Would you even want to survive a nuclear fallout?

[Whose]

Seeing loads of threads about bunkers and prepping etc etc

I have a friend who talks about this a lot and is deeply unimpressed with my stance of "honestly, I wouldn't want to survive the apocalypse anyway".

I like good cheese, and chocolate, I like wasting time on the Internet and going on holiday. I like hot showers.
The apocalypse sounds like it sucks. I haven't the first clue how to season a rat roasted on a stick, and cockroaches scare me. Camping is shit.

AIBU to think that in the case of a nuclear fallout, just instantly being wiped out sounds like the far nicer option?

A previous thread on this topic prompted me to do some research, because I couldn't understand the idea that a nuclear strike would automatically involve wiping out whole countries and everyone dying. So I decided to have a look at the RAND corporation's literature at the role NATO's nuclear deterrent could play in the conflict around Ukraine. I find that I feel much better about really scary things when I know as much as possible about them.

The gist of it (and it was a LONG document) is that actual launching of nuclear weapons is unlikely, but if it happened, it wouldn't just be a case of Russia nuking the living daylights out of the West and the West shooting everything they had back to wipe everyone off the map. It would be far more likely that it would begin with a limited exchange of smaller weapons into non-populated areas, and there would actually be tactics involved instead of bam bam bam. Not initiating by dropping an absolutely massive bomb on a city.

This gives rise to the idea of a 'limited' nuclear exchange. Some people think that this sort of exchange would inevitably escalate to an Armageddon situation. I'm not sure I agree, I think it's possible that one side would back down before it reached that point as everyone dying is not in anyone's interest. There's no way to know for sure I suppose unless it happened.

From what I understood from what I read, mutually assured destruction has evolved to more mutually assured retaliation (if it's possible to achieve any meaningful objective by retaliating). My point is- if you get the warning, and I ABSOLUTELY don't think that it will happen, I definitely wouldn't be loading my family into the car and driving towards wherever it was meant to fall! It might turn out to be a survivable situation.

I'll link to the document in case anyone feels like spending two hours reading through war scenarios. Apologies if I've misunderstood any of it, it was a rather heavy-going read!

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/researchreports/RR2700/RR2781/RANDD_RR2781.pdf

Yes I would want to try to survive. I will always choose life, even it’s a really shit version of it.

@shreddednips thank you for that useful information and link.

[quote CharSiu]@EmmaGrundyForPM I watched The Road once and I honestly agree with you. Of all the films I have ever watched I will never watch it again. Apparently the book is even more distressing.

I wouldn’t want to survive as negative as that sounds.[/quote]
I watched it at the cinema when it first came out, when it ended everyone just sat there, numb.
I agree, the book is more distressing.

Agreed. I've got Covid, so at least have time to catch up on some reading! I'll have a look at that tonight.

No problem, I just think that sometimes these fears can become bogeymen. ANY use of nuclear weapons would be appalling and hugely serious, but it wouldn't necessarily mean instant Armageddon either in my opinion. We can all speculate, but nobody actually knows how entities would really behave unless it happened. Again, I really think it's so unlikely to happen. But if it did, it would be awful if people started deliberately moving into more dangerous areas because they were so terrified by Threads and conversations like this.

Sorry if I’m repeating, the bombs drop on Japan were about 15 kilatons in size. The bombs today are about 3,000 times more powerful, and his got about 6,000 of them.

I watched it at the cinema when it first came out, when it ended everyone just sat there, numb.
I agree, the book is more distressing.

Look at the reality of the pandemic v. the dramatic version in multiple films like Contagion

Our forebears survived diseases that killed 20-25% of the population.

The reality is so much less dramatic than we fear in many disaster scenarios.

Nuclear war wouldn't necessarily be Armageddon but it would be pretty shit- unless you have a place in a bunker. I would hope the bomb hit me tbh

No.
If it ever was to happen then I would want to be taken out in the first blast.

I don't think I add value in a post apocalyptic life

I definitely don’t. Unless someone needs a pivot table my skills would largely be useless.

@bebanjo

Sorry if I’m repeating, the bombs drop on Japan were about 15 kilatons in size. The bombs today are about 3,000 times more powerful, and his got about 6,000 of them.

Now I'm wading into areas that I'm not quite sure of, but I think I read that the vast majority of all nuclear weapons are smaller missiles designed to take out strategically important targets without causing enormous loss of life. Also, I don't think that all of Russia's stock is anywhere near in a usable condition. There are certainly massive bombs in existence but I sincerely hope someone would find a way to deescalate before it got to that.

I should point out too that the link I shared is not exactly comforting reading and it's just exploring hypothetical situations. I wouldn't read it if you're already feeling very anxious. I just think while it's important to understand what the situation is, it's also really bad for people to spend too much time dwelling on the absolute worst possible outcomes of any given scenario. And while there are some truly wicked people and ways they have found to hurt each other, we shouldn't lose our faith in humanity's ability to prevail and the good and clever people working so hard to prevent these things ever happening.

I knew I should have purchased a disused bunker 15 years ago 🤦‍♀️

In all honesty I’d rather die instantly than not and it’s not something I would ever normally consider but I’d rather my kids died with me, awful as that sounds and will probably get flamed for it.

Off to spend the next 2 hours reading that link…

shreddednips Now I'm wading into areas that I'm not quite sure of, but I think I read that the vast majority of all nuclear weapons are smaller missiles designed to take out strategically important targets without causing enormous loss of life. Also, I don't think that all of Russia's stock is anywhere near in a usable condition. There are certainly massive bombs in existence but I sincerely hope someone would find a way to deescalate before it got to that.

Some of them are also designed to explode in the air, to take out electronics and communications mainly and with relatively low fallout.

while there are some truly wicked people and ways they have found to hurt each other, we shouldn't lose our faith in humanity's ability to prevail and the good and clever people working so hard to prevent these things ever happening.

That is a lovely summary of the content of EB White's letter than I posted upthread. Exactly the same realistic perspective and optimism.

@SickAndTiredAgain

I don't think I add value in a post apocalyptic life

I definitely don’t. Unless someone needs a pivot table my skills would largely be useless.

You and me both.

I am an Excel ninja, but I feel that's a skill that would be largely under-valued in the nuclear winter, sadly.

@Whatafustercluck

Our closest 'target' is 30 miles away. Depending on the size of the weapon, we could feasibly survive (providing no damage to windows/ walls) the fallout which, after about 2 weeks, reduces to 1%. I wouldn't want to survive if the rest of the country/ world was annihilated, mind. Of course in that scenario I'd want to be directly under it!

How do people know their target? Is there an 'enter your postcode and find your nearest nuke' type of app? Like the one showing how many covid cases are in your area

@Tilltheend99

You do realise that Japan was nuked twice in 1945. Do you think the people of Japan would rather all be dead? This thread is a bit tasteless.

I think people are answering with the thought of a more apocalyptic hypothetical scenario, that’s what I had in mind anyway. Would I rather die quickly, or slowly because most of the population is gone, everything is poisoned and I have to forage or fight for food. End of civilisation type stuff, the walking dead minus the zombies. Obviously if it was a situation where that hadn’t happened, that’s different.

Not initiating by dropping an absolutely massive bomb on a city.

Just to expand a bit on this. There aren't really any "massive" nuclear bombs in use. I think the average is around 800kt and the biggest operational nuclear device in the US arsenal has a payload of 1.2mt. Once they get much bigger than that they become difficult to attach to a delivery system and they don't really do a huge amount more damage at ground level so they stopped making them bigger and focused on making them faster/harder to stop.

They'd still do huge amounts of damage but they're not country killers. The first screenshot shows the blast zones of a 800kt bomb detonating over Edinburgh, shit for those under it but the rest of the country will survive just fine. Even the fallout would have a limited impact due to the prevailing winds in the UK, it would mostly land out in the North Sea. You might say but Russia have thousands of them, which is true, but only around 1600-2000 are ready for deployment and it would take around 500 to completely irradiated the UK alone, so even in an all out MAD dash there would still be plenty of places in the world that would remain nuke free.

The second image, just as a comparison, shows the effects of the biggest nuclear bomb detonated at 50mt. This delivers a huge increase who would be affected but still isn't country killer, although a few would do the job. Fortunately there were only 3 of them ever made, two were detonated in tests and one was decommissioned and put on display. Even if there were some secret ones hidden away by Russia they can only be delivered by heavy bombers so would require Russia to establish air dominance over their target first, by which point you probably don't need to worry too much if your on the ground.

It's often (tongue in cheek) been said that I'd rather die than go camping, so no I don't think a post apocalyptic world would be for me.

With enough warning I'd hope to find a largely pain-free and peaceful way to exit stage left in advance.

If I walk to the bottom of my road I can see the nuclear power plant Sizwell a bit further down the coast,but if that didn't get hit, i would try very hard to survive. In the hope that not all of the country will be decimated,and slowly we could start again.

Problem is I'm not sure you get a choice of whether to survive or not. Killing yourself is an option but not as easy as all that.

No I wouldn't want to survive, look at the horrors people inflict on each other now and imagine how much worse it would be. Hopefully where l live we'd all be wiped out pretty much instantly anyway.

I've always thought it was the only advantage of dh being type 1 diabetic, post nuclear war we have the means to die a painless death before the rampaging and pillaging begins!
No way would I want to try and survive that kind of world

Surviving a nuclear war didn't seem very nice in Nevile Shute's "On The Beach"