Nothing stops a nuclear attack like an elementary school desk. Hiding underneath those cast-iron things will save you, just like the 50s-era refrigerator saved Indiana Jones.
Everybody mocks those old duck and cover drills, but not every school kid was potentially at ground zero. The shock wave would have blown out windows beyond the immediate kill zone and not being ripped to shreds by glass shrapnel would have been nice in those dire circumstances.
A guy named Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived BOTH atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was only two miles from ground zero at the first one. In Nagasaki he was explaining to a Mitsubishi company director what had happened at Hiroshima when a blinding light flashed outside the window. “Yamaguchi dropped to the ground just seconds before the shock wave shattered the office windows and sent broken glass and debris careening through the room. “
Duck and cover worked for him.
There were lots of schools built in the 60’s with purposed fallout shelters. I’m my elementry, the entry was under the PE teacher’s desk, which was in a closet.