350 ChaPter^7
home town while they were at school, they should get under their desks and
curl up in a ball, with their head covered up to avoid the radiation. They were
instructed to get under a table if possible, as if that would stop the force of
nuclear power.
If out on a picnic when the bomb struck, families were advised to put a
tablecloth over themselves; if that was unavailable, a newspaper over one’s
head would do the trick. It is easy to mock that video today, because the
information given was so ridiculous. Desks, tables, and cotton cloth would
not protect one from the massive radioactive power of an atomic weapon. But
beyond its ridiculous nature lay a more sober and even somewhat cruel pur-
pose. Children especially were confronting the abject terror of being attacked
with a nuclear weapon, which caused incredible fear and stress among young
kids. But the government and media officials who made the video, who had
Bert advising them on avoiding nuclear fallout, knew that the information
they were putting on film was worthless. Government officials were aware of
the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; they had seen pictures and video.
Entire cities were destroyed with no buildings left standing; people were killed
instantly by the nuclear blast; many had hideous burns from the radiation;
even a vast number of the survivors were doomed because they would never
recover or develop cancer later. To tell children that they could survive an
attack that would be much worse than the ones in Japan in August 1945—theFIGuRE 7-2 Bert the Turtle tells kids to duck and cover, 1952