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Overpressure is no joke. That said the conclusions of the study encourage me to stand in front of a concrete wall as soon as I am aware of incoming ICBMs.
My sincere hope for my family and I in a mid-grade to all-out nuclear exchange is that we perish immediately. This would spare us exposure to subsequent famine and the loss of things like acetaminophen and central heating, not to mention civil society.
I do not subscribe to nuclear winter scare-theory. My greater concern is that the petrochemical supply and complex chemical chain will be largely destroyed in any kind of a material nuclear exchange. Without fossil fuel subsidies for agriculture mass starvation is certain.
Why do you call nuclear winter a "scare-theory"?
The short-term impact of a major nuclear exchange is fairly well supported by science. Nuclear explosions, particularly thermonuclear explosions, are powerful enough to propel fine particulate matter high enough into the atmosphere that no rain can wash it back to the ground. Unlike smoke from a forest fire, it will persist in the atmosphere for decades and spread globally, dimming the sun and negatively impacting global temperatures and insolation across the planet. That means crop failures for everyone, not just the combatants.
A nuclear first-strike that successfully wipes out the enemy's ability to retaliate will likely still lead to global starvation for decades. While scary, this does make it less likely for a major nuclear power to ever use such a first strike. Even if you win, you lose.
Fossil fuels is one thing. Synthetic fertilizers are another. Without them, it's often impossible to grow large amounts of crops on the available land.
Even a relatively small, compared to a global nuclear exchange, war in Ukraine sent ripples across the foods markets, because the war affected some noticeable amounts of wheat grown in the world, of fertilizers produced in the world, and of natural gas powering fertilizer production elsewhere in Europe.
> Without fossil fuel subsidies for agriculture mass starvation is certain.
Without fossile fuels for agriculture, starvation is certain. Without fossile fuel subsidies, we'd just pay a bit more for food and slightly less for other things.
I don’t anticipate calamity, nor do I prepare for one. But I’ve explored it as an experiment.
My original plan was to see what happens and make a go of it, but to be prepared to take the quick way out if it becomes too horrifying.
But now I have kids and I’m out of ideas. Maybe something about fleeing to my cottage where there’s fewer people and more nature.
> This would spare us exposure to subsequent famine and the loss of things like acetaminophen and central heating, not to mention civil society
Obviously MAD has changed things, but Hiroshima was back to normal in about 2 years. Power was restored in just a few days for example.
https://davidson.weizmann.ac.il/en/online/askexpert/recovery...
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/18/story-of-citi...
Oh no, no acetaminophen and central heating! Guess I'll just die!
In all seriousness - even if you sincerely plan to commit suicide (and take your family with you?) if life gets harder, why use the nuclear attack itself to do it? Why close off options? Why not attempt to survive, and reassess afterwards if you really think life still isn't worth living?
My sincere hope for my family is that weather patterns are 'nice' and we survive without significant fallout exposure. It's not as unlikely as it sounds, depending on where you are when the bombs fall.
Beyond that things will not really be that bad. Society maintains continuity even through insane events like the black death or cities being bombed into ruins. I think this is because humans are socialized for a very long time, and have very little experience living through apocalypses, and have a hard time accepting the inevitability of their own deaths. Society doesn't break down during mass starvation even.
Speaking of mass starvation and lack of clean water, that will be how most people who survive about 3 days post nuclear war will die. This is easily avoidable, water filtration/sanitization solutions are extremely cheap, or even free if you have a bucket and some sand. Storing 1 year of calories takes so little space and is so cheap it isn't even a consideration.
Mass starvation will not be a problem in the long run because it will be a huge problem much sooner. People will starve in the 2 months post event because of the temporary breakdown in logistics. After 6 months trains will be running again and there will be plenty of food, and no cities full of people to eat it.
> acetaminophen
Wow, never read about this before. I see that it equates to Paracetamol. You mean that we would run out of that medicine? And if so, why is that? Happy if you could provide an explanation (I have no medical background, mind you).
> My sincere hope for my family and I in a mid-grade to all-out nuclear exchange is that we perish immediately
Amen to that. With a family with small kids, I can only hope that we don't even realise what is happening and die instantly.
When COVID was new and we were deep in lockdown and there was no vaccine in sight, there was a definite feeling of "will the world ever be like it was again? Is everything we knew irreversibly changed forever?". It was a worrying feeling. I can only imagine how depressing and frankly terrifying it must feel to know that life as you knew it was over (and it will never "go back to normal"), and you and your kids are now going to live in some sort of hellscape and probably die of some "trivial" injury or accident, if you don't starve or get murdered first.
I wonder how many people in zombie apocalypse (of a viral kind) would just infect themselves voluntarily to avoid getting chewed by the horde of zombies.
On the plus(?) side, there will be plenty of remaining fertilizers in stock to grow food to feed the now much smaller population for a good while.
> loss of things like acetaminophen and central heating
Needing to tough out headaches without Tylenol and wear a coat or put wood in the fireplace inside your cabin...post apocalyptic first world problems.
edit: less moist
I had a conversation with my wife about this. For context, I mostly agree with you, however this is something you and a spouse should agree on and have a plan for. We have two young girls, so there’s that. Additional context: my wife is Jewish by birth.
Her reaction was immediate and unequivocal: we are going to do everything we possibly can to survive.
I guess generations of natural selection on a genetically isolated population really -does- matter!
Stay away from windows, shards of glass flying at high speeds are a big factor in indoor deaths from blasts. Many embassies have breathable curtains with weights on the bottom, to catch any glass while letting air pass through
Not just glass.
Some people in Hiroshima had to have surgery later in life to remove other people's teeth from their bodies.
I have security foils in my windows, though more against thieves than against a nuclear blast. The glass should break, but either stay in the window, or fall out in one blob kept together by the foil.
You should watch Threads (1984), the most messed up film ever made, produced in part by the BBC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgT4Y30DkaA (trailer only)
It's about the lives of average people before, during and after a fictional nuclear attack in the UK.
I watched it a year ago. The imagery sticks with you - you sigh a lot. It’s subtle and bleak with little to no “modern movie drama” (gasps, pop outs by bad guys, scares) other than a few run of the mill drawn out pregnancies. Watch it alone so you can digest it without the distractions of audible sighs (or crying) from people near you. I recommend it, much like On The Beach (the book or the movie).
Came here to post this. It's a movie that really bothered me on a visceral level enough that it's stuck with me and consistently makes me pause every once in a while when I remember it.
That movie would have been terrifying with just firebombing alone, something that has/had happen all over the world. Nukes somehow surpass the hell on Earth that is conventional total war.
It's also impressive what they made on such a small budget, with something like ~$500k.
> You should watch Threads (1984), the most messed up film ever made, produced in part by the BBC
No you shouldn't - atleast not without thinking about it first. I still remember its dark, unremitting bleakness 38 years later - it really makes you think about whether its better for your family to die in the initial blast rather than 'survive'.
I just listened to Atomic Hobo's podcast about Threads, and as someone with a bit of a fascination with nuclear history, I sort of want to see it, but I can't quite decide if it's something I want to put myself through.
I did view "Threads", years ago. It was disturbing, yes.
When I was in school, the teachers all put out an advisory about "The Day After (1983)". It was a big deal; many families were planning to watch it, and it wasn't on cable, it was on broadcast OTA TV, so it was highly accessible, even to children.
The school administration decided they needed to get in front of the controversy and put out a Christian message about hope and trust in God, when it seemed like the world was panicking over the Cold War and mainstream media was egging us on. Ever since then, I have appreciated their candor and willingness to tell us the truth about this world and the next.
We had fire drills at school; we knew about "duck and cover" but we didn't practice any air-raid drills that I can recall. However, when my mother took me shopping at the JC Penney across town, there was prominent signage for their old-fashioned Fallout Shelter in the basement. I was really intrigued by the bold yellow lettering and symbology, and I sometimes wonder what it was like down there, because we've never seen the inside of any bomb shelter whatsoever.
My dad worked around hazardous materials on a regular basis, as a safety professional, and he was on the science end of things, and spent time in the office as much as the lab. He often brought home tools like a Geiger counter, film badges, a radio pager, and I think there were other chemical sensors ("sniffers"?) Learning at his feet, I picked up a lot of geology, so I could recognize isotopes and chemical symbols and count in rems, etc.
Earthquakes were the primary hazard for us, and I suppose that any nuclear explosion would've had earthquake-like effects, among other things, to put it blandly.
I would be curious to hear your 2 cents on what you think the chance of a nuclear war are, for any given year.
I would say perhaps 1%, which in a sense is very little, and really a lot.
Also, if you think 1% is way too high, consider that in 1983 a nuclear war was averted by the decision of a single individual [0]. I'm pretty sure the chance that year would have been more than 20%.
Full on nuclear war is pretty unlikely as it is really in no-ones interest to invite retaliation in kind. An isolated nuclear attack however is more likely than ever. This whole "will they or will they not?" business with Russia is getting pretty scary. And then there are Iran, North Korea, and a few other places where nuclear weapons are a factor and the economics are trending towards desperate. Not a good combination.
I would say the chance for that might be creeping up a little bit lately. Too many nuclear armed, trigger happy, and increasingly desperate despots around right now. Hard to put a number on it. But I'd say it's high enough to start thinking about counter measures, defensive strategies, and an appropriately violent and fierce response to disincentivize any further escalation. Doesn't have to be a full on nuclear war. But it can't just be a slap on the wrist either.
> what you think the chance of a nuclear war are, for any given year.
Statistics is only useful if you actually have sufficient numbers. Otherwise you can just make any claim you want supported by any arbitrary model you can think of to support your preconceived idea - and let's face it, nobody will blindly create a model and then believe anything it says, instead they will tweak it until the result "sounds believable", no matter where they started.
A similar thing thing happened in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis.[0]
The math is sobering. Even if we assume 'only' a 1% chance per year, that implies a 63% probability per century.
Probable nuclear war also averted earlier, again by a single individual, in 1962.
During the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy himself estimated the risk of nuclear war as 1/3 to 1/2
None of that sounds pleasant or survivable. Air pressure is hard to grok, and a 5 PSI shockwave doesn't sound like alot until you realize how many square inches your shadow has.
Yeah, from a rough calculation, 5 psi would be 4500 lbs (2000 kg) of force across the average human standing up.
Everything I learned from surviving a nuclear impact I learned from Indiana Jones 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn4Vhkmb4Lw
I live in a highrise apartment building close to the center of a major city. It has an parking garage below the building which stretches many floors underground. During the several minutes it takes to get my car from the 6th floor underground out to the street, I've thought numerous times about how survivable a nuclear blast would be in a civilian structure that far underground, presuming of course that the upper floors didn't just collapse and bury me there forever.
Possibly pretty survivable in the short term as long as a nuclear warhead doesn't go off very close to where you are. Just because you're in a major city doesn't necessarily mean you're a high priority target. (In nuclear war, there are what is called a "counter-force" strategy where you target military bases, and a "counter-value" strategy where you target things with the highest value to the defender like cities.)
In the short-to-medium term the issue becomes: can you stay underground for the next week or so until the sky stops emitting gamma rays? Cement and dirt are both good barriers, but you'll need food and water eventually.
I'd also wonder if the air might become unbreathably bad or too hot due to everything burning.
Is it near a river? What about ground water level? Sometimes that has to be actively pumped out/up. Also large water mains may fracture, and soak it.
Blub
Edit: This can be seen often during the early stages of larger building construction, when they 'dig out' the hole for the basement, and optionally parking spaces below that, like in your case. There are large pumps, always working, 24/7 pumping it elsewhere. Those don't vanish. They are just being replaced by permanent installations integrated into the building, or near to it.
Similar things apply to many subway tunnels. Not always. Depends on the location of course.
The FEA images seem to show that the best place is to huddle right below or beside the window/door, and the blast will largely pass you by.
Considering it is a shock wave, best to be sure to open your mouth slightly and not hold your breath, so as to not trap pressure differentials
This is a good thing to publish, because most people seem to casually think nuke=dead, period. But the fact it that the simple geometry means that the areas of medium and lower damage are more than 10X the area of extreme damage, so any random location is much more likely to see effects that are survivable depending on your actions.
Lets hope it never comes to that
Contrary to what the RAND corporation would have had us believe, there are significant steps that can be taken to improve survival odds. Oak Ridge published a nice handbook[1]. I strongly recommend getting a hard copy, because duh.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War_Survival_Skills
This is all conditioned on a concrete building. Forget about it in a typical North American stick construction.
I am not at all reassured by the suggestion that hiding to one side of a door will help.
I don't understand the details of the simulation, but I would have guessed incoming pressure waves would bounce off back walls and create a turbulent mess of forces in the areas hidden from the initial pulse.
Also ignored was the solidity of the walls. Concrete might survive, brick could possibly survive. But a partition wall with a couple of sheets of thin plasterboard nailed to weak wooden supports would be unlikely to offer much protection.
I mean, depending on the scale of the conflict and explosion, nuke generally does equal dead. The variable is just how proximate to the explosion your death is going to be.
I think the way things are going nuclear war is likely, and the worse part is may be not fully intentional.
I think nuclear war is survivable if you are in a good location and already prepped to survive 2+ years on your preps and have the means to grow all your own food and are in a solid community that doesn't go bonkers after shtf.
But that's not the vast majority of us, so it would be quite the shit show. If you aren't prepped, I don't know why someone would want to survive the attack.
It seems like duck and cover is still good advice. Possibly lying down is better.
Obligatory link to the very thorough free book, Nuclear War Survival Skills: https://ia800501.us.archive.org/35/items/NuclearWarSurvivalS... , originally published by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
I am modestly underwhelmed by the scope here. They basically picked one symmetrical floor plan to simulate, sent a blast wave straight at it, and noted that in some areas, the forces involved could still fling people against walls hard enough to kill them. Okay, sure, ouch, but what about other floor plans? Could you simulate them at lesser fidelities? I feel like a few different real world house layouts with the blast from a few different angles would paint a more coherent picture. Maybe that’s a follow up paper?
cf https://www.babs.admin.ch/en/aufgabenbabs/schutzbauten.html
(note that shelters-for-all could only be a viable strategy for countries that do not have first strike capabilities)
So, would it be better to be outside? Thermal radiation may be a problem though.
Dumb question: would wearing a seatbelt help? (assuming the chair is fixed)
Another great argument against open plan offices.