Excerpt from Fallout Protection: What to Know and Do About Nuclear Attack

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 un likely, and to keep it unlikely is their most important aim. It is for this reason that we have devored 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 and death for you.

The need for preparation - for civil defense - is likely to be with us for a long time, and we mu5t suppress 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 program that would avoid large-scaleloss of life. But an effective program of civil defense could save the lives of millions who would 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 shel ter program is one of these. This booklet contains information about a shelter program - what the Federal Government in tends to do, and how State and local governments, and indi vidual citizens can work together to bring it into being as a sound measure of national preparedness.

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