Taking a look at that classic film, Duck and Cover, I wonder: would “ducking and covering” really save you from an atomic blast? If there is ever “a bright flash…brighter than the sun, brighter than anything you’ve ever seen,” could I really follow Bert the Turtle’s advice? (Of course, Bert has it worse, what with those damn dynamite-toting monkeys frightening him and all.)
I would think only in the sense that it would protect you from any falling/flying debris if the blast/shockwave damaged the building you are in enough.
As for radation, Nothing more then concrete, lead or a lot of earth is going to help much.
And if you are near the blast, just bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.
I’ve always felt that “duck and cover” was one of those things told to us by Higher Ups just to make us feel like we had some smidgen of control, and hope, in an otherwise chaotic and hopeless situation. Sorta like the advice you hear about what to do in a ______________ (fill in the disaster of you choice), some of which has little to do with actually surviving said disaster, but at least you can feel like you’re doing something other than kissing your ass goodbye.
Though my dad, who went through that kind of thing as a kid, has theorized that perhaps the schooldesks made in the 1950’s were made of some supersecret material that will protect them from nuclear blasts. 
My WAG agrees with HPL: If you’re pretty far from the blast and the worst thing you have to worry about is flying glass and ceiling tiles, sure it’ll help. But if you’re close, you’ll just get vaporized along with your desk:) The point is to raise the survival rate in the already survivable areas.
If the nuke goes off far enough away, the shockwave may be able to break glass, but still be surviable, ducking and covering under say a school desk would help greatly in stopping broken glass and the like from hurting you. Not much, but better than just standing up.
I guess Duck and cover was mostly propaganda.
However if you are far enough away to avoid death by incineration,radiation,blast, etc., then the advice from the old Protect and Survive days in the UK makes some sense.
If outside drop immediately face down (not drop dead!),close your eyes and cover exposed skin with clothing to reduce burns.
Lying flat would would reduce the blast danger somewhat, and surprisingly although the bigger bombs have a longer thermal pulse it’s got a more gradual rate of increase: so whereas with a little bomb you’d be burnt before you could react, with a big one you might have time to get under somecover as there’s time for your skin to get rid of some of the thermal energy.
Not saying you wouldn’t get burnt though.
The best advice would be to follow Neil out of BBC’s “The young ones” and whitewash yourself:D
You have to remember a few things.
In the late 40s and early 50s nuclear war wasn’t an if, it was a when. We had just actually used 2 nuclear bombs to end a war.
And things like thousands and thousands of push-button launched ICBMs, each with ten 1-megaton MIRVs, or mass starvation from nuclear winter etc., they didn’t exist. A few dozen nuclear bombs would have been dropped from prop-driven airplanes.
Not that that would have been a walk in the park. But it wasn’t the instantaneous ‘end of civilization’-type war the way we think (or, hopefully, thought) of nuclear war today. So ‘Duck & Cover’ was just a newer version of WWII style air raid drills. The idea that now just the flash from the explosion was deadly. And, if you’re not at ground zero, this is actually true. So ducking and covering could actually help.
And, of course, it was part propaganda. People wanted to know what, if anything, they should do.
We learned the same ‘duck and cover’ in tornado drills when I was a kid, to protect ourselves from flying glass and debris.
Also, one of my teachers was a photography technician who witnessed the bomb tests at Eniwetok. He said that the most common injury among the observers was broken bones from falls when the shockwave hit. Anyone whose duties allowed would sit down or hang onto something solid.
In the 1950s we were fighting the last war, as we have always done in our history until the new wars teach us differently through hard example.
Duck and cover, as explained above, is a reasonable way to protect oneself from the glass and debris of an ordinary blast wave. The understanding of what an atomic bomb going off overhead had not truly penetrated to the individual level, and had probably not even made it through to those in charge of civil defense. Those who did understand were reluctant to spread panic by admitting that no precautions could be taken to protect the public at large.
Nothing has changed. We’re still fighting the Soviet missile system and the dangers of a hijacked airplane, even though the next crisis will virtually certainly involve neither of these. 50s civil defence was mostly stupid, costly and time wasting, but I’m sure it brought some peace of mind to many. This is not negligible. Still, we’re extremely fortunate that no atomic bombs ever did fall on us or else we’d have, for the rest of our lives, the image of a shadow representing all that was left of a child impressed onto a desk to live with.
As I remember, one of the stories related in the book Unforgetable Fire involved a young woman who actually DID “duck and cover” in Hiroshima (She didn’t have any advanced intel, or anything, it was just standard safety training for conventional bomb raids). She was, indeed, somewhat sheltered from some of the blast effects, coming out almost uninjured, except for burns to her back. 'Though she did suffer from some radiation aftereffects later, as I recall.
'hope I’ve been of some help,
Ranchoth
It is really quite simple. Too close: you’re dead meat. Too far: no real danger. But in between taking a small precaution to prevent injury is a Real Good Idea. One thing the Civil Defense authorities really want to reduce is the number of somewhat injured people. Reduce that group by several thousand and the load on the system after the bomb goes down noticably. Note that aiming systems being what they were at a time, one had no way to really tell which of the 3 categories you might end up in. So just to be sure, …
I keep hearing people talking about how “What’s the point of doing X in bad situation Y. It clearly isn’t going to help.” When it’s not the worst case scenarios but the in between cases the safety precautions are for. E.g., Seinfeld ragging on sky divers’ helmets. “If you’re chute doesn’t open, they’re wearing you for protection.” No, a lot a times with the chute opening you still land bad and then having a helmet is a Good Thing.
As others have said, ducking and covering DID help if you were far enough away and the bomb was pretty small (say tens of kiltotens). I think they were basing their suggestions on their findings at Hiroshima, where even relatively modest shielding could make a big difference. There was a woman, I heard, who had the pattern on her kimonon burned into her skin, because the dark ink absorbed so much more of the heat than the light parts, which reflected it. Ducking and covering saved your skin and eyes from this sort of thermal burning.
Of course, if you were closer, or if (whwen) the bombs quickl accelerated into the hundreds of kilotons, then megatons, then tens of megatons range, “Duck and Cover” became a cruel joke, as graphically depicted in the film The Atmic Cafe, which juxtaposed scenes from Duck and Cover with devastation scenes from Atomic Blast Test films, or in the book and film QWhere the Wind Blows, where the old couple cover up w2ith paper bags that ultimately become their death shrouds.
And I was old enough to have actually participate in “Duck and Cover” drills while I was in grammar school. We didn’t just cower under our desks, though – we were told to go out into the hallway. You didn’t have the desk to shelter you from falling debris, but you had the added protection of another wall between you and the blast, rather than being exposed to so much of it through those huge school windows.
I suppose it mattered where you ducked and covered. Certianly, doing what you can is a bit better —however little— than doing nothing. If you ducked and covered behind a solid concrete wall, it would be better than staying standing up to watch the colorful fireball.
I would think that some people who saw the films of the various above-ground tests of A and H bombs where the military and science people observed (at a distance) might have concluded that the thing to do in case of a nuclear attack is to sit or stand and watch the fireworks, as if the soldiers and scientists did it, it must be all right. Also, there also may have been a few half-wits who actually beleived that exposure to nuclear radiation really would turn you into the 50 foot woman or give you super-powers, as in some of the popular movies. Advising “duck and cover” may have been trying to inform people that the danger is real and that nuclear weapons are not harmless fireworks.
Cynically, I always thought Duck and Cover was to assist in the clean up and casualty lists post-nuke. Get the kids to duck under their desks, have a list of which kids sat at which desks, note corpses under desks, BANG! Instant casualty lists confirmed against existing data.
Yeah, but as I note in my post just above, it didn’t always work that way in practice – in my school we were herded out into the hallway, away from any seating plan. I think it unlikely that they could count on finding a seating plan, and relying on it, in any case.
Since most schools were made of brick, moving to the hallway (as we were instructed), meant there were two walls between you and the shockwave. The brick and the space would reduce radiation damage, and reduce injuries due to flying glass.
It may look silly, but it would have saved lives. The problem is that people tend to see something that doesn’t save everyone as being ineffective.
Why would the distinction about megatonage make duck-and-cover useless? Each still has a fringe of survivability. In fact, the larger the weapon, the larger the fringe. Yeah, it isn’t going to help many people inside that fringe, but it should help many people.
It was not, is not, and never will be a joke. It is a useful survival skill people should know.
I can still recall the abject terror us kids faced in the 50s and 60s. Sirens going off for drills etc. Seems like a big joke now, but we are so damn lucky to have survived the cold war.
It doesn’t seem like a joke at all. It was damned scary, and required a lot of hard work and a lot of blood before it ended.
Duck-and-cover would help the VAST majority of the population where a bomb goes off, of any size. The inner area of total destruction is a much smaller area than the zone of survivability, but where there is still physical damage. In that entire zone, Duck and Cover saves lives.
It’s not just to be protected from the direct blast, but if you’re under a desk you might also survive if the roof falls on you after the building takes damage. That was quite a possible outcome in some of those old frame schoolhouses.