The terror my parents' generation had of a nuclear apocalypse, lest we forget

[Rev. Rye]

I remember the drills where we were to hide beneath our desks in case of a nuclear attack.  That basically meant we had a slab of wood with a metal drawer under it over our heads.  I couldn't figure out even at that young age what good that was for protection from anything.

Protection from schrapnel and debris is a start. For instance, due to her position in the lobby of the Bank of Japan, a reinforced concrete building, Akiko Takakura survived the Hiroshima bomb despite being 300 meters away from the hypocenter of Little Boy's fireball, with a lethal zone that extended well beyond that. She lived until 2003.

Or thermal radiation. Covering from something as insubstantial as a newspaper can protect you from the burns of thermal radiation. 

Caption from a site that showcased this photo:

The shadow of a Japanese fatsia exposed to the heat rays was imprinted on a telephone pole near the Meiji Bridge (about 1.3 kilometers south from the hypocenter). New shoots replaced the leaves that were burnt away, so the new outline differs from the shadow.

And apparently, in the interim between the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one cop from Hiroshima went to Nagasaki to explain that the police there to duck when the bomb went off. When the bomb dropped there, not a single Nagasaki cop died in the initial blast.

 Of course, Duck and Cover focuses on the initial blast. In the long term, though, especially if fallout and nuclear winter are a huge problem, and they likely will be, the living will probably envy the dead.