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- "Meanwhile, government disaster experts say bunkers aren't necessary. A Federal Emergency Management Agency 100-page guide on responding to a nuclear detonati
by perihelions 2y ago
- "Meanwhile, government disaster experts say bunkers aren't necessary. A Federal Emergency Management Agency 100-page guide on responding to a nuclear detonation focuses on having the public get inside and stay inside, ideally in a basement and away from outside walls for at least a day. Those existing spaces can provide protection from radioactive fallout, says FEMA."
What an irresponsible and reckless misrepresentation on NPR's part. The fact FEMA recommends this doesn't mean that it's safe—most people who follow that advice will still die—it just means it's the minimal advice they can plausibly offer to limit aggregate deaths, to people who don't have the a budget for or interest in building fallout shelters.
Can you hide from wildfire smoke by merely closing your windows? Nuclear fallout is a finer particulate than that smoke.
- buttercraft 2y ago> Can you hide from wildfire smoke by merely closing your windows? Um, yes? That's what we do every summer. Very little smoke gets in compared to an open window
- vorpalhex 2y ago"very little radiation" is still too much.
- bendigedig 2y agobananas are slightly more radioactive than background radiation
- waste_monk 2y agoEveryone who eats a banana (eventually) dies. Coincidence? I think not!
- ASalazarMX 2y ago"very little nuclear fallout radiation" is still too much. Background radiation and bananas won't stay in your lungs... normally.
- sterlind 2y agoBlast overpressure has a way of opening windows. And they're hard to close once the glass has become shrapnel.
- D13Fd 2y agoThe Cold War-era guidance I’ve seen online said that the main threat is aggregate fallout in the first few days, and that it doesn’t take all that much mass and distance to attenuate the radiation. So if you are in a basement surrounded by earth, with a multi-story house on top with the doors and windows closed, it sounds like you’ll do nearly as well as someone with a bunker.
- perihelions 2y agoThere's another key difference: normal buildings lose all of their windows in a large explosion. Alex Wellerstein's calculator says that "glass windows can be expected to break" at 1 psi (7 kPa) overpressure, i.e., out to 13.9 km distance (!) from the smallest-size modern MIRV warhead (350 kilotons). https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ (Do you happen to have a link to that specific Cold War guidance?)
- lazide 2y agoMany (most?) parts of the US don’t have basements, and/or don’t have multiple stories.
- vdupras 2y agoDuck and Cover ought to be enough for anybody.