Fallout

Access with nuclear weapons. Danger will come not just from blast or heat or nearby radiation effect, but also from fallout. Fallout which may occur miles and miles away from the blast. You need to know about fallout, what it is, how to detect it and what to do to protect yourself against it.

body needs to know. Yes, this does mean you. Watch and listen. One day, these facts may save your life. What is this fallout anyhow? Just bits of radio act fallout of the mushroom cloud of the nuclear explosion and settle on the ground. These bits of matter can be dangerous.

exposed to some radiation every day from cosmic rays or other natural sources of radiation. These exposures are too small to hurt you, but when a wartime nuclear explosion occurs, a serious fallout follows. Thousands of tons of atomized earth, building materials, rocks, and gases may be thrown into the air.

the mushroom cloud containing them sometimes moves as high as 100,000 feet. Nearly 20 miles up, some of the radioactive particles spill out near the explosion site. Others may be carried for 10, 50, 100 miles or more.

But how will you know if there is fallout? You can't hear, smell, taste or see the radiation. that you yourself can detect the fallout particles that produce it. The easiest time to do this without special instruments is when the fallout is settling through the air.

This starts any time from about one half hour to several hours after the explosion, depending on how far away you are, and it continues to fall for an hour or longer. You can see the fallout.

So if there has been an explosion of a nuclear weapon within a few hundred miles of you, you should suspect every unusual concentration of dust in the air of being fallout. After an explosion in daylight, watch any unusual accumulation of dust.