# FACTS ABOUT FALLOUT "3 FEET OF DIRT FOR SURVIVAL" NUCLEAR WAR 83304

Produced by Byron for the Office of Civil Defense, this 1955-vintage film illustrates some of the FACTS ABOUT FALLOUT from nuclear explosions. It was originally screened at community meetings and a pamphlet with the same name handed out. The film includes the infamous statement at the 7:15 mark that "3 feet of dirt" above your fallout shelter is all you need to survive. In an era before the hydrogen bomb, such a statement was not altogether ludicrous but once the H-bomb was a reality, death was all but certain. Still, for a brief time, assurances such as these spurred many Americans to construct shelters in their backyards and underneath their homes. The film does concede that radiation can make a person sick and even kill them. The three best defenses as illustrated in the film are distance, mass, and time. In other words, get as far from the fallout as possible, which may mean going to the middle of a large building rather than near its outside; have concrete and other materials between you and fallout; and, allow for the fact that radioactive material loses its potency over time: e.g., two weeks after an explosion, it's at 1/1000th of its initial strength. Fallout shelters are the best civil defense: the federal government has a program to ensure adequate fallout shelters for all. In the United States, the sheer power of nuclear weapons and the perceived likelihood of such an attack, precipitated a greater response than had yet been required of civil defense. Civil…

- Kind: Film
- Genres: War, Industrial and advertising
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/83304FactsAboutFallout)
- Licence or status: none stated by the archive
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/ia/83304FactsAboutFallout?play=1)