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Comment by nonameiguess | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a variant of trying to time the market. If you really believe the risk of nuclear war is elevated and you have a contingency plan to go live in a safer place, do it. Don't try to beat the general public by five minutes. What happens then if you get the alert, but you're in the middle of taking a crap, a shower, your phone happened to be a different room, you're driving through a tunnel, or you're more than five minutes from your house anyway? Are you really in a position to respond within five minutes 24/7/365?

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Yeah, I'm not sure what action you would take with this information. Especially given the specific scenario of a tactical nuke used half a world away. Certainly, that's a profound change in the state of nuclear war, but what is there for an average person to do about it?

Somewhat more actionable is if the situation escalates from there towards MAD, and you might want to head to your bunker or what have you; but if you plan to make peace with your estranged family in the event, do it now. If you plan to go stockpile supplies, do it now. If you plan to build a fallout shelter, it's probably a little late, construction is expensive and slow now, but maybe you can get a dirt delivery to enhance the survive-ability of a structure you already have.

The idea is that getting the information 5-15 minutes before everyone else could make it much easier to get out of a population center and then live. I already have a place to go in the countryside.

If your "flee-the-city" condition is Putin uses 1-3 tactical nukes in Ukraine, you've probably got an hour until population centers start getting hit if things move quickly.

I'm not sure I understand. Why would someone dismiss a plan that they think is generally solid and doesn't have a large cost, just because it fails in a few edge cases (bathroom, etc.)? Seems like this is strictly about getting access to more information to increase your chances of a good outcome (even though it doesn't guarantee it).

If the idea is that 5 minutes isn't enough time to beat the traffic -- well, yeah, could be, but that also depends on where you live.

Yeah, this is where I'm coming from. If, conditional on an exchange actually happening, having this information increases my likelihood of survival to three weeks afterwards by some substantial amount in expectation, that's fine and totally worth it.

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