so severe that they can kill, and destroy buildings, for up to five miles from the explosion. Beyond that, there can be severe damage.
Fall-out
Fall-out is dust that is sucked up from the ground by the explosion. It can be deadly dangerous. It rises high in the air and can be carried by the winds for hundreds of miles before falling to the ground.
The radiation from this dust is dangerous. It cannot be seen or felt. It has no smell, and it can be detected only by special instruments. Exposure to it can cause sickness and death. If the dust fell on or around your home, the radiation from it would be a danger to you and your family for many days after an explosion. Radiation can penetrate any material, but its intensity is reduced as it passes through - so the thicker and denser the material is, the better.
Planning for survival
Stay at Home
Your own local authority will best be able to help you in war. If you move away - unless you have a place of your own to go to or intend to live with relatives - the authority in your new area will not help you with accommodation or food or other essentials. If you leave, your local authority may need to take your empty house for others to use.
So stay at home.
Plan a Fall-out Room and Inner Refuge
The first priority is to provide shelter within your home against radioactive fall-out. Your best protection is to make a fall-out room and build an inner refuge within it.
First, the Fall-out Room
Because of the threat of radiation you and your family may need to live in this room for fourteen days after an attack, almost without leaving it at all. So you must make it as safe as you can, and equip it for your survival. Choose the place furthest from the outside walls and from the roof, or which has the smallest amount of outside wall. The further you can get, within your home, from the radioactive dust that is on or around it, the safer you will be. Use the cellar or basement if there is one. Otherwise use a room, hall or passage on the ground floor.
Even the safest room in your home is not safe enough, however. You will need to block up windows in the room, and any other openings, and to make the outside walls thicker, and also to thicken the floor above you, to provide the strongest possible protection against the penetration of radiation. Thick, dense materials are the best, and bricks, concrete or building blocks, timber, boxes of earth, sand, books, and furniture might all be used.
FLATS
If you live in a block of flats there are other factors to consider. If the block is five stories high or more, do not shelter in the top two floors. Make arrangements now with your landlord for alternative shelter accommodation if you can, or with your neighbours on the lower floors, or with relatives or friends.
If your flat is in a block of four storeys or less, the basement or ground floor will give you the best protection. Central corridors on lower floors will provide good protection.
Bungalows
Bungalows and similar single-storey homes will not give much protection. Arrange to shelter with someone close by if you can do so.
If not, select a place in your home that is furthest from the roof and the outside walls, and strengthen it as has been described.
Caravans
If you live in a caravan or other similar accommodation which provides very little protection against fall-out your local authority will be able to advise you on what to do.
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