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It does bother me that people think duck and cover is completely useless. It is if the bomb explodes directly above you, but if you're a few miles away, it's pr

It does bother me that people think duck and cover is completely useless. It is if the bomb explodes directly above you, but if you're a few miles away, it's pretty much the same situation as a tornado, and we still have drills for those.

unyttigfjelltol 1y ago
A tornado leaves only local destruction. Duck-and-cover implies that with proper preparation, total thermonuclear war is survivable by a society, which is not the correct mindset.
- slt2021 1y ago
  it is survivable according to the Soviet doctrine, which denied the concept of MAD. Soviets focused on the survival of small military command in hardened bunkers, rather than survival of entirety of civilian population. This doctrine allows unlimited pre-emptive nuclear strikes to achieve decisive victory over the enemy, and avoid attrition-style prolonged nuclear war
  - compass_copium 1y ago
    Hmm, I remember reading that the Soviets had significantly better preparations for civilian protection in nuclear war than the US (including more bunkers in cities), but I'm struggling to remember where. Possibly Raven Rock (subtitle: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself–While the Rest of Us Die) by Garrett Graff.
    - slt2021 1y ago
      Moscow subway (many other subways and bunkers throughout the country) are the underground bunkers that could shelter the Soviet elites in the event of nuclear war
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      Moscow in particular has a few low-hanging-fruits that can be mentioned; the Metro bunkers[0] and A-135 system[1]. Both were designed to make the city deeply survivable in the event of a targeted conflict, but it's questionable how well they would have worked. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-2 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_s...
      - arethuza 1y ago
        Moscow had, at least at one point, 179 DGZs (Designated Ground Zeros) from the US alone - with, I would imagine, at least another 20 or so from the UK and France. Moscow was the most overkilled places on the planet - doesn't matter if you were in a bunker - all that would do is delay your death a bit.
  - ajcp 1y ago
    Got a source for that doctrine?
  - vkou 1y ago
    > Soviets focused on the survival of small military command in hardened bunkers, rather than survival of entirety of civilian population. How exactly is the focus of the Americans any different? The VIPs[1] will be whisked away into bunkers, you and me will be vaporized. --- [1] Who have utterly and irredeemably failed in their most important job - of preventing a nuclear war. In a just world, not a single one of them should be allowed to survive such a failure. We don't live in a just world, though, the captain will run for the VIP life raft at the first glint of sea ice.
    - slt2021 1y ago
      the difference is ideology and class difference. American VIPs want to survive because they are rich and want to enjoy their wealth, they don't want to die. Soviet VIPs were not wealthy and their goal of survival was purely decisive military win and achievement of political goals.
      - vkou 1y ago
        I assure you, people and VIPs and their desires are more or less the same the world over. Othering and ascribing alien ambitions to the enemy only fools yourself. Why do you think their goals differed from those of someone like, say, Kissinger? Or any of the other people who have spent the past century and a half grooming and growing the empire?
        slt2021 1y ago
        who blinked first during Cuban missile crisis? It was JFK who called Khrushev for deescalation. who blinked first during Ukraine-Russia war? It was Jake Sullivan who redirected military gear from Urkaine to Israel and drip-fed the ammunition shipments, when Russia showed they are ready to use tactical nukes if necessary and formally updated their nuclear doctrine
        vkou 1y ago
        You're rewriting history. The actual timeline was that Kennedy blockades Cuba, Soviet vessels turn around rather than start a shooting war, Khruschev makes a secret proposal to de-escalate, Kennedy agrees to it, both side declare victory, Soviet bombers are removed from Cuba, the blockade is lifted, the US removes missiles from Turkey. That you see all this, and your takeaway is that "Kennedy blinked first because unlike Ivan, he isn't a power-hungry monster" belies an unnuanced, zero-sum, exceptionalist view of the world. As for Israel and Ukraine, I think all that demonstrated was that the US cared more about kowtowing to Israel, than it did about having a proxy war with Russia. Weirdly enough, though, to this day, weapons and cash (that is immediately spent on weapons) continue to pour into Ukraine. Someone should probably notify Canada and the EU about that new Russian red line, they clearly haven't gotten the memo.
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    American doctrine too. Both countries built thousands of tactical nuclear weapons.
  - unyttigfjelltol 1y ago
    You have agreed with my comment that the event would not be survivable by society. Duck-and-cover drills are for those who you call civilians, who will not survive. At best they invite the misinterpretation that such an event is survivable and capable of generating a “decisive victory over the enemy.” Would military command really have achieved a decisive victory by glazing the surface of their own country and burying what’s left underground for the foreseeable future? Clearly a failure of strategic thinking by our erstwhile competitors.
    - slt2021 1y ago
      the nuclear deterrence is basically a game of Russian roulette, and nobody can play it better than the Russians. The Soviet bet was that the collective West is more wealthy and hedonistic than Soviets, and has more to lose in the global hot war, and therefore would be less willing to climb up the escalation ladder, thus giving the escalation dominance to the Soviets, as long as technical means of delivering the decisive strike are available (ICBM, IRBM, SLBM, ALBM, MIRV, Perimeter, etc). examples are numerous: 1. Cuban missile crisis. It was JFK who blinked first in the Caribbean crisis and called Khrushev to deescalate and agreed to remove missiles from Turkey 2. Ukraine war. It was Jake Sullivan that turned off the tap on military shipments to Ukraine, when Russia communicated that they will be using tactical nukes in Kherson
      - unyttigfjelltol 1y ago
        Anyone who finds themselves in a game of Russian roulette is a loser. Perhaps the Soviet elite had less to lose and could rationalize a reckless escalation spiral. But, if your government acts like foaming madmen with— we all should recognize— no actual ability to decisively do anything to great powers, and relying on the rest of the world to act like statesmen and leaders and stop the escalation spiral— no, that government is destined for the dustbin of history. Where the Soviet Union is now. To the extent I’m incidentally describing any modern Western leadership, it’s a shame, we all lose.
        slt2021 1y ago
- Stratoscope 1y ago
  Duck and cover doesn't imply any such thing. It is simply a way to protect yourself in a case like nancyminusone described. A good example is the Chelyabinsk meteor event of 2013. Many people went to look out the window to see what was going on, not realizing that the shock wave would come moments later. > A fourth-grade teacher in Chelyabinsk, Yulia Karbysheva, was hailed as a hero after saving 44 children from imploding window glass cuts. Despite not knowing the origin of the intense flash of light, Karbysheva thought it prudent to take precautionary measures by ordering her students to stay away from the room's windows and to perform a duck and cover manoeuvre and then to leave the building. Karbysheva, who remained standing, was seriously lacerated when the blast arrived and window glass severed a tendon in one of her arms and left thigh; none of her students, whom she ordered to hide under their desks, suffered cuts. The teacher was taken to a hospital which received 112 people that day. The majority of the patients were suffering from cuts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
  - LorenPechtel 1y ago
    Exactly. Half a megaton, but high enough up that duck and cover would probably have saved everyone.
  - crote 1y ago
    Okay, so you survive your initial local blast. Now what? Nuclear war won't be a local thing. Your country will be hit by hundreds if not thousands of nukes. Not only is your local city devastated, so is literally every other city. Nobody is coming to help: your government and military no longer exist, there is no emergency response possible, the Red Cross isn't a thing anymore. The electric grid has collapsed. The internet is dead. You're rapidly running out of fuel, heating sources, running water, and food. So what exactly did the whole "duck and cover" do for you? Is surviving the initial blast worth the week or two of complete horror which will inevitably follow? Duck-and-cover maybe makes sense if a nuclear war is going to be a single hit and the rest of society survives to help you recover. But that's not what nuclear war will be like.
    - lazide 1y ago
JKCalhoun 1y ago
Not sure. My understanding is that it made sense before the hydrogen bombs. After Teller did his magic, the bomb shelter (etc.) became laughable.
- LorenPechtel 1y ago
  It depends on how far from the bomb you are. For any reasonable bomb there's a distance where duck and cover helps. It takes less overpressure to kill you with flying debris than to kill you directly. When the bomb is big enough this no longer applies, but in this realm adding more power to the boom doesn't do much to increase the damage area. There's no point in such a bomb unless you detonate it at high altitude--that means rockets, and you need a lot of rocket to lift such a bomb.
- lupusreal 1y ago
  It's not simple; with large bombs the lethal blast radius grows faster than the lethal prompt radiation radius, but the thermal damage grows fast too. You can duck and cover to survive flying glass and falling roofs, but if you're in line of the thermal pulse you're cooked. In any case, massive bombs being used in "counter-value attacks" (euphemism for targetting civilians) aren't the most likely way for a nuclear war to start. Both the Soviet Union/Russia and America invested heavily in tactical nuclear weapons, designed for battlefield use (e.g. "counter force".) Additionally, other nuclear powers like France have counter-force first strike as part of their nuclear doctrine. Any semi-rational way to start a nuclear war would be to target the oppositions ability to respond in kind, not to attack cities right off the bat. Strikes against cities are a reaction, a threat meant to deter, but starting the war out that way is just an elaborate form of suicide. Point is, it's a good idea to assume that civilians will have at least some period of disturbing escalation as warning to get the fuck out of urban areas. When you hear about the US military setting off nukes in the Fulga Gap to stop Soviet tanks, that's when you GTFO.
  - jbm 1y ago
    As someone who normally would not take such anti-life positions, I legitimately cannot understand why anyone would want to survive a nuclear attack. You'd survive just to starve. From that perspective, duck and cover is trading a quick death for a long one.
red369 1y ago
I'm getting quite off-topic, but this reminds me of the original Fallout game manual: https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/38400/manuals/Fallout_manual_English.pdf https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/38400/manuals/... It contains a section describing the effects of a nuclear explosions. There was a cartoon I really liked with the caption "if you see the flash, duck and cover!". I interpreted it as clearly tongue-in-cheek, but I was never sure whether that was intended to be an accurate representation of what was thought to be best practice in the '50s, or just made up in imitation of it. Looking at it now, it might even have just been good advice with a silly picture! Edit: Just re-reading, I'm surprised how much detail they went into on the effects of nuclear explosions. Also, did anyone ever cook the recipes from either the Fallout or Fallout 2 manuals? :) There have been a lot of great manuals over the years that included huge amounts of info that was entirely unnecessary for the game, but really added to the experience. As well as the small instructions for the game, Hellcats over the Pacific included a huge manual with info which Wikipedia tells me was taken from the F6F pilot's manual or an FAA flight training manual.

unyttigfjelltol 1y ago

A tornado leaves only local destruction. Duck-and-cover implies that with proper preparation, total thermonuclear war is survivable by a society, which is not the correct mindset.

slt2021 1y ago
it is survivable according to the Soviet doctrine, which denied the concept of MAD. Soviets focused on the survival of small military command in hardened bunkers, rather than survival of entirety of civilian population. This doctrine allows unlimited pre-emptive nuclear strikes to achieve decisive victory over the enemy, and avoid attrition-style prolonged nuclear war
- compass_copium 1y ago
  Hmm, I remember reading that the Soviets had significantly better preparations for civilian protection in nuclear war than the US (including more bunkers in cities), but I'm struggling to remember where. Possibly Raven Rock (subtitle: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself–While the Rest of Us Die) by Garrett Graff.
  - slt2021 1y ago
    Moscow subway (many other subways and bunkers throughout the country) are the underground bunkers that could shelter the Soviet elites in the event of nuclear war
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    Moscow in particular has a few low-hanging-fruits that can be mentioned; the Metro bunkers[0] and A-135 system[1]. Both were designed to make the city deeply survivable in the event of a targeted conflict, but it's questionable how well they would have worked. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-2 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_s...
    - arethuza 1y ago
      Moscow had, at least at one point, 179 DGZs (Designated Ground Zeros) from the US alone - with, I would imagine, at least another 20 or so from the UK and France. Moscow was the most overkilled places on the planet - doesn't matter if you were in a bunker - all that would do is delay your death a bit.
- ajcp 1y ago
  Got a source for that doctrine?
- vkou 1y ago
  > Soviets focused on the survival of small military command in hardened bunkers, rather than survival of entirety of civilian population. How exactly is the focus of the Americans any different? The VIPs[1] will be whisked away into bunkers, you and me will be vaporized. --- [1] Who have utterly and irredeemably failed in their most important job - of preventing a nuclear war. In a just world, not a single one of them should be allowed to survive such a failure. We don't live in a just world, though, the captain will run for the VIP life raft at the first glint of sea ice.
  - slt2021 1y ago
    the difference is ideology and class difference. American VIPs want to survive because they are rich and want to enjoy their wealth, they don't want to die. Soviet VIPs were not wealthy and their goal of survival was purely decisive military win and achievement of political goals.
    - vkou 1y ago
      I assure you, people and VIPs and their desires are more or less the same the world over. Othering and ascribing alien ambitions to the enemy only fools yourself. Why do you think their goals differed from those of someone like, say, Kissinger? Or any of the other people who have spent the past century and a half grooming and growing the empire?
      - slt2021 1y ago
        who blinked first during Cuban missile crisis? It was JFK who called Khrushev for deescalation. who blinked first during Ukraine-Russia war? It was Jake Sullivan who redirected military gear from Urkaine to Israel and drip-fed the ammunition shipments, when Russia showed they are ready to use tactical nukes if necessary and formally updated their nuclear doctrine
        vkou 1y ago
        You're rewriting history. The actual timeline was that Kennedy blockades Cuba, Soviet vessels turn around rather than start a shooting war, Khruschev makes a secret proposal to de-escalate, Kennedy agrees to it, both side declare victory, Soviet bombers are removed from Cuba, the blockade is lifted, the US removes missiles from Turkey. That you see all this, and your takeaway is that "Kennedy blinked first because unlike Ivan, he isn't a power-hungry monster" belies an unnuanced, zero-sum, exceptionalist view of the world. As for Israel and Ukraine, I think all that demonstrated was that the US cared more about kowtowing to Israel, than it did about having a proxy war with Russia. Weirdly enough, though, to this day, weapons and cash (that is immediately spent on weapons) continue to pour into Ukraine. Someone should probably notify Canada and the EU about that new Russian red line, they clearly haven't gotten the memo.
- lupusreal 1y ago
  American doctrine too. Both countries built thousands of tactical nuclear weapons.
- unyttigfjelltol 1y ago
  You have agreed with my comment that the event would not be survivable by society. Duck-and-cover drills are for those who you call civilians, who will not survive. At best they invite the misinterpretation that such an event is survivable and capable of generating a “decisive victory over the enemy.” Would military command really have achieved a decisive victory by glazing the surface of their own country and burying what’s left underground for the foreseeable future? Clearly a failure of strategic thinking by our erstwhile competitors.
  - slt2021 1y ago
    the nuclear deterrence is basically a game of Russian roulette, and nobody can play it better than the Russians. The Soviet bet was that the collective West is more wealthy and hedonistic than Soviets, and has more to lose in the global hot war, and therefore would be less willing to climb up the escalation ladder, thus giving the escalation dominance to the Soviets, as long as technical means of delivering the decisive strike are available (ICBM, IRBM, SLBM, ALBM, MIRV, Perimeter, etc). examples are numerous: 1. Cuban missile crisis. It was JFK who blinked first in the Caribbean crisis and called Khrushev to deescalate and agreed to remove missiles from Turkey 2. Ukraine war. It was Jake Sullivan that turned off the tap on military shipments to Ukraine, when Russia communicated that they will be using tactical nukes in Kherson
    - unyttigfjelltol 1y ago
      Anyone who finds themselves in a game of Russian roulette is a loser. Perhaps the Soviet elite had less to lose and could rationalize a reckless escalation spiral. But, if your government acts like foaming madmen with— we all should recognize— no actual ability to decisively do anything to great powers, and relying on the rest of the world to act like statesmen and leaders and stop the escalation spiral— no, that government is destined for the dustbin of history. Where the Soviet Union is now. To the extent I’m incidentally describing any modern Western leadership, it’s a shame, we all lose.
      - slt2021 1y ago
Stratoscope 1y ago
Duck and cover doesn't imply any such thing. It is simply a way to protect yourself in a case like nancyminusone described. A good example is the Chelyabinsk meteor event of 2013. Many people went to look out the window to see what was going on, not realizing that the shock wave would come moments later. > A fourth-grade teacher in Chelyabinsk, Yulia Karbysheva, was hailed as a hero after saving 44 children from imploding window glass cuts. Despite not knowing the origin of the intense flash of light, Karbysheva thought it prudent to take precautionary measures by ordering her students to stay away from the room's windows and to perform a duck and cover manoeuvre and then to leave the building. Karbysheva, who remained standing, was seriously lacerated when the blast arrived and window glass severed a tendon in one of her arms and left thigh; none of her students, whom she ordered to hide under their desks, suffered cuts. The teacher was taken to a hospital which received 112 people that day. The majority of the patients were suffering from cuts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
- LorenPechtel 1y ago
  Exactly. Half a megaton, but high enough up that duck and cover would probably have saved everyone.
- crote 1y ago
  Okay, so you survive your initial local blast. Now what? Nuclear war won't be a local thing. Your country will be hit by hundreds if not thousands of nukes. Not only is your local city devastated, so is literally every other city. Nobody is coming to help: your government and military no longer exist, there is no emergency response possible, the Red Cross isn't a thing anymore. The electric grid has collapsed. The internet is dead. You're rapidly running out of fuel, heating sources, running water, and food. So what exactly did the whole "duck and cover" do for you? Is surviving the initial blast worth the week or two of complete horror which will inevitably follow? Duck-and-cover maybe makes sense if a nuclear war is going to be a single hit and the rest of society survives to help you recover. But that's not what nuclear war will be like.
  - lazide 1y ago

JKCalhoun 1y ago

Not sure. My understanding is that it made sense before the hydrogen bombs. After Teller did his magic, the bomb shelter (etc.) became laughable.

LorenPechtel 1y ago
It depends on how far from the bomb you are. For any reasonable bomb there's a distance where duck and cover helps. It takes less overpressure to kill you with flying debris than to kill you directly. When the bomb is big enough this no longer applies, but in this realm adding more power to the boom doesn't do much to increase the damage area. There's no point in such a bomb unless you detonate it at high altitude--that means rockets, and you need a lot of rocket to lift such a bomb.
lupusreal 1y ago
It's not simple; with large bombs the lethal blast radius grows faster than the lethal prompt radiation radius, but the thermal damage grows fast too. You can duck and cover to survive flying glass and falling roofs, but if you're in line of the thermal pulse you're cooked. In any case, massive bombs being used in "counter-value attacks" (euphemism for targetting civilians) aren't the most likely way for a nuclear war to start. Both the Soviet Union/Russia and America invested heavily in tactical nuclear weapons, designed for battlefield use (e.g. "counter force".) Additionally, other nuclear powers like France have counter-force first strike as part of their nuclear doctrine. Any semi-rational way to start a nuclear war would be to target the oppositions ability to respond in kind, not to attack cities right off the bat. Strikes against cities are a reaction, a threat meant to deter, but starting the war out that way is just an elaborate form of suicide. Point is, it's a good idea to assume that civilians will have at least some period of disturbing escalation as warning to get the fuck out of urban areas. When you hear about the US military setting off nukes in the Fulga Gap to stop Soviet tanks, that's when you GTFO.
- jbm 1y ago
  As someone who normally would not take such anti-life positions, I legitimately cannot understand why anyone would want to survive a nuclear attack. You'd survive just to starve. From that perspective, duck and cover is trading a quick death for a long one.

red369 1y ago

I'm getting quite off-topic, but this reminds me of the original Fallout game manual: https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/38400/manuals/Fallout_manual_English.pdf https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/38400/manuals/... It contains a section describing the effects of a nuclear explosions. There was a cartoon I really liked with the caption "if you see the flash, duck and cover!". I interpreted it as clearly tongue-in-cheek, but I was never sure whether that was intended to be an accurate representation of what was thought to be best practice in the '50s, or just made up in imitation of it. Looking at it now, it might even have just been good advice with a silly picture! Edit: Just re-reading, I'm surprised how much detail they went into on the effects of nuclear explosions. Also, did anyone ever cook the recipes from either the Fallout or Fallout 2 manuals? :) There have been a lot of great manuals over the years that included huge amounts of info that was entirely unnecessary for the game, but really added to the experience. As well as the small instructions for the game, Hellcats over the Pacific included a huge manual with info which Wikipedia tells me was taken from the F6F pilot's manual or an FAA flight training manual.