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 no hope of living through it. In fact, anywhere within one-half mile of the center of explosion, your chances of escaping are about 1 out of 10.

On the other hand, and this is the important point, from one-half to 1 mile away, you have a 50–50 chance.

From 1 to 1½ miles out, the odds that you will be killed are only 15 in 100.

And at points from 1½ to 2 miles away, deaths drop all the way down to only 2 or 3 out of each 100.

Beyond 2 miles, the explosion will cause practically no deaths at all.

Naturally, your chances of being injured are far greater than your chances of being killed. But even injury by radioactivity does not mean that you will be left a cripple, or doomed to die an early death. Your chances of making a complete recovery are much the same as for everyday accidents. These estimates hold good for modern atomic bombs exploded without warning.

Do not be misled by loose talk of imaginary weapons a hundred or a thousand times as powerful. All cause destruction by exactly the same means, yet one 20,000-ton bomb would not create nearly as much damage as 10,000 two-ton bombs dropped a little distance apart. This is because the larger bombs "waste" too much power near the center of the explosion. From the practical point of view, it doesn't matter whether a Rh