SOME POSSIBLE MEASURES

These are the preventive measures you can take to protect yourself from the fallout.

PREVENTION Build a fallout shelter for yourself and your family, preferably in a basement. The further this is from any dust that might fall outside, the better. The more material of any kind you can put between yourself and the falling dust the better. Pile 50 cm of earth against the windows and any unexposed walls. Fit your shelter with a simple ventilation system that will keep dust out. Carefully seal it against dust, and provide it with a toilet. Furnish it with enough food and water for at least two weeks.

CAUTION! Get into your shelter before any fallout descends, and don’t come out!

IF YOU ARE CAUGHT IN THE FALLOUT change your clothes and wash any dust from your skin and hair. Dust particles in contact with your skin will cause beta burns. Don’t eat or drink anything contaminated with fallout.

HOW LONG TO STAY INSIDE? If you don’t have a radiation monitor, there is no means of knowing. Stay for at least two weeks.

WHEN YOU COME OUT expect millions of your countrymen to be dead; power, communication, water, and sewage to be disrupted, pestilence and famine to be widespread, the economy to be in ruins, and civil disorder rife.

Perhaps, when (and if) you do come out you will agree with Nikita Kruschev that it might have been better not to have done so. Perhaps you will realize that you might have done more to prevent it? If so, read on.