Lists Worth Keeping · From history
Eight pieces of 1950s atomic advice, and which ones still hold.
Always wear a hat. Bury your face in your arms. Don't start rumors. Checked, line by line, against what the government says today.
By Dan Whelan, founder of New World Survival
Researched from government agencies, university extension services, and other published sources. See our sources
01 · The story
A 32-page booklet, and a turtle.
In 1950, a year after the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, the federal government printed a 32-page booklet called Survival Under Atomic Attack. Cities reprinted it under their own covers. Boston's mayor sent one to every household in February 1951 with a note explaining that, for the first time in 136 years, an enemy had the power to strike the city. The center pages were meant to be torn out and carried.
The booklet is calm to the point of cheerfulness. It tells you that if you are between half a mile and a mile from the blast you have a 50-50 chance, and that beyond two miles the explosion will cause practically no deaths at all. It tells you to always wear a hat. It assures you that even with a serious dose of radiation you would stand better than an even chance of a complete recovery. One of its four bold headings reads: Radioactivity Is Not the Bomb's Greatest Threat.
A year later the same agency released a nine-minute film for schoolchildren. Bert the Turtle saw a flash, pulled into his shell, and a generation of children learned to duck under their desks. Millions saw it. By 1982 a documentary called The Atomic Cafe had turned Bert into a punchline, and he has stayed one. Duck and cover is now shorthand for advice so hopeless it is funny.
Here is the thing. Open Ready.gov today and read what the government says to do in a radiation emergency. Then go back to the 1950 booklet. Some of it is embarrassing. Some of it has been quietly reversed. And a surprising amount of it is still there, sentence for sentence, under a new logo.
What follows is eight instructions from the 1950s, each one checked against the current federal guidance, with a verdict. The last item is the one that explains the other seven.
02 · The list
Eight instructions, each with a verdict.
The 1950 wording comes from the booklet itself, which is public domain and linked below. The 2026 wording comes from Ready.gov as it reads today.
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01
Always wear a hat.
The 1950 booklet wanted you in full-length, loose-fitting, light-colored clothes, never with your sleeves rolled up, and always in a hat, because light colors reflect the heat flash and bare skin burns. The physics is sound. As a plan it asks you to dress every morning for a bomb. Ready.gov today says nothing about clothing before an event and everything about getting inside the nearest building. Verdict: retired, politely.
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02
Fall flat on your face and bury your face in your arms for 10 or 12 seconds.
This is duck and cover, and it is the most mocked sentence in American civil defense. Read the whole instruction, though: get behind a wall or a bank, drop, cover your face, do not look up, and stay away from spots right opposite the windows. Ready.gov's first words today are to get inside the nearest building and move away from windows. The posture changed. The reason, flying glass and a flash you cannot look at, did not. Verdict: the joke is on us.
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03
Don't rush outside. Wait at least an hour, maybe three or four.
The booklet said that after a ground burst you should stay indoors for at least an hour, possibly three or four. Ready.gov says to remain in the most protective location for the first 24 hours, because radiation levels fall sharply in that window. The direction was right in 1950. The number was short by a factor of six to 24. Verdict: held, and lengthened.
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04
Don't take chances with food or water in open containers.
In 1950: throw out unpackaged food left where dust might settle, wash the outside of cans and bottles before opening, and trust anything in closed drawers or tight cupboards. In 2026: it is safe to eat and drink food that was inside a building, safe to eat sealed food that was outside if you wipe the container first, and unsafe to eat anything that was outdoors and uncovered. Change the typeface and you could not tell the two apart. Verdict: held, nearly word for word.
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05
Take a bath or shower with warm water and soap. Change your outer clothes.
The booklet's decontamination advice: scrub with warm water and soap, pay attention to hair and fingernails, change outer garments and shoes, leave shoes at the door. Ready.gov: remove your outer layer of clothing, take a shower or wash with soap and water, and do not use household cleaning wipes on your skin. The wipes are the only thing the 1950 authors could not have anticipated. Verdict: held.
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06
Keep the radio on. Battery sets will work even if the city power goes off.
Seventy-five years later, the single most durable item in American emergency guidance is a battery radio. Ready.gov's basic kit still lists a battery-powered or hand-crank radio and a NOAA weather radio, and its radiation page notes that radios will keep working if other forms of communication fail. The booklet also told you to use the telephone only for true emergencies. Networks still fill up. Verdict: held, and still the best advice on the list.
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07
Keep a seven-day supply of food in the house.
This one came later, in 1955, when the Federal Civil Defense Administration launched a campaign called Grandma's Pantry and asked every household to keep seven days of food and water on hand. By 1961 the government's Fallout Protection booklet had raised that to two weeks. Today's Ready.gov kit asks for a several-day supply of food and a gallon of water per person per day for several days. The 1950s asked more of a household than the baseline does now. Verdict: held, and we have gotten lazier.
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08
Radioactivity is not the bomb's greatest threat.
This is the heading the whole booklet rests on, along with the table of odds that gave you a 50-50 chance at half a mile and practically no deaths beyond two. It was written about a weapon the size of the ones used in 1945. Within four years the hydrogen bomb existed, and by 1961 the same government was publishing a booklet that called fallout a potential killer of millions of unprotected persons and told families to be ready to live in a shelter for as long as two weeks. The advice that aged badly was never the hat or the turtle. It was the arithmetic. Verdict: reversed, by the people who wrote it.
03 · What it means for you
Two piles of advice, one of which changes.
The pattern is worth noticing because it applies to more than bombs. The household advice, what to eat, how to wash, where to stand, which radio to own, has barely changed in 75 years, because it was based on how houses, bodies, and radios work. The strategic advice, how bad it will be and how long it will last, was rewritten within a decade, because it was based on a weapon that was about to be replaced.
So when you read preparedness guidance, old or new, sort it into those two piles. The household pile tends to be stable and cheap to follow. The forecast pile is where you should expect revisions, and where a confident number deserves a second source.
If you want the current version of the household pile, it is short: get inside, stay inside, stay tuned. Ready.gov's radiation page has the details, and our guides on emergency water storage, food storage, and the radio and the rest of the communications list cover the parts that have not changed since Bert.
And if you ever find a copy of the 1950 booklet at an estate sale, buy it. It is a better read than most of what has been written about it.
Sources
Where the old words come from.
- Survival Under Atomic Attack, Executive Office of the President, National Security Resources Board, 1950 (City of Boston reprint, February 1951), Internet Archive. All quotations from the 1950 booklet: clothing, drop and cover, waiting times, food and water, washing, radio, the odds table, and the four headings. Public domain.
- Fallout Protection: What to Know and Do About Nuclear Attack, Office of Civil Defense, 1961, Internet Archive. Fallout as a potential killer of millions, two weeks in shelter, two-week food supply, one quart of water per person per day minimum. Public domain.
- Duck and Cover, Federal Civil Defense Administration, 1951, Library of Congress. The film, its sponsor, and its selection for the National Film Registry.
- Ready.gov: Radiation emergencies. Get inside, stay inside, stay tuned; 24 hours; move away from windows; decontamination; food and water; radios; pets. Current federal guidance.
- Ready.gov: Build a kit. One gallon of water per person per day for several days; a several-day supply of food; battery-powered or hand-crank radio.
- Public Health Reports (1950s), on Federal Civil Defense Administration food planning, CDC Stacks. FCDA's recommendation that all households keep a seven-day supply of food, adopted after 1954.
- Grandma's Pantry Was Ready, Federal Civil Defense Administration leaflet, 1955, University of North Texas government documents catalog. The 1955 campaign leaflet and its publisher.
All sources accessed 2026-11-09. The 1950 and 1961 booklets are U.S. government works in the public domain. Ready.gov wording is quoted as it appeared on the access date and may be revised.