This book provides a brief overview of worldwide terrorist activity and reviews technologies and methods for designing blast resistant buildings. These techniques, primarily developed by the military, have applicability and relevance to the design of civilian structures. The volume recommends that a program of applied research and technology transfer be undertaken to hasten the availability and utility of these techniques to the civilian building community.

Specifically oriented to the design of protection from the effects of nuclear weapons, the report deals with the phenomena of the intense or close-in regions not always adequately covered in such otherwise thorough standard works as Glasstone's The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. Some features given emphasis are early fireball growth, prompt nuclear radiation near an explosion, cratering and intense ground shock, high-overpressure air blast, hot fireball air and intense thermal exposure, and distribution of debris and afterwinds. The intention, however, was to include information on all aspects of nuclear explosions known to be pertinent to the design of shelters.