And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
we were taught to just get under our desk if we saw the bright flash. even as grade schoolers in the early 60's most of us were pretty skeptical about that.
They also said, they would tell us if a missile launch was detected. Then we found out that with only 32 minutes warning, they wouldn’t. I guess they thought the panic it would cause, might impede them from getting to protection.
Would rather be instantly converted to energy than die over the next weeks of radiation poisoning or cancer. Certainly don't want to be enslaved by the ruling elite when those cockraches come out of their holes.
You all should probably read that book and a few others to get a better idea of what might happen. If you are in the shadow of the explosion, you have an excellent chance of survival. If you are in a basement with 3 feet of dirt between you and the crater's edge you will survive. You won't like the rock and roll from the explosion, but you won't be glowing in the dark at all.
In the 50s and 60s the Civil Defense network worked well with rapid notifications. There were designated shelters with survival supplies and equipment and in each district there were warehouses ready to feed everyone. Now with cell phones, we get messages after the fact and the warehouses are pretty much empty after giving the stored food to folks without replenishing the shelves.
Either you're far from Ground Zero, and prepared for the next several years on your own against all comers, or you're fodder for the gent on the pale horse. Period.
Three feet of dirt stops the radiation, sure. But you can't cook it or eat it. It won't keep you warm in the winter. Figure about 10' of conex box (or equivalent) per person, per year, of storage chock-full of Everything You Better Have. Ain't got that, and in the affected area? You're still pretty much screwed, even if you survived the blast. And the fallout.
The Russian version of kiss your ass goodbye from 1950-1990 was equally informative: A: "If you see a bright flash, wrap yourself in a white sheet, and walk towards the cemetery slowly." B: "Why slowly, Comrade?" A: "So as not to create a panic."
That's a whole lotta disinformation there, Aesop. I'm disappointed. You can do better. You didn't learn this stuff in NBC School in the Corps.
If you are in fireball zone, not much can be done for you unless you are fortunate enough to be deep underground in a bunker. The idea of just waiting to be evaporated is defeatist nonsense, Marine. Instead of being evaporated there is a far higher chance of being charred by the thermal effect and lying in a broken heap for three days or so until dying. To those who say that they will wait to be "evaporated," just how do you know where Ground Zero will be. No, what you are really saying with a flippant response like this is that you simply don't want to learn about what you can do to improve your chances.
For those beyond the thermal effects zone, but still in the blast zone, ducking and covering as kids were taught in the 1950s and 1960s will save about 90% from experiencing physical trauma from flying debris.
Sure, if downwind in the fallout zone, water will be irradiated. Growing food will be irradiated, too. Canned or food sealed in packages will be fine. Water can be filtered. Stored water is, of course, better.
Location is everything. That is why most Americans will survive the nuclear exchanges. They simply do not live close enough to nuclear targets.
The Left convinced the world that nuclear war was not survivable in the 1980s. That was about the same time when the "experts" were telling us that a New Ice Age was coming. How did that work out? That "nuclear winter" BS, which was very politically motivated, has been refuted by later research.
Nuclear war will be the most devastating event in human history. Tens of millions of Americans will die in an all-out nuclear exchange. It's true that many who do all the right things to prepare will die anyway due to their location. A HUGE number of those who do nothing will certainly die. Nevertheless, preparing now with "beans, bullets, and Band-Aids" will be the important difference in surviving for most people.
I could write for the next hour refuting some of the ideas expressed in the comments here, but that is just not going to happen. Doing so will have little effect on those whose minds are already made up.
"A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." Lie, la, lie.
Either you're far from Ground Zero, and prepared for the next several years on your own against all comers, or you're fodder for the gent on the pale horse. Period.
90% casualties for a major exchange, within the first year. Say goodbye to 270m of your friends and neighbors, and everything in the world that was. Power? Gone. Most food production? Gone. The people that survived the initial exchange, but made no provision? Better hope they don't find you. They're the problem now.
If you've made provision and planned to be in the 10%, good for you. Everybody on both coasts, and most of everybody else as well? Not so good.
These maps were published on Modern Survival blog. https://i.imgur.com/8BBaNqb.jpg https://i.imgur.com/qK6D6c1.jpg
They're rosy assumptions, praying that nukes aren't launched at every military base and airfield, just the strategically important ones. Those target blobs? 75-80% of the current U.S. population lives there. The fallout is wind dependent, of course, but with no power, and no food, pretty much for anyone's lifetime, disease runs rampant, and you have hordes of not-immediately-atomized survivors looking for anything they can get their hands on to live another day.
They won't be asking, and they won't be paying cash or bartering.
Best wishes in that scenario, really. I don't care who or where you are. 9 out of 10 people in the U.S. alive on that day will be dead within 12 months. Best case. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoXjUl5usKI
Gainsaying that reality isn't going to change it. If you've got a deep, secret, well-stocked hidey hole, good for you. That's less than 1% of the country, right this minute, or ever. And a good hunk of that 1% doesn't like you already.
Thank you for this. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/pdf/Nuclear_War_Survival_Skills. This was a more courageous approach to such a situation than "bend over and . . . " But, I suppose when "we" were hanging our hats on the "mutually-assured destruction" posture it wouldn't do for the population to know that nukes can be survivable.
This is my plan. If a weapon goes off in Ukraine, I am taking a vacation and driving somewhere less likely to be a target. I will pack food, dogs, and firearms/ammo. Wife and I will drive each of our cars to have more room for supplies. ~ Doctor Weasel
For Aesop and Anon, you need to remember that Civil Defense in the 50s and 60s was better than today. Booklets were available on how to survive in your home or in public shelters. Folks were requested to have a two week supply of food and water in their home. There were huge CD stockpiles of food and supplies in regional depots, cities, and towns. Notification was quick and older folks will remember the CD test announcements via public broadcasting which would give time to get to a nearby shelter.
Remarks today that nuclear blasts weren't survivable are just not accurate.
Just as today, those who want to be prepared are prepared. Watch Florida during hurricane season. Those who take the time to help themselves survive bad situations do well. The others are in line at Home Depot trying to find plywood or at gas stations with almost empty tanks complaining.
People that think the blast is the problem, are the problem. Those are the grasshoppers in the parable. https://read.gov/aesop/052.html
See the reply to survivorman99, above.
The blast is just the impact. Pro Tip: No one - No. One. - on RMS Titanic died from the ship hitting the iceberg. It was what happened in the next four hours that brought the scope of the real problem into focus.
It'll be the same thing with any nuclear exchange larger than a single hit. As 4000 Pentagon war games can testify, once you get a nuke and a response, it all goes up like matches. https://youtu.be/vsbo4KazMV0?t=180
Aesop agrees that the blast is only part of the problem but that those who were not prepared suffered. What was the problem with Titanic? A captain who wanted to make a record run. Officers who wouldn't use the available life saving equipment to the maximum extent. An abusive captain on the Californian who refused to use the radio or to maneuver to Titanic and rescue everyone on that ship. There are plenty of problems and they all point to the fact that even in that disaster, there were multiple opportunities to save almost everyone. It's the same with big bombs.
The articles on nuclear winter or books such as One Second After and the like all ignore other well researched studies which show that life will continue. It just isn't the happy, easy going life that we have now. If you don't bail the water out of the ship, you sink. Folks who want to live will live and those who think that it's all over won't. Studies don't keep you alive or kill you. The actions you take often determine the outcome.
Add to the Titanic analogy the fact that many lifeboats left the ship unfilled, not because the occupants were callous and only concerned about their own safety, but because early in the incident, many refused to leave what they perceived to be an unsinkable ship and to get on a lifeboat that would bob in the dark on the endless ocean. "Oh, hell no!"
Yes, life will be very, very tough after a nuclear war. As civilization has advanced, we have become a very soft species that views modern conveniences as necessities of life. A great many cannot imagine life without HBO and "Dancing with the Stars." Yet, "Life finds a way." No one is promising a rose garden but, "given the alternative..."
"Folks who want to live will live and those who think that it's all over won't." Yes, but to be completely honest, many in both categories will live or die whether they want to or not. The reality is that flippantly dismissing the chance of survival no matter what they do allows them to ignore the need to do anything.
For all of those people who have dismissed the need to take actions that may save their lives and who say that they will simply run toward Ground Zero and get evaporated, I simply say, "Please tell me where GZ is going to be." It's just a convenient, flippant dodge by people with Scarlett O'Hara-like thought processes: "I can't think about it today. I'll think about it tomorrow." It is quite likely that these are EXACTLY the people who (quite literally) will not pass this Darwin Test
In the final analysis, when actually confronted with the prospect of immediate death, their survival instinct will kick in full throttle. Kenny Chesney said it well:
"Everybody wanna go to heaven But nobody wanna go now."
Nobody (least of all me), is "dismissing the need to take actions that may save their lives". The point is that, exactly like on the Titanic, once you have impact, it's too late to pull a lifeboat out of your ass if you didn't pack one there before you set sail.
If you already reside in the low-risk areas, and you socked away everything you need for 5-10-25 years of no discernible civilization, including dealing decisively with the Golden Hordes who see you solely as a supply point, Rock On With Your Bad Self.
For the rest of folks, which would be 98+% of the populace, things are liable to be rather more sketchy, and for 90% of everyone, terminal due to lack of caloric intake.
Gainsaying that reality doesn't change it.
No one's telling you not to try. But as Master Yoda told you, Do. Or do not. There is no "Try".
we were taught to just get under our desk if we saw the bright flash. even as grade schoolers in the early 60's most of us were pretty skeptical about that.
ReplyDeleteThey also said, they would tell us if a missile launch was detected.
ReplyDeleteThen we found out that with only 32 minutes warning, they wouldn’t.
I guess they thought the panic it would cause, might impede them from getting to protection.
When your school is one chainlink fence from ground zero - why bother, friends?
ReplyDeleteThe one and only real and usable advice that I have ever heard on this subject is:
ReplyDelete"Bend over, grab your ankles and kiss your ass good-bye."
Yes, Hollywood has trained you well.
DeleteJust as Disney has similarly done for you.
DeleteWould rather be instantly converted to energy than die over the next weeks of radiation poisoning or cancer. Certainly don't want to be enslaved by the ruling elite when those cockraches come out of their holes.
ReplyDeleteYou all should probably read that book and a few others to get a better idea of what might happen. If you are in the shadow of the explosion, you have an excellent chance of survival. If you are in a basement with 3 feet of dirt between you and the crater's edge you will survive. You won't like the rock and roll from the explosion, but you won't be glowing in the dark at all.
ReplyDeleteIn the 50s and 60s the Civil Defense network worked well with rapid notifications. There were designated shelters with survival supplies and equipment and in each district there were warehouses ready to feed everyone. Now with cell phones, we get messages after the fact and the warehouses are pretty much empty after giving the stored food to folks without replenishing the shelves.
Civil Defense was a joke then, and worse now.
DeleteBe Somewhere Else.
Either you're far from Ground Zero, and prepared for the next several years on your own against all comers, or you're fodder for the gent on the pale horse.
Period.
Three feet of dirt stops the radiation, sure.
But you can't cook it or eat it.
It won't keep you warm in the winter.
Figure about 10' of conex box (or equivalent) per person, per year, of storage chock-full of Everything You Better Have.
Ain't got that, and in the affected area?
You're still pretty much screwed, even if you survived the blast. And the fallout.
The Russian version of kiss your ass goodbye from 1950-1990 was equally informative:
A: "If you see a bright flash, wrap yourself in a white sheet, and walk towards the cemetery slowly."
B: "Why slowly, Comrade?"
A: "So as not to create a panic."
Dave, this is more for Aesop than it is for you.
DeleteAesop,
That's a whole lotta disinformation there, Aesop. I'm disappointed. You can do better. You didn't learn this stuff in NBC School in the Corps.
If you are in fireball zone, not much can be done for you unless you are fortunate enough to be deep underground in a bunker. The idea of just waiting to be evaporated is defeatist nonsense, Marine. Instead of being evaporated there is a far higher chance of being charred by the thermal effect and lying in a broken heap for three days or so until dying. To those who say that they will wait to be "evaporated," just how do you know where Ground Zero will be. No, what you are really saying with a flippant response like this is that you simply don't want to learn about what you can do to improve your chances.
For those beyond the thermal effects zone, but still in the blast zone, ducking and covering as kids were taught in the 1950s and 1960s will save about 90% from experiencing physical trauma from flying debris.
Sure, if downwind in the fallout zone, water will be irradiated. Growing food will be irradiated, too. Canned or food sealed in packages will be fine. Water can be filtered. Stored water is, of course, better.
Location is everything. That is why most Americans will survive the nuclear exchanges. They simply do not live close enough to nuclear targets.
The Left convinced the world that nuclear war was not survivable in the 1980s. That was about the same time when the "experts" were telling us that a New Ice Age was coming. How did that work out? That "nuclear winter" BS, which was very politically motivated, has been refuted by later research.
Nuclear war will be the most devastating event in human history. Tens of millions of Americans will die in an all-out nuclear exchange. It's true that many who do all the right things to prepare will die anyway due to their location. A HUGE number of those who do nothing will certainly die. Nevertheless, preparing now with "beans, bullets, and Band-Aids" will be the important difference in surviving for most people.
I could write for the next hour refuting some of the ideas expressed in the comments here, but that is just not going to happen. Doing so will have little effect on those whose minds are already made up.
"A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." Lie, la, lie.
Repeated for emphasis:
DeleteEither you're far from Ground Zero, and prepared for the next several years on your own against all comers, or you're fodder for the gent on the pale horse.
Period.
90% casualties for a major exchange, within the first year.
Say goodbye to 270m of your friends and neighbors, and everything in the world that was.
Power? Gone.
Most food production? Gone.
The people that survived the initial exchange, but made no provision?
Better hope they don't find you.
They're the problem now.
If you've made provision and planned to be in the 10%, good for you.
Everybody on both coasts, and most of everybody else as well?
Not so good.
These maps were published on Modern Survival blog.
https://i.imgur.com/8BBaNqb.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/qK6D6c1.jpg
They're rosy assumptions, praying that nukes aren't launched at every military base and airfield, just the strategically important ones.
Those target blobs? 75-80% of the current U.S. population lives there.
The fallout is wind dependent, of course, but with no power, and no food, pretty much for anyone's lifetime, disease runs rampant, and you have hordes of not-immediately-atomized survivors looking for anything they can get their hands on to live another day.
They won't be asking, and they won't be paying cash or bartering.
Best wishes in that scenario, really.
I don't care who or where you are.
9 out of 10 people in the U.S. alive on that day will be dead within 12 months.
Best case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoXjUl5usKI
Gainsaying that reality isn't going to change it.
If you've got a deep, secret, well-stocked hidey hole, good for you.
That's less than 1% of the country, right this minute, or ever.
And a good hunk of that 1% doesn't like you already.
That's not pessimism nor optimism.
It's realism.
Thank you for this. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/pdf/Nuclear_War_Survival_Skills. This was a more courageous approach to such a situation than "bend over and . . . " But, I suppose when "we" were hanging our hats on the "mutually-assured destruction" posture it wouldn't do for the population to know that nukes can be survivable.
ReplyDeleteThey better start reprinting these now with president Slip'n'Fall in office.
ReplyDeleteDuck - and cover.
ReplyDeleteBe somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteThis is my plan. If a weapon goes off in Ukraine, I am taking a vacation and driving somewhere less likely to be a target. I will pack food, dogs, and firearms/ammo. Wife and I will drive each of our cars to have more room for supplies.
Delete~ Doctor Weasel
For Aesop and Anon, you need to remember that Civil Defense in the 50s and 60s was better than today. Booklets were available on how to survive in your home or in public shelters. Folks were requested to have a two week supply of food and water in their home. There were huge CD stockpiles of food and supplies in regional depots, cities, and towns. Notification was quick and older folks will remember the CD test announcements via public broadcasting which would give time to get to a nearby shelter.
ReplyDeleteRemarks today that nuclear blasts weren't survivable are just not accurate.
Just as today, those who want to be prepared are prepared. Watch Florida during hurricane season. Those who take the time to help themselves survive bad situations do well. The others are in line at Home Depot trying to find plywood or at gas stations with almost empty tanks complaining.
Survivormann99
DeletePeople that think the blast is the problem, are the problem.
DeleteThose are the grasshoppers in the parable.
https://read.gov/aesop/052.html
See the reply to survivorman99, above.
The blast is just the impact.
Pro Tip: No one - No. One. - on RMS Titanic died from the ship hitting the iceberg.
It was what happened in the next four hours that brought the scope of the real problem into focus.
It'll be the same thing with any nuclear exchange larger than a single hit.
As 4000 Pentagon war games can testify, once you get a nuke and a response, it all goes up like matches.
https://youtu.be/vsbo4KazMV0?t=180
Aesop agrees that the blast is only part of the problem but that those who were not prepared suffered. What was the problem with Titanic? A captain who wanted to make a record run. Officers who wouldn't use the available life saving equipment to the maximum extent. An abusive captain on the Californian who refused to use the radio or to maneuver to Titanic and rescue everyone on that ship. There are plenty of problems and they all point to the fact that even in that disaster, there were multiple opportunities to save almost everyone. It's the same with big bombs.
DeleteThe articles on nuclear winter or books such as One Second After and the like all ignore other well researched studies which show that life will continue. It just isn't the happy, easy going life that we have now. If you don't bail the water out of the ship, you sink. Folks who want to live will live and those who think that it's all over won't. Studies don't keep you alive or kill you. The actions you take often determine the outcome.
Well said, Dave.
DeleteAdd to the Titanic analogy the fact that many lifeboats left the ship unfilled, not because the occupants were callous and only concerned about their own safety, but because early in the incident, many refused to leave what they perceived to be an unsinkable ship and to get on a lifeboat that would bob in the dark on the endless ocean. "Oh, hell no!"
Yes, life will be very, very tough after a nuclear war. As civilization has advanced, we have become a very soft species that views modern conveniences as necessities of life. A great many cannot imagine life without HBO and "Dancing with the Stars." Yet, "Life finds a way." No one is promising a rose garden but, "given the alternative..."
"Folks who want to live will live and those who think that it's all over won't." Yes, but to be completely honest, many in both categories will live or die whether they want to or not. The reality is that flippantly dismissing the chance of survival no matter what they do allows them to ignore the need to do anything.
For all of those people who have dismissed the need to take actions that may save their lives and who say that they will simply run toward Ground Zero and get evaporated, I simply say, "Please tell me where GZ is going to be." It's just a convenient, flippant dodge by people with Scarlett
O'Hara-like thought processes: "I can't think about it today. I'll think about it tomorrow." It is quite likely that these are EXACTLY the people who (quite literally) will not pass this Darwin Test
In the final analysis, when actually confronted with the prospect of immediate death, their survival instinct will kick in full throttle. Kenny Chesney said it well:
"Everybody wanna go to heaven
But nobody wanna go now."
Nobody (least of all me), is "dismissing the need to take actions that may save their lives".
DeleteThe point is that, exactly like on the Titanic, once you have impact, it's too late to pull a lifeboat out of your ass if you didn't pack one there before you set sail.
If you already reside in the low-risk areas, and you socked away everything you need for 5-10-25 years of no discernible civilization, including dealing decisively with the Golden Hordes who see you solely as a supply point, Rock On With Your Bad Self.
For the rest of folks, which would be 98+% of the populace, things are liable to be rather more sketchy, and for 90% of everyone, terminal due to lack of caloric intake.
Gainsaying that reality doesn't change it.
No one's telling you not to try.
But as Master Yoda told you,
Do. Or do not. There is no "Try".
I've got a more recently published book on the subject. It's pages are blank.
ReplyDelete