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A few of the fallout products have a long half life and can cause harmful effects. Do you consider those to be not deadly? Could they exist in sufficient qu

• hollerith 10y ago
  Ground bursts do produce a lot more fallout than air bursts, but that's been taken into account. The worst fallout would probably be downwind of the ICBM silos both because of the number and the size of the weapons used and the fact that they'd be ground bursts. Downwind of the ICBM silos, one might have to stay in a fallout shelter for 4 weeks or even a little longer. Fallout can be even higher IIRC within a few miles of the explosion, but implicit in the concept of the fallout shelter (as opposed to the much more expensive blast shelter) is the assumption that the shelter will be outside of the range in which the explosion is immediately deadly to humans (through blast, through heat / infrared radiation and through "prompt" radiation). Note that even before the START treaties, the Soviets only ever had enough weapons to cause immediate death to humans over approximately 5% of the area of the United States. Consequently, many suburban and rural American could and can realistically expect to survive the immediate effects of the explosions with fallout being the main danger in the weeks immediately after the attack. After a few weeks, starvation starts to become the main danger although note that as of a 1985 survey, the US had enough food stored (mainly on farms, mostly wheat, corn, grain sorghums, and soybeans) to keep 200 million Americans from starving for 6 years. This information comes from Cresson Kearny's Nuclear War Survival Skills, revised 1986 or 1987, which is available for free in PDF form on the internet. Kearny was employed by the American civil-defense establishment.
  • TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > This information comes from Cresson Kearny's Nuclear War Survival Skills, revised 1986 or 1987, which is available for free in PDF form on the internet. Kearny was employed by the American civil-defense establishment. I'm not sure how much faith to put into that despite the source you just cited. From what I heard, a lot of the nuclear war survival measures (like city evacuation plans) were just methods to calm the population down. I.e. they weren't really meant to work at all, but as long as people believed they will, they carried on with their lives.
    • mikeash 10y ago
      There is a ton of misinformation out there, and it tends to greatly overestimate the dangers of nuclear weapons. For example, it's a common assumption that global thermonuclear war would wipe out humanity, or even all life on Earth. That's not even close to true. Billions would die and civilization would be wrecked, but the human race would continue. For an example specific to civil defense, the old "duck and cover" routine is widely ridiculed. Which is bizarre, because it's great advice which would have saved many lives in the event of nuclear war. But people don't understand how this stuff works, and just think that nuclear war is a moment where all die, O the embarrassment. With sufficient warning, evacuating cities would have saved many lives. Such warning wouldn't have been available for ICBM strikes, but in the 50s and 60s the threat was bombers, which would have provided hours of warning.
      • 7952 10y ago
        Of course a full on nuclear war could cause hurricane force winds and fire storms. Does anyone really know how far that could spread? There is a lot of vegetation in close proximity to targets, and in places little to stop a fire spreading for hundreds of miles through crops and forest. Also, you would have to deal with the fallout from the nuclear power plants that have just been mixed into those hurrican force winds. Humanity may survive but the effects could be felt far beyond the blast radius of the bombs.
        • mikeash 10y ago
          Of course, but there would still be many survivors (especially in the 50s and 60s) and good civil defense measures would have greatly increased that number.