Nuclear war survival guide reveals seven everyday items if disaster strikes | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear war survival guide reveals seven everyday items if disaster strikes

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One test I now use on survival related material, especially ones written pre-COVID, is how long does it take them before they start talking about how to cut hair.

One thing we learned during COVID was a significant limitation in people's willingness to stay isolated was their hair was getting out of control. It's the exact, boring, unsexy topic that you omit if you're selling the fantasy of survival and you include if you want to cover the boring, day to day logistics.

The entire survival industry is not acquitted well in being revealed as how much the industry is an aesthetic movement.

> One thing we learned during COVID was a significant limitation in people's willingness to stay isolated was their hair was getting out of control. It's the exact, boring, unsexy topic that you omit if you're selling the fantasy of survival and you include if you want to cover the boring, day to day logistics.

COVID wasn't really a survival situation though, and least not in the traditional sense (i.e. staying at home for long periods ordering stuff of Amazon).

In an actual survival situation, I'd suppose you hack away at your hair with a pair of scissors or a knife, because you're dirty and starving and have more important things to worry about.

"Survival", as conceptualized as an industry, is that you're holed up in a secure location with adequate food, ammunition and other essentials to last months to years. Plenty of preppers who diligently prepared bunkers for the end of the world emerged from those bunkers, not because they ran out of food or ammo, but because their hair got too annoying to deal with and cosplaying survival did not extend to actually learning how to cut their own hair vs giving up the pretense and having a professional do it..

> Plenty of preppers who diligently prepared bunkers for the end of the world emerged from those bunkers, not because they ran out of food or ammo, but because their hair got too annoying to deal with and cosplaying survival

Sure, but what I'm saying is haircuts are more of a problem for survival cosplay scenarios than actual survival scenarios. It's actually legitimate to omit haircuts when you're planning an actual survival scenario (or you treat it very briefly: scissors are a tool you should have in your bunker).

For instance: there was a Ukrainian soldier holed up in a front-line bunker for the better part of a year, did he emerge from his bunker when he needed a haircut? Or did he hack away at it with whatever was available?

1. Building a shelter

2. Clean drinking water

3. Non-perishable food

4. Radiation fallout meter

5. Valuables, money and vital documents

6. Lighting

7. Protective clothing

not much use for the 5th point in nuclear war, there are better things to burn

Slightly more up to date than 1979, the Swedish government recently produced and sent to all residents a "in case of crisis or war" guide that includes a bunch of helpful tips on how to be prepared in case of crisis, and is very concise and easy to read: https://rib.msb.se/filer/pdf/30874.pdf (some Sweden-specifics, like about all the civil defence shelters being available everywhere, but most things are generic and global advice)

The guide itself was submitted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48876737

There are a few editions of this guide, apparently, and the most recent is a 2022 edition, but it contains most information of the older editions but might have a newer foreword.

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

This is the 2022 edition linked from Wikipedia: https://link.us1.storjshare.io/s/jxoqtjnsv35pbrrndvy3gifrqqo...

Here is a html version of the book that has clickable chapter links and so forth: https://www.oism.org/nwss/

Iran doesn't have nukes and the Obama deal was really good. Iran didn't want to develop nukes. But now it totally makes sense that they should.

Hillary Clinton was interviewed recently and she was refreshingly candid about the glaring problems with the “Obama deal” which most notably was that it did nothing to prevent Iran from amassing a large stockpile of ballistic missiles and giving support to violent factions like the Yemeni’s who you may recall used such to disrupt global trade. It was better than nothing, and maybe good, but it’s worth adding context when someone describes it as “really good.” Hillary Clinton wouldn’t use that phrase.

Where is this interview? I Haven't heard of this. So now you're trying to equate missiles with a nuke program?

The Iraq War was pushed through under the claim of preventing Iraq from obtaining Weapons of Mass Destruction, which presumably could have included nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration sold the claim in part because of aluminum tubes which they claimed could be used to create ballistic missiles. Clinton, who herself voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, is aware that parts that could be used to build ballistic missiles is pretty much fungible with nukes in a lot of American's minds.

It's not the commenter who is trying to equate missiles with nukes, it's the American political discourse that posited and accepted this claim nearly 25 years ago.

No the point, as I understand it, is that with enough missiles, enforcing the JCPOA becomes impossible. Iran can dominate other regional powers, cause global suffering, decide they want to build nuclear weapons after all and not much can be done to stop them. As we are seeing, they are powerful enough now that Trump isn’t having an easy time winning, and it may even impact the midterms it’s that bad.

At the start of 2017, we were in a position where we could have negotiated another deal with Iran to limit their missile production and stockpile while keeping the JCPOA in place. Nine years later, and we're not in a position to even negotiate a durable cease fire. We could have negotiated a diplomatic solution to those ballistic missiles to buttress the JCPOA.

> Trump isn’t having an easy time winning

I've seen no indication that Trump is winning in any way.

> it may even impact the midterms it’s that bad

I'm not worried. Democrats haven't been out in any meaningful way banging the drum of affordability. They could hang $5/gal gas and $14 fast food combos on Trump and this war he started, but instead they've been beating back Democratic Socialists, declaring themselves capitalists, and extolling the virtues of Graham Platner up until about a week ago.

> hang $5/gal gas and $14 fast food combos on Trump

In my mind, this is anachronistic thinking. The average poor person isn’t as concerned about gas or burger prices as boomer politicos think. The difficulty most Americans face now is neither of those, it is housing and energy costs, and increasingly jobs. Your typical homeless person isn’t stressing on how they’ll get their next burger. There very little sunlight between the parties on these big issues. Neither party has moved the needle on housing aside from inflating costs. They can’t. Nobody that owns wants housing prices to collapse, and the economy wouldn’t stand it, and even if they did want housing prices to collapse, it’s impossible to scale up production enough to lower costs. We can at most flatten the second derivative. And jobs? Jobs can be created through stimulus like the inflation reduction act, but that causes inflation. And those jobs, having been artificially produced, will be quickly liquidated when the stimulus runs dry.

I locked in my $210K mortgage for 3.875% over a decade ago, housing affordability isn't what's on my mind. I'm pissed that I spent $5/gal on gas at Costco and $14 for a combo meal at Carl's Jr. last night.

It may be anachronistic thinking in _your_ mind, but people like me who had been insulated from the affordability problems under Biden are no longer able to ignore just how expensive things have gotten. I assure you that Democrats can target middle class Gen X and Baby Boomer independents to vote blue this fall by pointing out that Chili's has a 3 for $11 deal going on right now while a Famous Star combo at Carl's is $14.

I just saw a clip, from the recent 92nd street y interview. I’m not saying missiles are nuclear weapons. I’m simply saying the JCPOA was flawed according to her. Not that she thinks it should have been repealed entirely. She argues Trump could have extended or expanded it, but of course she would say that because she wasn’t the one tasked with renegotiating it with them.

It was a good deal that constrained enrichment, allowed human inspectors to roam and legitimately raise complaint if kept from chasing leads, permitted installation of tamper resistant / tamper revealing fixed monitoring instruments.

It addressed neither missiles, late library fees, digital piracy, etc.

It was flawed in the same sense a car is flawed for not being able to pull a 820 Flexi-Coil 18 metre bar, with a 2320 tow behind Flexi-Coil airseeder across a muddy field.

( eg: outside of design scope )

Worth noting also - not just a US deal - a number of other countries had input on the deal and on inspections.

Stockpile whisky - you can disinfect with it, trade it, or drink it and stop caring about the Apocalypse.

A person would be better off drinking 40% ethanol than relying on it for disinfection. That way the inevitable death from bacterial infection might be a very small amount less horrible.

Hey, you can disinfect with it 3 times to get 120%

The key usage here is "drink" in case the humor was too subtle for ya.

"Disinfect" always works in the movies. So there.

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