In September 1961, three months after his failed summit with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and just weeks after the construction of the Berlin Wall, U.S. President John F. Kennedy had a letter published in LIFE magazine.

In that message, Kennedy told Americans "there is much you can do to protect yourself" against the threat of nuclear fallout.

The message appeared in the September 15 issue of LIFE. The headline on the cover read, "How You Can Survive Fallout." Inside the magazine, readers were told they could be "among the 97 percent to survive if you follow the advice on these pages." Information was given on how to build fallout shelters, where to hide in cities, and what to do during a nuclear attack.

Kennedy's message in LIFE came a full year before what many consider his greatest challenge as president, the Cuban Missile Crisis -- an event that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

A message to you from the president

The White House
September 7, 1961

My Fellow Americans:

Nuclear weapons and the possibility of nuclear war are facts of life we cannot ignore today. I do not believe that war can solve any of the problems facing the world today. But the decision is not ours alone.

The government is moving to improve the protection afforded you in your communities through civil defense. We have begun, and will be continuing throughout the next year and a half, a survey of all public buildings with fallout shelter potential, and the marking of those with adequate shelter for 50 persons or more. We are providing fallout shelter in new and in some existing federal buildings. We are stocking these shelters with one week's food and medical supplies and two weeks' water supply for the shelter occupants. In addition, I have recommended to the Congress the establishment of food reserves in centers around the country where they might be needed following an attack. Finally, we are developing improved warning systems which will make it possible to sound attack warning on buzzers right in your homes and places of business.

More comprehensive measures than these lie ahead, but they cannot be brought to completion in the immediate future. In the meantime there is much that you can do to protect yourself -- and in doing so strengthen your nation.

I urge you to read and consider seriously the contents in this issue of LIFE. The security of our country and the peace of the world are the objectives of our policy. But in these dangerous days when both these objectives are threatened we must prepare for all eventualities. The ability to survive coupled with the will to do so therefore are essential to our country.

John F. Kennedy