![]() Several miles from “groundzero,” however, the great peril to human life was the radioactive dust and debris kicked up and sent flying by the explosion. Should an atomic bomb burst in Times Square with the explosive force of five megatons (equivalent to 5,000,000 tons of TNT), virtually everything within a two-mile radius would be destroyed by the blast. For a half-dozen years Americans had been told the basic facts about radioactive fallout. ![]() ![]() On the face of it, that enterprise seemed perfectly practical, prudent, and straightforward-with or without presidential prompting. “In the coming months I hope to let every citizen know what steps he can take without delay to protect his family in case of attack.” With those few ominous words about civil defense, set against a looming confrontation with the Kremlin, President Kennedy triggered off what was to become a national craze, a spectacular bubble, and one of the most revealing moral debates in our history as “one nation under God.” The subject: building fallout shelters for oneself and one’s family in hopes of surviving attack in a thermonuclear war. If the Russians used force to override our rights, Kennedy warned, they would be met with still greater force: “We do not want to fight but we have fought before.” In consequence, he was calling upon Congress to appropriate $93,000,000 to provide shelter for the population against radioactive fallout. Those rights might be terminated on December 31 when Premier Khrushchev signed, as he threatened to do, a separate peace treaty with East Germany. The Russians were threatening American access rights to that isolated city, the President told an audience of 50,000,000 tense and expectant Americans. Kennedy went before television cameras to explain to his countrymen the grave meaning and still graver consequences of the deepening crisis over Berlin. ![]() It all began on the evening of July 25, 1961, when President John F. ![]()
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