Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmnicolas | Hacker News Reader

I know we're not supposed to question why a link was posted here, but... why? ;)

I mean I thought about a lot of bad scenarios and how to prepare for them, but a nuclear war is probably not survivable, you're just going to prolong the pain a few more days / months.

To have any chance you probably would have to stay at least 5 years in an underground bunker. The guys on the TV shows Alone (I'm watching the first season now) are getting crazy just after a couple weeks of isolation.

The Germans have an excellent saying for these kind of situations: better an horrible end than an horror without end (sorry if my translation isn't accurate).

View on HN

This is addressed right up front in the book, interestingly enough.

> "While working with hundreds of Americans building expedient shelters and life-support equipment, I have found that many people at first see no sense in talking about details of survival skills. Those who hold exaggerated beliefs about the dangers from nuclear weapons must first be convinced that nuclear war would not inevitably be the end of them and everything worthwhile. Only after they have begun to question the truth of these myths do they become interested, under normal peacetime conditions, in acquiring nuclear war survival skills. Therefore, before giving detailed instructions for making and using survival equipment, we will examine the most harmful of the myths about nuclear war dangers, along with some of the grim facts."

That's nice if you are in a rural part of the US - less so if you are in densely populated and heavily targetted (at least during the Cold War) locations like the UK.

Edit: Optimistic estimates by the UK government predicted 65% of population killed (53%) or seriously wounded (12%) in the short term - a real attack is likely to have been much worse:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg

NB This optimistic scenarios was used in the writing of Threads.

Edit: Think about that: Threads was optimistic!

For me the lack of urgency in “prepping” for existential disasters is that I have far more pressing concerns, like avoiding bankruptcy and homelessness.

If I were sitting on a mountain of cash and hard assets, I would be more willing to invest in prepping. But until then, I’ve got little to protect anyway, and I’m not about to drop $800 on filling a bag with some supplies to last me a week in the apocalypse.

Surviving post-collapse would be an adventure for everyone, but an unpleasant one for most. I’ve found the best way to resolve any existential concern is to continue working on long term goals of wealth acquisition and self improvement. Come the apocalypse, I’d rather be the guy with the army than the ex-programmer begging for food in exchange for repairing a home owner’s smart fridge.

You generally can get a large fraction of the benefits of preparing for a rare risk of very bad events with minimal time investment. See for instance Rob Wiblin's nuclear war cheatsheet, which takes about 60 seconds to read:

https://www.facebook.com/robert.wiblin/posts/801710894825

(Pastebin to avoid facebook login: https://pastebin.com/xeyr5CwX )

It's not too hard to argue that something like that is worth re-reading, say, annually.

Upvoted for two reasons: one, excellent comment, and two, you kindly provided the Pastebin. Well done.

(old) Shoes, underwear, toilet paper, bottles of water, travel hand sanitizer, marine rations, first aid kit, u.s. army field survival guide (book).

Basically as much water as you can carry and 2-3 packets/pouches/bricks of emergency shortbread/fake-cake.

My threat models are 1) 3-day general disruption in services (water, electricity)... 2) immediate local disruption (fire, tornado), 3) "let's go camping!"

Basically pack a "let's go camping" backpack (heavy on bottled water and a few extra of those emergency bricks), and throw it in the car whenever you go "out" for like a hike or a weekend road trip or whatever.

The more you actually pick it up, use it, handle it, and travel with it... the more you'll figure some useful adjustments to it.

It doesn't have to really cost much money in any case, just don't throw away your next pair of shoes... grab your ugliest "TechBro" free backpack, and stuff 5 liters of water in there. You'd already be way ahead of the game in case of a widespread disruption of services.

I tend to keep my "dopp kit" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toiletry_bag ) in there when I'm not traveling which has my spare razor, q-tips, etc. ...again, total cost is nearing zero to get started, it's usually about making sure you've gathered useful things you already have into the same place.

This is good advice, but see, my problem is that I’d eat the marine rations when I run out of food next week, and I’d reach for the toilet paper as soon as it was out of stock at the shop. So now every time I go shopping I’ve got to refill the buffer. And next time I switch landlords, I have another bag to move!

Maybe it’s a bit more like the old bear quote. You just need someone else to be prepared…

Perfect! It's actually better if you interact with it regularly... which reminds me it's time to rotate the rations in my kit. Dessert for the week! :-D

Technically you should have multiple bags. One in the car, one by the bed, one in the shop. Again, it's more of a mindset, and what's the cheapest, comfiest buffer you can get away with. For me: water, shoes, toilet paper, marine rations. Sanitizer b/c it's not the earthquake that gets you, it's the diarrhea caused by poor hygiene afterwards.

It was mentioned in the thread on the Castle Bravo nuclear test and OP had a good intuition that it might catch on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28478338

Edit: sigh, another PDF on my digital tsundoku pile ("in"? - as it is resembling a set more than it does a stack?).

Why try to survive? That's something people have to ask themselves individually really.

I took a wilderness survival course in college. We were usually out in a park practicing skills, but one day we just stayed in the classroom and our teacher talked about what drives people to survive extreme situations, even when they have little experience or training to do so. He brought up cases of parents going the extra mile to save the child they were lost with. He mentioned Hugh Glass and his drive for revenge after being left for dead from a bear mauling. Viktor Frankl observed a concentration camp prisoner who was always optimistic until the day he saw his family brought into the camp, and then he died soon after. For some people it could be a biological urge to keep living. Or maybe their religious beliefs drive them.

One of the best authors for these kinds of stories (about hard-core survival) is Jack London. You can even select a theme: Tropical islands and storms, ships and the ocean, or ice-cold Yukon and gold rush? Animal centric (Call of the Wild, White Fang)?

> Why try to survive?

I don't question trying to survive bad scenarios in general but nuclear in particular.

People seem to say a nuke isn't as bad as we think, but the problem is that in case of a nuclear war, there won't be only one nuke, so the amount of radioactivity will be very high and a nuclear winter mean that even if you survive radioactivity nothing will grow for at least 5 years so you'll end up starving.

I could see myself try to take on a "Mad Max" like scenario, not a nuclear one.

'Better an end with horror than horror without an end.'

A saying attributed to Ferdinand von Schill, shortly before his death fighting in the streets of Stralsund. Von Schill is a, in the wider population, mostly forgotten 'German' or better Prussian hero of an uprising against french occupation in Napoleonic times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_von_Schill

Stolen from Reddit: A slight correction: the fixed phrase in German is "Lieber ein Ende mit Schrecken als ein Schrecken ohne Ende", which translates as

"Better a horrifying ending than a horror without end"

Oh, its fine.

Translation is interpretation.

So, mine is not the the only valid one.

And, it's a saying handed down by people admiring his determination.

I'm German.

Didn’t say it wasn’t fine. Thanks for your input though.

I’m English

The Germans have an excellent saying for these kind of situations: better an horrible end than an horror without end (sorry if my translation isn't accurate).

You are the reason I come to HN. Sometimes we know, but few can say it. Thanks.

> but... why? ;)

Because it is interesting? Because it is one of those things which fits in the frame of mind of many a hacker-type? For the same reason that some of us wear hiking boots in the server hall, just in case a mountain might spring up there?

> a nuclear war is probably not survivable

Of course it is, just look at how Japan came out of one. Would it be a pleasant experience? No, of course not, but the same was true for Hamburg, Tokyo and Dresden during the fire bombings, London during the Blitz, Stalingrad during the beleaguerment, the northern part of the Netherlands during the "hunger" winter of '44-'45. We like to read about war, watch movies about war, sing songs about war, create and look at art about war but few people actually want to experience war.

> at least 5 years in an underground bunker

As long as only "normal" nuclear weapons are used a few weeks would probably be enough, long enough for the fallout to be washed away by rain. The next step would be to leave the area and head for "the hills" - or any other area which was not directly attacked nor in the fallout plume of an attack.

I read somewhere that some nuclear ware strategists considered a 30-40% global fatality rate an acceptable outcome of nuclear war, which lead to the idea of strike first being ok. I hate to think what an advanced AI would do if it thinks the best things for humanity is less humans. An anti-natalist AI with nukes is not a good thing.

There is no need for an AI to come up with such a sentiment, there are plenty of people who see humans as a plague on the earth which it is better off without. The chance of some of these people triggering a nuclear exchange far exceeds the change of some future W.O.P.R. [1] getting the world into a conflict.

[1] https://www.dataplusscience.com/WOPR/wargames.html

I think you're just taking general feelings of frustration for humanity's short-sightnedness a tad too seriously, I've yet to see any group wanting to organize the demise of humanity based on what usually drives those sentiments, like the destruction of nature or cruelty towards animals and humans, in comparison to, say...

Religious people making decisions with far-reaching consequences based on their religion's eschatology.

I'm not so much thinking of people who want to totally eradicate humanity - these do exist [1] but they'll find it hard to gain enough adherents to get themselves in the position to trigger a nuclear exchange. The people I'm thinking of are those who'd like to see the world population reduced to what they consider to be a 'sustainable' level - neo-Malthusianists, radical Ecrocritics, etc. As you mentioned above there are also those who'd like to 'immanentise the eschaton' driven by religious zeal, e.g. Islamic State awaited the army of “Rome,” whose defeat at Dabiq, Syria, would initiate the countdown to the apocalypse [2]. They did not succeed but the recent fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban might spell trouble for neighbouring Pakistan - a nuclear power - where the intelligence service ISI is suspected of being more loyal to extremists than to the Pakistani government [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Mov...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-is...

[3] search for 'Pakistan ISI extremists' or something similar

For the early 1960s according to Daniel Ellsberg:

"The total death toll as calculated by the Joint Chiefs, from a U.S. first strike aimed primarily at the Soviet Union and China, would be roughly 600 million dead. A hundred Holocausts"

600 million was known at the time to be an underestimate and then add in what the Soviets would have done then over a billion is probably realistic. World population at the time was about 3 billion.

Edit: Worth noting that this US strike would have killed about 100 million in Western Europe.

The nuclear weapons we have now are WAY more powerful than the ones used on Japan, and only two were dropped. An all out modern nuclear war would be a lot more devastating.

If you read the linked book, it covers this point. Yes, the tech exists to build bombs with multi-megaton yields and has existed for decades However, those super-big explosions are actually less tactically and strategically useful. More useful are smaller explosions that can be placed with more precision, and the tech needed to hit with precision has only improved over time. It is more likely that deployed weapons would have yields measured in kilotons. While bigger than Nagasaki, probably still closer to Nagasaki than Tsar Bomba

Yeah radioactive decay from fallout is exponential. The hottest isotopes decay rapidly. It might be 5 years in the worst locations, but not everywhere.

Japan took "only" 2 low yield bombs. We're speaking nuclear war here, with nukes flying left and right.

> As long as only "normal" nuclear weapons are used a few weeks would probably be enough

For the "lulz" read about cobalt nukes. I have read somewhere that Russia had some but I can't confirm it.

but a nuclear war is probably not survivable

Do read the first chapter of the linked webpage.

I'll do, but I'm pretty sure the author is assuming one nuke detonating in your area. If this is a nuclear war there's a good chance thousands of nukes will be detonated.

No, no the author isn't discussing one nuke.

I think you are the one assuming, twice now, not the author...

When I think about it I certainly wouldn't want to have my family live through it.

But I would like to ... see what happens. Maybe try some effort to record observations and such, bury it in the hopes someone finds it. It might be horrible, but I can of course end it at anytime if I wish. I would not expect any kind of comfortable long term survival.

What it really comes down to is that with or without this info you most likely live your life mostly the same until a catastrophe strikes. When it does you’re either dead or need to make a new life. Now based on your saying, are you going to really off yourself voluntarily, or will you make the best of a bad situation? And if you are going to make the best of it, it would’ve been real nice to study about what supplies to have prepared and what you’re going to do now, rather than go blind, and without the internet resources to help you anymore.

Either you take a massive dose of radioactivity (nuclear war means several nukes) and suffer horribly 'till death or you starve because nuclear winter.

I have read about it a long time ago so don't quote me on this, but a nuclear winter is supposed to last at least 5 years. Do you have the financial means and space to store that much food and rotate it regularly? I don't and frankly I'd rather not bother.

Once nuclear winter is over, do you know how to grow your own food? You might not be able to hunt because all animals will either be dead or killed by other hunters.

This scenario is very very hard to overcome. Not impossible, but only a few very prepared and or very lucky individuals would survive.

You're overestimating the cost to store years of food (dense portions of dried beans, rice, chocolate, liquor, etc; rough estimate $120 / twelve 20-lb bags of rice per person per year) and the basic educational precautions that can mean a world of quality of life; the kind of precautions you won't be able to educate yourself on if something does happen, you'll have to rely on previous gathered knowledge. Things like how to best shelter at impact and prevent exposure to radioactivity after the fact.

I have really considered same. Why bother. The surviving part is harsh, but what comes after that? Most modern nice things will be gone for years. Would that really be even worth living?

About what comes after: Our ancestors lived with a lot worse than that. The people who walked across the US on the Oregon trail did it. I’m sure we could do it too.

Just because some people lived in forests before me and burned down them to farm or ate the trees don't mean I want to do that...

Honestly I wouldn't mind loosing modern nice things, as long as I can go outside and trying to get food in a "normal" environment.

Puking blood while cancer eats me from inside, starving because animals are dead and the sun is hidden so no agriculture... way too much for me.

Have you forgotten the Great Toilet Paper Riots of 2020?

We're having trouble surviving a (reasonably mild by comparison) pandemic as a species that has killed millions! Now multiply what we've seen by several orders of magnitude. With all the greed and guns in the USA... oof.

And when the global manufacturing, logistics and supply chains actually break down. It won't be pretty...

I live in an affluent area that gets hurricanes. You know when a storm is coming because certain shelves of goods are wiped out — non-perishable items, bread, water.

When the pandemic hit, these were the same items people hoarded (in addition to toilet paper). Why? The pandemic wasn’t going to shut off a fridge/freezer. It wasn’t going to disable the water system. People reacted in the only way they knew for a crisis they experience often — not what the actual situation was.

It served as a reminder that when a major, acute crisis hits, most people are not going to be thinking rationally. They’re going to rely on whatever instincts have been developed.

I can’t even imagine what extremes would result from a fast-moving crisis like a nuclear explosion.

Early in the pandemic we didn't know the degree to which the supply chains would be shut down. I mean, you had footage from Wuhan where things really were seriously locked down and people basically didn't leave their houses. I'm not surprised all the beans and rice and pasta and oats vanished from the shelves.

In the end our version of "shutdown" was much milder, but we didn't know that at the beginning. We were rather fortunate that delta variant didn't come along until our vaccination program was well on its way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com