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Yeah, what I've learned from films like "Threads" and "The Day After" is that you very much want to die in the first 20ms of a nuclear war. Don't dig a hole to

Yeah, what I've learned from films like "Threads" and "The Day After" is that you very much want to die in the first 20ms of a nuclear war. Don't dig a hole to hide in, put your lawn chair on the roof and hope you're close enough to ground zero to get a peaceful and dignified end.

Gud 1y ago
Fuck that. I’m going to resist dying. I am going to keep those around me, alive.
- jamespo 1y ago
  for a few minutes / hours I guess
  - XorNot 1y ago
    Outside of acute radiation poisoning and blast damage, it's still a big planet. The real problem is what happens over the next 3 to 12 months, since global trade and agriculture would fall apart. Most projections of casualties from nuclear war have much higher fatalities from famine then bombardment.
- BuyMyBitcoins 1y ago
  Surviving will be a miserable ordeal. That being said, all of my ancestors have survived every major calamity in the history of life on earth. The way I see it, I owe it to them to try surviving whatever comes next. A few select generations lived through much, much worse. It may sound bizarre, but I don’t believe in an afterlife so I might as well lean into something to give me inspiration. The idea that I exist because my extremely distant ancestors survived every mass extinction gives me a sense of wonder.
  - leptons 1y ago
    >Surviving will be a miserable ordeal Life is already a miserable ordeal for far too many people.
    - Henchman21 1y ago
      Which is why if I ever see a mushroom cloud, I’m running towards it.
- mopenstein 1y ago
  And you'll survive. You'll build the cornerstones of future civilization! They'll erect statues of you! And then in 100 years they'll curse you and tear down those statues because they found out you ate the last kangaroo in order to survive.
andybp85 1y ago
yup. "the survivors are the lucky ones" is fantasy.
- georgeecollins 1y ago
  It is a well understood phenomena of human nature to say that "I would rather die then go through X" and then when you go through X (or worse) you don't want to die. This is well understood because it happens a lot with illness or accident. Also its a very adaptive trait that we want to avoid terrible situations but most of us don't quit.
Amezarak 1y ago
I think it’s important to understand fictional stories, even reasonable speculative ones, will usually have very little to do with actual reality. Don’t base your choices on what you saw in a movie.
lenerdenator 1y ago
Funny that you mention "The Day After", I watched that movie in high school then went to lunch in a school that overlooks the Kansas City skyline. No chance that had anything to do with the panic attack I had when Putin put his nuclear troops on high alert after invading Ukraine. No sir, not at all.
- jajko 1y ago
  As we saw puttin' is just empty talk, he is too smart and paranoid to fuck up his mafia empire be built so hard, his survival in some deep shelter with few bodyguards would be very short, person like him doesn't have any reliable true friends. The problem is the person coming after him - if he will be an extremist nutjob, everything is possible even if only 5% or 10% of soviet missiles still work.
armada651 1y ago
If there is a chance at survival, no matter how slim I would take it. Even if it brings me suffering at least I tried to escape death. Whether my end was peaceful or dignified is of no relevance to me, because I won't be around to regret my end.
- tintor 1y ago
  The problem is how much of your resources and time right now will you spend "prepping" for that "no matter how slim" chance in the future.
  - jajko 1y ago
    Its like working out in the gym - if you see it as a chore and a must, it is or becomes painful very quickly. If you make it fun and self-motivating (and ie get into hiking and camping in the wilderness, or practice shooting on targets, or training martial arts, some people really enjoy gardening and so on), the time is not wasted but enjoyed. But I agree thats hardly a mindset of typical US redneck prepper. Although most of them live in rural areas and at least some hunting skills are sort of essential to cut costs.
    - Nevermark 1y ago
      > hunting skills are sort of essential to cut costs. That's the first time I have heard of marauding post-apocalyptic biker gangs being called "costs"!
- NotCamelCase 1y ago
  This discussion reminds me a beautiful sentence I read in 'The Power and the Glory' by Graham Greene: "Hope is an instinct that only the reasoning human mind can kill."
southernplaces7 1y ago
I truly, really, forcefully recommend reading the novel "Warday" by Witley Strieber and James Kunetka It takes place in the early 90s, several years after an accidentally limited nuclear exchange between the United States and the USSR. The story traces the journey of two reporters crossing the devastated country and chronicling the stories of survivors and how they got by, while also slowly developing the journalists' own survival narratives. In a very well written, visceral way, this novel showcases the barbarities that even such a limited nuclear can unleash on a society, like few others I've read. On the other hand it also underscores the hopeful recovery efforts that people are capable of. For anyone who appreciated those films, I can't imagine them disliking Warday. It's also delivers an unusually powerful emotional punch with its character development, well above the average for apocalypse literature. One of the frighteningly realistic elements of the storyline is how it describes the nuclear bombardment as "moderate", at least compared to what was intended by the Soviets. However, because a large part of the fallout completely ruins the agricultural capacity of the country, the resulting development of widespread malnutrition turns a later flu epidemic into something truly murderous, causing far more death on top of what the bombs produced.
- wat10000 1y ago
  Finally, someone else who appreciates Warday! It's really good. And as far as I can tell, as a layman who reads way too much about this stuff, quite accurate in terms of what the sort of limited strike depicted in the book would do in the short and long term. (I have quibbles, such as what happens to San Antonio and Manhattan, but nothing major.) Highly recommended to anyone who like the genre.
  - southernplaces7 1y ago
    I thought the book was both harrowing as hell, grim to the point of being close to a horror novel in some parts with its descriptions of what people went through, and also extremely moving. The scene where Streiber manages to visit the wreck of his Manhattan apartment was enough to bring tears. I'm curious, What were your quibbles with Manhattan and San Antonio? Edit, and yes, I've read that it was highly praised for realism. The authors really put their effort into making it as close to what things might really be like as possible. No hyperbole or dramatics, just the stark inevitable horror of even limited nuclear war and its effects
mopsi 1y ago
One has to recognize the genre of "Threads" and "The Day After" - they represent suffering porn that has little to do with how actual disasters play out. In "Threads", the way people suddenly lose the ability to speak and rapidly turn into cavemen after a nuclear strike is comical. Kids grunt instead of talk, everyone shuffles around like zombies, and basic things like farming or using tools just vanish. How is anyone supposed to take that seriously? Is that how Cologne, Dresden, Würzburg and Pforzheim, or Hiroshima and Nagasaki looked a decade after they had been destroyed in Allied bombing raids? The truth is that even after infrastructure gets bombed back to the Middle Ages, life remains surprisingly normal, and people quickly rebuild. Hiroshima in 1957, about a mile from the epicenter of the nuclear strike: https://img.i-scmp.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto/sites/default/files/d8/images/methode/2020/08/06/481b2068-d309-11ea-88dd-6bec610be4a6_972x_110037.jpg https://img.i-scmp.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,...
- clutchdude 1y ago
  Those events happened when widespread support and supply were brought into to deal with the relatively limited destruction. This is destruction on a scale that has not been seen in the likes of civilization outside the bronze age collapse. The fact is there is going to be no one coming to help replace burned up hoes and shovels. Threads and the Day after weren't a snapshot of one single city - they were a snapshot of what would be happening everywhere else at the same time.
  - mopsi 1y ago
    > The fact is there is going to be no one coming to help replace burned up hoes and shovels. Why? Why would it be happening everywhere - in South America, Africa, Asia, and many other places - at the same time?
    - wat10000 1y ago
      Asia, because there are a lot of targets there. South America and Africa would probably get off pretty lightly. And then they'd experience the worst economic depression that has ever been seen due to the complete collapse of global trade. They're not going to be up for the job of rescuing entire continents.
palmotea 1y ago
> Yeah, what I've learned from films like "Threads" and "The Day After" is that you very much want to die in the first 20ms of a nuclear war. Don't dig a hole to hide in, put your lawn chair on the roof and hope you're close enough to ground zero to get a peaceful and dignified end. That's all fine and dandy if you only have yourself to think about...
- saltcured 1y ago
  OK, so you'll need a bigger roof and more lawn chairs...
  - palmotea 1y ago
    > OK, so you'll need a bigger roof and more lawn chairs... You jest, but imagine lining up your four year old to die (you may be childless, so that might be hard for you).
    - saltcured 1y ago
      Yes, I joked, but mostly just to soften the discomfort of the idea. I think the argument a few posts up was that this is the humane way out, rather than dragging themselves or their loved ones through the burns, trauma, radiation poisoning, starvation, and/or depredation that they assume comes next. Having loved ones is not a counterpoint to this sort of thinking. I can't necessarily imagine making these decisions, but it is not unprecedented that parents would do so for themselves and their children. It's happened with much less trigger than a nuclear holocaust.
      - palmotea 1y ago
        > I think the argument a few posts up was that this is the humane way out, rather than dragging themselves or their loved ones through the burns, trauma, radiation poisoning, starvation, and/or depredation that they assume comes next. Another problem with that argument is that you'd actually be able to position yourself to be vaporized, when I don't think anyone could know what would be targeted with that level of certainty (beyond a couple things like the White House, Pentagon, etc). Like maybe by setting up some lawn chairs on a roof, you just signed you and your family up for extra burns and trauma because you assumed they'd target downtown, but they actually only targeted the airport so you're miles away from the vaporization zone.
toss1 1y ago
That sounds like a good idea but the physics mean you have a far greater likelihood of painfully regretting that choice; "It seemed like a good idea at the time" will be no solace. Using an example of a 350kt airburst on NukeMap[0], the fireball radius is 700m with an area of 1.53 km². The Thermal Radiation Radius with 3rd degree burns is 7.67 km with an area of 185 km². The Light Blast Damage Radius is 13.9 km with an area of 610 km². While the numbers will be different for different yields, the basic ratios will be the same. This means that your person in the lawn chair is highly unlikely to get to unconscious bliss in 20ms. They are 120 times more likely to enjoy the full experience of 3rd degree burns and ~400 times more likely to get significant injury while still being alive. It seems far better to take shelter and do all you can to survive intact, and help others. If the situation on the other side is intolerably bad, you'll likely be able to find ways to end your situation far less painfully vs being naked against a nuke blast. [0] https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
rl3 1y ago
>Don't dig a hole to hide in, put your lawn chair on the roof and hope you're close enough to ground zero to get a peaceful and dignified end. If Sarah Connor's dreams taught me anything, it's that there's an optimal middle ground to be had here. You don't want to be exposed to the flash nor the heat pulse seconds later, because it's pretty much instant blindness followed by your skin melting off. What you do want is the blast wave that sends large objects plus the pulverized debris with it in your direction, so you probably just get crushed instantly. I'd only recommend the lawn chair part if you've got a protective suit and flash blinders, in which case the real question is what you're drinking and/or smoking at the time.
pmontra 1y ago
I have a nice view of the skyscrapers of a large city some 70 km to the North. Looking at it from my lawn chair probably won't kill me but it could make me blind.
benlivengood 1y ago
I think you have to be pretty close to the actual fireball to die within 20ms, and most fireballs would be air bursts 1km altitude or higher. As I understand it the main reason there isn't instant disintegration out to hundreds or thousands of meters is that as soon as enough initial gamma and X-rays turn surrounding material into plasma most of the energy released goes into fireball formation because the plasma is virtually opaque to all EM and the fireball grows in volume as a plasma until expansion reaches equilibrium with compressed surrounding air, everything at the plasma/gas interface is incandescent and radiates as a black body of ~10,000C which transfers a lot of heat but not sufficient to atomize many centimeters thick objects unless they are very close. Portions of the towers that suspended initial nuclear tests survived, for example.
andbberger 1y ago
nuclear war is a lot more survivable than people make it out to be. if you can get your hands on enough clean water to hide in a basement for a week you'll basically be ok
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  You'll basically be ok for a week. After that you'll become less and less ok as you start having to deal with increasingly intense challenges to your continued survival.
Wobbles42 1y ago
The problem with this strategy is that the "instant death zone" is much much smaller than the "3rd degree burns over 100% of your body" zone. I don't share your fatalism, but I can't criticize it. It is an understandable position. With that said, if your desire is truly to remove yourself from existence in the aftermath of such an event it is better to have some plan to do so already laid in. The majority of immediate casualties will not be deaths, you are very likely to regret relying on the weapons. That would also grant you the chance to reconsider whether the resulting world is actually not worth living it -- or at very least to confirm that it is in fact so bleak.

Gud 1y ago

Fuck that. I’m going to resist dying. I am going to keep those around me, alive.

jamespo 1y ago
for a few minutes / hours I guess
- XorNot 1y ago
  Outside of acute radiation poisoning and blast damage, it's still a big planet. The real problem is what happens over the next 3 to 12 months, since global trade and agriculture would fall apart. Most projections of casualties from nuclear war have much higher fatalities from famine then bombardment.
BuyMyBitcoins 1y ago
Surviving will be a miserable ordeal. That being said, all of my ancestors have survived every major calamity in the history of life on earth. The way I see it, I owe it to them to try surviving whatever comes next. A few select generations lived through much, much worse. It may sound bizarre, but I don’t believe in an afterlife so I might as well lean into something to give me inspiration. The idea that I exist because my extremely distant ancestors survived every mass extinction gives me a sense of wonder.
- leptons 1y ago
  >Surviving will be a miserable ordeal Life is already a miserable ordeal for far too many people.
  - Henchman21 1y ago
    Which is why if I ever see a mushroom cloud, I’m running towards it.
mopenstein 1y ago
And you'll survive. You'll build the cornerstones of future civilization! They'll erect statues of you! And then in 100 years they'll curse you and tear down those statues because they found out you ate the last kangaroo in order to survive.

andybp85 1y ago

yup. "the survivors are the lucky ones" is fantasy.

georgeecollins 1y ago
It is a well understood phenomena of human nature to say that "I would rather die then go through X" and then when you go through X (or worse) you don't want to die. This is well understood because it happens a lot with illness or accident. Also its a very adaptive trait that we want to avoid terrible situations but most of us don't quit.

Amezarak 1y ago

I think it’s important to understand fictional stories, even reasonable speculative ones, will usually have very little to do with actual reality. Don’t base your choices on what you saw in a movie.

lenerdenator 1y ago

Funny that you mention "The Day After", I watched that movie in high school then went to lunch in a school that overlooks the Kansas City skyline. No chance that had anything to do with the panic attack I had when Putin put his nuclear troops on high alert after invading Ukraine. No sir, not at all.

jajko 1y ago
As we saw puttin' is just empty talk, he is too smart and paranoid to fuck up his mafia empire be built so hard, his survival in some deep shelter with few bodyguards would be very short, person like him doesn't have any reliable true friends. The problem is the person coming after him - if he will be an extremist nutjob, everything is possible even if only 5% or 10% of soviet missiles still work.

armada651 1y ago

If there is a chance at survival, no matter how slim I would take it. Even if it brings me suffering at least I tried to escape death. Whether my end was peaceful or dignified is of no relevance to me, because I won't be around to regret my end.

tintor 1y ago
The problem is how much of your resources and time right now will you spend "prepping" for that "no matter how slim" chance in the future.
- jajko 1y ago
  Its like working out in the gym - if you see it as a chore and a must, it is or becomes painful very quickly. If you make it fun and self-motivating (and ie get into hiking and camping in the wilderness, or practice shooting on targets, or training martial arts, some people really enjoy gardening and so on), the time is not wasted but enjoyed. But I agree thats hardly a mindset of typical US redneck prepper. Although most of them live in rural areas and at least some hunting skills are sort of essential to cut costs.
  - Nevermark 1y ago
    > hunting skills are sort of essential to cut costs. That's the first time I have heard of marauding post-apocalyptic biker gangs being called "costs"!
NotCamelCase 1y ago
This discussion reminds me a beautiful sentence I read in 'The Power and the Glory' by Graham Greene: "Hope is an instinct that only the reasoning human mind can kill."

southernplaces7 1y ago

I truly, really, forcefully recommend reading the novel "Warday" by Witley Strieber and James Kunetka It takes place in the early 90s, several years after an accidentally limited nuclear exchange between the United States and the USSR. The story traces the journey of two reporters crossing the devastated country and chronicling the stories of survivors and how they got by, while also slowly developing the journalists' own survival narratives. In a very well written, visceral way, this novel showcases the barbarities that even such a limited nuclear can unleash on a society, like few others I've read. On the other hand it also underscores the hopeful recovery efforts that people are capable of. For anyone who appreciated those films, I can't imagine them disliking Warday. It's also delivers an unusually powerful emotional punch with its character development, well above the average for apocalypse literature. One of the frighteningly realistic elements of the storyline is how it describes the nuclear bombardment as "moderate", at least compared to what was intended by the Soviets. However, because a large part of the fallout completely ruins the agricultural capacity of the country, the resulting development of widespread malnutrition turns a later flu epidemic into something truly murderous, causing far more death on top of what the bombs produced.

wat10000 1y ago
Finally, someone else who appreciates Warday! It's really good. And as far as I can tell, as a layman who reads way too much about this stuff, quite accurate in terms of what the sort of limited strike depicted in the book would do in the short and long term. (I have quibbles, such as what happens to San Antonio and Manhattan, but nothing major.) Highly recommended to anyone who like the genre.
- southernplaces7 1y ago
  I thought the book was both harrowing as hell, grim to the point of being close to a horror novel in some parts with its descriptions of what people went through, and also extremely moving. The scene where Streiber manages to visit the wreck of his Manhattan apartment was enough to bring tears. I'm curious, What were your quibbles with Manhattan and San Antonio? Edit, and yes, I've read that it was highly praised for realism. The authors really put their effort into making it as close to what things might really be like as possible. No hyperbole or dramatics, just the stark inevitable horror of even limited nuclear war and its effects

mopsi 1y ago

One has to recognize the genre of "Threads" and "The Day After" - they represent suffering porn that has little to do with how actual disasters play out. In "Threads", the way people suddenly lose the ability to speak and rapidly turn into cavemen after a nuclear strike is comical. Kids grunt instead of talk, everyone shuffles around like zombies, and basic things like farming or using tools just vanish. How is anyone supposed to take that seriously? Is that how Cologne, Dresden, Würzburg and Pforzheim, or Hiroshima and Nagasaki looked a decade after they had been destroyed in Allied bombing raids? The truth is that even after infrastructure gets bombed back to the Middle Ages, life remains surprisingly normal, and people quickly rebuild. Hiroshima in 1957, about a mile from the epicenter of the nuclear strike: https://img.i-scmp.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto/sites/default/files/d8/images/methode/2020/08/06/481b2068-d309-11ea-88dd-6bec610be4a6_972x_110037.jpg https://img.i-scmp.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,...

clutchdude 1y ago
Those events happened when widespread support and supply were brought into to deal with the relatively limited destruction. This is destruction on a scale that has not been seen in the likes of civilization outside the bronze age collapse. The fact is there is going to be no one coming to help replace burned up hoes and shovels. Threads and the Day after weren't a snapshot of one single city - they were a snapshot of what would be happening everywhere else at the same time.
- mopsi 1y ago
  > The fact is there is going to be no one coming to help replace burned up hoes and shovels. Why? Why would it be happening everywhere - in South America, Africa, Asia, and many other places - at the same time?
  - wat10000 1y ago
    Asia, because there are a lot of targets there. South America and Africa would probably get off pretty lightly. And then they'd experience the worst economic depression that has ever been seen due to the complete collapse of global trade. They're not going to be up for the job of rescuing entire continents.

palmotea 1y ago

> Yeah, what I've learned from films like "Threads" and "The Day After" is that you very much want to die in the first 20ms of a nuclear war. Don't dig a hole to hide in, put your lawn chair on the roof and hope you're close enough to ground zero to get a peaceful and dignified end. That's all fine and dandy if you only have yourself to think about...

saltcured 1y ago
OK, so you'll need a bigger roof and more lawn chairs...
- palmotea 1y ago
  > OK, so you'll need a bigger roof and more lawn chairs... You jest, but imagine lining up your four year old to die (you may be childless, so that might be hard for you).
  - saltcured 1y ago
    Yes, I joked, but mostly just to soften the discomfort of the idea. I think the argument a few posts up was that this is the humane way out, rather than dragging themselves or their loved ones through the burns, trauma, radiation poisoning, starvation, and/or depredation that they assume comes next. Having loved ones is not a counterpoint to this sort of thinking. I can't necessarily imagine making these decisions, but it is not unprecedented that parents would do so for themselves and their children. It's happened with much less trigger than a nuclear holocaust.
    - palmotea 1y ago
      > I think the argument a few posts up was that this is the humane way out, rather than dragging themselves or their loved ones through the burns, trauma, radiation poisoning, starvation, and/or depredation that they assume comes next. Another problem with that argument is that you'd actually be able to position yourself to be vaporized, when I don't think anyone could know what would be targeted with that level of certainty (beyond a couple things like the White House, Pentagon, etc). Like maybe by setting up some lawn chairs on a roof, you just signed you and your family up for extra burns and trauma because you assumed they'd target downtown, but they actually only targeted the airport so you're miles away from the vaporization zone.

toss1 1y ago

That sounds like a good idea but the physics mean you have a far greater likelihood of painfully regretting that choice; "It seemed like a good idea at the time" will be no solace. Using an example of a 350kt airburst on NukeMap[0], the fireball radius is 700m with an area of 1.53 km². The Thermal Radiation Radius with 3rd degree burns is 7.67 km with an area of 185 km². The Light Blast Damage Radius is 13.9 km with an area of 610 km². While the numbers will be different for different yields, the basic ratios will be the same. This means that your person in the lawn chair is highly unlikely to get to unconscious bliss in 20ms. They are 120 times more likely to enjoy the full experience of 3rd degree burns and ~400 times more likely to get significant injury while still being alive. It seems far better to take shelter and do all you can to survive intact, and help others. If the situation on the other side is intolerably bad, you'll likely be able to find ways to end your situation far less painfully vs being naked against a nuke blast. [0] https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

rl3 1y ago

>Don't dig a hole to hide in, put your lawn chair on the roof and hope you're close enough to ground zero to get a peaceful and dignified end. If Sarah Connor's dreams taught me anything, it's that there's an optimal middle ground to be had here. You don't want to be exposed to the flash nor the heat pulse seconds later, because it's pretty much instant blindness followed by your skin melting off. What you do want is the blast wave that sends large objects plus the pulverized debris with it in your direction, so you probably just get crushed instantly. I'd only recommend the lawn chair part if you've got a protective suit and flash blinders, in which case the real question is what you're drinking and/or smoking at the time.

pmontra 1y ago

I have a nice view of the skyscrapers of a large city some 70 km to the North. Looking at it from my lawn chair probably won't kill me but it could make me blind.

benlivengood 1y ago

I think you have to be pretty close to the actual fireball to die within 20ms, and most fireballs would be air bursts 1km altitude or higher. As I understand it the main reason there isn't instant disintegration out to hundreds or thousands of meters is that as soon as enough initial gamma and X-rays turn surrounding material into plasma most of the energy released goes into fireball formation because the plasma is virtually opaque to all EM and the fireball grows in volume as a plasma until expansion reaches equilibrium with compressed surrounding air, everything at the plasma/gas interface is incandescent and radiates as a black body of ~10,000C which transfers a lot of heat but not sufficient to atomize many centimeters thick objects unless they are very close. Portions of the towers that suspended initial nuclear tests survived, for example.

andbberger 1y ago

nuclear war is a lot more survivable than people make it out to be. if you can get your hands on enough clean water to hide in a basement for a week you'll basically be ok

TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
You'll basically be ok for a week. After that you'll become less and less ok as you start having to deal with increasingly intense challenges to your continued survival.

Wobbles42 1y ago

The problem with this strategy is that the "instant death zone" is much much smaller than the "3rd degree burns over 100% of your body" zone. I don't share your fatalism, but I can't criticize it. It is an understandable position. With that said, if your desire is truly to remove yourself from existence in the aftermath of such an event it is better to have some plan to do so already laid in. The majority of immediate casualties will not be deaths, you are very likely to regret relying on the weapons. That would also grant you the chance to reconsider whether the resulting world is actually not worth living it -- or at very least to confirm that it is in fact so bleak.