If the A-Bombs Burst


Here is what to expect, what you can do today to prepare yourself, what you can do then to survive
By Clifford B. Hicks
8:15 a.m., August 6, 1945. A single plane flies over the city. The only warning is a blinding flash of light. A ball of fire explodes in the sky, hanging there for a moment as it grows in size and fury. Then in a crackling instant the world's second atomic explosion races down to strike the earth at a spot called Hiroshima.
Sixty seconds later 70,000 Japanese are dead, caught above ground. The heart of the city has been blasted into rubble which still plummets down on the dead and dying.
10:15 a.m., January 2, 1950. A stenographer in Manhattan shrugs her shoulders over her mid-morning cup of coffee and says to her girl friend, "I'm tellin' you, there's nothing you can do to save yourself —just one bomb will wipe out New York. Me, I'm headin' for the country if things get worse."
At the same moment the sky above Chicago's Loop is split by a bright flash of lightning from a sudden winter storm. A nervous executive freezes in terror for an instant, then smiles sheepishly as he returns to the morning mail. But he can't help wondering whether the bomb would demolish his home and kill his family in a suburb 14 miles away.