How to Protect Yourself from Nuclear Fallout and Survive an Atomic Attack – 1950s Educational Film
The original title of this film is “Fallout: When and How to Protect Yourself Against It”.
About fallout:
Fallout (also fall-out) is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast or a nuclear reaction conducted in an unshielded facility, so called because it “falls out” of the sky after the explosion and shock wave have passed. It commonly refers to the radioactive dust and ash created when a nuclear weapon explodes, but this dust can also be originated in a damaged nuclear plant. Fallout can also refer to nuclear accidents, although a nuclear reactor does not explode like a nuclear weapon.
This radioactive dust, consisting of material either directly vaporized by a nuclear blast or charged by exposure, is a highly dangerous kind of radioactive contamination. It can lead to the contamination of aquifers or soil and devastate the affected ecosystems years after the initial exposure. A wide range of biological changes may follow the irradiation of animals and humans. These vary from rapid death following high doses of penetrating whole-body radiation, to essentially normal lives for a variable period of time until the development of delayed radiation effects, in a portion of the exposed population, following low dose exposures.
During the Cold War, the governments of the U.S., the USSR, Great Britain, and China attempted to educate their citizens about surviving a nuclear attack by providing procedures on minimizing short-term exposure to fallout. In the U.S. and China, this effort became known as Civil Defense.
