https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UPOQz5xNsc

The original “Duck and Cover” educational video to protect from an atomic blast.

Psyral Infection said

scruffy said

Psyral Infection said   
‘its a great big universe…’    

i sing that song all the time.  no joke. 

Psyral Infection later said
‘DUCK AND COVER!’ 

that took me right back to fifth grade. 
anybody else have to watch that in school?  

Wow. I sing that one too. Along with the Animaniacs “Nations of the World” and their “50 US States and Capitals”. I know them by heart. I used to sing them to my daughter when she was young.

there it is.  twice more. 

favorite line:  ‘the spanish sahara is gone [?]’ 

know this one? 

And the “Duck and Cover” one I had to watch in school too. I love that you can protect yourself from a nuclear blast and radiation by simply pulling your jacket over your head and ducking down. Makes me wonder why people are so worried about nuclear weapons when it is so easy to thwart the effects.   

short answer, its intended to give the suburbanites a chance.  more specificly, anybody far enough from the burst that flash fires dont happen, and blast wave effects are survivable.  if you live just that long [and assuming you werent blinded], youve got a small amount of time to get the hell out of dodge, or improvise a fallout shelter. 

okay, sure, if detonation is a quarter mile away, youre fucked, period.  even if you could somehow magically negate the enormous temperatures and pressures of the blast [you cant; youre gonna be pulverized and incinerated], youd still be given a dose of hard radiation that will kill you just as dead. 

the primary physical effects of a nuclear blast cover a huge, huge area, but most of it would be outside of the instant vaporization and immediate firestorm.  further away you are from it, the more ‘duck and cover’ means shit. 

when i was a youngn, at the time i last watched it, my school was more or less the exact aiming point for im sure at least three digits worth of soviet warheads. 

probably not true of many schools, but this one happened to be right at the border between the air base and pearl harbor.  no question, they woulda schwacked it.