7 ms·

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 ma

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?
  - dirtyid 4y ago
    MAD is more for large scale counter value exchanges. Nonstrategic / theatre level / tactical nuclear use was always on the table and IMO probable when nuclear states become cornered. Here's a CRS report on it from this year. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/RL32572.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/RL32572.pdf
xyzzyz 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. None of this has happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today, the number of nukes in existence is entirely inadequate to actually render land unusable. You are doomposting without having good grasp on what exactly nuclear weapons do, their scale, and scale of the landmass.
- sph 4y ago
  > Hiroshima and Nagasaki That was not a nuclear war. If one country gets nuked today, the rest of the world nuclear arsenal will be expended. There is an infinitesimal chance that only one nuke goes off, or only one country nukes and the other doesn't. This is why Mutual Assured Destruction is such an effective peace time strategy, until it isn't.
  - JoeyJoJoJr 4y ago
    No one knows what would happen if one nuke goes off. It’s not even a given that there would be retaliation. MAD is a very useful piece of propaganda to deter that first nuke, but it is not a given.
  - gremlinsinc 4y ago
    If Russia sent one Nuke to warsaw, and threatened that New York City, would be the next target followed by Barcelona, Paris, etc. If Putin then says: if you stand down. I will not nuke any other cities. Don't give me more reasons to send Nukes. The sad thing is - the madman holding the nuke button has all the control. He's crazy so he'll do anything. He's old enough not to care about dying and destroying the whole world with him. Everything doesn't just swing into action automatically. Poland gets nuked. Congresses, UN, Nato all hold virtual summits to figure out what to do. A week later, they decide this can't stand but if we can save 5 million lives in NYC, maybe we should. It would like play out more like chess by mail, Putin makes a move, Biden makes a move, maybe Germany makes their own move, etc. Once the game is in motion, it can go many ways. All Russia needs to do is cut a deal with a few NATO countries to let them be 'neutral' if they keep their noses out of things, and Nato falls apart, and then it leaves USA vs them, of course the way Russia military runs things that's not a big threat. Another thing to think about - most of Russia's military officers are corrupt. They've been embezzling funds meant for supplies/equipment etc for years and now they finally need that equipment, they're getting shown off for fraudsters. It costs iirc something like a billion every 10 years PER nuke just to update them and keep them working. On top of that I've read there could be as high as a 60% failure rate for normal nukes in action, probably due to the fact they mostly spend their entire lives just sitting in a bunker somewhere. Quality checking may not get done as often because of the radiological risks etc. I'm betting of all the nukes in existence, Russia's by a magnitude of 20 maybe are more likely to fail than China or USA or other countries that actually have a competent military.
lumost 4y ago
> Airbursts would magnify this effect. The opposite is actually true. Airbursts maximize the damage to lightly protected targets, but do not irradiate and lift the same amount of material as a ground burst. Unfortunately hard targets such as missile silos are likely to be targeted with ground bursts resulting in large plumes of irradiated material falling anywhere remotely close to the missile silos. These silos are generally clustered in the mid-west. It's unfortunate that all sides still use nuclear tipped missiles for the purpose of striking missile silos - they only needed nuclear warheads to achieve their objective in the 60s-80s due to poor targeting. There are going to be large swaths of Europe, Africa, South America, Asia, and North America which will be mostly unaffected by fallout or blasts. These areas for the most part don't include any industrial, or agricultural significance.
- techdragon 4y ago
  Theres also a lot of ambiguity regarding the effect of non-dirt fallout... I live near a military port, and submarine base with US fleet ties. It's probably not a "priority target" but it's a pretty likely target if your goal is to deny the USA support in this region, so in its probably going to make the list should a significant number of nukes are launched/deployed, theres also a military airfield, but its no where near as valuable a target for a nuke since the USA couldn't turn any convenient highway and parking lot or field into an airfield with a couple of C5s. The only sensible place to drop a nuke near me is that port, anything else is replaceable by the forces who would value the port. As part of evaluating my situation, using my own process ( which I outlined here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33016531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33016531 ) I ran into the airburst vs laydown attack question with respect to the port infrastructure. If you want to damage a military port, including any of the hardened, buried and underwater infrastructure... you probably need to put your nuke on the ground. But its a small island so I thought to myself ... just how much radioactive dirt could they possibly produce, surely they would end up vaporising way more water, how does this affect the fallout?... well it turns out that the fallout is different and estimating as a member of the public not party to various classified military reports that were obviously written about this and every nuke related topic under the sun... is actually pretty hard. Theres scattered notes from past research by people like https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/02/underwater-nuclear-explosions-how-deep.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/02/underwater-nuclear-exp... but its not as clear a picture as it is for a "normal" land based ground detonated nuke.
Buttons840 4y ago
I thought most overweight Americans (I have sympathy, I'm one too) could fast for 3 weeks or a little more? People who fast usually say they're starting to feel good and energetic about day 3.
- jlawson 4y ago
  There are lots of cases of obese individuals fasting for months with no ill health effects. Some even have gone over a year without food. It turns out that all that fat really is like a giant extra-length fuel tank. And many, many Americans have enough fat on them to break 3 months without eating a calorie. It might, in a bizarre way, save some of them. (Micronutrients might be a problem but is much easier to solve than the calorie problem.)
  - rhinoceraptor 4y ago
    I personally have fasted for 28 days. The dangerous part isn't micronutrients, it's electrolytes. Fasting for an extended period can put you at a dangerously low level of certain electrolytes like phosphorus, which upon refeeding, are taken into the cells, which results in levels low enough to cause death. This is why extended fasting regimens should only be done with medical supervision. Also, the initial onset of ketogenesis from fasting is very rough for people who aren't used to it. Most people's bodies are not used to it, and they won't be able to think clearly, they won't have much energy, etc.
    - jlawson 4y ago
      I believe the definition of micronutrient covers electrolytes (including phosphorus), but I see what you're saying. There would definitely be challenges! I wonder suspect this would be alleviated if survivors managed to get like 300 calories a day of various foods, which seems more likely than pure starvation.
- 5d8767c68926 4y ago
  Rule of threes: three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food. I feel like this rule is dated from a thinner time, so feel free to adjust for BMI.
cycomanic 4y ago
It's interesting to observe the different perspectives of different national backgrounds. Here in Sweden a lot of the preparation that has become much more common is about social cohesion and working together (see https://www.dw.com/en/swedish-preppers-a-nation-rehearsing-disaster/a-62483147 https://www.dw.com/en/swedish-preppers-a-nation-rehearsing-d...). In contrast a lot of US prepping seems to be about protecting yourself from your neighbors, because they are after you (you express a similar sentiment so I assume you are a US American). This was also discussed in a recent post about an article in the guardian (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32711413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32711413).
- Test0129 4y ago
  I don't think the perspective is uniquely American though you correctly identified my nationality. Protecting yourself from your neighbor is to protect yourself from human nature. It's not to say so much that you should hate your neighbor, but you also shouldn't be overly forthcoming with information, nor should you be expecting help when they themselves are in a worse situation. Consider even in Sweden if your neighbor has children and a wife, they are starving, and they know you have food there's no amount of focus on social cohesion that will stop him from bashing your head with a rock for your can of beans. Social cohesion is higher on the hierarchy of needs than food and water. Humans are still animals and higher order thinking is a privilege of the well nourished. Surely, social cohesion is important. That's why I suggested having a "team". It's often better to cooperate than not. But as the civil wars in Eastern Europe over the last 50 years have shown us none of this matters once food supplies dwindle.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    > Consider even in Sweden if your neighbor has children and a wife, they are starving, and they know you have food there's no amount of focus on social cohesion that will stop him from bashing your head with a rock for your can of beans. Your sense of social cohesion is so poor that you’ve decided the only logical path is to murder your neighbor and steal his food rather than ask to share it.
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
My biggest fear are shaped charge airburst nukes. Basically two in almost tandem, exploding in sync, one above the other. One generates a Pressure ball above the other, forcing its explosion into a much more destructive ring. Do that with hydrogen bombs and you get weapons were one such warhead can level entire metropol areas and one icbm can carry multiple.. SF would be a circular coral reef after that
hollerith 4y ago
>Airbursts would magnify this effect. No, if the fireball does not touch the ground, which is the definition of an air burst, the fallout is much much less. The trouble is that some targets are most efficiently destroyed with ground bursts. These targets include ICBM silos, command-and-control bunkers, telecommunications hubs and internet-cable landing stations (where submarine cables intersect with a coastline). The other trouble is that the effects of the air bursts other than the fallout are quite destructive.

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?
- dirtyid 4y ago
  MAD is more for large scale counter value exchanges. Nonstrategic / theatre level / tactical nuclear use was always on the table and IMO probable when nuclear states become cornered. Here's a CRS report on it from this year. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/RL32572.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/RL32572.pdf

xyzzyz 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. None of this has happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today, the number of nukes in existence is entirely inadequate to actually render land unusable. You are doomposting without having good grasp on what exactly nuclear weapons do, their scale, and scale of the landmass.

sph 4y ago
> Hiroshima and Nagasaki That was not a nuclear war. If one country gets nuked today, the rest of the world nuclear arsenal will be expended. There is an infinitesimal chance that only one nuke goes off, or only one country nukes and the other doesn't. This is why Mutual Assured Destruction is such an effective peace time strategy, until it isn't.
- JoeyJoJoJr 4y ago
  No one knows what would happen if one nuke goes off. It’s not even a given that there would be retaliation. MAD is a very useful piece of propaganda to deter that first nuke, but it is not a given.
- gremlinsinc 4y ago
  If Russia sent one Nuke to warsaw, and threatened that New York City, would be the next target followed by Barcelona, Paris, etc. If Putin then says: if you stand down. I will not nuke any other cities. Don't give me more reasons to send Nukes. The sad thing is - the madman holding the nuke button has all the control. He's crazy so he'll do anything. He's old enough not to care about dying and destroying the whole world with him. Everything doesn't just swing into action automatically. Poland gets nuked. Congresses, UN, Nato all hold virtual summits to figure out what to do. A week later, they decide this can't stand but if we can save 5 million lives in NYC, maybe we should. It would like play out more like chess by mail, Putin makes a move, Biden makes a move, maybe Germany makes their own move, etc. Once the game is in motion, it can go many ways. All Russia needs to do is cut a deal with a few NATO countries to let them be 'neutral' if they keep their noses out of things, and Nato falls apart, and then it leaves USA vs them, of course the way Russia military runs things that's not a big threat. Another thing to think about - most of Russia's military officers are corrupt. They've been embezzling funds meant for supplies/equipment etc for years and now they finally need that equipment, they're getting shown off for fraudsters. It costs iirc something like a billion every 10 years PER nuke just to update them and keep them working. On top of that I've read there could be as high as a 60% failure rate for normal nukes in action, probably due to the fact they mostly spend their entire lives just sitting in a bunker somewhere. Quality checking may not get done as often because of the radiological risks etc. I'm betting of all the nukes in existence, Russia's by a magnitude of 20 maybe are more likely to fail than China or USA or other countries that actually have a competent military.

lumost 4y ago

> Airbursts would magnify this effect. The opposite is actually true. Airbursts maximize the damage to lightly protected targets, but do not irradiate and lift the same amount of material as a ground burst. Unfortunately hard targets such as missile silos are likely to be targeted with ground bursts resulting in large plumes of irradiated material falling anywhere remotely close to the missile silos. These silos are generally clustered in the mid-west. It's unfortunate that all sides still use nuclear tipped missiles for the purpose of striking missile silos - they only needed nuclear warheads to achieve their objective in the 60s-80s due to poor targeting. There are going to be large swaths of Europe, Africa, South America, Asia, and North America which will be mostly unaffected by fallout or blasts. These areas for the most part don't include any industrial, or agricultural significance.

techdragon 4y ago
Theres also a lot of ambiguity regarding the effect of non-dirt fallout... I live near a military port, and submarine base with US fleet ties. It's probably not a "priority target" but it's a pretty likely target if your goal is to deny the USA support in this region, so in its probably going to make the list should a significant number of nukes are launched/deployed, theres also a military airfield, but its no where near as valuable a target for a nuke since the USA couldn't turn any convenient highway and parking lot or field into an airfield with a couple of C5s. The only sensible place to drop a nuke near me is that port, anything else is replaceable by the forces who would value the port. As part of evaluating my situation, using my own process ( which I outlined here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33016531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33016531 ) I ran into the airburst vs laydown attack question with respect to the port infrastructure. If you want to damage a military port, including any of the hardened, buried and underwater infrastructure... you probably need to put your nuke on the ground. But its a small island so I thought to myself ... just how much radioactive dirt could they possibly produce, surely they would end up vaporising way more water, how does this affect the fallout?... well it turns out that the fallout is different and estimating as a member of the public not party to various classified military reports that were obviously written about this and every nuke related topic under the sun... is actually pretty hard. Theres scattered notes from past research by people like https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/02/underwater-nuclear-explosions-how-deep.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/02/underwater-nuclear-exp... but its not as clear a picture as it is for a "normal" land based ground detonated nuke.

Buttons840 4y ago

I thought most overweight Americans (I have sympathy, I'm one too) could fast for 3 weeks or a little more? People who fast usually say they're starting to feel good and energetic about day 3.

jlawson 4y ago
There are lots of cases of obese individuals fasting for months with no ill health effects. Some even have gone over a year without food. It turns out that all that fat really is like a giant extra-length fuel tank. And many, many Americans have enough fat on them to break 3 months without eating a calorie. It might, in a bizarre way, save some of them. (Micronutrients might be a problem but is much easier to solve than the calorie problem.)
- rhinoceraptor 4y ago
  I personally have fasted for 28 days. The dangerous part isn't micronutrients, it's electrolytes. Fasting for an extended period can put you at a dangerously low level of certain electrolytes like phosphorus, which upon refeeding, are taken into the cells, which results in levels low enough to cause death. This is why extended fasting regimens should only be done with medical supervision. Also, the initial onset of ketogenesis from fasting is very rough for people who aren't used to it. Most people's bodies are not used to it, and they won't be able to think clearly, they won't have much energy, etc.
  - jlawson 4y ago
    I believe the definition of micronutrient covers electrolytes (including phosphorus), but I see what you're saying. There would definitely be challenges! I wonder suspect this would be alleviated if survivors managed to get like 300 calories a day of various foods, which seems more likely than pure starvation.
5d8767c68926 4y ago
Rule of threes: three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food. I feel like this rule is dated from a thinner time, so feel free to adjust for BMI.

cycomanic 4y ago

It's interesting to observe the different perspectives of different national backgrounds. Here in Sweden a lot of the preparation that has become much more common is about social cohesion and working together (see https://www.dw.com/en/swedish-preppers-a-nation-rehearsing-disaster/a-62483147 https://www.dw.com/en/swedish-preppers-a-nation-rehearsing-d...). In contrast a lot of US prepping seems to be about protecting yourself from your neighbors, because they are after you (you express a similar sentiment so I assume you are a US American). This was also discussed in a recent post about an article in the guardian (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32711413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32711413).

Test0129 4y ago
I don't think the perspective is uniquely American though you correctly identified my nationality. Protecting yourself from your neighbor is to protect yourself from human nature. It's not to say so much that you should hate your neighbor, but you also shouldn't be overly forthcoming with information, nor should you be expecting help when they themselves are in a worse situation. Consider even in Sweden if your neighbor has children and a wife, they are starving, and they know you have food there's no amount of focus on social cohesion that will stop him from bashing your head with a rock for your can of beans. Social cohesion is higher on the hierarchy of needs than food and water. Humans are still animals and higher order thinking is a privilege of the well nourished. Surely, social cohesion is important. That's why I suggested having a "team". It's often better to cooperate than not. But as the civil wars in Eastern Europe over the last 50 years have shown us none of this matters once food supplies dwindle.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  > Consider even in Sweden if your neighbor has children and a wife, they are starving, and they know you have food there's no amount of focus on social cohesion that will stop him from bashing your head with a rock for your can of beans. Your sense of social cohesion is so poor that you’ve decided the only logical path is to murder your neighbor and steal his food rather than ask to share it.

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

My biggest fear are shaped charge airburst nukes. Basically two in almost tandem, exploding in sync, one above the other. One generates a Pressure ball above the other, forcing its explosion into a much more destructive ring. Do that with hydrogen bombs and you get weapons were one such warhead can level entire metropol areas and one icbm can carry multiple.. SF would be a circular coral reef after that

hollerith 4y ago

>Airbursts would magnify this effect. No, if the fireball does not touch the ground, which is the definition of an air burst, the fallout is much much less. The trouble is that some targets are most efficiently destroyed with ground bursts. These targets include ICBM silos, command-and-control bunkers, telecommunications hubs and internet-cable landing stations (where submarine cables intersect with a coastline). The other trouble is that the effects of the air bursts other than the fallout are quite destructive.