New Advice On How to Survive Nuclear Attack
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Now I grew up in the '60s, within 30 miles of a cluster of Titan missile silos, practically surrounded by them (one of them blew up in the '80s! What fun that was!) So I knew that I could duck and cover till the cows came down and it wouldn't do any good. Because I'd be incandescent gas.
However, in my grade school and teenage nightmares it was Russian HBombs that I was obsessing about. Terrorist bombs are likely to be much smaller, closer to the size of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Or smaller. So "assuming the position" is actually pretty good advice if you aren't killed instantly.
Staying put to avoid fallout is another issue. It depends on how close to the blast you are, and what the prevailing winds are doing. If I were in a good spot, say a building basement or the subway, I'd probably stick with it. In a car or a heavily damaged frame building, I dunno. The roads are likely to be impassable, so the best bet might be to head for a larger, building basement or other underground structure.
Assuming the current inhabitants are taking in stragglers...
The article is amazingly light on analysis and actual advice.
Well, another reason to keep those wind up radios around.
If you are upwind of the blast, and a reasonable distance away, it might make sense to make a run for areas not effected by the blast and out of the immediate fallout pattern. Especially if there is an effort to rescue and remove survivors from the area underway. During an actual nuclear war there is unlikely to be any organized efforts by the surviving government, but after a terrorist attack, there will almost certainly be. And hopefully they will be broadcasting on emergency frequencies, hence the wind up radio.
If you are in the fallout area, unless you are in a well stocked fallout shelter, you are probably screwed. Rescue efforts are likely to be minimal for weeks. Food and water will be a problem. Not to mention people who've been wandering around in the fallout wanting to share your hidy hole. It could be pretty grim.
wouldn't it be the easiest to make a TV entertainment series that would play in a nuclear apocalyptic scenario and include 60-ish style warnings of what to do when you see a mushroom?
Maybe something fallout style? This would not make anyone panic, as it's entertainment, but the message would go into subconsciousness to most.
Before the mushroom too. Like when the tide goes out before a tsunami.
I remember watching the 'Day After' a long time ago and in one scene is everyone on a highway - and all of their cars suddenly die/stall. I assume this is EMP blast related?
In the case you survive that, don't leave the car.. and pray!
By the way, Jason Robard's character did one educational thing: bending (I hope that's the right word) as much as he can behind the dashboard.
Also the movie featured prominently a white noodle-like dust rain that had that charming effect of making people bald.
There was another film with William Hart (can anybody remember the title?) about a post-apocalyptic world where most electronics are fried due to EMP.
It wasn't completely realistic, but most of the shows were about things the survivors had to do afterward to deal with contamination, breakdown of government, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Game
Threads is probably the bleakest thing ever shown on TV - all the more so when you realize that the attack on the UK used as the basis for the program was actually fairly optimistic:
Three Bedroom House with Emergency Shelter http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/our_offices/departments/Biolog...
Bunker-type Fallout Shelter (for beef cattle) http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/our_offices/departments/Biolog...
Stall Barn & Fallout Shelter http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/our_offices/departments/Biolog...
Fallout Shelter, Dairy Barn & Family Center http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/our_offices/departments/Biolog...
Anyway, you can get around the nytimes restrictions simply by googling for the article and clicking through. It must be based on referers. Eg, go here and then click the top link:
Emphasizing the unsurvivability of a nuclear war encourages terrorists and marginal, rogue nation states and feeds into their ideation of "Once I have a nuke, they'll have to take me seriously!", a dynamic we can already see in the world. If you want to consider the effects of propaganda on world behavior (severed from the question of the truth of the propaganda), a good case can be made that now is the time to understate the dangers of nuclear weapons, that they are in the end just fairly large bombs, etc. Or perhaps just tell the truth, which is that they are dangerous and devastating, yes, but their effects have historically been overstated for the reasons discussed above.
Also, remember, part of what makes these nation states marginal is their lack of solid leadership and control. Iran right now thinks that a nuke is their meal ticket, but based on my reading of their own internal turmoil I would consider it a nontrivial possibility that if a nuke does show up there very significant internecine conflicts would begin and it's impossible to know who would actually end up with it; even if the current leadership retained control of the country the nuke may end up with somebody else. (Actually, the probability of the Iranian nuke actually ending up going off in Iran due to internal conflicts I would consider nontrivial, though certainly low odds relatively speaking.)
It isn't world-ending apocalyptic if North Korea launched its entire arsenal, but it would be incredibly devastating, which is exactly why the world treats it with such kid gloves. No one is overstating the concern regarding that, and a nuclear attack on Tokyo or, less likely, the West Coast of the US, would be horrifying.
Just to go back to Japan for a moment, note that in most world conflicts the decision to be aggressive or not is a very selfish one from the perspective of leadership: Leaders and peoples who feel that they and their family are impervious, or at least reasonably impervious, are far more likely to engage in and prolong conflict. To talk terrorism for a moment, as that has come up, NY city residents, as a general rule, tend to be against US oversea actions, whereas people in rural states -- where the risk of so-called "blowback" is dramatically reduced -- are far more emboldened.
The world faces incredible peril if the people with their finger on the button, so to speak, can do so with any comfort that they themselves will ultimately be okay.
Mutually assured destruction is not a problem for terrorists or suicide bombers who feel that their own martyrdom would be of benefit to them.
It's interesting how many Western movies include the heroes essentially committing suicidal acts. That's commendable. Terrorists...well they're just irrationally crazy!
Further, to carry out a terrorist plot the actors usually need substantial support by people who aren't as...committed (see: Osama himself). Syria, for instance, was often considered a major sponsor, or at least facilitator, of terror, but since the Afghanistan war they've been one of the most committed to making sure terrorism is stopped. There are a lot of such middlemen who have selfish reasons to ensure that terrorism does not occur.
I find the concept, though, that nuclear weapons are only sought because of some sort of incorrect illusion of their effectiveness to be simply shocking. Does anyone really believe that? Does anyone really believe that even at the most "pessimistic", a nuclear weapon would be at least a thousand times more effective than anything any terrorist could dream up?
As a whole, this is true of the leadership. This is virtually true by definition because being that inhuman and single-minded is incompatible with leadership and anybody who tries fails as a leader. Unfortunately, the way they lead is to fire very very potent memetic weaponry around with relatively wild abandon and they do unfortunately end up producing True Believers in quantity. We know this, because a suicide bomber almost by definition has to be a True Believer, and suicide bombers definitely exist. I would tend to agree that most terrorist leadership would rather use the nuke as a stick to beat people with rather than fire it but I am uncomfortable with the scenario in which one or more True Believers come to believe that their leadership are actually traitors and in their True Belief fire the weapon anyhow. Terrorists build their structures around some very toxic and volatile belief structures and we are justified in being very concerned about the combination of that and nuclear weaponry. Perhaps not "terrified" but certainly a matter of justifiable international concern. (I would reserve terrified for 5-15 years in the future when biological warfare becomes easy enough for them.)
It only takes one True Believer.