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Knowing how to protect yourself from blast, heat, and explosive radioactivity, only one major problem remains: That is how to avoid harm from lingering radioactivity.

Explosive radioactivity bursts from the bomb at the time of explosion and lasts for only little more than a minute.

Lingering radioactivity remains for a longer time, from a few minutes to weeks or months,

depending on the kind of radioactive material.

Lingering radioactivity may become a danger when atomic bombs are exploded on the ground, underground, or in the water. Air bursts leave no dangerous lingering radioactivity.

Most lingering radioactivity comes from leftover bomb wastes, or "ashes," technically called fission products. They consist of countless billions of fragments, or pieces, of atoms split up in the explosion. Smaller, and usually less dangerous, amounts of lingering radioactivity may

be thrown of by scattered atoms of uranium or plutonium that fail to split up when the bomb goes off.

These totally invisible radioactive particles act much the same as ordinary, everyday dust. When present in any real quantity, they are scattered about in patches and contaminate, or pollute, everything they fall on, including people. While 20