4 ms·

Seems weird to be concerned about social distancing in the event of a nuclear explosion.

• pbourke 5y ago
  An N95 mask might help with inhaling irradiated dust. But yeah, COVID would be rather low on the list of concerns.
  • micromacrofoot 5y ago
    imagine the bad luck if that’s when you contracted it?
    • kmonsen 5y ago
      Seriously, Covid is extremely low on my list of worries if I am close to a nuclear explosion. Like so far down that I can't see why it should be mentioned at all. Radiation, access to food/water and breakdown of society are the only realistic concerns I can think of right away. And I am not really sure if preparing is all that helpful, at least not the kind of preparation that is mentioned here. What I need is a way of providing food long term (years), and be able to defend it. In a place without radiation.
• mc32 5y ago
  Especially considering most mask mandates are being rescinded. But you’re right. The first concern should be protection from the most immediate threat —which in this scenario would not be Covid-19. That’s bureaucracy for us…
• willismichael 5y ago
  If I were sheltering from a nuclear strike with a bunch of strangers, I think I would do the opposite - encourage everybody to come in close and share lots of hugs. Human beings need contact, especially while experiencing trauma.
  • soared 5y ago
    Just be sure everyone in the hug was in shelter before being exposed to fallout, otherwise those hugs might be radioactive!
    • willismichael 5y ago
      Yes, that's a good point. The document does specifically talk about avoiding contact with fallout, or removing it if necessary. Hopefully everybody gets inside before it drops.
• tshaddox 5y ago
  Why? In relative terms, yeah, obviously, but a respiratory virus breakout in a fallout shelter certainly isn’t any less troubling than a respiratory virus breakout at a workplace or music festival.
  • kragen 5y ago
    A covid outbreak in March 02022, when everyone is already vaccinated and the dominant strain of covid is the omicron strain (which, even without vaccination, is only as fatal as the regular flu instead of an order of magnitude worse), is dramatically less troubling than a covid outbreak six months ago, and it isn't worth mentioning in the context of fallout safety rules, except to say not to worry about covid.
    • mattl 5y ago
    • tshaddox 5y ago
      I strongly suspect they don’t update these documents every month to keep up to date with different waves. That wouldn’t even make sense for a nation-wide document like this. Most likely these docs just got updated once when COVID first became a big deal, and will be updated again whenever someone decides the pandemic has subsided enough that it doesn’t need to be in these docs.
      • kragen 5y ago
        It says they updated it four days ago
    • dev_tty01 5y ago
      Average flu deaths in the U.S. for the last decade are about 35,000 per year. In the U.S., even with vaccines and Omicron, we still had over 70,000 covid deaths in the last 30 days. Given that a typical flu season is 4 to 6 months long, I would say even the last month Covid has been much worse than a typical flu season. So, a covid outbreak in a fallout shelter would still be very difficult in that environment. There will be many older and otherwise immune-compromised people in a crowded shelter who are susceptible to a still highly contagious virus. It is completely reasonable to at least attempt to be cautious in the short term. By the way, "everyone" is not vaccinated. Only 65% of Americans are fully immunized at this point. I'm not saying Covid is the threat it was a year ago, but some prudence is still reasonable.
• ozten 5y ago
  +1 Also, this isn't a new threat vector. It's not like someone who hasn't heard of COVID-19 is going to discover this amazing survival tip here for the first time. Probably the doc change was proposed 2 years ago and finally shipped.