[Stratoscope]

We had a recent example of the value of "duck and cover" - and more specifically what happens if you don't do it - the Chelyabinsk meteor.

"Its explosion created panic among local residents, and about 1,500 people were injured seriously enough to seek medical treatment. All of the injuries were due to indirect effects rather than the meteor itself, mainly from broken glass from windows that were blown in when the shock wave arrived, minutes after the superbolide's flash."

Many of the injured went to a window to see the spectacle in the sky, not realizing that the shock wave was about to shatter the window in their face.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor

[jjwiseman]

And from that article, there's even a way to compare the effects of duck & cover:

"A fourth-grade teacher in Chelyabinsk, Yulia Karbysheva, was hailed as a hero after saving 44 children from imploding window glass cuts. Despite not knowing the origin of the intense flash of light, Karbysheva thought it prudent to take precautionary measures by ordering her students to stay away from the room's windows and to perform a duck and cover maneuver and then to leave a building. Karbysheva, who remained standing, was seriously lacerated when the blast arrived and window glass severed a tendon in one of her arms and left thigh; none of her students, whom she ordered to hide under their desks, suffered cuts."

[dsfyu404ed]

>Many of the injured went to a window to see the spectacle in the sky, not realizing that the shock wave was about to shatter the window in their face.

Same thing happened in the Halifax explosion.

[rtkwe]

That explosion was close enough that there would be basically no chance to react between the actual explosion and the shock wave.