Duck and cover was supposed to reduce casualties in the relative outer regions of the blast damage area (which are by far the largest).
Yeah, a nuclear blast is gonna be totally deadly within a particular radius, no matter what you do. And then at some larger radius, everything outside that radius will be safe, regardless of what you do. So the area in between is going to be the area where the response can make a difference.
And as you mention, the area of the "can actually make a difference" zone is much larger than the "dead-no-matter-what" zone, because it scales by the square of the distance. So if the outer safe radius is twice the inner death radius, the area of the in between zone is gonna be about 3 times the size of the death zone (π(2r)^2 - πr^2 = 3πr). If it's 3 times the radius, it'll be 8 times the area.
People only think about extremes. Why do we need seatbelts on a plane? Well, not for the crash, for the tons of turbulence you don't think about because you're wearing your seatbelt when they happen.
Just keeping people away from the windows could potentially prevent hundreds of thousands of injuries from burns and flying glass in the survivable area of the blast radius. It'd be really hard to overstate what a massive difference that could make when it comes to allocating medical resources in the aftermath.
Fantastic quality as ever
We had an earthquake drill at one place I worked, where there was an outside door less than 20 feet from our desks. Another guy and I agreed, if there was ever an earthquake we were heading out that door and would wait in the middle of the parking lot until it was over and then help dig bodies out of the rubble. Somebody said, "What about falling debris?" It was a freaking 2-story building, but yeah we conceded we'd be taking a risk for a second or two as we sprinted clear - vs expecting our cubicle furniture to keep a collapsing building off us lol.
Having lived through a major earthquake - if it's a brick or concrete tilt-slab building, you are way better off inside the building. The risk isn't so much some random piece of something falling off, it's the entire facade of the building coming down on your head.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're able to perceive the nuclear explosion and not even go blind, then you aren't close enough for your house to disintegrate like that.
The blindness thing is really only for a split second while the fission/fusion is actually happening. By the time the mushroom cloud has formed, the actual explosion was like 30 seconds ago.
If you see a full mushroom cloud, that means the glass in front of you is probably going to rapidly accelerate into your skull when the shockwave hits you.
Boom. Roasted.
Better this way
Iron Giant did it better.
