Nuclear fallout information

   / Nuclear fallout information #43  
With Russia yet again threatening the west with nukes, I thought it might be a good idea to spread some information that I've learned so far.

The blast will probably occur in a city, or all the cities. If they do it, they'll likely go all in with a 500 nuke strike. How many will actually make it to mainland or hit their intended target is another thing. We do have reasonable knowledge that most of their deployable nuclear weapons are ~150kt range. Surviving a direct hit isn't possible, but assuming you aren't hit, there's a few basic things you can do to survive the fallout.

Here's the most likely target map. The purple triangles are in a 500 warhead scenario, the black dots are in a 2000 warhead scenario.

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Fortunately for me, I'm in-between targets, but fallout would rain down considerably over my head. Unfortunately for me, my house didn't come with a fallout shelter. So I built one.

The thing about fallout is, once the bomb lands, it spreads in the air and follows the wind. If Baltimore, MD or Washington DC got hit, their fallout would make a bee-line for me.


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Fallout is tiny particles blasting radiation around in all directions. If it is outside, and you are inside behind a concrete wall, you have a degree of protection. However if you are inside and it lands on your roof, and your roof is made of shingles and wood rafters, you are not very protected. The key to protection from fallout is mass. Lead offers a high density per volume, but is expensive. Concrete and steel are good, followed by dirt.

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So, hiding in the sub-basement of a brick five story apartment building will leave you exposed to just 1/200 the amount of fallout radiation outside; hanging out in the living room of your one story wood frame house will only cut down the radiation by about one-half, which, if you are next to a nuclear explosion, will not do much to help you.

Fortunately, fallout typically runs it's course in 48-72 hours, but if you're seeking shelter, it's probably a good idea to stay a week just in case. So it's a good idea to have a week's supplies in your shelter. Personally, my shelter is in my basement, a 12x12 room with 8" solid concrete walls and roof. My house is made of concrete block, so leaving the shelter for a short period to use the bathroom is generally ok, making it easier.

As fallout particles are airborne, think of snowfall. Fallout will blanket everywhere snow does. If there are open windows or doors, fallout will come in them. So sealing your house to be as air tight as possible will be to your advantage. Close and tape all windows, door seems, anywhere that air can get in. Fallout will lay on the ground, roof, window ledges, anywhere snow can get to. And it will be blasting radiation in all directions.

If you have a direct line of sight to it, you are only protected by what is between you and it. Stand in your basement and look up, you are protected by the floor, carpet, ceiling drywall on first floor, plywood on the roof, and shingles. if you look at a wall, you're protected by the wall, and what the wall is made of. Don't count the studs or joists or trusses, they are not useful. If you stand in front of a window, you are protected by the glass in that window alone.

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I've attached some additional resources for extra reading time.

I'm open to constructive criticism, or any corrections, or if anyone wants to contribute to this they are welcome to.
If Russia launches 500 Nukes do you really think the world will be worth living in for 200 years anyway?

Oh I survived! Wait all vegetation, wildlife, and water sources on the planet are contaminated for the next 200 years! Is prepping really going to help? So you have 2 years of food/water....that wont be anywhere near enough.

What you need is a rocket to take you to Mars..its going to be move livable than Earth after a nuclear war. Start working on that.
 
   / Nuclear fallout information #44  
If folks would rather not try that’s their choice. But I’ll do everything I can to survive, and I’m probably not the only one. So I wanted to provide the information that I’d researched for anyone who wants to survive until the next generation. Will everyone? Probably not. But it’s better than no one.
I guess my thought would be to spend your time and money making humanity better (even if that is just in your own family circle) instead of planning for its demise.

That said, the topic is very interesting and engaging. The science behind nuclear explosions and their sequelae is very complex.
 
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   / Nuclear fallout information #45  
I'm not too concerned; I've seen this before and I believe that if our adversaries watch our news they'll conclude that they can do more damage to the country by leaving Portland intact.
I don't think that there are any other strategic targets nearby.
 
   / Nuclear fallout information #46  
For some reason Corvallis, Salem , and absurdly, Medford are on the target maps. Eugene Oregon, is not worth a single nuke?
I'm writing a stern letter to the Russian embassy regarding this oversight as we are a Sister City with Irkutsk, Russia.

Seriously, Medford is worthy of a nuke and Eugene isn't?
:)

BTW, it takes high explosives to set off a fission bomb that then sets off a fusion bomb. This is the difference between a thermoneclear bomb, a hydrogen bomb, and an atomic bomb. You could argue that, by yield, a fusion bomb has less radiation. But each war head still has that fission part to it. So if anything, there will be more radiation fall out, due to the numbers deployed, then if both sides just used a few, little atomic bombs. The size and individual yield of the primer fission bombs is highly classified. Though I hear, recently, that the specs were less classified then some people thought. :)

Preppers still think, a nuke war exchange is survivable. You, my friends, are being sold a fantasy of protecting yourself and kin to some how repopulate the world with a certain ideology as you emerge from your radioactive proof bunker in to a radioactive world. This was the ideology the US Civil Defense maintained up, until hydrogen bombs were invented. Then, they looked at it with the new H-bomb yields, and slowly decommissioned all these public/private shelters as useless. I know this because my Grand Father had a designated shelter as the local doctor and he had a shelter set up that the Civil Defence site stocked with food and water and stuff in the Mid-sixties. When the Grand Father died in the early eighties, we still had signs that there was a fall out shelter on the property. Which could hold maybe 40 people in a town that had 2,000. How would that have worked out? This made no sense as all the rations had since gone bad and I got a letter back that the site was decommissioned, and we could do what we wanted with it. I removed all the signs. And as a note, the food from the sixties, as set up, doesn't taste good, and will make you sick for a few days. I had to do the experiment, and you shouldn't eat anything in a can that old.
There is nothing wrong with prepping for a natural disaster, I do, but prepping for a nuke war is just silly, less you want to be an Australian Aborigine. Its a long flight there. And there is nothing wrong with that, but you are still in the wrong place. Radiation, circulating in the northern hemisphere on the winds will kill all the deer, or other animals, you think you will provide as food. Eat them, and you will see cancers that slowly kill off all that you wanted to protect in a slow and painful manner.
You can not by any way, escape the entire destruction of a culture, which these devices are designed to do. And there are still way too many of them, and too many hits, to do any sort of escape in the northern hemisphere.
We have revised the idea of playing with the idea of the unthinkable after 30 years of NOT thinking about it. We are back to the bad old days of the cold war, now with two counties, and not just one. Cause if China backs Russia, we are in a bad situation.
Thats why every one in the USA, now, stops buying any thing made from China. It solves the war, with out too much effort and little conflict.
 
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   / Nuclear fallout information #47  
For some reason Corvallis, Salem , and absurdly, Medford are on the target maps. Eugene is not worth a single nuke? I'm writing a stern letter to the Russian embassy regarding this oversight.
Seriously, Medford get a nuke and Eugene doesn't?
:)
Spare nuke, what are you going to do with it?

I'm certain to get nuked, i got a starlink dish sitting outside and Putain is pissed at Elon.
 
   / Nuclear fallout information #48  
The map/targets are quite old for the most part...as old as most of the speculations...
...Hopefully the US has state of the art counter measure technology and hardware where no where near the number of possible launched missiles ever reach their target...
...Thermonuclear explosions in the atmosphere are not a good thing either...so hopefully counter measures would only leave unexploded nukes laying around or on the sea floor...
 
   / Nuclear fallout information #49  
I have better things to do than contemplate a what if, like posting on this forum for one....lol
 
   / Nuclear fallout information #50  
I have better things to do than contemplate a what if, like posting on this forum for one....lol
Does anybody remember having to duck and hide from nuclear drills in school during Cold War. Showing my age but I can recall it in elementary school and also the old civil defense signs on buildings as child. History repeats itself hopefully not to death and destruction but awareness we live in a balance. In 1984 we were at the closest time in history for mutual destruction but humanity awoke within ourselves to not do the unthinkable. Soon after a movie came out called the “day after” (Jason Rimbaud) showing what could happen in destructive scenario. This was presented to us in highschool for our generation to understand nuclear exchange was end game for society.

Sure some could survive nuclear war but many will parish from radiation poisoning, starvation break down of society. Any war is bad , period. Need to figure out peacefully how to end these threats without loss of life on either side. We all need to deep breath remember we are supposed to helping each other to live peacefully. History is there to remind us not repeat it.
 
 
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