If a nuclear bomb is dropped on your city, here's where you should run and hide.

[L. Coyote]

This is the updated since the 1950s "Under your school desk" advice.

http://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-explosion-fallout-radiation-survival-shelter-2017-3

President Trump has egged on a new arms race. Russia violated weapons treaties to upgrade its nuclear arsenal. North Korea is developing long-range missiles and practicing for nuclear war — and the US military is considering preemptive attacks on the isolated nation's military facilities.

Meanwhile, nuclear terrorism and dirty bombs remain a sobering threat.

Though these events are unlikely to trigger the last-ditch option of nuclear war, let alone a blast in your neighborhood, they are very concerning.

So you might be wondering, "If I survive a nuclear-bomb attack, what should I do?"

......................

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye,

like we said in the old days. It's déjà vu all over again...

[RKP5637]

2. Gotta go find my old school desk! n/t

[Auggie]

13. +1

[hunter]

38. Those things were built like tanks when I was a kid.

It took two sixth graders to move one.

[dchill]

53. Yeah, but I used to worry about the fallout...

that would come in through the inkwell!

[Hekate]

41. I was shocked when a cynical high school friend said that around '63 or '64....

I lived thru the Cuban Missile Crisis in terror, but he had figured it out by age 16.

For anyone who cares, there is a host of post-nuclear sci fi from the 1950s and 1960s. Stuff used to give me nightmares.

For an excellent non-sci fi novel about what the actual survivors of The Bomb experienced, I always recommend "Black Rain" by Ibuse Masuji. His protagonist is one of the many "rescuers" who streamed into the devastated city to offer aid, all of them unaware of the intense radiation they were being exposed to. I read that at university -- it remains on my shelf after all these decades.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

43. I remember some of that post-nuclear sci-fi.

Some of the scariest things were a TV drama called Alas, Babylon - that one scared the bejeebers out of me. There was also On the Beach, Fail Safe, Dr. Strangelove (one of my favorite movies), a few unnerving Twilight Zone episodes, and a book called A Canticle for Leibowitz.

[Hekate]

45. Canticle for Leibowitz was another excellent book...

I was a Twilight Zone fan, but had to catch up to the movies later.

We had a really weird discussion here maybe 10 years ago with a slew of younger members insisting -- insisting -- that the US govt had engaged in a conspiracy to suppress all photographic and eyewitness evidence of the horrors of atomic warfare in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. That was sure news to me, who had seen so many photos splashed around LIFE magazine, for instance, when I was still in gradeschool.

[heaven05]

54. so true

lol, but really sad. Oh the hell with this board today, on another thread so many democratic Party members? War mongering, drop the bombs! Bomb the hell out of them!. Sad really. All you Christ lovers, Jesus was really about peace unless it came to bankers and such....

[Beartracks]

3. Missile looks like a penis in that first toon.

It's even orange.



===============

[L. Coyote]

7. You don't suppose

they apply that orange cake face crap in that region too?

[MADem]

15. Was this tiny hands compensation at play, I wonder? nt

[KittyWampus]

24. why do you think China keeps supporting NorK while it's in such a messed up state?

So many millions of neighbors so close to starving.

I don't understand what's in it for China.

If NorK opened up, China would have a huge market to sell it's stuff and even more investing opportunities.

[vlyons]

26. What's in it for China

is not having to feed north Koreans. The people are starving. their money is worthless.

[hunter]

40. China, South Korea, and Russia don't want millions of hungry clueless people...

... suddenly flooding across their borders.

And who can blame them?

[MADem]

47. It's the "verge" of their front yard, basically....

If a car goes off the road, it'll plow up the verge instead of their nice lawn.

All that lovely NK buffer/cannon fodder between them and their "enemies." And, push come to shove, they can "control" those troops of Li'l Kim's simply by controlling access to the rice bowl, which they basically do.

Of course, nowadays they tend to be merchants more than fighters (unlike the Mao days) but they can revert, if needs must. They're not sitting on their asses; they've started to plus-up their Navy in a big way, for example....

[dalton99a]

4. Good article.

[PsychoBabble]

5. Damn. Seattle felt like an awesome place ...

Until NOW.

[Crash2Parties]

20. What about the infamous touristy "underground city"?

[PsychoBabble]

23. LOL. Been there ...

Not sure I wanna LIVE there.

(Unless it is the only way to stay alive)

[Lebam in LA]

6. If a nuclear bomb is dropped

I want to be at ground zero. Have no desire to live in a post nuclear world

[Grammy23]

8. Yup....at least at ground zero...

We will never know what hit us. Blinding flash, loud noise and it will be over.

Not to make light of any of this but frankly, sometimes you need to laugh to keep from crying....

I live not too far (as the crow flies) from Eglin Air Force base where MOAB was tested a number of years ago. It is likely I heard it but they test stuff all the time there and so you kind of get used to loud booms and bangs. I wonder if that makes this area a prime target for an attack??

An aside: Before I retired, I worked for a health related non-profit and we were often asked to do presentations to schools. One time I was doing a school program not far from Eglin to a class of 4th graders. Throughout most of the program there were the loudest booms you could imagine taking place practically on the playground. (Well, not REALLY that close but enough to make the ground shake and the windows rattle.) Not a single child flinched or looked out the windows to see anything. They just sat there listening and paying attention. They were totally used to it but I confess, it was not easy for me to carry on as normal with what sounded like full scale war taking place a few miles away.

[sarcasmo]

12. I've spent quite a bit of time on Okaloosa Island. I'M not sure if the Eglin area is the safest

place or the first place that will be hit.

[beachbum bob]

9. pssst...there aint no surviving a full out nuclear war...just saying

after dust and radiation settles, everything is gone for hundreds of years or more

[workinclasszero]

17. Thats right. The survivors of a large nuclear will face this next...

Nuclear winter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter

[TexasTowelie]

52. ...and Trump will declare it as a success

because he stopped Global Warming.

[cwydro]

10. I love the "until rescuers arrive."

[onethatcares]

11. they will be

the real "Walking Dead".

[cwydro]

16. Yes indeed.

A sobering thought.

[MADem]

14. My home was a designated shelter at the height of the Cold War.

It's an old pile with very, VERY thick stone over brick walls.

I think there's only 1 family in the neighborhood who might remember that, though.

[cwydro]

19. My dad actually built one in the 60s.

My sister and I loved playing in it.

My mother made it very clear she would NOT be joining us if the unthinkable happened. She had no wish to be in those close quarters, nor did she think the world would be worth living in after a nuclear war.

[MADem]

49. Mine was the whole house, due to the thickness of the walls and the foundation/cellar.

Place is a fort. It takes a bit of work to heat it up, but it holds the heat pretty well. Same deal w/ summer time heat--it's like a cave, at least ten, often 20 degrees cooler than the outside air.

[randome]

25. So...um, where do you live MADem? Got any rooms for rent? I'm asking for a friend.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Where do uncaptured mouse clicks go?[/center][/font][hr]

[MADem]

48. LOL! The civil defense sign is long gone....

If they come and put it back up, I'm moving.

[Crash2Parties]

31. Our home would fare well if the bombs fell elsewhere.

Duct tape & plastic in storage (from past drywall work) to seal door & windows; garage would act as an airlock to keep dust out
Emergency (earthquake) kit has iodine tablets, water, food, solar rechargers & radios, etc.
Multiple geiger counters + batteries
HEPA filters galore (originally for allergies)
HEPA face masks (originally for sanding)
Local water system is gravity fed, w/ enclosed tanks

If you notice, not much of that is out of the ordinary for many homes.

But that's all only useful if say, Trump provokes North Korea and they set off a single bomb on Seoul, South Korea. Not coming down with cancer would depend on luck of location & dispersal of radioisotopes. Luckily it wouldn't be like Fukushima where it just kept spewing out for days & weeks & months as they cleaned up & disturbed the soil (& still is in the water).

We are in a location where the prevailing winds split to go around a set of mountains; it creates a shadow effect (or did with Fukushima). And we have a stupidly thick stucco exterior that does provide some blocking (tested). But if there is so much fallout that we have to worry about the walls not providing adequate shielding from high energy gamma* radiation from fallout, well that means there is so much it wouldn't be going away any time soon and we are all completely screwed anyway. It's not like the human race can simply hole up for a weekend, a month or a few years - count on increased cancer rates for a couple generations. Why isn't that considered a crime against humanity?

*Alpha is blocked by few inches of air & beta doesn't travel through walls easily. Neutrons are only a concern near the blast.

[calimary]

18. Pop a chocolate into the mouth and go out smiling.

I doubt there's much "recovery" or "survival" after a nuclear blast.

Hell, I live in a big city on the West Coast. Probably well within the bad zone of any little flying "gifts" from North Korea. If there's a nuke, I'd want it to come right down on my head. I don't think I'd want to be around to pick up the pieces - all of which you couldn't touch, anyway, because of the radioactivity - that doesn't just fade away in a few minutes or a few days. See all my little birdies and squirrels and flowers and gardens gone forever. Nope. I don't want to "survive" that.

I'd rather let it just snuff me out quickly.

Morbid, 'eh? Well, I think about that a lot these days. I'm in my 60s. Retired. Kids grown and gone - very nicely doing their own thing and running their own lives now, and really don't need either of us anymore. More days behind me than in front of me, and I've had a good life. And if somebody's gotta go - let it be someone like me, aging and increasingly in the way. I've lived my life. I think I'd see it as making more room for the young and fit, who can bounce back more quickly, smarter and more flexible and electronically connected to this modern world while I'm a total technophobe. I kinda see it that way already. In some ways I already feel left behind.

[FakeNoose]

21. Guys this isn't gonna happen

Our military leaders will assassinate Trump if they have to. They're not going to let him start World War III.
The North Koreans are crazy but they have -zero- chance of launching a bomb that would hit us.
We'd see it immediately and send it right back to North Korea.

I know these cartoons are meant to be "funny" but they're just getting people all upset.
Is this fair to our kids and grand-kids?
Is this how you want them to live?

Thing #1 is to impeach Trump immediately. Let's not be deterred from that.

[Crash2Parties]

35. Yeah, not like he put a guy named "crazy dog" or some such in charge of the military.

Who keeps pulling at his leash & convinces Trump to authorize stupid military actions.

[Crash2Parties]

22. Bomb hitting your city - unlikely. If it does you will likely die soon it's just a matter of when.

That's one of those things you can't really do much about. And it's not like N. Korea can hit us anyway; they are aiming at Seoul, S.Korea.

However, it is far - far - more likely that if even a single low yield nuke is detonated above ground - even one - the radionuclides will be carried by the wind around the hemisphere. It won't matter if you are in a target city.

Also? Unless you are near ground zero, it's not the environmental alpha, beta or gamma that you need to worry so much about. It is ingesting or inhaling radioactive particles of fallout carried on the wind or previously incorporated into produce, meat or milk. Those particles - again, assuming you aren't where the bomb goes off - will lodge in a lung or replace calcium in your bones or otherwise be incorporated into your body instead of the non-radioactive versions, or replace elements near them on the periodic table. Then they sit, in your body bathing nearby cells with new radiation as they breakdown into non-radioactive isotopes. That is how bombs continue killing for decades.

After Fukushima, the EPA hid the problem by resetting all of their West Coast monitoring stations so that readings prior and post could not be compared. Then they also raised the "safe minimum" by several orders of magnitude (as did the governments of Canada and Japan). So don't count on "the authorities" to act in your best interests; expect them to cover up the problem as long as they can. Those cute graphics of, "stay in your shelter until instructed to evacuate" are fantasies.

Buy or build an at home radiation detector and join radioactive@home or radnet. They are citizen run groups where people's stations feed readings in on a regular basis. It's the only way you'll know if your home is safe. We saw waves of spikes in readings that eventually dampened down after Fukushima as the fallout was carried around the globe by the wind. On the days when they spiked, we kept the kids indoors and ran the HEPA filters with doors and windows closed. Iodine tabs are in the emergency / earthquake kit just in case. A relative lived in L.A. at the time, which was hit harder than where we live. Her daughter came down with cancer five months later. I'm guessing that in a few more decades the governments of the USA, Canada & Japan may finally admit that there were spikes in cases.

Btw, if it does happen & your town has federal government buildings from the 50's, 60's & 70's - or buildings that were government during that era - they were likely designed to double as fallout shelters.

[Kablooie]

27. It's unlikely N Korea could send a nuclear bomb into the US.

Alaska would be the closest but to get to the 48 states Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana would be the next closest with California, Nevada Utah and Wyoming next.

The closest major cities are San Francisco and Los Angeles but they are still pretty far away.
Most other major cities, Chicago, New York, Wash. DC are much farther away.

It's probably unlikely they could send a missile reliably into the US.

Of course S. Korea and Japan would be relatively easy to attack.
It's just insane that Japan could once again be one of the few countries actually threatened with nuclear weapons.

[L. Coyote]

32. Whose submarine is that off the coast of Cali they were hunting the other day?

Created quite a buzz to see all the military scrambling and flying over that area for hours.

[Kablooie]

37. I haven't heard about that.

On Wikipedia it lists several subs that NK have. They are diesel/electric and one is an Experimental Ballistic Missile Submarine.

[L. Coyote]

39. The likelihood of what NK will or will not do is not determined by what you have heard.

But hey, if that comforts you .... even though they have promised to nuke you.

[EX500rider]

42. N Korea has zero subs that could sneak over to the US...

....mostly coastal junk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_North_Korean_ships

[Kablooie]

44. That's what I would expect

[LittleBlue]

28. Why are people posting hyperbole like this?

Kim hasn't even been able to mount a nuke on a missile of any kind, let alone demonstrate that his missiles can hit US territory. His missiles are mostly failing after launch. We have anti-missile technology that completely outclasses anything NK has.

There is zero chance of Kim nuking any US city. He can't even nuke his neighbors a few dozen miles to the south. His nukes haven't been miniaturized and are too heavy to mount on a missile.

[Crash2Parties]

34. Trump's North Korean twin could almost hit Seoul with a nuke flung by tribuchet

...and we'd get the radioactive nuclides as a party favor about two or three days later thanks to the prevailing wind patterns.

[Luz]

50. Why would Kim even want to send a nuke. He's sitting

in his catbird seat, he's got everything he wants, every whim granted. He's a fat, greedy little pig, but he loves his good life. Kim is an intelligent man, he knows what a post nuke world means. He won't give up his cushy life.

[JNelson6563]

29. Some places more safe than others.

Here in northern MI it seems relatively safe (if our Gov doesn't kill us with poisoned water of course) in a lot of ways. Weather-wise the worst that hits us is snow. Lots of it. But we know how to deal with it. Even the big snow dumps, we get through. Also,, not near any coast which is where bombs would hit. Plus we are VERY close to Canada! Great for easy escape if necessary!

[Brother Buzz]

30. I'll head straight for my wine cellar

It won't provide much protection against radiation fallout, but it full of fine mature vintages. I'll leave the door open for anyone in the neighborhood, only remember, it's BYOG (bring your own glass).

[Crash2Parties]

33. You should consider storing some cheeses down there too ...and crackers.

Obviously a brie or triple cream would have to be consumed every 60 days or so, but that is the price of being prepared. There are others that will keep longer; might not be bad for variety.

[Brother Buzz]

36. Chocolate, too

My 1987 Dry Creek Zinfandel and a chunk of Ritter Sport Bittersweet Chocolate sends me to the moon. And speaking of moons, I should use Wallace & Gromit's playbook and bring back some cheese. Oh, I got the crackers covered, I still have a twenty pound tin of cold war era survival crackers.

[Crash2Parties]

55. Now that's funny - I just assumed chocolate is part of every emergency kit!

But yeah, if you have reds you gotta have chocolate. Is that '87 the "old vine"?

[Brother Buzz]

56. Post prohibition dry farmed 'old vine'

ALL the grapes are now under contract to Gallo of Sonoma, and they are paying three times what I used to pay. That being said, they really were killer grapes, and the late eighties were killer years.

[Demtexan]

46. I am not worried about NK.

It is the fool in white house.

He has no control like a 2 year old.

If we do not get him out we will not have clean air or clean water.

I think we in more danger of another depression.

Lack of healthcare.

He bombing this country right with his pen.

[krispos42]

51. I live in Fairfield County, CT

I'm downwind of NYC and surrounded by defense companies like Sikorsky, Pratt and Whitney, Raytheon, etc.

If shit goes down, I'm quickly dead. Probably not in a blinding flash of light, but not much longer.