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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. No
by 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 agoThe US nuked itself literally thousands of times, and that never happened. You’re assuming a far more competent and omnipotent enemy with far more destructive weapons than exists.
- BobbyTables2 1y agoLocation, location, location! The US didn’t nuke its critical infrastructure… For example, how many fewer water plants can your city survive on?
- lazide 1y agoThere are easily 10x more fresh water plants in the US than nukes in both countries arsenals combined. Not to mention fresh water wells on private property, which are 100x or more. I’m not saying Nukes won’t cause damage - just that there is zero chance they can cause the pervasive, complete destruction of ‘everything’ that movies portray. There just aren’t enough of them. And no one knows enough or is competent enough to identify everything of value. Don’t live in a high value target area though, or next to a major military base.
- MomsAVoxell 1y agoDuck and Cover was just one of many aspects of the culture of Cold War - another was indeed, for American families to dig their own survival bunkers. The jingle at school was for the kids, the Sears catalog bunker section, adults.