A field-tested guide to surviving a nuclear attack, written by a revered civil defense expert. This edition of Cresson H. Kearny’s iconic Nuclear War Survival Skills (originally published in 1979), updated by Kearny himself in 1987 and again in 2001, offers expert advice for ensuring your family’s safety should the worst come to pass. Chock-full of practical instructions and preventative measures, Nuclear War Survival Skills is based on years of meticulous scientific research conducted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Featuring a new introduction by ex-Navy SEAL Don Mann, this book also includes: instructions for six different fallout shelters, myths and facts about the dangers of nuclear weapons, tips for maintaining an adequate food and water supply, a foreword by “the father of the hydrogen bomb,” physicist Dr. Edward Teller, and an “About the Author” note by Eugene P. Wigner, physicist and Nobel Laureate. Written at a time when global tensions were at their peak, Nuclear War Survival Skills remains relevant in the dangerous age in which we now live.

Researchers who have spent much time and effort learning the facts about effects of nuclear weapons now know that all-out nuclear war would not be the end of mankind or of civilization. Even if our country remained unprepared and were to be subjected to an all-out nuclear attack, many millions of Americans would survive and be in favorable conditions to live through difficult post-attack years. This book is written for the majority of Americans who, in a crisis threatening nuclear war, would want to improve their chances of surviving. It brings together field-tested instructions that have enabled untrained Americans to make expedient fallout shelters air pumps to ventilate and cool shelters, fallout meters, and other expedient life-support equipment. ("Expedient," as used in civil defense work, describes equipment that can be made by untrained citizens in 48 hours or less, while guided solely by field-tested, written instructions and using only widely available materials and tools.) Successive versions of these instructions have been used repeatedly and successfully by families working under simulated crisis conditions. These instructions have been improved repeatedly by Oak Ridge National Laboratory civil defense researchers over a period of eight years and are the heart of this book.

An examination of the American government’s Cold War national defense measures and public communications regarding protection from nuclear disaster. The launch of Russia’s Sputnik satellite in 1957 began an era where American citizens were haunted by fears of annihilation. Baby Boomers will remember Bert the Turtle, who instructed them how to “duck and cover.” Survive the Bomb documents other U.S. government efforts to calm the collective psyche with nuclear survival handouts. These cheerful and naïve representations unintentionally inspired countless schoolchildren to question authority at an early age. This strange era reached its peak in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis, lasting at least until the fall of the Berlin Wall. The nightmare still lingers today with the terrorist threat of dirty bombs and efforts by countries like Iran and North Korea to build their own nuclear arsenals. In addition to Civil Defense brochures and pamphlets from the period, Survive the Bomb includes: · Aftermath descriptions and casualty estimates at various distances from a nuclear blast · Civil Defense reports and recommendations to the United States Congress and President · Declassified nuclear wargame scenarios where the Department of Defense imagined the unimaginable · An introduction and commentaries by Cold War historian Eric G. Swedin

There is a high risk that someone will use, by accident or design, one or more of the 17,000 nuclear weapons in the world today. Many thought such threats ended with the Cold War or that current policies can prevent or contain nuclear disaster. They are dead wrong—these weapons, possessed by states large and small, stable and unstable, remain an ongoing nightmare. Joe Cirincione surveys the best thinking and worst fears of experts specializing in nuclear warfare and assesses the efforts to reduce or eliminate these nuclear dangers. His book offers hope: in the 1960s, twenty-three states had nuclear weapons and research programs; today, only ten states have weapons or are seeking them. More countries have abandoned nuclear weapon programs than have developed them, and global arsenals are just one-quarter of what they were during the Cold War. Yet can these trends continue, or are we on the brink of a new arms race—or worse, nuclear war? A former member of President Obama’s nuclear policy team, Cirincione helped shape the policies unveiled in Prague in 2009, and, as president of an organization intent on reducing nuclear threats, he operates at the center of debates on nuclear terrorism, new nuclear nations, and the risks of existing arsenals.

From cover: Here is everything you wanted to know about nuclear war . . . but were just too scared to ask.