Suppose you have a premonition that WWIII will kick-off on February 15, 2022 at 7 PM Eastern Standard Time.
That gives you all of Sunday and Monday and most of Tuesday to prepare.
Where are the holes in your preps? What can you do to fill them in that time frame?
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Suppose that Western Europe and North America's opponent(s) unleash cyber chaos at the start of the event. What resources will you need that are more than an hour's walk from where you will be at the starting gun? Are there any almost-good-enough alternatives within that one-hour walk?
Second part of the mental simulation:
Western Europe and North America get their butts handed to them. We authorize tactical nuclear weapons to save face. They go nuke in retaliation.
How long could you stay in your house if major targets in the continental US are hit? Fallout often has a grace-period before the dirty material lifted on the mushroom clouds starts coming down. Suppose you have two-to-ten hours. Grid is down. What do you do in those hours to minimize the need to go outside? That is, make a list. Remember, the hottest isotopes burn out the quickest in a decaying exponential fashion.
Third part:
Does China get a pass?
Do India and Pakistan lob nukes at each other?
Fourth part:
Who do you let into your lifeboat? Do they know that? Comms will be down.
FYI, officially the US doesn't have tactical nukes anymore, just strategic.
ReplyDeleteIf we had a war with Europe, I'd be interested to see what Germany, Denmark, Italy, and Turkey did with the nukes we have stationed there; the weapons are earmarked for delivery by them if needed, so all they'd need to do is crack open the vaults to get them out.
So no more nuclear torpedos on the fast attack boats?
DeleteThanks for the info regarding US not having tactical nukes.
ReplyDeleteSome go-getter might decide to use a strategic weapon to solve a tactical problem. The situation would escalate from there.
From a war-game perspective, the United States is nothing like it was at the end of WWII. Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh...not a factor. D.C. metro area is 5X what it was in 1950. The "classic" targeting of the Cold War is no longer.
I would be interested to see what the current targeting is.
Unfortunately for me, Chicago is upwind of me and is probably still on the list.
i'd be all clear except if they hit oak ridge, tn...fill up all my water cans. set them in the basement window sills. order a dump truck load of sand, bag it if time or just toss it on the first floor. use some tarps etc to make a mudroom/decontamination zone outside the basement door. assuming the nukes were accurate as reported of course. hardest part will be herding the cats back into the house.
ReplyDeleteMy impression of Oak Ridge is that it is now more of a basic research institution rather than a nuts-and-bolts assembler of weapons.
DeleteIf I were on the Red team I would focus on screwing up water, sanitation and the grid. I would discombobulate major ports and the petrochemical industry. I might use a few weapons to fry transportation choke-points.
Cold, dark, hungry, swimming in sewage, deprived of information most "civilized" people are soft and will roll-over and die.
This is all stuff a 6th grader could figure out so it is not like I am helping Vlad.
Brotherman, thats right down Gallagher Road from me.
DeleteThey still make the hot stuff at the lab today. Couple hummers with dual 50 cals parked at the gate, long road leading up to entrance. No Sir, its a live lab. I dunno if they assemble them there though, I think they just cook up the good stuff, ship it elsewhere for assembly.
I drive by the building once a week and a couple times a year get to see secure transport group taking a convoy down I-40. Kinda funny, they think the clearly unmarked government vans, jeeps, and tractor trailers "blend in" with regular traffic. Once when I saw it they actually had shit in it (saw them up in Bristol behind the old theatre, guys were taking a shopping break at the Bass Pro Shop, another funny story). Turns out that puck of plutonium went to Mars. One of my daughters friends father works in the transport group. He has some funny stories about a state trooper trying to pull them over...
Riverrider, if you're out this way, we should get a slice some day. You ever go to Little Nikki's or Big Eds?
K in Tenn
k, i'm down wind in va. but i do get out that way for vacation once in a while. thanks for the invite though. i'd love to live there but family is here. stay safe.
DeleteWe're close enough to the missile fields out here that we'd be toast. We should be clear if Denver got hit. It's ~70 miles away, and downwind most of the year. And yes, we have a "safe" place to go, and we're on the list for a "Get Your Ass Out Of There" moment....
ReplyDeleteI'd suggest getting yourself some sodium alginate (sold as a soup thickener) , pectin, or green tea, in that order as a defense from strontium-90. Strontium-90 has a long half-life. It wouldn't kill you fast, but it's bad if it gets incorporated into your bones. See:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC1935644/
https://www.ipen.br/biblioteca/cd/irpa/2004/files/6d6.pdf
You should already be fully prepped for surviving the after math of a nuclear exchange....it's too late to do much now except top of supplies if you can. The biggest issue would be fallout....and depending on a lot of factors like distance, wind and weather you may need NO special preps beside staying inside OR you might need a couple of feet of dirt and three plus weeks of holing up to survive. Where you are in relation to possible targets makes a big difference as does the normal prevailing wind patterns.
ReplyDeleteIf I know things were about to fall apart, I'd stock up on item's with shorter shelf lives - like batteries, bandages, antibiotic ointment, fill gas cans and tanks, etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd you have a good point about nuclear targeting having changed. I'd be curious to know how much it has, or if Russia is still using old target lists.
I think if I was Vlad I would pick kick off time for the Superbowl. As far as my survival, we are downwind of Ft. Campbell by 70 miles and south of Ft. Knox by about the same. We are good for food, water and ammo for 60 days but after that it's just play the hand tour dealt.
ReplyDeleteI am the only guy I know that has installed a hand pump in my well. I think I will be very popular someday. ---ken
ReplyDeleteThis area will get flattened if they start tossing nukes. No reason to consider survival in that scenario, it won't be possible.
ReplyDeleteShut off the water to the water heater - it's now a storage tank of pre-holocaust safe drinking water. Have kids fill every available container with water. I need some D cells to run the old civil defense Geiger counter I've got in the basement. Need to plan to shelter in basement for at least 3 weeks. Take shovel and fill in basement window wells and put as much dirt as I can against the side of the house. Put beds and mattresses in basement against a wall or in a corner to provide maximum protection from skyshine. I've got some potassium iodide pills in the basement already. Dust off the old printout I've got of "nuclear war survival skills" (available online for free as a .pdf). The best area to shelter in my home would be against a basement wall. You'd want to put some mass on the ground floor above to absorb radiation. Plan for waste is short trips to ground floor toilet, flushing with bucket of water only once per day max. If ground floor has too much radiation, plan for waste is using 5 gal bucket for commode. Liquid goes down drain if it's working, solid gets put in plastic trash bags. We could easily survive 3 weeks in the basement this way but would be completely screwed after that without access to food.
ReplyDeleteEverything depends on how long the emergency lasts and whether it goes non-conventional or not. And that doesn't just include nukes. CBRN - chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty hard to put up enough supplies to last a family for a few decades or more. Or protect against certain things ... look how panicked and feeble we got over covid, which for most of us was nothing more than a bad flu.
We're almost ok for off-grid living, just need to revive the hand-pumped well outside the kitchen door. And we don't have enough food in the freezer or on the hoof yet. I need another year or two. So if it happens before I'm ready, I'll take care of the family as long as I can and then find a way to keep calm and take some with me.
ReplyDeletei would like to note that china told putin not to ruin the ground here. they have a plan to take us out, leaving the real estate clean for their use. after the olympics, look out.
ReplyDelete