7 ms·

If a nuclear bomb explodes nearby, never get in a car

23 points by diminish 9y ago

LinuxBender 9y ago
I would add that if a car is your only option and if it still runs, you actually should get in it before the wind brings any fallout. Most modern cars have some air filtration. It's not as good as a HEPA filter, but it's better than nothing and might get you to a nearby building faster. Unlike in the movies, the EMP won't likely harm the cars computer.
- sjg007 9y ago
  If the dust lands on your car though you are out of luck.
- linkregister 9y ago
  It seems like the article claims it's unlikely that you could outrun the wind-borne fallout.
  - eveningcoffee 9y ago
    If you are not already in a building then getting there by a car can be considerably faster.
  - LinuxBender 9y ago
    There are many factors in this, such as proximity to the blast, elevation of the nuke, surface shape and soil/sand content, wind direction, ambient temp, humidity levels, your age, your pre-existing health condition. There are way too many factors to generalize any proper response. If you are too close to the blast for the filtration in a car to be of use, you will probably be in a state of shock anyway, so just get in, drive away, go to the closest convenience store, help yourself to water, food, etc and drive away as fast as you can. Otherwise, if you are in a busy city, ya, yer pretty much out of luck. Oh and this is just a guess, but save up on bottle caps.
znpy 9y ago
Thanks for the nightmares.
tdeck 9y ago
I think the information from "Protect and Survive" (an old UK civil defense pamphlet) is still relevant in scenarios like this. It recommends building an "inner refuge" - a sort of fort of dense objects (cans, suitcases, etc) around yourself in an inner room of your home or basement to attenuate gamma radiation. The advice is based on experiments carried out in the 1960s: http://www.atomica.co.uk/main.htm http://www.atomica.co.uk/main.htm
- huxley 9y ago
  I suppose building an "inner refuge" gives you something to do in the roughly half hour between an ICBM launch and its arrival on target.
gregatragenet3 9y ago
Afaik after the explosion no nearby car would run, and the advice to 'tune in a radio' seems futile as the EMP would zorch the modern electronics in either device. BTW if you want real nightmare stuff, google the casualty rates after 1 year from the EMP of a nuke detonated high above the United States.
wand3r 9y ago
Pretty worrying that this article even needed to be written. In a scenario where a nuclear bomb has detonated it is rather likely many more will as well. I hope we aren't in a scenario where this becomes likely. Also, if I'm sat home during a one-off detonation; what good is waiting for that nuclear material to rain down on my house?
daly 9y ago
See the move "Command and Control' on Netflix this week. They point out that the Nuke in the video, if it had exploded in DC would have killed everyone up to Philadelpha, half of NYC, and some people in Boston. That was a U.S. Nuke on U.S. soil, part of one of over 1000 Nuke-related accidents so far... If you survive a Nuke explosion you can see then you can assume you will starve. Nobody is going to truck food in any quantity anywhere near you anytime soon. A single modern Nuke explosion in any populated center anywhere on the earth is going to change EVERYTHING about how you live.
- apsec112 9y ago
  That is not even remotely true. A 5 megaton nuke in DC - about the upper limit of modern active-duty warheads - wouldn't directly injure anyone in Baltimore, never mind Philadelphia. If the wind was blowing the wrong way, Philadelphia might get some fallout. But that would take many hours to arrive, there'd be plenty of time to evacuate or take shelter. And even a lot of fallout wouldn't come close to killing everyone in the city. Alex Wellerstein made an awesome map, where you can "nuke" any city with any size bomb and see all the effects: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
  - daly 9y ago
    Did you watch the movie? I'm simply quoting the analysis. They modeled their results by taking the actual plume from a test blast of similar size and overlaying it on the U.S. mainland. So they are working from recorded data, not a model. Wellerstein does not model a lot of the effects in Nukemap, as he admits. The fallout issue depends on the height of the blast, the material attacked, etc. A ground blast lofts huge amounts of radioactive material into the upper atmosphere. Depending on the firestorm to follow there is yet another source of uplift. Low background steel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel) is highly valued because it is not contaminated by nuclear tests which affect all post-war, pre-1963 manufacture. Chernoble affected Europe in detectable amounts and it wasn't even a warhead. Just yesterday I read an article (http://investmentwatchblog.com/a-nuclear-spent-fuel-fire-at-peach-bottom-in-pennsylvania-could-force-18-million-people-to-evacuate/ http://investmentwatchblog.com/a-nuclear-spent-fuel-fire-at-...) pointing out that a fire in the spent fuel storage in Pennsylvania would affect millions (http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs24vonhippel.pdf http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs24vonhippel.p...). And that's just a fire, not a Nuke. If the Nuke hit a spent fuel pool things would get ugly fast. I admit it might not kill everyone. But it would certainly ruin their morning coffee.

23 points by diminish 9y ago

I would add that if a car is your only option and if it still runs, you actually should get in it before the wind brings any fallout. Most modern cars have some air filtration. It's not as good as a HEPA filter, but it's better than nothing and might get you to a nearby building faster. Unlike in the movies, the EMP won't likely harm the cars computer.

sjg007 9y ago
If the dust lands on your car though you are out of luck.
linkregister 9y ago
It seems like the article claims it's unlikely that you could outrun the wind-borne fallout.
- eveningcoffee 9y ago
  If you are not already in a building then getting there by a car can be considerably faster.
- LinuxBender 9y ago
  There are many factors in this, such as proximity to the blast, elevation of the nuke, surface shape and soil/sand content, wind direction, ambient temp, humidity levels, your age, your pre-existing health condition. There are way too many factors to generalize any proper response. If you are too close to the blast for the filtration in a car to be of use, you will probably be in a state of shock anyway, so just get in, drive away, go to the closest convenience store, help yourself to water, food, etc and drive away as fast as you can. Otherwise, if you are in a busy city, ya, yer pretty much out of luck. Oh and this is just a guess, but save up on bottle caps.

znpy 9y ago

Thanks for the nightmares.

tdeck 9y ago

I think the information from "Protect and Survive" (an old UK civil defense pamphlet) is still relevant in scenarios like this. It recommends building an "inner refuge" - a sort of fort of dense objects (cans, suitcases, etc) around yourself in an inner room of your home or basement to attenuate gamma radiation. The advice is based on experiments carried out in the 1960s: http://www.atomica.co.uk/main.htm http://www.atomica.co.uk/main.htm

huxley 9y ago
I suppose building an "inner refuge" gives you something to do in the roughly half hour between an ICBM launch and its arrival on target.

gregatragenet3 9y ago

Afaik after the explosion no nearby car would run, and the advice to 'tune in a radio' seems futile as the EMP would zorch the modern electronics in either device. BTW if you want real nightmare stuff, google the casualty rates after 1 year from the EMP of a nuke detonated high above the United States.

wand3r 9y ago

Pretty worrying that this article even needed to be written. In a scenario where a nuclear bomb has detonated it is rather likely many more will as well. I hope we aren't in a scenario where this becomes likely. Also, if I'm sat home during a one-off detonation; what good is waiting for that nuclear material to rain down on my house?

daly 9y ago

See the move "Command and Control' on Netflix this week. They point out that the Nuke in the video, if it had exploded in DC would have killed everyone up to Philadelpha, half of NYC, and some people in Boston. That was a U.S. Nuke on U.S. soil, part of one of over 1000 Nuke-related accidents so far... If you survive a Nuke explosion you can see then you can assume you will starve. Nobody is going to truck food in any quantity anywhere near you anytime soon. A single modern Nuke explosion in any populated center anywhere on the earth is going to change EVERYTHING about how you live.

apsec112 9y ago
That is not even remotely true. A 5 megaton nuke in DC - about the upper limit of modern active-duty warheads - wouldn't directly injure anyone in Baltimore, never mind Philadelphia. If the wind was blowing the wrong way, Philadelphia might get some fallout. But that would take many hours to arrive, there'd be plenty of time to evacuate or take shelter. And even a lot of fallout wouldn't come close to killing everyone in the city. Alex Wellerstein made an awesome map, where you can "nuke" any city with any size bomb and see all the effects: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
- daly 9y ago
  Did you watch the movie? I'm simply quoting the analysis. They modeled their results by taking the actual plume from a test blast of similar size and overlaying it on the U.S. mainland. So they are working from recorded data, not a model. Wellerstein does not model a lot of the effects in Nukemap, as he admits. The fallout issue depends on the height of the blast, the material attacked, etc. A ground blast lofts huge amounts of radioactive material into the upper atmosphere. Depending on the firestorm to follow there is yet another source of uplift. Low background steel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel) is highly valued because it is not contaminated by nuclear tests which affect all post-war, pre-1963 manufacture. Chernoble affected Europe in detectable amounts and it wasn't even a warhead. Just yesterday I read an article (http://investmentwatchblog.com/a-nuclear-spent-fuel-fire-at-peach-bottom-in-pennsylvania-could-force-18-million-people-to-evacuate/ http://investmentwatchblog.com/a-nuclear-spent-fuel-fire-at-...) pointing out that a fire in the spent fuel storage in Pennsylvania would affect millions (http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs24vonhippel.pdf http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs24vonhippel.p...). And that's just a fire, not a Nuke. If the Nuke hit a spent fuel pool things would get ugly fast. I admit it might not kill everyone. But it would certainly ruin their morning coffee.