“It may well be that we have, in a process of sublime irony, reached a stage in our history where security will be the hardy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of 'annihilation'... When Winston Churchill evokes, in his last great speech before the House of Commons in 1955, this "sublime irony" of a peace ensured by fear, in a face-to-face western hand on the H-bomb, the world has been living for several years to the rhythm of nuclear tests. There were 21 for the United Kingdom, 82 in the USSR and 166 in the United States between 1951 and 1958, when public opinion, worried about radioactive fallout, pushed the governments of the three nuclear nations and their allies to adoption of a moratorium on stopping trials. France, which has been preparing its A-bomb since 1955, will not stick to it: the Gerboise Bleue, 70 kilotons, explodes in the Algerian Sahara in October 1960.
AdvertisementRenewed on the wire from year to year, this suspension will not resist the renewed tension of 1961: failed landing in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, unsuccessful meeting of Khrushchev and Kennedy in Vienna, Berlin crisis and construction of the wall… Arguing from this new international deal and from the first French nuclear tests which continued on the surface until April 1961, the USSR broke the agreement. The tests start again. In two months, from September 1 to November 4, 1961, the Soviets exploded no less than 57 nuclear bombs, including the "Tsar Bomba": on October 30, a Tupolev Tu-95 bomber dropped into the sky of the Russian Arctic, 3 km above the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya, a 57 megaton machine, still today the most powerful weapon of mass destruction ever used...
What's next after this advertisementSee in the Match archives: In 1961, the shocking images of the construction of the Berlin Wall
What's next after this adMore than ever, the world fears that the Cold War will go nuclear, and people must prepare for it. As early as 1949, a very young representative from Massachusetts named John Fitzgerald Kennedy had challenged President Truman on the risk of an “atomic Pearl Harbor”, the lack of means allocated to the protection of civilians in the event of a nuclear attack. Having become president, JFK enjoined his compatriots in September 1961 to build an atomic shelter in their garden, in a letter published by the magazine "Life" followed by a complete file on the subject...
For Match, the American president has just sounded "the alarm bell of the apocalypse". “How do you survive it? asks our magazine, which is following in the footsteps of "Life", its American cousin, by publishing a major report detailing, with a touch of nonchalance in the face of the end of the world which is looming, the terrifying consequences of a nuclear war, and our often unrealistic, always derisory solutions... A fascinating testimony to the great atomic fear of the Cold War.
The sequel after this adThe sequel after this adHere is the report dedicated to the fallout shelters, as published in Paris Match in 1961.
Discover Retro Match, the news through the Match archives...
Paris Match n°651, September 30, 1961
Surviving the atomic bomb
by Marc Heimer (Jean Mezerette investigation)
It's conceivable, you have to prepare for it, answer the Americans. And we, what would we do?
Damn! Damn! Damn! The character is rather creepy. With his swooning eyes, his glowing nose, his sci-fi hood and his oversized hand outstretched towards an unspeakable enemy, he looks straight out of a Croatian horror movie. The trouble is that it graces the cover of “Life” this week. What it announces there is beyond its nightmarish aspect. A kind of art of surviving. To survive the atomic bomb.
In short, the President of the United States, who took up the pen to present this issue, and the journalists of the major magazine advise Americans to put together, in their spare time, their own shelter which at the bottom of their garden, which deep in his cellar. Free enterprise is that...
Of course, the atomic war will not take place. At least it is better to think and believe it. But in the end, a mistake, a false move, an electronic contact that works badly or too well, an infinite number of probabilities can trigger war, and that even against the will of the East or the West. An error in judgment can also start the terrible cycle of nuclear disintegration. Thus, inadvertently or madly, humanity can start running with closed eyes towards its Tarpeian rock.
Forewarned is forearmed, they say, and the ostrich policy has never worked for anyone. Not even ostriches. Well! here is what you too will need to know to survive despite everything what will probably never happen.
An atomic bomb is a monstrous thing, but a hydrogen bomb is a phenomenally disastrous thing. Only one of them, and even then it would be of below average size, could, if it exploded three hundred meters above the spire of Notre-Dame, destroy Paris, its suburbs and its greater suburbs. to Mantes, Melun and Fontainebleau. In Le Havre, in Lille, in Orléans, in Besançon, the windows would be shattered and still this would only be a foretaste of the deadly radioactive cloud which would fall in the half hour which would follow the explosion. .
Twenty medium-strength H-bombs would be enough to destroy absolutely all life on French territory. The populations of Kuban or Sin Kiang could, after having waited the time necessary for the radioactivity to drop, come to live there without encountering any resistance other than that of hypothetical ghosts. It should also be said that it is appreciably less super-bombs of 100 megatons than Nikita Khrushchev would need to obtain the same result. A handful would do.
One hundred and fifty million degrees - that's the heat produced in a thermo-nuclear explosion. This is fabulous, gigantic, but only lasts a millionth of a second. Afterwards, the heat drops, but it remains 8,000 to 9,000 degrees within a radius of 10 km from the zero point, that of the impact. For the men who are exposed to it, this dramatic reduction in thermal intensity is of little importance. We die as effectively at 9000 degrees as above. Exposed to this infernal heat, polished granite becomes rough, roof tiles swell with hideous bubbles, concrete roads become rivers of scarlet lava. The smallest ribbon of asphalt smokes like a whole Ruhr, the skin of men turns to absolute black...
After that, the blast effect, however spectacular it may be, may seem benign. In Hiroshima, where it was just a childish bomb, the blast wave had a force of 15 kg/pressure near ground zero and a speed of 7800 km/hour. However, 550 meters from the point of impact, his force had dropped to 2 kg/pressure and his speed was only 1,200 km per hour.
With modern, much more serious bombs, the shock wave propagates at 2000 km per hour at 2 km from the zero point, and the blast remains sensitive at 70 km. However, if it comes to the 100 megaton super-bomb, even brighter results can be achieved. Thus, 10 km from the point of fall, the speed of the wave of destruction remains above 2000 km/hour and the houses will collapse en masse 100 km from the place where it will have burst. We could extend this area of destruction much further if we blew up this “big Bertha” from the Urals at an altitude of 12 km, that is to say at the limits of the stratosphere. In this case, if it exploded in Paris, the buildings would collapse in Bordeaux.
The radioactive fallout! The main danger is still them. No matter how conscientiously physicists grind their admirable brains, they have not yet been able to precisely define the way in which they are distributed on the ground. It depends on too many variable things: the speed of the winds, their direction, the nature of the ground, among others. However, the case law of nuclear experiments allows us to know that it is generally the shape of a cigar oriented in the direction of the wind from the point of deflagration that the area of the dangerous fallout takes and that it is half an hour later. the explosion that the deadly cloud arrives. Thus thirty minutes of respite are granted to those who survived the first round of the atomic drama.
For, indeed, many will have survived and that is what is prodigious. Of course, the damage will be enormous: the Civil Protection has calculated that 2 million 500 thousand Parisians would be killed by the explosion of an H-bomb and that more than a million would be seriously injured; but still that leaves a million and a half survivors in the Paris region, which is more than you might think if you take into account the unthinkable enormity of the bomb.
But how will this death be? Oh! fast for those who will be in the crater, that is to say in the immediate vicinity of the explosion. In Paris, with a super H-bomb, it would reach five kilometers in radius and nearly 200 meters deep. Inside the funnel: nothing, not even a fly, would remain unless it had been buried three or four hundred meters underground under fabulous layers of super-concrete.
Beyond the crater things will change, though with a carefully crafted H-bomb any animal can be burned to death 120km away from impact. However, we can here, this time, do something against the horror. If one is at a reasonable distance from the zero point, the slightest protective screen placed in front of the thermal wave will be effective, provided however that it is white.
A terrible danger will be the blast, at least by an intermediary. Man can indeed withstand substantial and rapid changes in pressure quite well. The same is not true of any objects that clutter up any villa or any apartment. None have the malleability and degree of shock adaptation of an animal body. Thus, launched into space at 2000 km/hour, the most peaceful coffee grinder becomes a super bazooka rocket, the most good-natured washing machine a shell worthy of inclusion in the arsenal of Krupp factories. In Yucca Flats, New Mexico, where a small bomb was “tested” on an average American village (empty of inhabitants) doorknobs were thus found torn off. having pierced right through concrete walls.
As for these other dangers concomitant with the thermal wave and the blast that are fires and the destruction of buildings, we can very well resist them. With regard to fire, and outside the destruction zone, the standard fire prevention instructions apply. Any firefighter will explain them to you. If, as is likely, a few minutes are allowed between the sound of the sirens and the explosion of the bomb itself, it will be necessary to close the electricity meters, open the refrigerators (so that they do not explode as a result of the changes pressure), remove flammable materials such as curtains, furniture and the like from windows and windows, prepare fire extinguishers and containers of water. Then, we can run and hide under the simplest of makeshift shelters against destruction.
As amazing as it is, a good H-bomb shelter does exist. We even have the advantage of possessing in France the most apparently perfect of these marvels. As a prototype, of course. But that's still not so bad. It can contain fifty people, which allows us to affirm today that fifty French people will be able to perpetuate the race whatever happens. Tested on August 31, 1957, in Nevada, the shelter withstood the impact of a beautiful atomic bomb without major damage when it was 200 m from ground zero. This true jewel of life-saving architecture comes in the form of a sort of safe 7.80 m long by 3 m wide and 2.30 m high with pre-stressed and reinforced concrete walls 60 centimeters thick. thickness, enclosed by three steel and asbestos doors. The air responsible for allowing the happy — and rare — beneficiaries of the shelter to breathe comes from outside after having passed through purifiers made up of 60 centimeters of sand. A transmitter-receiver radio station also allows the shelter buried under 1.50 m of earth to communicate with what remains of life above it.
In this way, it is believed that its tenants could quite comfortably survive the fifteen days necessary for the radioactivity of the air to become bearable again. Reserves of water and food - low in salt and balanced - are provided for this purpose. The trouble is, as I said, that this magnificent shelter is still at the experimental stage with us. Well, almost, since there are only about twenty anti-atomic chambers built under certain very privileged prefectures or under a few very rare high schools... In Paris, the future Maison de la Radio, rue Pastourelle and rue Castagnari are, with the garage du Marché Saint-Honoré and the police headquarters in the Place de la République are the only places where you will risk surviving. For what ? For lack of funds, of course, since a shelter for fifty people costs 12 million. There is the drama.
While France's military budget amounts year in, year out to one thousand million old francs, that of Civil Protection is exactly one thousandth. Which explains a lot. When the French government spends 14 francs (old) for the safeguard of its civilians America, it spends 168, which allows President Kennedy to plan a plan to identify the classic shelters that can be transformed into atomic shelters, d build others from scratch and equip its reasonable defense administrations. Western Germany, it will spend in 1962, 122 million Deutschmark for its civil protection. As for the blessed Sweden, its super-shelters are the most gigantic in the world -- that of Stockholm can shelter 200,000 people, while those planned by Switzerland will be able to protect in 1963 more than two million Swiss citizens...
If we wanted to carry out a similar program in France, given the current state of construction possibilities, we would have to stop all new housing projects for three years and invest 1,200 billion in this way, which for many reasons is unthinkable.
It is probably above all America and Russia themselves that will be explained first and foremost “in the atomic way”. This is indeed justice. We were able to calculate with precision and according to whether we are optimistic or pessimistic that it is from 4% to 75% of Americans or Russians who would survive the nuclear war. The first figure represents approximately 380 million dead on both sides, the second “only” one hundred. It goes without saying that the first list appears much closer to the truth as — it is to be hoped --- that it never will be. So, of course, Americans and Russians got down to gigantic civil defense projects: their fate depends on it. But they did it very differently.
The Russians concentrate on what they have and count a lot, in the cities, on the metro - probably wrongly because this, given the multiple access routes, doors and air vents, n will not spare Muscovites considerably from receiving a substantial dose of radioactivity. As for Nikita Khrushchev, he can see it coming. He is the proud owner of a sumptuous shelter like the boudoir of the beautiful Otero, located outside Moscow and connected to the Kremlin by a 15 kilometer underground. John Kennedy, for his part, is less well shared. He has a pretty effective shelter under the White House, but his real super-safe haven is in Fort Ritchie, Maryland. It would take him two hours by helicopter to get there with key cabinet members and the three service chiefs of staff whose personal shelter at the Pentagon is located so close to the large Washington collector that a atomic bomb would immediately pour all the impurities of the city on the generals responsible for ensuring the replica of America. It would be disastrous.
Let us say, moreover, that as far as we French are concerned, the fate of our government is no more enviable than that of the common mortal. We had thought of building an atomic blockhouse under the Elysée not very long ago. He was to receive the President, the Prime Minister and the holders of the main portfolios. To this shelter were to be added two other identical ones located in the provinces and responsible for receiving other members of the government, so that at least one of the shelters having resisted the first attack, power could be perpetuated. Alas! this project remained a project - the credits always…
It is this same problem of credits that made the Americans advise the construction of special shelters. Here too, despite the billions of government dollars that will be spent, it is the "Help yourself, heaven will help you" that is likely to save the most people. In this, the inhabitants of the United States are lucky. Most have their own house, and however small it may be, there is always the possibility of building a shelter there, which, although rudimentary, will be more effective than no shelter at all. On the other hand, if one lives, as is the case for most French people, in an apartment, the thing becomes much more complex. It is still difficult to start digging a trench in the middle of the street or even in the middle of a common courtyard...
The range offered to buyers and do-it-yourselfers across the Atlantic is vast. It ranges from the simple but honest $700 prefabricated set to the "luxury" blockhouse with lacquer panels, television, Pullman armchairs, Martian suits to protect against radiation, radio, transmitter, electric generator and library with built-in bible...all for $3,000. Shelters can be set up anywhere and all that remains is to fill them with provisions for a fortnight. Then we can see coming. When you think about it, it's not as childish as it may seem. No doubt there must be a good dose of envy in the eyes of the hilarious neighbors of the shelter owners. Who laughs well who laughs the last... Many bunker buyers have undoubtedly understood this from the eyes of their neighbours, as we have seen the increase in firearms sales, concurrently with the construction of private forts. For what ? Would the "sheltered" also want to defend themselves against the Cossack hordes that would follow the bombardments? No, it's not that at all. On the contrary, they arm themselves against their neighbors, because they know that on the day of the alert, these same neighbors, who were making fun of their prefabricated shelters at 700 dollars, will want to rush there to save their lives. .
Building or having your own little bunker built is as easy in France as it is in America. It is enough to make him fulfill the necessary conditions of sealing and solidity that any builder of fortress will be able to indicate to you. Roughly speaking, the thickness needed to protect against radiation is 7.5 centimeters if lead is chosen, 15 centimeters for steel, 60 centimeters for concrete, 1 meter for earth, 1 60 meters for water and 3 meters for wood, the latter material being recommended for those looking for difficulty and something new. On the other hand, it is necessary to provide 3 square meters of “living” surface per person and to design the entrance and the corridor serving it, in such a way that it forms an elbow with the outside. This will have the effect of breaking the angle of arrival of the radiations which have a marked tendency to behave like light. You will also need to install an air intake fitted with a filter, a battery fitted with a 150 milliampere lamp (this will give you ten days of light), take a good transistor with an antenna (this is absolutely crucial, because the radio will have a very important role to play: giving orders and comforting you with its presence, it will be your only link with the still living world).
As for your overall survivability, it is believed that under a 5 megaton attack you will have a 90 out of 100 chance of surviving in perfect shelter, provided you are more than two kilometers from ground zero. As for radiation, they are, in a well-made bunker, 1/5,000 of what they are in the open air. It has been estimated that if each American could benefit from a common shelter or had his own installation, 97% of them would survive total atomic war... We would then be far from a cataclysm as apocalyptic as it is irreparable. Unfortunately, even in America, we are not there yet.
While waiting and in the absence of shelter, it can always be useful to know that there are hundreds of places where one can be safer from radiation than in the open air. A very deep cave allows to support only the fortieth of what is in open country, a simple arch of bridge 1/20, a car placed on a trench in which one earths oneself only lets pass 1/50 of the radio - activity, in the center of a one-storey house the fallout is half of what it is outside, in the center of the cellar of this house it is 1/7 and 1/11 in the corners. On the ground floor of a two-storey villa, the radioactivity is only one third of that outside and in the center of the middle floor of a building it is one fiftieth of that existing in the street. At the bottom of the cellar of this building, it is the thousandth... Of course, one should not rely too much on these figures, because the doses of radiation occurring after an H-bomb being what they are (enormous) 1 /1,000 remains far too much, but in the end it gives hope and hope is a beautiful and good thing...
It is this essential quality that is endowed with those in charge of civil protection in France. Speaking on the principle that America will be hit first and only then will our turn come, they have planned a gigantic plan of evacuation of the threatened zones which will be implemented at the slightest sign of danger.
Similar plans exist in the United States where atomic warnings have been planned of three types. Alert number 1, the most disastrous, will be triggered if a rocket is launched by the Russians from a submarine. It will inevitably be detected by the American network of radars which extends from Behring to the north of Scotland (this last Scottish radar is the one which will warn Paris of the approach of the rockets which will be intended for it). In the case of the “underwater” alert, the Americans will have a respite of six minutes, that is to say barely the time necessary to cover 100 meters. On the other hand, if the rocket is sent from Russian territory, the respite will amount to 30 minutes. This will be just enough to cause, before the death of New Yorkers, traffic jams such as the devil himself could never conceive of such... The race towards each other of the separated members of the same family will be horrible, unless it happens at night, which is not impossible considering the time difference between New York and Moscow. The Soviets could decide to send their bombs in Russian daylight so as to strike America by night and have the advantage of receiving the U.S. "retaliation" by day.
However, in the event that war should have been declared after a very short period of tension which would have let it be foreseen, New York, Los Angeles and the other centers likely to be targeted would be immediately evacuated. Everything is ready and it was calculated that it would take four days under the worst circumstances for the eight million New Yorkers to find themselves dispersed in Connecticut, New Jersey or Rhode Island. Schools are now ready to leave at the slightest notice and so are public services and many large companies. An electronic brain will make it possible to reunite dispersed families at a later date. So that he does not exhaust himself in inaction, this computer is already working, diligently calculating data on cosmic rays.
It's as good as we have in France, minus the artificial brain. The evacuation plan for the major centers is extended over one hundred and forty-four hours and has as basic data a calculation of the probabilities on the objectives that we have capable of enticing the atomic strategists.
Two things may, at first sight, interest the enemy: Paris, its monuments, so symbolic for the West, its staffs, Shape, Nato and others; then the large American bases located on a Verdun-Bordeaux line. Camouflaged, defended by good-natured flak, these bases are at the mercy of any medium-range rocket sent from Poland or the Baltic countries. On the other hand, the French specialists very rightly think that the Soviets would like to destroy our own industrial potential together with this: the North, Pas de Calais, Alsace, Seine-Maritime, Loire-Atlantique, the regions of Lyons and stéphanoise and Marseille would thus be targeted. If the Russians want to destroy everything without notice and all at once, then there is absolutely nothing to do, except to keep a sample of the French race, that is, a few peasants from Lozère. ...even if the Mongols then exhibit them in Ulaanbaatar or elsewhere...
If however we have a little time in front of us, the famous 6-day moving plan will begin. By the middle of next year, French people living in threatened areas will therefore receive a small booklet in a pleasant pink, blue or yellow color depending on whether they are little, moderately or very essential to the economic life of the region where they are located. The booklet will at the same time indicate to them the place of possible withdrawal and the order in which the thing will be done.
In practice and in order to avoid repeating the days of June 1910 when military convoys were blocked by cohorts of refugees, distinct one-way roads will be intended for the army and civilians. In this way, by whole trains, by whole roads, the French of the North will be folded up towards Normandy except Seine-Maritime; those from the Rhône will go to scatter in Isère, the Marseillais will be distributed in the Basses-Alpes and the north of the Alpes-Maritimes; the people of Saint-Etienne will go to Ardèche; those of Lorraine and Alsace in Saône-et-Loire, in Allier and Jura. As for Parisians, suburbanites or not, 28 dormitory departments are intended for them: they go from Brittany to Sologne and the Pyrenees... The S.N.C.F., alone, will transport 1,670,000 belonging to the priority categories in 72 hours: women, children, hospitals and administrations.
Then, our climate giving them a bad trick in its own way, the Russian bombs may come. Three hundred and sixteen days a year, France is, in fact, subject to winds coming from the Atlantic and blowing towards the East. The cloud resulting from thermonuclear explosions taking place on our soil will thus, nine times out of ten, return to Moscow. And since the best of Russian generals is General Winter, ours will be called West Wind.
The apocalypse alarm bell
It's a fact: America is planning “the unthinkable”.
Here is the document that brings atomic fear into the daily lives of Americans. It is a letter signed Kennedy which has just appeared in "Life", the largest magazine in the United States. To illustrate "practically" the call of the President of the United States, "Life" publishes on 12 pages all the models and advice to survive, if possible, nuclear war.
The White House, September 7, 1961.
“Dear Compatriots,
Nuclear weapons and the possibility of nuclear war are real facts, which we cannot ignore today. I do not believe that war is capable of solving any of the problems facing our world today. But the decision does not depend only on us.
The government is taking steps to strengthen your protection in communities and through Civil Protection. We began to count, inspect and indicate all the public buildings offering the possibility of atomic shelters, for 50 people or more. This work will be continued over the next 18 months. Shelters are provided in both new federal buildings and some old ones. These shelters are provided with food and medical supplies for one week, and a water supply for two weeks, all intended for the occupants of the shelters. In addition, I have recommended to Congress the establishment of supply storage centers throughout the country, at points where an attack might require them. Finally, we extend sophisticated systems, to transmit the alert, by vibrators, to your home, to your workplace.
Wider measures are planned, but they will take some time to implement. In the meantime, you can do much yourselves for your protection. By doing so, you will strengthen the nation.
I urge you to read and take the content of this issue of “Life” very seriously. Our policy has no other objective than the security of our country and the peace of the world. But, in these days of danger when these two objectives are precisely threatened, we must be prepared for all eventualities. The power to survive and the will to survive are therefore also essential to this country. »
John F Kennedy.
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