A NEW YORKERS GUIDE TO CIVIL DEFENSE. WHERE TO GO, WHAT TO DO & HOW FAST TO DO IT.
family to the Civil Defense shelter at the school. It’s way down in the subbasement. It’s really safe.
If a single twenty-megaton bomb were exploded over the Empire State Building, and we were hiding in our Civil Defense shelter, we would not survive the two main effects of the bomb—heat and blast.
As the bomb explodes it creates a fire-ball six miles across with light and heat as intense as the center of the sun. At ground-zero we are vaporized. Not burned, not charred, but vaporized. Farther out, people and objects burst into flames and the blazing heat sets fire to everything combustible, sheet metal on buses ignites, tires liquefy, tanks explode and human flesh melts. As far away as four miles, the light from the flash passing through windows ignites rugs and furniture. Twelve miles away the flash causes blindness, charred flesh
