Tag Archives: nukes

Article – How to survive nuclear war after a bomb is dropped: what to do, how to prepareArticle –

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Some light reading for Saturday:

If Russia launched a weapon from international waters just off the East Coast, people in cities like New York, Boston, and Washington, DC, might have just 10 to 15 minutes to prepare.

“You wouldn’t even have time to go get your kids from school,” Irwin Redlener, a public-health expert at Columbia University who specializes in disaster preparedness, told Insider last year.
Arguably, the American public is not as prepared or educated on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack as Americans were during the Cold War, when fallout shelters, , and air raid sirens were in place across the nation. So here’s a minute-by-minute guide to help.

Llikelihood of the classic Reagan-era all-out nukefest actually happening? Pretty small, I think. But all it takes is one thermonuclear weapon to ruin your whole day and , besides, this information may prove to come in handy some day.

Articles on nuclear survival and Nukemap

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“Shattered people are best represented by bits and pieces.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

And nothing shatters like atoms getting smashed overhead. As of late it seems that the media is warming us up to the possibility of nuclear war. This is silly because, really, ever since 1945 nuclear war has always been a possibility…its just that some times it was more likely than others.

Two articles that popped up on my feeds:

The notion that a nuclear attack is unsurvivable is demonstrably false. There are people who survived the nuking of Japan who were literally only a few hundred yards from ground zero when the bomb went off. To be fair, they were, I believe, in a heavily fortified bank vault, but the point is that with appropriate protection you could have a nuke dropped nearby and still make it out. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it is survivable.

But, of course, the number one rule of surviving any disaster is: don’t be there. Don’t live where nukes are likely to be dropped. Being fifty miles away from any major target area isnt a bad idea.

Curious how you’d fare? Hit Nukemap, select your closest likely target area, drop a good sized nuke on it, and see how your area would fare. Great Falls is a likely target but according to the simulator, even the biggest bomb Putin has would still leave my region safe from immediate blast damage. Windborne fallout, of course, is a different story.

But…in case you havent given consideration to nuclear stuff, you might want to read the articles and play with the simulator.

Now Im curious what Plan B is

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This is interesting, if a bit sobering. It’s a simulation of a conventional war going nuclear.

This four-minute audio-visual piece is based on independent assessments of current U.S. and Russian force postures, nuclear war plans, and nuclear weapons targets. It uses extensive data sets of the nuclear weapons currently deployed, weapon yields, and possible targets for particular weapons, as well as the order of battle estimating which weapons go to which targets in which order in which phase of the war to show the evolution of the nuclear conflict from tactical, to strategic to city-targeting phases.

(H/T to RobertaX for the above information)

Do I think something like what is going on in Russia will lead to a big nukefest like in this video? No, I do not. I have always firmly believed that the next time someone opens up a can of nuclear whoopass it will either be some terrorist group with a stolen nuclear artillery shell from a collapsed Soviet Union, or, it’ll be two smaller powers settling long-standing grudges (India v. Pakistan, Israel v…well..everyone, etc.)

Nonetheless, the possibility does exist and as such it’s probably not a bad idea to pivot your preps a little in that direction. Dean Ing’s book ‘Pulling Through’ tells the fictional story of a family hiding out in a basement for two weeks waiting for the fallout to drop, and the movie ‘Threads’ will stir you so deeply that you’ll rent a Uhaul and go loot your local WalMart pre-emptively.

I remember back in the 80’s actually going to my library and doing this sort of research on my own. Fascinating how the times have changed to the point that I can get all that info without the days and days of prowling the stacks of government bulletins and reports.

By the way, I am notoriously wrong when it comes to predicting the future. But…war doesn’t make economic sense. Sun Tzu said the greatest victory is the battle you do not have to fight. Quark says that you should never spend more than you need to for an acquisition..If Putin can get what he wants when the price is low, that is to say without having to spend men and treasure, he’s going to do that. If Ukraine can get what it wants when the price is low, that is to say without being invaded or occupied, theyre going to do that. We’ll see if I’m wrong, but I see this going the way of the Cuban Missile Crisis…backroom and back-channel deals are made to nip things in thebud before they get too out of control.

Article – Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was True

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Half a century after Kubrick’s mad general, Jack D. Ripper, launched a nuclear strike on the Soviets to defend the purity of “our precious bodily fluids” from Communist subversion, we now know that American officers did indeed have the ability to start a Third World War on their own. And despite the introduction of rigorous safeguards in the years since then, the risk of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear detonation hasn’t been completely eliminated.

If you havent read it, Stephen Hunter (of “Point Of Impact” fame) wrote a terrific book, The Day Before Midnight, about some guys busting into a launch facility to do a little DIY WW3. It was a really great book and would make an awesome movie. It’s my favorite book of his, narrowly edging out POI. And, yeah, it’s a little derivative of “Twilight’s Last Gleaming.”

Anyway, the gist of the article is that despite the protestations of the military and the government, there have been times when the ability to launch nukes on one’s own has been possible. I suppose in Cold War planning that made sense – if command-n-control is knocked out there has to be a way for weapons to be used without authorization from the smoldering radioactive ruins of DC.

I mention this because it’s a fascinating little bit of history that sort of segues into preparedness. For those of us who grew up in the world of first strike, second strike, MADD, and Minuteman missiles its rather interesting.

The article is also  interesting because it details how the .gov tried to balance a very complicated equation – nukes had to be tightly controlled so no one could go off-kilter and start WW3 on their own, BUT there had to be mechanisms in place to allow an individual command to launch independently if higher authorities were disabled/destroyed. The solution (if you want to call it that) was two-man rules, no-lone-zones, layers of verification, split codes, and a few other ‘team’ requirements. Basically, it was a lot like having two names on a checking account…without both people signing off, nothing happens. (At least, thats the plan anyway.)

And, to segue to a slightly less on-topic matter, it’s interesting to note that while it supposedly takes more than one person to launch a nuclear attack, it has historically taken only one to prevent it.

Although there is the premise of the rogue individual starting WW3,  most folks are unaware of the rogue individual who prevented WW3. There are at least two Soviet officers (here and here) who, when given the opportunity to allow a some fissionable matter to do its thing, said nyet and prevented what might have been the start of WW3.

Interestingly, once you start looking into these sorts of matters you discover there have been quite a few times that we’ve been just a phone call and a button press away from having a nuclear exchange. Nowdays I suspect the incidence of nuclear war is fairly low but the risk of nuclear attack is unchanged or perhaps a bit higher. Somewhere there is a cargo container with a couple nuclear artillery shells in it just waiting to go through the Port of Seattle or somewhere similar. I mean, you look at the numbers and you realize there is a huge amount of smaller, less dramatic nuclear devices out there…man-portable stuff that some zealot can stuff in the back of a Cessna 182 and detonate over pretty much anywhere. There’s a lot of those little nukes out there..artillery shells, torpedoes, ‘special weapons’, demolition packages, etc, etc….stuff that fits into a 55-gallon drum or smaller.

Anyway, an interesting article for those of us who have an interest in control (or lack thereof) of these sorts of things.