[HN Gopher] Nuclear War Survival Skills (1987) [pdf]
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Nuclear War Survival Skills (1987) [pdf]
Author : baxtr
Score : 88 points
Date : 2022-03-02 21:28 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (oism.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (oism.org)
| ohiovr wrote:
| The preferred way to survive nuclear war is to not to provoke one
| in the first place.
| capableweb wrote:
| No, it's not. And thinking like that is not helpful. "Best way
| to get rid of a drug addiction is to not get addicted in the
| first place" is similarly helpful, which is not at all.
|
| There are ways to act that maximises the chance of surviving a
| nuclear attack, just like there are ways of maximising the
| chance of getting rid of a addiction.
| ohiovr wrote:
| Unfortunately taking the life of innocents to save some
| semblance of an empire is a risk the powers are willing to
| take. You cannot imagine the stakes here. After this event
| even if it is confined to just the aggressors it will lead to
| a life of hardship for you that will never end. Peace is
| always better than war and its troubles if it can be avoided.
| No one knows the aftermath. We have to see it with our own
| eyes. Ever seen a man suffering from bone cancer? That could
| be you and me someday.
|
| You can never break an addiction you want to have.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| The preferred way to survive nuclear war is to maximize the
| chance of not provoking one in the first place.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Again, you're doing a semantic dance around the question.
|
| I, personally, am not in control of global politics.
| However I am, personally, in control of building a shelter
| in my basement.
| firebaze wrote:
| You could do both, though. Take care lunatics don't cause
| global disruption by influencing your sphere of
| influence. Works in recursion, at least.
| andrepd wrote:
| If you survive a nuclear attack you will wish you were dead.
| Any "nuclear attack survivability guide" is probably
| counterproductive because it reinforces the illusion that
| there is any such thing as a world the day after a nuclear
| attack. It's all over.
| q1w2 wrote:
| This is complete nonsense. You can absolutely survive a
| nuclear war if you are prepared.
|
| Maybe you'd prefer not to bother preparing because you
| think the probability is too low of it happening, but you
| cannot make that choice for the rest of us.
| ohiovr wrote:
| Just not as long as we could before the war is the point
| I wish to make.
| firebaze wrote:
| With current warheads, it (unfortunately) is survivable.
| It's more or less as if any city on the world looks like
| germany after WW2 - plus some radiation, but most of it is
| gone after a few weeks.
|
| Fucked up, sure. But survivable for some.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > There are ways to act that maximises the chance of
| surviving a nuclear attack,
|
| This reads like a monty python skit
| ohiovr wrote:
| Absurdity is funny until it is in command of your destiny.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| But at this point you need to ask, what for? Surviving a
| conventional attack is completely different - you move
| somewhere else and live on, possibly coping with PTSD.
| Surviving a nuclear war means only prolonged suffering with
| no purpose, that's all.
| itisit wrote:
| Prevention is better than cure.
| acqbu wrote:
| very useful, thanks, will definitely need it in the immediate
| future - getting ready & prepped!
| bdz wrote:
| The US Army's Survival manual is much more useful imo. It's an
| actual guidebook covering all kind of survival techniques and
| practical informations (very basic things too like how to build a
| fire which most urban people doesn't even know)
| https://irp.fas.org/doddir/army/fm3-05-70.pdf
|
| For nuclear and other hazards see chapter 23/page 358 (Survival
| In Man-Made Hazards)
| Noe2097 wrote:
| Can't help but think about The Day After
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After
| gcheong wrote:
| It certainly feels like we're having something of a Dr.
| Strangelove moment at this point.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove
| andrepd wrote:
| Or "Threads", an even bleaker and realistic look at what a
| nuclear exchange looks like.
| ekianjo wrote:
| You better watch Threads for a more accurate take.
| Diederich wrote:
| Amazing movie, had a big impact.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNQ694QzLqY
| carabiner wrote:
| We will all need this soon.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Ok, here we are. I actually favourited this post and going to
| share it with others. This is 2022.
| csee wrote:
| Any recent update on the correctness of the 'nuclear winter'
| concept?
| giantg2 wrote:
| There's this:
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nuclear-war-global-warming_n_...
| mysecretaccount wrote:
| Have to admit, my nuclear war anxiety has never been as high as
| it is now.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Over the last few decades we've lulled ourselves into a false
| sense of security. The reality is that the number,
| deliverability, and distribution of nuclear weapons has
| continued to increase.
|
| It is only a matter of time before we see some degree of
| nuclear weapons use.
|
| If limited, it might cause a major shift in how humans choose
| to distribute themselves. Living in a city might come to be
| seen as an unnecessary liability.
| dom96 wrote:
| Same. I have already done at least one bit of prep: buying a
| Geiger counter.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| While I understand your anxiety, it is baseless. This mad
| person who is so afraid of even his close collaborators that he
| sits several meters away from them wanted something very
| different: capturing a country he felt he lost. Who will praise
| him if there is nobody on the Earth?
|
| Also, make no mistake, his inner circle is full of people who
| know how to calculate risks and will betray their colleagues in
| a blink. Putin might be cornered but a collective suicide is
| not exactly the dream of people around him.
| javajosh wrote:
| The anxiety definitely has a basis: we live in a world where
| individual humans control powerful nuclear weapons that can
| be delivered, without real possibility of interception, and
| with minimal warning, right over every major city. The only
| real safeguard we have are the chain of human soldiers
| between the leader, the launch order, and the launch. There
| are like 10 brains in the world that can order a launch, and
| best case 10 brains to launch. So the world's nuclear safety
| is in 110 brains, best case, 10 brains, worst case.
|
| Brains, meanwhile, are highly plastic. Emotion, impulse,
| greed, fear - these are universal human drives. Now attach
| them to ever growing control over resources, power, to see
| your will be done, to cheat and get away with it, _but only
| if you keep escalating_... How could this possibly end with
| Putin backing down?
|
| My belief: Putin _will_ order a launch. This will result in
| either nuclear war, if his proxies are loyal to him, or his
| immediate loss of power, if his proxies are not.
| robotnikman wrote:
| Your not alone, I feel the same way. Born after the cold war
| ended, I never thought I would be worrying about nuclear
| annihilation in my lifetime.
| maliker wrote:
| I was having dinner with a climate researcher in his 60s a
| while ago. What he did previously came up, and he said he was a
| nuclear nonproliferation researcher before, but climate change
| seemed like a bigger threat. Time has come to switch back,
| maybe?
| javajosh wrote:
| You must be young. I was very young when "The Day After" came
| out, and that friggin' movie gave me nightmares for many, many
| years. Into my twenties. Every time I heard a jet, I was
| convinced it was an inbound ICBM. My case may be extreme, but
| the Cuban Missile crisis was by that time well understood, the
| immorality of the USG was apparent thanks to Vietnam and Nixon,
| and classic movies like Wargames and James Bond used the threat
| of nuclear war _constantly_. Getting nuked by Russia was a real
| threat for 40 years. But you realize it 's out of your hands,
| and deal with the stuff in front of you.
|
| (The real question is: what is the path away from nukes,
| entirely? It seems to me that a world in which any individual
| can launch nukes is a world with a very short lifetime. This
| gets worse the fewer human barriers there are to launch. Even
| if we get past this conflict, we have this fundamental problem
| which affects democracies and autocracies both.)
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| "Threads" is also a nice one, I would say it is more brutal
| and anxiety inducing than "The Day After".
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| To everybody reading this. Maybe in the 50s or 60s it made sense
| when Russians had 50 nukes or so. Now they claim they have a few
| thousand. I believe 10% of these will nuke them during takeoff,
| based on the deplorable state of their equipment we see now.
| Maybe a few ICBMs will be shot "down" in the last moment but I'm
| not sure how much this will help. When the world around you dies,
| do you really want to survive? I would prefer to live in the city
| and quickly die with my friends rather than move 200 miles away
| from civilization and experience inevitable illness, famine,
| nuclear winter and painful death.
|
| Also, I don't believe a nuclear war will happen because those who
| actually push the buttons proved in the past they are far more
| rational than their leaders.
| baybal2 wrote:
| By mid cold war, RAND calculated that it will take 20 years for
| the US to reach full reconstruction to pre-war level in an even
| of a Total Nuclear War
| slibhb wrote:
| > When the world around you dies, do you really want to
| survive?
|
| Yes.
|
| > I would prefer to live in the city and quickly die with my
| friends rather than move 200 miles away from civilization and
| experience inevitable illness, famine, nuclear winter and
| painful death.
|
| I despise this attitude. Almost everyone who gets old dies
| painfully. Are you going to kill yourself at 45 to avoid aging?
|
| And this idea that only life in a city is worth living -- what
| the hell? Of course life lived hand to mouth outside a city is
| worth living.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > I despise this attitude. Almost everyone who gets old dies
| painfully. Are you going to kill yourself at 45 to avoid
| aging?
|
| FWIW I agree with the parent comment, and comparing "living
| in a barren nuclear winter wasteland" with "living past age
| 45 in the country" is a strawman and not really what the
| comment you replied to was talking about.
|
| I've got my "nuclear war survival plan", and it involves a
| big fucking bag of weed, some super expensive wine, and
| having sex with the person I love until the nuclear fallout
| gets us.
|
| Obviously I'm being somewhat hyperbolic, but depending on the
| scope of a nuclear conflict I don't think it's irrational at
| all to decide on a comfortable end.
| int_19h wrote:
| "Barren nuclear winter wasteland" is not a likely outcome
| of even a major nuclear war.
| [deleted]
| geenew wrote:
| The apparent disregard of the risk of nuclear war that is
| evident in a lot of the internet commentary around the Ukraine
| war can only be worrying.
|
| Many people are willing to at least declare in internet posts
| that they think the risk of a nuclear war is worth taking in
| order to better help the people of Ukraine.
|
| Thankfully the people running countries are treating the issue
| more seriously. But it is still concerning that such a careless
| and foolish attitude is being aired. It is inarguable that
| there is more political pressure on leaders now to act rashly
| with regard to a topic that needs the most careful handling.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| I'm with you in the "prefer instant annihilation" camp.
|
| Here's all the places that a nuclear strike would hit:
| https://i0.wp.com/www.armenpogharian.com/wp-content/uploads/...
|
| Looks like the only survival strategy is "live in the west,
| away from major cities and away from nuclear launch sites."
| roberttod wrote:
| You should read the Myths and Facts sections in chapter 1.
|
| > inevitable illness, famine, nuclear winter
|
| Each one of these myths are debunked in that section to an
| extent.
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| This was written in the late 80s.
| code_duck wrote:
| Check out this graphic:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/t4hyik/oc_...
|
| Russians had about as many warheads in the 60s as they do now.
| In the 50s they had twice as many as China does now.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| Some interesting stuff in here. Some of it could even be useful
| for "normal" things, like the pump information.
|
| I do wonder how much is outdated and that there are likely newer
| tech and designs that could work for some things.
|
| I also wonder how much warning the government would give the
| people in order to seek shelter. I guess they do an OK job of it
| in HI (false alarms). But I wonder if they would even bother
| telling the highly populated east coast in a full scale event due
| to the panic and subsequent issues for the survivors.
| hackertux wrote:
| Previously discussed here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15305892
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28481782
| the_courier wrote:
| Anyone else re-playing all the Fallout games as way to prep?
| [deleted]
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| baybal2 wrote:
| Russia has around 1000 warhead maximum possible first launch
| capacity in the most optimistic scenario.
|
| If Russia saves submarine second strike, it will be 800.
|
| If Russia will chose to hold off land-based second strike, it
| goes to 550.
|
| If Russia chose to reserve some of its most powerful ICBMs as a
| reserve for the "dire friend" China, I would give it to be 300
| warheads.
|
| If the nuclear command & control centre is destroyed by a pre-
| emptive strike, there will be no coordinated first strike, but
| uncoordinated launches by individual units, highly conditional on
| officers resolve to fight an now unwinnable war.
| javajosh wrote:
| Do you know how such officers are chosen? I was speculating
| that these are relatively quiet, cushy postings. Or perhaps
| such postings are boring, and reserved for punishment? In any
| event, what are the odds that either a) a verified order from
| Putin is ignored, or b) that a field officer would launch based
| on loss of contact with C&C?
|
| I get into such detail because it is my guess that Putin won't
| back down, and will escalate until he gives a launch order, and
| it will be up to these field officers to reject a first launch
| order (or question the veracity of a retaliatory launch order).
| Flatcircle wrote:
| I looked into what to do:
|
| If a bomb goes off, don't look at the blast, go to an area in
| your house without windows and little air access, close the doors
| and wait there for 24 hours.
|
| Ideally, it's a closed basement surrounded by ground and
| concrete. If not, maybe a bathroom wine cellar, etc. the idea is
| to isolate yourself from the surrounding radiation in the air.
|
| Hopefully, you have a shortwave radio with fresh batteries or one
| you can hand crank. Because cellphones and access to information
| will be limited, the shortwave radio is important because
| ideally, city officials will be broadcasting where to avoid going
| outside and safety instructions.
|
| Don't go outside within the first 24 hours, as small radiation
| particles will fall on you and cause serious health issues.
|
| If you do go outside get rid of all your clothes and take a
| shower, don't use conditioner which binds radioactive material to
| your body.
|
| They say that after 24 hours, radiation levels should drop off
| significantly, since the winds will hopefully blow them away. But
| that's why a shortwave radio is important to have, so you know
| which directions of the city are getting the radiation.
| csee wrote:
| I'd suggest longer than 24 hours if you have the supplies to do
| so. The radiation will continue to drop off quickly into day 2
| and 3.
| echoradio wrote:
| > But that's why a shortwave radio is important to have...
|
| As would be a faraday cage/box/bag to keep the radio in until
| it is needed. An electromagnetic pulse would render the
| electronics inside a modern radio useless.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> it's a closed basement surrounded by ground and concrete.
|
| Underground parking garages. The goal is to have lots of mass
| between you and the glowing stuff and a concrete monolith does
| that. All those 90-degree corners in the structure will then
| mitigate any blast damage without risk of being trapped behind
| any door. Just like an earthquake, you want to be far away from
| glass. A wet climate is also better as rain will wash the
| fallout out to sea. And not too cold. Fallout and snow is a bad
| combination. Just look at how dirty streets become when the
| snow melts. That's where the fallout will concentrate. So the
| best place to be on the day is probably a parking structure in
| a non-targeted city somewhere the pacific northwest.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Browseable HTML version:
|
| http://www.ki4u.com/free_book/s73p911.htm
| Barrera wrote:
| The books thesis is that nuclear war is far more survivable than
| the public has been led to believe. It's an eye-opening
| perspective for sure.
|
| But this is not the kind of book you're going to be able to use
| in a crisis. The appendixes contain how-tos for:
|
| 1. building a fallout shelter
|
| 2. building a ventilation device for the shelter
|
| 3. building a dosimeter
|
| The problem is that these instructions are mixed with commentary.
| Lots of it. There are half a dozen or so types of shelter you can
| build. Which one do you build? Go figure. What should be simple
| recipes are ordeals in concentration. I can only imagine the
| kinds of heated conversations that would take place should this
| guide be pulled out and used in anger as the hand crank radio
| crackles with terrifying reports of unthinkable events.
|
| What the book has going for it is field testing. The methods
| described were tried out on regular folk who were paid to
| participate and paid bonuses for certain milestones. The author
| claims good results.
|
| Apparently this was all done as part of a federally-sponsored
| program that no politician wanted to see become public policy.
|
| One of the most useful parts of the book is a prediction of
| fallout zones across the US. The author notes that even at the
| time of publication, this was 10 years old. Imagine a map of the
| US with greyscale clouds running left/right. Darker means more
| potential for fallout. Really hard to do given uncertainties, but
| maybe valuable for big-picture planning. I'm not aware of a more
| modern map.
| q1w2 wrote:
| With some basic tools, a very simple shelter can be constructed
| with 2-3 days. Sufficient enough to keep you alive and
| radiation free.
|
| The real trick is not starving after.
| giantg2 wrote:
| To be fair, no book is going to be very useful in a crisis.
| It's helpful only if you read and prepare before hand. In the
| actual crisis, there likely won't be time to read it, gather
| supplies, build a shelter, etc.
| samwillis wrote:
| Seems to be down, believe it's this:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War_Survival_Skills
|
| https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VPFTAAAAMAAJ&printsec=fr...
| sva_ wrote:
| IPFS:
| bafykbzacedqk3izhcrqsk4lmnebhmi6dv2sn4h2nundwnyhuu5hmbleoqqiqm
|
| https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzacedqk3izhcrqsk4lmne...
| samwillis wrote:
| This is basically the perfect use case for IPFS.
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