8 ms·

I live pretty close to a US Navy base, and its common for me to hear and see formations of military helicopters like Ospreys, sometimes fighter jets, cargo plan

by mradek 4y ago

I live pretty close to a US Navy base, and its common for me to hear and see formations of military helicopters like Ospreys, sometimes fighter jets, cargo planes, etc. I swear that I hear them more often than I used to say 4 years ago (before COVID). It is kind of scary to think about these kinds of scenarios, like if something bad happens what the hell will I do if I happen to survive? All I have are my parents who live far away, no kids or wife, not a lot of close friends here. I'm also moving pretty soon to near SF, which I hope isn't a target in such a war. I guess it is good that I've been working out. If I survive, I plan on staying alive as long as I can on my own. Damn I don't want to think about this because I don't want to die like that. Maybe all my time sunk into playing solo DayZ back in the day and surviving against Russians, Chinese, and other players who I didn't understand working together will help, heh. FFS.

themodelplumber 4y ago
Tough to think about. Being single and ideally relatively mobile I'd guess you'd be good to cover at least 10 miles a day which would be significant in the bay area considering the hills nearby. You'd just need to know where to go. Which, the big locations these days will be schools, especially high schools. It's a good idea to know the location of your nearest city hall and high school. From there the goal will be to collect information, list your options, and rank them. I've lived through some emergencies near you (rural north bay) and I would recommend turning on and listening to the FM & AM radio in emergencies. FM can get you stations at some distance, and there's a reasonable chance some of your local transmitters will still be up, or will be brought back up quickly. Local is fantastic for getting news that's relevant to you, at least hourly in my experience. But in the case of national/international news, AM can also help in that it can get you (especially in mornings and evenings) plenty of news stations from in and outside of California if your area is devastated. I picked up a TX/MX border station in the middle of my house one morning a couple years ago for example. If you have a shortwave radio like the PL-380 or CC Skywave, it will additionally be easy to pick up some stations like Radio New Zealand here in CA in the mornings and evenings. But be sure to practice this before the emergency. If you worry about making contact from your position, it could help to pick up an FRS radio like the Midland XT511. That way you could monitor for people on the radio and call out if needed, especially if cell towers are down. When I went through that kind of emergency up here, ham radio and FRS still worked fine, and in fact the WIN system was up and running so I was able to talk to people in Ireland, Hawaii, etc. At least in the 1990s SF had plenty of prominent targets, from what I read in books at the time. One of them (I don't remember where I read this) was the Chevron oil refinery & storage facility just off the Richmond bridge. Driving past all those oil tanks you can kind of see why. Hopefully it was just some fictive thinking though... I was also just reading a book about a POW doctor from the UK who was right in Nagasaki when the A-bomb went off there. Shortly thereafter, aboard an allied medical ship he was...probed...and announced good to go / clear of long-term effect afterward, which surprised me. The book is "A Doctor's War", pretty interesting overall.
- EarlKing 4y ago
  > At least in the 1990s SF had plenty of prominent targets, from what I read in books at the time. One of them (I don't remember where I read this) was the Chevron oil refinery & storage facility just off the Richmond bridge. Driving past all those oil tanks you can kind of see why. Hopefully it was just some fictive thinking though... Prior to the 1980s or so targeting strategies were nominally divided into some mix of counterforce (i.e. targeting military installations) and countervalue (i.e. targeting civilians). The exact mix would depend on the parties involved and what sort of attacking they were either perpetrating or defending against. However, at some point infrastructure targets became a sort of third option for target lists, which chiefly means oil refineries. Certain parts of the East Bay were effectively giant bull's eyes because of the concentration of air, naval, and army bases, as well as oil refineries. Cutbacks since the 90s have pared away much of the military in the area, and oil refineries are usually secondary targets.. the sort of thing you don't want to hit if you think you can win without it because you'd rather it still be around so you can make use of it yourself, but if not, waste it.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    You're assuming that missiles have been retargetted since the 1990s. It would be plausible to me that a bunch of Soviet era missiles have their original targets still loaded.
    - techdragon 4y ago
      It would be absurd to not have re-evaluated the targeting lists given the rise of the internet, fall of the iron curtain and the ability of “tourists“ to travel from Russia to the USA for over 20 years… while many targets are likely still valid and thus unchanged, much has changed, best example I can think of while waking and on my phone is Cheyenne Mountain, famed Cold War bunker veteran of many movies and tv shows and now a less important target than it used to be, it’s still a valuable target but perhaps one not worth the size of nuke necessary to crack it open given the damage a much smaller weapon could do at Air Force and Space Force assets stationed at Peterson and Vandenberg
Test0129 4y ago
The big fear isn't being a target. There are very few areas that would not be completed irradiated by substantial fallout taken by the winds. Airbursts would magnify this effect. It's safe to assume that in any real cook off everyone is dead. Some immediately, some a little later. Those that do survive will likely starve because the land will be unusable. You wont be able to go by car, bicycle, or anything else - it'll kick up resting fallout. The panic will last weeks or months as people desperately try to escape. Supposing you survive the initial attacks you will be stuck where ever you are. Then you have to deal with your neighbors - I hope you didn't tell them you have guns/food/ammo/medicine in passing. After 3 days people begin to die of dehydration, after a week those that could stay hydrated will begin to do literally anything to eat. Your friends suddenly will turn on you, so will your family, and everyone around you. Best stash some rations for them. You'll need a team to survive. Following the guide lines of FEMA will have you underprepared by such a larger margin it's laughable. 3 days of food and water will get you to the point you can wait in a line for humanitarian aid (which won't come in a fallout zone). You'll need months of rations for each person. The only winning move is not to play.
- judge2020 4y ago
  Eh, I imagine the protocols in place all around the world limit any initial response to only match the incoming threat’s size and scope, with a framework in place to allow politics to decide whether or not to escalate with more force. So if Russia nuked a small village along the Rocky Mountains just to show ‘we can’, I don’t see the US sending anything huge to a populous area or Russia.
  - throwaway1777 4y ago
    If the last few years have showed us anything it’s that there are not protocols in place or a grand plan to save us all.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Are we no longer doing MAD? Where you promise to turn kill everything no matter how small the attack was?
5d8767c68926 4y ago
>...near SF, which I hope isn't a target in such a war You are talking about a city right on the coast, a top-20 most populated in the country, representing the tech center of the nation. Why wouldn't it make the cut?
- TylerE 4y ago
  And Oakland is a major port.
  - Turing_Machine 4y ago
    And there's Military Ocean Terminal Concord, the primary ammunition port for the Pacific area of operation.
scruple 4y ago
SF has air strips, military installations, technology, and is a massive economic center for the US at-large. It is a ripe target for any enemy that thinks about these things.

by mradek 4y ago

themodelplumber 4y ago

Tough to think about. Being single and ideally relatively mobile I'd guess you'd be good to cover at least 10 miles a day which would be significant in the bay area considering the hills nearby. You'd just need to know where to go. Which, the big locations these days will be schools, especially high schools. It's a good idea to know the location of your nearest city hall and high school. From there the goal will be to collect information, list your options, and rank them. I've lived through some emergencies near you (rural north bay) and I would recommend turning on and listening to the FM & AM radio in emergencies. FM can get you stations at some distance, and there's a reasonable chance some of your local transmitters will still be up, or will be brought back up quickly. Local is fantastic for getting news that's relevant to you, at least hourly in my experience. But in the case of national/international news, AM can also help in that it can get you (especially in mornings and evenings) plenty of news stations from in and outside of California if your area is devastated. I picked up a TX/MX border station in the middle of my house one morning a couple years ago for example. If you have a shortwave radio like the PL-380 or CC Skywave, it will additionally be easy to pick up some stations like Radio New Zealand here in CA in the mornings and evenings. But be sure to practice this before the emergency. If you worry about making contact from your position, it could help to pick up an FRS radio like the Midland XT511. That way you could monitor for people on the radio and call out if needed, especially if cell towers are down. When I went through that kind of emergency up here, ham radio and FRS still worked fine, and in fact the WIN system was up and running so I was able to talk to people in Ireland, Hawaii, etc. At least in the 1990s SF had plenty of prominent targets, from what I read in books at the time. One of them (I don't remember where I read this) was the Chevron oil refinery & storage facility just off the Richmond bridge. Driving past all those oil tanks you can kind of see why. Hopefully it was just some fictive thinking though... I was also just reading a book about a POW doctor from the UK who was right in Nagasaki when the A-bomb went off there. Shortly thereafter, aboard an allied medical ship he was...probed...and announced good to go / clear of long-term effect afterward, which surprised me. The book is "A Doctor's War", pretty interesting overall.

EarlKing 4y ago
> At least in the 1990s SF had plenty of prominent targets, from what I read in books at the time. One of them (I don't remember where I read this) was the Chevron oil refinery & storage facility just off the Richmond bridge. Driving past all those oil tanks you can kind of see why. Hopefully it was just some fictive thinking though... Prior to the 1980s or so targeting strategies were nominally divided into some mix of counterforce (i.e. targeting military installations) and countervalue (i.e. targeting civilians). The exact mix would depend on the parties involved and what sort of attacking they were either perpetrating or defending against. However, at some point infrastructure targets became a sort of third option for target lists, which chiefly means oil refineries. Certain parts of the East Bay were effectively giant bull's eyes because of the concentration of air, naval, and army bases, as well as oil refineries. Cutbacks since the 90s have pared away much of the military in the area, and oil refineries are usually secondary targets.. the sort of thing you don't want to hit if you think you can win without it because you'd rather it still be around so you can make use of it yourself, but if not, waste it.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  You're assuming that missiles have been retargetted since the 1990s. It would be plausible to me that a bunch of Soviet era missiles have their original targets still loaded.
  - techdragon 4y ago
    It would be absurd to not have re-evaluated the targeting lists given the rise of the internet, fall of the iron curtain and the ability of “tourists“ to travel from Russia to the USA for over 20 years… while many targets are likely still valid and thus unchanged, much has changed, best example I can think of while waking and on my phone is Cheyenne Mountain, famed Cold War bunker veteran of many movies and tv shows and now a less important target than it used to be, it’s still a valuable target but perhaps one not worth the size of nuke necessary to crack it open given the damage a much smaller weapon could do at Air Force and Space Force assets stationed at Peterson and Vandenberg

Test0129 4y ago

The big fear isn't being a target. There are very few areas that would not be completed irradiated by substantial fallout taken by the winds. Airbursts would magnify this effect. It's safe to assume that in any real cook off everyone is dead. Some immediately, some a little later. Those that do survive will likely starve because the land will be unusable. You wont be able to go by car, bicycle, or anything else - it'll kick up resting fallout. The panic will last weeks or months as people desperately try to escape. Supposing you survive the initial attacks you will be stuck where ever you are. Then you have to deal with your neighbors - I hope you didn't tell them you have guns/food/ammo/medicine in passing. After 3 days people begin to die of dehydration, after a week those that could stay hydrated will begin to do literally anything to eat. Your friends suddenly will turn on you, so will your family, and everyone around you. Best stash some rations for them. You'll need a team to survive. Following the guide lines of FEMA will have you underprepared by such a larger margin it's laughable. 3 days of food and water will get you to the point you can wait in a line for humanitarian aid (which won't come in a fallout zone). You'll need months of rations for each person. The only winning move is not to play.

judge2020 4y ago
Eh, I imagine the protocols in place all around the world limit any initial response to only match the incoming threat’s size and scope, with a framework in place to allow politics to decide whether or not to escalate with more force. So if Russia nuked a small village along the Rocky Mountains just to show ‘we can’, I don’t see the US sending anything huge to a populous area or Russia.
- throwaway1777 4y ago
  If the last few years have showed us anything it’s that there are not protocols in place or a grand plan to save us all.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Are we no longer doing MAD? Where you promise to turn kill everything no matter how small the attack was?

5d8767c68926 4y ago

>...near SF, which I hope isn't a target in such a war You are talking about a city right on the coast, a top-20 most populated in the country, representing the tech center of the nation. Why wouldn't it make the cut?

TylerE 4y ago
And Oakland is a major port.
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  And there's Military Ocean Terminal Concord, the primary ammunition port for the Pacific area of operation.

scruple 4y ago

SF has air strips, military installations, technology, and is a massive economic center for the US at-large. It is a ripe target for any enemy that thinks about these things.