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What to do if a nuclear disaster is imminent [pdf]
- recursivedoubts 4y agoControversial take, but I'm going to be pretty upset if there is a global thermonuclear war and we all die, I am not going to sugar coat it.
- wordyskeleton 4y agoYou'll be upset, I'll be frantically filling my bathtub and water mattress with potable water—we are not the same
- kjkjadksj 4y agoGreat more water for the raiders when they bash down your door
- jnrk 4y agoYou have a water mattress..?
- rdtwo 4y agoI’m going outside. I don’t want to survive into the world after. Better to die in the initial flash then die slowly in the aftermath
- wordyskeleton 4y agoCan't hear your negativity over the sound of my bathtub approaching 100% capacity.
- rdtwo 4y agolol to each their own. Hopefully you stashed away a couple years of food and lots of guns
- tshaddox 4y agoIs there a plausible situation where you'd be unable to acquire food for a couple of years and then you'd start being able to acquire food?
- kelnos 4y agoWhy not? I mean, you could ask the same question for 1 week, 1 month, 6 months, whatever. And I don't think it's an immediate zero-to-normal kind of situation. You might be unable to get much/any food at all for a week or three, and then you might only be able to get emergency rations from the government. And then after a few months, some staples might start trickling in, with increasing quantities over time. Eventually, after a year or so, things might be back to some reasonable percentage of normal. But all throughout, given high levels of stress, anxiety, and uncertainty, it'd probably be nice to not have to worry too much about what kind and quantity of food you'll be able to get, because you already have enough to last you a long time. If we're talking about "a couple" years, and the situation is still essentially that no food is available for purchase or from the government, I expect the situation is so bad that society has at least partially collapsed. By that point I would think you would have needed to relocate, and have started growing your own food or hunting, well before you get to the couple-of-years point. But I suppose if you did actually store a couple of years of food, and you had a stable, safe, and secure shelter location, you could probably stay.
- tshaddox 4y ago
- function_seven 4y agoMy entire financial planning model is founded on a lack of global thermonuclear war. Now I need to figure out what to short so I can take advantage of this black swan event? Eh, this is good for crypto.
- CamperBob2 4y agoMy entire financial planning model is founded on a lack of global thermonuclear war That's funny, my financial planning model is founded on the opposite premise.
- jmkni 4y agoBottle caps?
- bsagdiyev 4y agoLet me just login in to the intern... oh right. Well the radios should still wor... no? Shit. I need to pay for clean water from my neighbor.
- kaoD 4y agoThis is the only thing that makes me want to learn radio. I don't want to buy expensive gear, but being able to build my own DIY QRP (low-power) DX (long-distance) CW (Morse) transceiver? Count me in. Too bad there doesn't seem to be extensive information to introduce us digital engineers to the hobby. I don't want a kit. I want to learn the fundamentals so I can be ready when the society collapses and the ham übermenschen rule the world.
- CamperBob2 4y agoThe ARRL Handbook is still the best overall introductory material, I think. Depends on how old-school you want to get. SDR? Pre-SDR digital techniques? Analog-only? Analog-only with discrete transistors? Vacuum tubes...? The Handbook will bring you up to speed on all but the latter, and for that, there's always the older editions.
- ge96 4y agoYeah I just got a good job too Just sucks thinking about starting over, try to make RISC V out of sticks.
- HPMOR 4y agoUgh I literally love you right now.
- nicoburns 4y ago> I'm going to be pretty upset Not if you’re dead, you won’t be. IMO the much worse fate is remaining alive in an apocalyptic hellscape.
- jpm_sd 4y agoHere's a modern version https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lie-down-try-not-to-cry-cry-a-lot https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lie-down-try-not-to-cry-cry-a... In all seriousness, in a true nuclear disaster the survivors will envy the dead.
- sfe22 4y agoNot most of the dead though, one certainly wouldn’t envy the guy that died an hour ago after days of radiation poisoning or starvation.
- scarecrowbob 4y agoThis reminded me of the better documentary films I have seen, The Atomic Cafe (1982). It is a well-crafted film, with a neat-o formal technique of only using found footage/ audio to describe the history of US atomic-age propaganda. More interestingly to me, it offers a useful commentary about the contradictions between the use of media to present nuclear wars a survivable and possibly necessary event but simultaneously an existential threat that requires the total resources of the state to avoid. The ending of the film seems especially useful as footage of naive "duck and cover" drills is juxtaposed with (legitimately terrifying) images of actual bomb blasts. I think, in general, it recalled this bit: "Christopher Isherwood gave expression to this unreality of the American daily life, exemplified in the motel room: "American motels are unreal! /.../ they are deliberately designed to be unreal. /.../ The Europeans hate us because we've retired to live inside our advertisements, like hermits going into caves to contemplate.""
- hotpotamus 4y agoDr Strangelove was obviously about the absurdity of trying to plan for nuclear war, but the ending credit scene of nuclear bombs exploding while playing "We'll Meet Again" by Vera Lynne sounds like it might have influenced "The Atomic Cafe". Interestingly, the detail in the linked document that made me think of a movie was the improvised lean-to shelter. One of the protagonists in the British film "When The Wind Blows" built one in his house while following a similar guide.
- scarecrowbob 4y agoYes, I can certainly agree that the ending montage in both films is similar enough that we'd suspect one influenced the other. I used to really enjoy bringing Strangelove into my history of film classes as an opportunity to talk about obscenity and the end of the US PCA-- the opening sequence of "Try a Little Tenderness" across the mating of a tanker and a bomber is the first of many, many implied situations
- zwieback 4y agoI remember Atomic Cafe, when it came out it was pretty popular in Germany, where I grew up. At the time we were assuming we'd be the first to go, being right between the two big atomic powers. Everyone I knew back then assumed there's really nothing you could do, though.
- jamal-kumar 4y agoI suppose this is of special interest now since Poland, a NATO member, got hit by what sounds like an errant missile from Russia recently. [1] Reading the first part, I think the best thing that could happen in the event some big red buttons get pushed is that if you're next to a military base you're probably going to be vaporized along with it if you can't evacuate. Trying to survive that kind of thing sounds way worse. Was nice knowing everyone! [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/15/russia-poland-missiles-00067016 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/15/russia-poland-missi...
- mzs 4y agoSeems to be a 5V55K type motor and S-300 sized crater: https://twitter.com/JakeGodin/status/1592618577622093824 https://twitter.com/JakeGodin/status/1592618577622093824
- jamal-kumar 4y agoYeah, they've been repurposing those particular surface-to-air missiles for land attacks since around July. [1] [1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russia-now-firing-s-300-surface-to-air-missiles-at-land-targets-in-ukraine-official https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russia-now-firing-s-30...
- gdy 4y ago'A ukrainian official alleged...' There, fixed that for you. 5V55K has the range of 47 km, Russia is much further from Poland than that. Ukraine, on the other hand, uses Soviet S-300.
- deepsun 4y agoWhat are you talking about? They launched dosens (hundreds since Feb 24th) of Kalibr missiles, all the way from Caspian and Black seas.
- 4y ago
- maximinus_thrax 4y agoInteresting, but no thank you. I consider myself lucky to be living around one of the largest nuclear stockpiles on the planet. Huge target for the enemies. So, if nuclear attack is imminent, I would likely not even feel my body disintegrating. I'm more worried about the survivors.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoI'm with you. My plan for surviving the apocalypse is not to.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- JrProgrammer 4y agoWebsite down, mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20221006150022/http://www.ki4u.com/guide.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20221006150022/http://www.ki4u.c...
- andirk 4y agoMy dad said they would do air raid drills in elementary school (50's, 60's) due to the fear of a nuclear attack. They were taught to get under their desks.
- unsupp0rted 4y agoApparently getting under their desks was on the off-chance their school is far enough away to avoid being incinerated but still close enough for a pressure wave to blow out all the glass in the windows and turn it into projectiles.
- pfdietz 4y agoThis came in handy when that meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk a few years ago. A teacher remembered the training and had everyone hide under desks, and they were spared laceration from the blown-in windows.
- int_19h 4y agoIn Russia, this kind of training is not a long-gone relic - there's a class in school that's dedicated to survival in various situations, covering all kinds of stuff from emergency first aid to making shelter in the wilds. A subset of that is dealing with anthropogenic disasters, and a subset of that is civil defense. If I remember correctly, we had two hours covering nukes alone - likely targets in the vicinity, what kind of damage to expect where, how to build fallout shelters, when to evacuate etc. So far as I know, this all is still taught in schools there.
- lostlogin 4y agoProbably quite handy if that is all the training you get before your call up and your country is threatening nuclear war.
- int_19h 4y agoIn Soviet times, the class was called "preliminary military training", and focused more on that aspect - not quite to the point where they'd shoot things, but it would involve timed field-stripping an AK, for example, and reading military topographic maps. After 1991, the military aspects were stripped out, although in many schools they turned into an opt-in afterschool "patriot club" or some such. These were the primary source of videos like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrxjYfl05ek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrxjYfl05ek. Recently, they've announced that they'll be reviving the old Soviet format, so it'll become mandatory for all high schoolers again, beginning with the next school year (starting in September, 2023).
- BaculumMeumEst 4y agoi think its better not to spend time and energy coming up with ways to prolong your suffering in an unlikely scenario but that’s just me. that’s to say i don’t have a plan, but rather it’s much shorter and weighs on me less
- ravi-delia 4y agoEh people lived and died for generations doing awful subsistence farming and watching half their children die (if they didn't die in childbirth themselves). Not getting acute radiation poisoning and dying painfully over days in one of the worst ways possible for the low low cost of having a basement and keeping some water in it seems within the cards. I guess you could just kill yourself and your family immediately, which would also prevent a slow agonizing death from radiation poisoning, but I don't hate my basement enough to go out and buy a gun.
- oceanplexian 4y agoI think people are assuming that a nuclear disaster would be the end of the world. There are all kinds of scenarios where a nuclear disaster comes into the picture but society is intact, while also massively disrupted. In such a case more people would lose their lives from panic, starvation, infection, lack of clean water than anything exotic like radiation or a nuclear blast. This is why I have some preps; it’s not to survive if the world turns into a Walking Dead episode but as a way to prevent dying over something mundane before help arrives a few weeks or months later.
- stareatgoats 4y agoThe site is down so I can only speculate what it recommends. Whatever it is, I suspect it is not a list of suggestions for how to avoid nuclear disasters altogether. Because that is simply not in vogue. It seems we must all accept as something inevitable to have the specter of millions dead, if not billions, if not life as we know it, hanging over our heads for time eternal. Because we as humans are seemingly only endowed with creative and innovative thinking when it comes to advertising, crypto scams or new JS frameworks, etc. When it comes to accomplishing something as basic as survival we seem to revert thoughts and prayers, and amassing even more weapons. It's frankly a mystery.
- ptr 4y agoWhere in the world are nuclear disasters “in vogue”?
- stareatgoats 4y agoLists of suggestions on how to avoid them are not in vogue.
- simonh 4y ago1. Elect competent politicians 2. Pray
- Nathanael_M 4y ago
- stareatgoats 4y agoMay I suggest you take your ad hominem elsewhere? This was uncalled for.
- HL33tibCe7 4y agoYour original comment in itself is already dripping with ad hominem.
- aussiesnack 4y agoI was subject to discussions at school about the UK gov's ludicrous 'Protect and Survive' novelty booklet in the 70s. Some years later The Young Ones episode 'Bomb' seemed like the most appropriate response. Having grown up pretty much assuming I'd be incinerated by nukes at some point (I frequently dreamed of mushroom clouds on the horizon as a child), this is all nothing new to me. I've lived longer than I ever expected.
- firecall 4y agoYep, me too! As an X-gen child of the 70s/80s I was at various points terrified of nuclear bombs! Watching Threads when I was way to young didn't help... There are times when I'd lay terrified in bed when I heard a jet engine over my house, and thought it might be a nuclear bomb! An article I read a while back suggested that X-Gen kids have a form of PTSD from the Cold War!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- aussiesnack 4y agoWell I hope you got over it! I never did, in truth.
- firecall 4y agoHonestly, not really! It's all been dragged up again recently! Right now, it feels like the Cold War never ended.
- themeiguoren 4y agoI find it almost satirical that a guide on an imminent nuclear disaster is a 13-page pdf of dense text. If the producers of this guide are serious about their mission, this needs to be condensed into a flowchart with short statements and plenty of pictures that can be absorbed quickly. More detailed info can be tacked on the end, but some bolded statements in the middle of a wall of words is not how you communicate in an emergency. An ICBM will take ~20-30 minutes from launch to hit the US. By the time you are notified, you will have 5-15 minutes to prepare. This goes down to minutes to seconds for dirty bombs/ground detonations or short range missiles (to which the US is not immune thanks to submarines).
- baybal2 4y ago
- chasd00 4y agoi skimmed through it, it only makes sense for population centers not targeted or attacked. If you're in a city that is a target the best thing to do IMO is setup an informational circuit breaker where, once flipped, you get the hell out of dodge and wait for more information.
- pelasaco 4y agoit's assumed that everyone will be at home when a nuclear disaster happens, but it would probably happen on a weekday early in the morning, when kids are in the school, wife or husband is at work, and the chance that all of us get safe to the bunker is small.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hulitu 4y ago> What to do if a nuclear disaster is imminent [pdf] Thank to your leaders.
- timoth3y 4y agoPlace your head firmly between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.
- teddyh 4y agoI’d do something really interesting, so that the author of my world would be forced to focus on me and continue my life story. Because the only place where nuclear war is a realistic possibility is in a fictional setting.
- ankaAr 4y agoI have a house in Patagonian mountains. You are invited to come and have a last barbacue.
- bulbosaur123 4y agoIt seems that most of you are ignoring that there are plenty of actors out there that actively seek destruction and ways to promote it. It's not that people are stupid. Many people of power are both intelligent and actively evil, as in-- working against your interests of survival--especially when their positions are threatened. In fact, in some rare scenarios, nuclear destruction might even make logical sense to someone in power. One such scenario is evening out the playing field when you are way behind everyone else in the race. Do you recall how playing the "Armageddon" card in certain scenarios of Worms could actually help you win?
- otikik 4y agoWe are 8bn people. Of course there’s gonna be some wackos on that lot. Not so many with access to nuclear weapons, fortunately. Worms might not be a very detailed geopolitical simulator. The ninja rope was nice thoug.
- MisterMower 4y ago> Of course there’s going to be some wackos on that lot. Not so many with access to nuclear weapons, fortunately. How would we know, one way or the other? I mean, it only takes a few wackos to trigger such a scenario. And there are clearly a lot of wackos among 8 billion people. Doesn’t seem far fetched to me at all.
- lazyfanatic 4y agoIsn't it something like 99 percent of species go extinct?
- ok_dad 4y agoI live next to a massive US naval base + airbase + army base complex. I think I'll just enjoy my last seconds before vaporization.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 8bitsrule 4y agoAlways tried to live somewhere near ground zero. Right now I live just far enough away that I'll have time to repeat after H. G. Wells, " God damn you all, I told you so."