5 ms·

I think the reality is that where exactly you were when the nukes started flying wouldn't matter - you'd be very likely to die of starvation or other causes in

by jowday 5y ago

I think the reality is that where exactly you were when the nukes started flying wouldn't matter - you'd be very likely to die of starvation or other causes in the days and weeks afterwords unless you were already prepared with a clean source of water and stockpiled food in a remote location. That said, I think it's extremely unlikely this will escalate to a nuclear exchange. Nobody wants that, and I think it's likelier that Putin is deposed before he (successfully) orders a nuclear launch. The rumor is that Putin has given the order to take Kyiv by the end of Monday, and that's going to involve use of artillery and rockets indiscriminately against an urban environment, resulting in tons of civilian deaths. The nuclear readiness alert is to signal to the west not to interfere even amidst the carnage.

ctvo 5y ago
> That said, I think it's extremely unlikely this will escalate to a nuclear exchange. Tail risk is real. No one thought Trump would be president. No one saw the pandemic changing the world. No one thought there’d be conventional land war in Europe again. I hope nothing happens but I’ll withhold assigning likelihood for now.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  I'm relying on the fact that even though Putin seems to be completely unhinged and detached from reality, the people responsible for keeping Russian nukes working and managing their launch aren't.
  - mach1ne 5y ago
    That depends on how the system is organized. If there is a briefcase with a large red button, and the people in the silos don't know whether the launch is real or training, Putin's decision is literally the only factor.
- readme 5y ago
  s/No one/most people/
- withinboredom 5y ago
  > No one thought Trump would be president. Anyone who thought through the whole thing saw it as obvious he was. Republicans were thinking Democrats were going to show up in droves. Democrats thought no one would vote for Trump, so why vote?
rightbyte 5y ago
Russia could nuke some deserted island to show business without triggering a nuclear war. I don't think they are desperate enought yet though? Supposedly they argue they are winning.
- jowday 5y ago
  That would accomplish nothing other than making Russia even more of an international pariah than it already is. They don't need to demonstrate that they can use nuclear weapons if they want to - the world already knows that.
- sgt101 5y ago
  The launch would almost certainly trigger a nuclear war. The most likely use that wouldn't is to employ tactical nukes in Ukraine itself. On the other hand what would that achieve? There's no logistic hub or massed armour formation.
  - mach1ne 5y ago
    Nuke Kiev and Lviv for unconditional surrender. Worked in WW2 for the US. Personally not sure if it would work this time.
nostrademons 5y ago
Nuclear war is surprisingly survivable if you aren't unlucky and know what you're doing. See Nuclear War Survival Skills, a free PDF put out by Oak Ridge National Laboratory: http://oism.org/nwss/nwss.pdf http://oism.org/nwss/nwss.pdf Basically - you're only toast if you're within the fireball, radiation, and moderate blast damage radius. If you're inside the thermal radiation or light blast damage radius, you should immediately take shelter away from windows and face away from the flash, much as you would in an earthquake. Hiroshima is filled with anecdotes of people being vaporized and casting shadows on the wall behind them, while people in the next room over survived with only minor cuts and burns. You have about 5-20 seconds between seeing the flash and the blast wave getting to you; the thermal pulse itself can last for up to 40 seconds, so the less time you spend in it the less badly you'll be burned. You can view the blast radius for common warheads on NukeMap: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ Topol ICBMs are 800kt and Bulava SLBMs are 100-150kt; you can expect Russia to use SLBMs on strategic military targets and ICBMs on cities. A hypothetical attack on the Bay Area that targets SFO, OAK, Moffett, Alameda NAS, and the Port of Oakland with Bulavas and downtown San Francisco and San Jose with Topols would leave basically all of the East Bay intact, along with the Sunset/Richmond, San Jose south of 280, and the Peninsula from Mountain View to Hillsborough. It's survivable at the Googleplex, despite being basically in sight of Moffett, as long as you're not near an east-facing window when the blast hits. In NYC, assuming a Topol on Manhattan and Bulavas on JFK/LGA/EWR, it'd take out most of lower Manhattan but large portions of Queens and virtually all of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island would survive. You do need to prep for an interruption of utilities, but you should do that anyway for hurricane/earthquake/etc preparedness. If you've got ~3 days of water and ~2 weeks of food and are outside a blast radius, there's a good chance of you being fine. Given the large amounts of suburbia that are not in the blast radius of a likely target, food supply chains likely wouldn't be more damaged than they were in the pandemic, and you could go to a local Walmart for food. Depending on how centralized your local water supply is and whether they have backup generators (the electrical grid is a likely casualty), you may keep municipal water as well.
- jowday 5y ago
  >You do need to prep for an interruption of utilities, but you should do that anyway for hurricane/earthquake/etc preparedness. If you've got ~3 days of water and ~2 weeks of food and are outside a blast radius, there's a good chance of you being fine. Given the large amounts of suburbia that are not in the blast radius of a likely target, food supply chains likely wouldn't be more damaged than they were in the pandemic, and you could go to a local Walmart for food. Depending on how centralized your local water supply is and whether they have backup generators (the electrical grid is a likely casualty), you may keep municipal water as well. I think you're incredibly optimistic about the robustness of logistic networks in the aftermath of the complete destruction of all of the major cities in the United States. You think people are going to bother coming into work to stock food on shelves, deliver it, etc in the immediate aftermath of a large-scale nuclear exchange? This isn't even getting into the immediate effects of say, all of the forests in the western US turning into firestorms.

by jowday 5y ago

ctvo 5y ago

> That said, I think it's extremely unlikely this will escalate to a nuclear exchange. Tail risk is real. No one thought Trump would be president. No one saw the pandemic changing the world. No one thought there’d be conventional land war in Europe again. I hope nothing happens but I’ll withhold assigning likelihood for now.

theshrike79 5y ago
I'm relying on the fact that even though Putin seems to be completely unhinged and detached from reality, the people responsible for keeping Russian nukes working and managing their launch aren't.
- mach1ne 5y ago
  That depends on how the system is organized. If there is a briefcase with a large red button, and the people in the silos don't know whether the launch is real or training, Putin's decision is literally the only factor.
readme 5y ago
s/No one/most people/
withinboredom 5y ago
> No one thought Trump would be president. Anyone who thought through the whole thing saw it as obvious he was. Republicans were thinking Democrats were going to show up in droves. Democrats thought no one would vote for Trump, so why vote?

rightbyte 5y ago

Russia could nuke some deserted island to show business without triggering a nuclear war. I don't think they are desperate enought yet though? Supposedly they argue they are winning.

jowday 5y ago
That would accomplish nothing other than making Russia even more of an international pariah than it already is. They don't need to demonstrate that they can use nuclear weapons if they want to - the world already knows that.
sgt101 5y ago
The launch would almost certainly trigger a nuclear war. The most likely use that wouldn't is to employ tactical nukes in Ukraine itself. On the other hand what would that achieve? There's no logistic hub or massed armour formation.
- mach1ne 5y ago
  Nuke Kiev and Lviv for unconditional surrender. Worked in WW2 for the US. Personally not sure if it would work this time.

nostrademons 5y ago

Nuclear war is surprisingly survivable if you aren't unlucky and know what you're doing. See Nuclear War Survival Skills, a free PDF put out by Oak Ridge National Laboratory: http://oism.org/nwss/nwss.pdf http://oism.org/nwss/nwss.pdf Basically - you're only toast if you're within the fireball, radiation, and moderate blast damage radius. If you're inside the thermal radiation or light blast damage radius, you should immediately take shelter away from windows and face away from the flash, much as you would in an earthquake. Hiroshima is filled with anecdotes of people being vaporized and casting shadows on the wall behind them, while people in the next room over survived with only minor cuts and burns. You have about 5-20 seconds between seeing the flash and the blast wave getting to you; the thermal pulse itself can last for up to 40 seconds, so the less time you spend in it the less badly you'll be burned. You can view the blast radius for common warheads on NukeMap: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ Topol ICBMs are 800kt and Bulava SLBMs are 100-150kt; you can expect Russia to use SLBMs on strategic military targets and ICBMs on cities. A hypothetical attack on the Bay Area that targets SFO, OAK, Moffett, Alameda NAS, and the Port of Oakland with Bulavas and downtown San Francisco and San Jose with Topols would leave basically all of the East Bay intact, along with the Sunset/Richmond, San Jose south of 280, and the Peninsula from Mountain View to Hillsborough. It's survivable at the Googleplex, despite being basically in sight of Moffett, as long as you're not near an east-facing window when the blast hits. In NYC, assuming a Topol on Manhattan and Bulavas on JFK/LGA/EWR, it'd take out most of lower Manhattan but large portions of Queens and virtually all of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island would survive. You do need to prep for an interruption of utilities, but you should do that anyway for hurricane/earthquake/etc preparedness. If you've got ~3 days of water and ~2 weeks of food and are outside a blast radius, there's a good chance of you being fine. Given the large amounts of suburbia that are not in the blast radius of a likely target, food supply chains likely wouldn't be more damaged than they were in the pandemic, and you could go to a local Walmart for food. Depending on how centralized your local water supply is and whether they have backup generators (the electrical grid is a likely casualty), you may keep municipal water as well.

jowday 5y ago
>You do need to prep for an interruption of utilities, but you should do that anyway for hurricane/earthquake/etc preparedness. If you've got ~3 days of water and ~2 weeks of food and are outside a blast radius, there's a good chance of you being fine. Given the large amounts of suburbia that are not in the blast radius of a likely target, food supply chains likely wouldn't be more damaged than they were in the pandemic, and you could go to a local Walmart for food. Depending on how centralized your local water supply is and whether they have backup generators (the electrical grid is a likely casualty), you may keep municipal water as well. I think you're incredibly optimistic about the robustness of logistic networks in the aftermath of the complete destruction of all of the major cities in the United States. You think people are going to bother coming into work to stock food on shelves, deliver it, etc in the immediate aftermath of a large-scale nuclear exchange? This isn't even getting into the immediate effects of say, all of the forests in the western US turning into firestorms.