The advice to "cover" one's exposed skin with anything that can cast a shadow, like the picnic blanket and newspaper used by the family in the film, may seem absurd at first when one considers the capabilities of a nuclear weapon, but even the thinnest of barriers such as cloth, or plant leaves would reduce the severity of burns on the skin from the thermal radiation with the "flash" light, similar in average emission spectrum/color to sunlight, emitting in the ultraviolet, visible light, and infrared range but with a higher light intensity than sunlight, with this combination of light rays capable of delivering radiant burning energy to exposed skin areas. As the time-to-rise at peak and total duration of the emittance pulse of this burning thermal radiation, is both prolonged and increases with larger explosive yield, it is usually at least a few seconds long for all high yield stockpiled weapons, creating the potential for protective countermeasures.