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What do to if I survive a nuclear blast in my city?

I recently saw a comment chain about nuclear bombs, and that led me to thinking about this. Say there is a nuclear explosion in the downtown of my US city. I survive relatively fine, but obviously the main part of the city has been destroyed, while major zones extending from the center were also badly damaged. What would be a good response to (a) survive and (b) help out the recovery effort?

otherbarry ,

Say there is a nuclear explosion in the downtown of my US city.

If it’s that close you then essentially you’ll need to decide whether to die quick or slow :/

If you’re actually planning on surviving you’d need to stay in an underground bunker or something similar for at least 3-5 weeks to be safe enough to travel outside (and we’re assuming you have clean sources of food/water, bathroom, etc, during that time). If you make it that far then afterwards you’d likely want to go outside & get as far away from the radiation zone as possible.

Coincidentally the basement of my work building actually has a fallout shelter sign from back in the day so the basement might survive a blast but I don’t see how I’d make it 3-5 weeks without being extra prepared for that beforehand.

BearOfaTime , (edited )

It really depends.

Scale of bomb

Design of bomb.

Distance from epicenter

Ground explosion or atmospheric

Prevailing winds

City construction

Etc, etc.

It’s nowhere near as simple as we’ve been taught.

I’ve looked at the bomb simulator linked above, and for me and my city, and where I live, prevailing winds, etc, only the two largest warheads would have direct effect on me, and fallout isn’t a concern for the rest (distance and prevailing winds).

Now after that, it would surely be a complete shit show. I’d likely have no water (or maybe I would, this suburb isnt tied to the city). Power would certainly be an issue, as would telephone/cell, radio would be problematic for a short while. Food would be a problem, of course.

otherbarry ,

Yes of course, I meant as a general idea of what you’d aim to do lacking any other information beyond the fact that the bomb itself fell in the local downtown area (going by the post itself).

Thing is if a bomb dropped that close most people will not know what the scale of the bomb was, what the design was, how far exactly they were from the blast radius, whether it’s ground / atmospheric, wind direction, all that stuff. In that short amount of time you’d just need to run into the nearest still-standing shelter & figure things out from there.

Hopefully with some extreme luck the bomb would fall just as you were walking/driving past your nearest fallout shelter and can easily get in. Or you’re a prepper and aren’t far from your homemade bunker with supplies, radio, and whatnot.

EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted ,
@EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I’ve looked at the bomb simulator linked above

I’m not seeing a link. Did it get deleted?

BearOfaTime ,

nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted ,
@EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Thanks. :)

Beacon ,

I'm far from an expert on this, but I would guess the safety of being outdoors heavily depends on additional factors, like for example wind direction and speed.

NeatNit ,

This brings to mind something David Mitchell said once on Would I Lie To You (British panel show):

In response to Kelvin MacKenzie’s claim that the “This Is My” guest had built him a nuclear bunker:

David Mitchell: If there’s a nuclear war, I don’t want to live. I don’t want to come out of a shelter and try to rebuild society. I have no skills. Okay, society is destroyed by a nuclear war, we’re basically - we’re back to the bronze age…how long is it gonna be before people start pitching panel shows again? It’s gonna be at least 2000 years!

Watch it here if you want, it was annoyingly hard to find.

However I don’t think David - who is a comedian - is precisely right about how such a war would affect the state of technology. If there are survivors, I don’t think we’d really be back to the bronze age. Even if all technology was destroyed (which it wouldn’t be), give humans a few decades, we’ll have some sort of modern technology back up and running. Maybe not computers, but some certainly some analogue electronics - the knowledge isn’t lost. Communications would be one of the first points of focus, so television would follow closely behind.

peopleproblems ,

The longest stretch would likely be chip fabs. You need precision electronics and hazardous chemicals and plenty of power.

But considering that some form of electronics will survive, and it wouldnt take long for people to get rudimentary electricity going, I don’t see why we couldn’t have world Internet within a decade.

NeatNit ,

Yeah, chip fabs are exactly why I think computers would need more time. I’m not super familiar with this, but I’d wager such a factory can only be built using tools and machines that come from other specialized factories, and so on maybe 3 levels down before you get to a relatively rudimentary manufacturing process that can be reasonably achieved within a few years. It would take a lot to get that back up and running.

Zoot ,
@Zoot@reddthat.com avatar

However… Just think about how many chips are currently just sitting around… Between scrapping and searching you would likely be just fine for a few decades.

Mammothmothman ,

EMP would fry most of them though.

Zoot ,
@Zoot@reddthat.com avatar

Only if they were currently running, and I’m willing to guess the vast majority of reusable/scrap chips will be unpowered in the event of an EMP.

Replacing all working electronics with new boards would definitely be a task. But unless we get an massive flare from the sun I hardly think that’ll be an issue.

intensely_human ,

By the time nuclear war happens, most chip manufacturing capability will be underground or in hidden sites and therefore not targeted.

NeatNit ,

How could you be sure of any of that? For all we know, nuclear war could start tomorrow. Or, a bit more realistically, next year. How fast can these factories be built?

volvoxvsmarla ,

Thank you for the clip! I once found the show on youtube by accident, it is such a gem. It all started with the cabbage feud. (But I have come to notice that James Acaster only tells true stories, alas.)

I absolutely don’t get the point system though but nevermind.

NeatNit ,

I never tried to keep track, but I always assumed each correctly identified lie/truth gets a point, and each mistake gives a point to the other team. Keep in mind that the show gets edited down and you don’t see everything that the audience did, while the score probably includes those things you didn’t see.

But like, absolutely no one watches this show for the score, so who cares? It might as well be QI’s scoring system :)

dohpaz42 ,
@dohpaz42@lemmy.world avatar

The thing is, people inherently want to live. It’s instinctual. Secondly, everybody - regardless of skill level - can learn to be handy and useful. If everything is destroyed, and society is to be rebuilt, a lot of manual labor will be needed for cleanup and rebuilding. Even the “I pick things up and put them down” guy is perfectly suited for this type of work.

grue ,

Counterpoint:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

uid0gid0 ,

When you’re functionally immortal like Lazarus Long you’ll have time to learn all that. Most people only live long enough to master one profession.

intensely_human ,

None of that’s about mastering professions

CoffeeJunkie ,

Great questions, and you need to familiarize yourself with the correct answers. Generally memorize the protocols. I’m going to regurgitate what I have internalized & point you to online resources to educate yourself further.

Preparations made well in advance really give an advantage to survival.

As soon as a nuke is dropped, go the fuck home. Turn on your faucets & fill all sinks & bathtubs, as this may be the last of your easy, clean, potable water you’ll get from the grid for who knows how long.

One of the biggest & best things you can do is shelter in place, I think for a week. Radioactive fallout & the heavy alpha particles will be everywhere, and blow everywhere. Cover all windows & doors with Visqueen sheeting & duct tape, control & eliminate the travel of random-ass particulates. After 1 week, the radioactive potency of the dust particles should be reduced by 85-90%. That’s huge. So shut your windows & doors, seal everything up, and sit your ass down. It could save your life.

Shelter in place requires food, water, preps. I think it’s overkill, but overkill is also kind of what you need/want, 1 gallon of water per person per day. When Russia started getting on their shit, people were buying up iodine tabs. This harmless substance negates the harmful effects of potential radioactive exposure via your food & drink. The trick is you have to take this stuff a set amount of time…before…exposure to radioactive particles. It protects your thyroid gland, IIRC. Have water, have food, maybe have a container or two of those fancy tablets.

Especially in the earlier days, you help others by being able to help yourself. If there are assistance efforts, you can turn them down & the help can go to others in more dire need.

We can, and do, talk about prepping things for years on end. I would recommend you tune in to Canadian Prepper (hey,I watched some of the video after & I didn’t do too badly!)

Yes, Canadian Prepper touches on this. In my words: information is good. But the authorities, and other people, may lie or not tell the entire truth. They tell you what they want you to know. Good advice in general.

Anticorp ,

Probably a stupid question, but during that week, going outside to fire up my whole house generator would probably be a death sentence. Right? So I should just live without electricity for a week? That reality has me thinking that I need to get one of those generators that turns itself on when power goes out. It would be really convenient during the winter anyways, since we lose power a lot when it snows around here.

DeLacue ,

Yes going outside in the first week is a very bad idea. However not because the radiation outside will instantly drop you. Much of the radiation will be coming from radioactive dust, known as fallout that’ll be comprised of all kinds of isotopes. The isotopes that decay quickly release a lot of radiation over a short period and if you go outside you will come back covered in them. This will bring radiation into wherever you are using as your shelter. This would not just harm the person who went outside but everyone else sheltering with them. So do not go outside for any reason. You can make do without power for a while.

On a related note; keep water and food covered. Skin is a surprisingly good defense against radiation but breathing in this dust or letting it get into the food you eat or the water you drink is very dangerous. After a week has passed you should for your own safety keep the time spent outside your shelter as low as possible. Short trips outside will become safer as time goes on but activities that kick up dust will still be dangerous for a long time.

Anticorp ,

I think that I might rather get caught in the blast zone than deal with the fallout.

intensely_human ,

Your kit should include a firearm

Anticorp ,

It does.

intensely_human ,

Just get some kind of remote control for starting it. That way you still decide when it does and doesn’t run

grue ,

But the authorities, and other people, may lie or not tell the entire truth. They tell you what they want you to know.

You’d think that lesson would still be fresh from the pandemic, when at the very beginning the CDC tried to get the public not to hoard masks so the actual medical professionals could have them, then that got twisted and metastisized into “masks don’t work” and the ant-masker/anti-vaxxer bullshit.

cynar ,

The frustrating thing is that masks don’t protect you particularly well. What they do is protect others from any infection you are carrying. This is why it was more important to provide them to those interacting with infected or vulnerable people. It limited the risk of spreading it further.

Nikls94 ,

I think the aspect of “hoarding” itself is the culprit here. Yes Karen, you can take 4 masks for you and your 3 kids. No karen, you don’t need 28 for every day of the week.

abbadon420 ,

Go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over.

QProphecy ,
@QProphecy@lemmy.world avatar

I love the background music playing during the Winchester scene…

makyo ,

https://i.imgur.com/BxVNomN.gif

intensely_human ,

You definitely don’t want to wait for nuclear fallout to blow over.

intensely_human ,

Move away from the mushroom cloud. It. Pay attention to the direction of the wind and try to see if the mushroom cloud itself is moving in order to tell what the wind is doing higher up.

You want to avoid being underneath it. That means primarily just moving away from it, adding more distance. But also, keeping in mind the top of that mushroom cloud is itself moving across the sky (being pushed by wind), so if it’s going the same direction as you, switch directions to get out from under it.

The mushroom cloud is full of radioactive material which will come settling out. If the initial blast didn’t kill you, this radiation is the next biggest danger. Just keep moving away, away, away.

fine_sandy_bottom ,

Everyone is talking about radiation but IMO having food and water is more important.

In a large city, things would turn to shit within hours. There would be violence.

Honestly, if you don’t have a relative on a farm within a days walk, then your best bet is a refugee camp.

LouNeko , (edited )

Everybody is acting like its the apocalypse, just put on one off those N95 masks we all have from covid, get in your car and fuck off. Or walk, you can easily cover 30 km in a few hours to the next not destroyed city.

Edit: I meant kilometers.

Lost_My_Mind ,

you can easily cover 30 miles in a few hours to the next not destroyed city.

Dude…how fast do you walk???

LouNeko ,

Sorry I meant kilometer, its like 19 miles. Which is doable in 6 - 8 hours.

Lost_My_Mind ,

Oh…yeah, I guess thats true. I was thinking you meant like 30 miles in 2-3 hours, which I won’t say is as fast as the flash…but maybe the flash’s infant baby?

Although, with me personally, I’d be like “uuuuggghhhhhh how long is this walking going to beeeee???”

And someone would say “we’ve been walking 45 minutes…so, maybe another 5 hours?”

“Ya know what? You guys go ahead without me. I’m just going to lay in the road and wait for the next bomb”

Pssshhhh!!! Walking…

Illuminostro ,

In an irradiated wasteland.

Beacon ,

A very fit athletic person who has done endurance training can do 30 miles in a day, but that's not typical. Most people could do around 10+ if their life literally depended on it like in the aftermath of a nuke

Source: a brief web search

LouNeko ,

Yeah I meant kilometers.

Caligvla ,
@Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

People in this thread are playing way too much Fallout lol.

fine_sandy_bottom ,

If cities are being nuked it probably is the apocalypse.

piyuv ,

If you survive (big if) find Steve Huffman, he thinks he’ll be a good leader in a post apocalyptic earth

StaySquared ,

Nuclear? In your city? You’re dead in a matter of days… maybe months at best.

Mango ,

Not joking here. Find a way to finish dying.

HubertManne ,

I live at the edge of a city but near a major airport. my biggest nuke fear is a bomb hits the city center that leaves me alive and the airport ones take awhile to arrive.

echodot ,

Is there even any nukeing the airport? Damage to the runway plus the EMP generated would probably prevent aircraft from taking off.

skillissuer ,
@skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

turns out that flat strips of concrete firmly attached to ground are pretty hard to damage

HubertManne ,

I just assumed they would want to hit major infrastructure like airports, depots and such. Now my new fear is they don't nuke the airport at all. Im like at 3rd degree awefulness distance.

skillissuer ,
@skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

airstrips longer than 1600m (iirc) were at some point designated as strategic targets by soviets, so you assumed correctly

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

I used to live about three miles from Camp David. I figured I’d either be killed immediately or inside a defensive perimeter in the event of a war.

RememberTheApollo_ ,

Large bridges, airports, urban areas, any military installations, dams/hydroelectric, power plants, major train hubs, etc. are all targets in all-out nuclear war. You’ll need to actually think of how many things are targets and plot what not to be near.

Either way, all-out war would fuck the planet and probably set us back a century at best. If China survived they’d be the global power as they have the resources and manufacturing that the rest of the world has mostly given up, the rest would be completely decimated.

wabafee ,
@wabafee@lemmy.world avatar

Probably just get away from the city or away from the radiation, forget about helping recovery effort as initial response. That can happen once your safe.

someguy3 , (edited )

The first rule in rescue is don’t become another casualty.

Hunker down for a few days, iirc the most dangerous radiation will decay in the first few days. You don’t want the ash on your body. Fill your bathtub/whatever else with water to drink and ration your food.

slazer2au ,

Kurzgesagt has a video on it.

Atelopus-zeteki ,
@Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run avatar

Excellent Video! And important call for nuclear disarmament.

BombOmOm ,
@BombOmOm@lemmy.world avatar

The only time a nuke has ever been used in war was when only one country had them. Disarmament destroys MAD and makes it possible for only one country to have (and therefore use) nukes again.

14th_cylon ,

have (and therefore use) nukes again

nukes, or anything else.

just look how great nuclear disarmament worked for ukraine. you can bet your right hand that no country will give their nukes up ever again.

Atelopus-zeteki ,
@Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run avatar

I suspect you are at least as old as I am, from the MAD comment.

Why Mutually Assured Destruction Can No Longer Keep the World from Annihilation
https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/why-mutually-assured-destruction-can-no-longer-keep-the-world-from-annihilation/

Why MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) Is No Longer Reassuring
https://www.fdd.org/podcasts/2022/04/01/mutually-assured-destruction-no-longer-reassuring/

The Diminishing Reassurance Of Mutually-Assured Destruction
https://theowp.org/reports/the-diminishing-reassurance-of-mutually-assured-destruction/

Zorsith ,
@Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Don’t use certain cleaning products when bathing; I forget if it’s shampoo or conditioner, but one will bind radiation to you hair and scalp.

Illuminostro , (edited )

That won’t be a problem. If you’re that close, you’ll be dead within a week from the massive dose you already took.

Edit: Aww, look. Somebody thinks Fallout was based on real science and facts. Don’t worry, buddy, you’ll be a ghoul and live forever.

Contravariant ,

It’ll be a rather unpleasant death I might add. Plan accordingly.

Illuminostro ,

Exactly.

zarathustra0 ,

Shampoo cleans, conditioner binds moisture in. Cleaning is good, binding radioactive goop in is bad. Don’t condition.

AFC1886VCC ,

Attention all Fallout gamers!

BackOnMyBS is in trouble and they need your help to survive a nuclear explosion in their city. To do this, they need a Vault and a trusty canteen. To help them, all they need is your credit card number, the three numbers on the back and the expiration month and year. But you gotta be quick so that BackOnMyBS can build a Vault and survive nuclear annihilation!

AngryCommieKender ,

What’s the vault experiment? Are we giving him the box of puppets?

Decoy321 ,

Good ol 77. Truly the best vault.

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