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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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

memfree ,
@memfree@lemmy.ml avatar

My understanding is the thing you most need is community. No one is likely to make it on their own, but if you can band together, your chances increase.

Evil_Shrubbery ,

Make sure my PC is ok and all GOG games downloaded. If needed, transfer the battlestation to a safer or better location, with a generator/solar panels & a decent battery.

Profit.
My life won’t change, I just won’t go to work.

Don_Dickle ,

Not to be a clit but it kind of depends where your city is.

skillissuer ,
@skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

if you’re gonna die in nuclear strike, it’ll be most likely because a building you’re in collapses. unless you’re very close to a target that might get a ground burst or small nuke, like airport, large transit node like cargo railroad terminal, high level military command hq or such, you shouldn’t worry too hard about radiation either. in any other case, if you’re within fatal radiation dose range, then you’re also deep within overpressure-that-will-collapse-any-building range and instant-third-degree-burn-and-beyond range. at smaller yields you’ll see fireball range greater than fatal radiation range. play around with nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ to get the idea

if you’re outside, you’ll get thermal burns and might be thrown around but as long as nothing falls on you, and ignoring burns, you should be mostly fine. there won’t be utilities, no power, no water, no communications, so you better have some batteries. if you have shelter, then if you have water and food to weather it out, and if you’re upwind of groundbursts if any, then you’ll probably survive

…long enough to be drafted, because in space of day we went from peace to total war

YaksDC ,
@YaksDC@lemm.ee avatar

I live in Pentagon City VA, I’m not surviving shit. ☺

memfree ,
@memfree@lemmy.ml avatar

I’ll bet you an upvote that there’s several bunkers damn close to you. All you need to do is figure out who’ll let you use one.

Riven ,
@Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I can guarantee that’s one of the cities in the US that has anti nuke defenses. The US has a tone of those. I haven’t checked but I also bet nobody is allowed to just randomly fly over the city or else they get shot down, and anybody who hijacks a passanger plane that does have clearance to fly over wouldn’t be able to smuggle a nuke onto it anyways.

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

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