So how are y'all preparing for the Apocalypse?

[Facing]

I can't see Trump getting too enthusiastic about pushing the button - all-out nuclear war is very bad for business.

This assumes a reasonable man who is thoughtful enough to consider the long term ramifications of his deeds. His twitter feed paints a different picture, one of a man who is both petty and vindictive.

 

[N. E. White]

So... how would we survive a nuclear holocaust? Go!

(And please, I am just as bummed about our president-elect as half the U.S.A. population are, but let's try to stay away from politics.)

 

[Matthew Hughes]

So... how would we survive a nuclear holocaust?

Why would you want to?

 

[Facing]

Why would you want to?

That's a good question. I have no desire to hide out in a concrete bunker eating tinned food and chemically purified water. I don't think I would do well.

 

[Windshadow]

Why would you want to?

After playing Fallout 1, 2, 3, New Vegas, and 4 I think I agree with you at my age... but back when we all were encouraged to build fallout shelters I came home from the duck and cover drills at grade school and asked my dad why we weren't building one. He told me we lived so close to major defense industry plants and a SAC base (just 20 miles away and upwind of our farm) a fallout shelter would not enhance our survival chances... then I read Farnham's Freehold and i decided he was probably right... Ten years later and at engineering college well away from prime targets I was a sort of a semi survivalist. Then I got a series of jobs that had me traveling all over the world on 6 to 18 months contracts. and as it is hard to travel light and live in rented accommodation with 6 months of dry rations I sort of forgot about the whole thing.... and now in late retirement the whole survivalist thing just seems like too much hard physical work.

 

[Justin Swanton]

So... how would we survive a nuclear holocaust? Go!

(And please, I am just as bummed about our president-elect as half the U.S.A. population are, but let's try to stay away from politics.)

Move to S.A!

 

[JacenAster]

I'm with the "why would you want to?" people on surviving the nuclear holocaust. Also very unlikely I'd live through the opening minutes, as I live fairly close to the U.S. airbase holding pretty much the entire B-2 fleet. Unless something has changed, that base alone would make the state of Missouri the world's third largest(in quantity) nuclear power in the world, were it to somehow separate from the USA. Gotta be pretty high up on the priority lists, I would think.

Though, if you really wanted to survive it, I imagine the best bet would be to move to a remote paradise island. You'd need some specialty equipment to deal with the fallout and potentially years of blocked sunlight, but it would be doable. Either a geothermal tap or a dam a small river for power, lay in a supply of grow lights, and either dig out a large underground area to use for plant growing(or find a cave system). An underground spring would be ideal for fresh water, as it would be at least partially shielded from all the radiation. Definitely want to include some medicinal plants that can be turned into basic antibiotics and such in your grow area. It would suck to live through the nuclear holocaust just to be killed by an infection or easily treatable accident.

 

[Fish Owl]

Nuclear holocaust is very overrated by media. If you wish to know what real post-Nuke world probably would be – pick up some Cold War manuals for army and civilians alike. About real shelters, real impact from bombing and real radiation problems and ways to solve them. It’s actually not that bad as Fallout or Mad Max describe it. For example almost all huge plants and arms manufacturers should be restored few weeks after impact because war would continue after Nukes, everybody understood it. People who worked on those plants were instructed how to act and had all the equipment. Even special vacuum cleaners to clean radioactive dust. All sorts of things. Even anti-nukes shelters are not that complex. I read those plans for Nuclear War made in Soviet Union. Fascinating stuff. Don't know about USA but in USSR people were drilled and trained for Nuclear War on daily basis starting with school.

And as for civilians – only biggest cities would be the target. And smaller ones with 500 hundred and less population wouldn’t probably even feel the bombing. Of course they would lose electricity and water because power plants would be the first obvious targets. But then again we have power generators of all kinds in abundance.

So in my opinion nuclear holocaust is overrated. As World War was. It would be a big mess, of course. But not the end of civilization and humankind. Quite the contrary, it was a huge boost to technology and progress.

 

[N. E. White]

Quite the contrary, it was a huge boost to technology and progress.

Absolutely! Think of the possibilities, folks.

I know you are all depressed, but there is always hope.

I just funded some research on raccoon dogs near Chernobyl. Fascinating stuff.

 

[Av Demeisen]

Sure, nuclear fallout is a hoax. Kind of like climate change, it's politicized science.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...onald-trump-eliminate-climate-change-research

 

[Facing]

Our farm is within an hour's drive of a shuttered military base. It might not be much of a priority target anymore despite the city's population but without my family.....no thanks

We're we to have a world war that didn't involve mass amounts of nuke's....I can grow enough food to feed a small town. We sold off some of the heavy equipment when we stopped farming but I've still got 50 acres of bush (lots of deer and turkey and more bunnies than can be counted), two ponds (one spring fed - both large enough to be better stocked), 25 workable acres and more than a decade of experience farming all kinds of crap.

We also have a natural gas well and solar panels that my handy dandy hubby could probably jerry-rig to the house given enough time, need and lack of legal ramifications.

 

[Nechtan]

If there was a nuclear holocaust, if I had time, I would gather a group of friends, stand in front of a wall and at the appropriate moment all leap in the air and strike silly poses leaving nothing but unusual shadows for future generations to puzzle over.

 

[Matthew Hughes]

leaving nothing but unusual shadows for future generations to puzzle over.

Future archaeologists would invariably describe it as evidence of ritual behavior.

 

[Nechtan]

Future archaeologists would invariably describe it as evidence of ritual behavior.

It's funny because it's true. They really would. See every documentary about any culture or civilisation that didn't leave written records.

 

[JacenAster]

Nuclear holocaust is very overrated by media. If you wish to know what real post-Nuke world probably would be – pick up some Cold War manuals for army and civilians alike. About real shelters, real impact from bombing and real radiation problems and ways to solve them. It’s actually not that bad as Fallout or Mad Max describe it. For example almost all huge plants and arms manufacturers should be restored few weeks after impact because war would continue after Nukes, everybody understood it. People who worked on those plants were instructed how to act and had all the equipment. Even special vacuum cleaners to clean radioactive dust. All sorts of things. Even anti-nukes shelters are not that complex. I read those plans for Nuclear War made in Soviet Union. Fascinating stuff. Don't know about USA but in USSR people were drilled and trained for Nuclear War on daily basis starting with school.

And as for civilians – only biggest cities would be the target. And smaller ones with 500 hundred and less population wouldn’t probably even feel the bombing. Of course they would lose electricity and water because power plants would be the first obvious targets. But then again we have power generators of all kinds in abundance.

So in my opinion nuclear holocaust is overrated. As World War was. It would be a big mess, of course. But not the end of civilization and humankind. Quite the contrary, it was a huge boost to technology and progress.

That...misses a few critical points. First, those various manuals were mostly junk intended to help people believe they might survive. Mind you, you aren't wrong that rural small towns would not be nuked. However, there are an estimated 23,000 nuclear weapons still in existence, and unlike the crude attempts of WWII, each of those offer a total annihilation zone of between a 5km and 21km sphere. A single nuke can wiped out a city and all of its suburbs. And that's only the "close" effects, the radiation death zones and EMP effect are larger still. Worse yet, those are only the initial effects. The real problems come after that mass devastation.

The largest of those problems isn't even the radiation aftermath. Oh sure, that's bad, but the smoke is worse. Even the detonation of merely the USA/Russia rapid response (2600 + some fraction of the estimated 7600 submarine launches) would generate 150 million tonnes of smoke that would rapidly ascend into the stratosphere. The spread of that smoke would quickly cover the Earth entirely, and remain there for years blocking and absorbing sunlight. The estimate is that 70% of all sunlight would be blocked from the Earth's surface in the hemisphere of the detonations (in the event it was a one hemisphere war, not global) and 35% in the non-involved hemisphere. Of course, with Korea, China, and others joining in, you'd likely get similar effects in both hemispheres of 70% solar blockage. The net result of this is the "Nuclear Winter" term you've probably heard before, with nightly killing frosts that would prevent the growth of any open-terrain food. Average global precipitation would fall by 45%, causing a global drought, massive ozone layer destruction would occur with resulting dangerous UV exposure with the sunlight that did reach the ground, and lower lying toxic smoke from all the refineries and power plants would blow through huge territories like poisonous dust storms.

A true, full-blown nuclear was/is considered an extinction level event for a reason. Arguably, those poor bastards living in small towns would have it worse , as they'd die slowly of starvation and atmospheric poison instead of quickly in the detonations themselves. Oh, and don't just dismiss the smoke effects as nonsense or fear mongering, go look at what the atmospheric effects of volcanic eruptions are. Single volcanic eruptions, which produce far far less smoke than we're talking about with a nuclear war, create vast regional cooling effects that can last for months or years, giving ample practical data to use in modeling the effects of the smoke in large volumes.

So, ultimately, you're right that it isn't as bad as Fallout or Mad Max...it's worse, much worse.

 

[Matthew Hughes]

It's funny because it's true. They really would. See every documentary about any culture or civilisation that didn't leave written records.

See David Macaulay’s book, Motel of the Mysteries.

 

[Fish Owl]

However, there are an estimated 23,000 nuclear weapons still in existence

And how many ordinary bombs and rockets? Even during WW1 there was enough weapons to destroy the whole world. Theoretically. By the way there are actually 10,144 nuclear weapons according to latest data.

The net result of this is the "Nuclear Winter" term you've probably heard before

Term 'Nuclear winter' was coined by Carl Sagan. He actually claimed that burning Kuwait oil fields will have similar effect.

So, ultimately, you're right that it isn't as bad as Fallout or Mad Max...it's worse, much worse.

There were similar articles in 1920-th that described gas holocaust just the way we now know nuclear. And both never happened for similar reasons. First of all you need to detonate all those weapons at the same time, you need to be sure that all of them will detonate and none will be destroyed by counter-measures before detonation, malfunction and such. And you need a madman in each country to push the button. And even Hitler didn't use his gas arsenal in 1945.

Sure, nuclear fallout is a hoax. Kind of like climate change, it's politicized science.

Interesting that you mentioned it. He just changed his mind about it
By the way I just love how people talk about ecology and climate change after buying their new iphone, new computer, new car and all the kinds of similar stuff. So eco-friendly.

 

[Matthew Hughes]

And even Hitler didn't use his gas arsenal in 1945.

Churchill was prepared to use poison gas against the Germans if they'd come over the Channel.

 

[Fish Owl]

Churchill was prepared to use poison gas against the Germans if they'd come over the Channel.

And US proposed to nuke North Korea and Vietnam back in 1950-th. It's always easy to make those threats when you are an island or remote nation and you know that enemy can't retaliate. Hitler never used gas because he knew that would be the end of German people.

 

[Matthew Hughes]

It's always easy to make those threats when you are an island or remote nation and you know that enemy can't retaliate

If Churchill had used gas, Hitler would have used gas. But Hitler's first choice was a negotiated peace with Britain.