The title refers to a 1951 Civil Defense movie that advocates finding shelter close to the ground in the event of a nuclear flash in order to reduce the effects of the following blast wave on casualty rates.
In this story it is mentioned that Arnold Vinnick has been a US Senator for twenty-five years. This suggests the character may be inspired by Pete Wilson, a real-world moderate Republican from California elected to the US Senate in 1983. Wilson is only a couple of years older than Alan Alda, and had he remained in the Senate would have been there for twenty-two years. However Wilson went on to become governor.
The nuclear power plant plot of this episode is similar to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979, as depicted in the 2022 documentary Meltdown: Three Mile Island (2022).
The title is derived from the Cold War-era "civil defense" film made to inform citizens, particularly schoolchildren, how to react in the event of an alert indicating an impending nuclear strike. As neither walls nor tables would provide any meaningful protection in such circumstances, the phrase has come to represent a futile but instinctive self-defense response.