Thread: Tell Me About a Post Nuclear World

Are we talking about a nuclear weapon going off in your city or an all out "cold war gone hot" scenario?

In any case, the first sign of a nuclear blast is a blinding flash of light, at which point you should do like a 1950s civil alert ad and duck for cover. The shock wave should follow several seconds later depending on how close you are to ground zero. The shock wave from a nuke can topple a tank, so find the sturdiest damn thing around and hide behind it. If you're in a building, you'll have to be careful about stuff collapsing on you though. I'd assume that the best place for weathering out the shock wave would be in a basement/subway/underground whatever. I'd also block my ears to try and save my eardrums. The heat from a nuclear blast can go out for miles and travels at the speed of light, so you might be severely burnt (if not incinerated) if you are in the open before you have time to do anything at all.

If you survive the initial blast, which pretty much depends on how close to the explosion you were, then you'll have to try to limit any radiation exposure as much as possible. The radiation from a nuke comes from the microscopic fission leftovers of the bomb's uranium/plutonium, so an air blast would actually increase the irradiated area because the bomb's particles would be dispersed and then fall over the city, rather than being blocked by buildings/debris at ground level. The radiation always travels with the wind so you should be fine if you stay upwind of ground zero. After that I'd get as far as possible. No point in defending your house in a city that just got nuked, it's not like there's going to be anything left for you there.

If it's some kind of massive attack, then the military will know about it and have a small amount of time to warn the public. I don't know if they still have public fallout shelters in the US, but I'd just follow whatever directives the nuclear armageddon specialist dudes would give, they've spent a lot of time training for those kinds of scenarios. After that I'd try to leave the country as soon as possible before the fallout starts blanketing the countryside.

There was really no good reason for Akono to lock the first thread.

Originally Posted by Xei

There was really no good reason for Akono to lock the first thread.

I asked him to. It looked like a troll post with its grammar and one line post.

Anyway, I don't think you really have to worry about this. The odds are that if a nuke gets detonated, it'll be a small, ad-hoc terrorist bomb that had to be small enough to fit in a suitcase. It'll be devastating locally, but not affect the rest of the world.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

I asked him to. It looked like a troll post with its grammar and one line post.

Anyway, I don't think you really have to worry about this. The odds are that if a nuke gets detonated, it'll be a small, ad-hoc terrorist bomb that had to be small enough to fit in a suitcase. It'll be devastating locally, but not affect the rest of the world.

Haha. I can see why it looked like a troll post. I am not actually terrified of this. Rather I am going to revolve a project around this within the next few months, (hopefully,) and need all the data I can get. The bad grammar was to come off as a person legitamentally afraid of Russia up and nuking us to see how one would respond to suchg a person, (because that is the type of person I am catering to.) I will be honest, some of it was just me feeling silly.

The dirty bomb, suit case style stuff, only does damage to a couple of blocks. Its highly unlikely you will die from one, unless you are actually in the building that is being targeted. However it could cause disruptions if done in the city, and you should be prepared for that. In a lot of cases, the same types of preparations will be useful in floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and things like that. So even if its unlikely, being prepared for any natural disaster actually makes sense.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

I asked him to. It looked like a troll post with its grammar and one line post.

Anyway, I don't think you really have to worry about this. The odds are that if a nuke gets detonated, it'll be a small, ad-hoc terrorist bomb that had to be small enough to fit in a suitcase. It'll be devastating locally, but not affect the rest of the world.

Well it was clearly written in a satirical paranoid fashion and it already had an interesting and detailed post, plus spockman is hardly a nefarious member... perhaps just editing the post or messaging him?

But anyway... I heard back in school doing physics that a single kilo of plutonium, if vaporised in the upper atmosphere, is toxic enough to destroy all human life on Earth.

Originally Posted by Xei

Well it was clearly written in a satirical paranoid fashion and it already had an interesting and detailed post, plus spockman is hardly a nefarious member... perhaps just editing the post or messaging him?

But anyway... I heard back in school doing physics that a single kilo of plutonium, if vaporised in the upper atmosphere, is toxic enough to destroy all human life on Earth.

Wow, could it really? Do modern researchers still accept that as truth?

I guess so, this was only a couple of years ago, and the health effects of nuclear decay is pretty well established science which isn't really subject to change. I think we were doing some question about why plutonium wouldn't be good fuel for a space probe.

Originally Posted by Xei

But anyway... I heard back in school doing physics that a single kilo of plutonium, if vaporised in the upper atmosphere, is toxic enough to destroy all human life on Earth.

I don't think that's true, a nuke contains a few kilos of plutonium and we've blown them up all the way into space. Plus during a nuclear explosion, most of the plutonium is converted into its fissile components.

I'm talking about chemically vaporising the plutonium.

Edit: I did some looking and it looks like I was misinformed, it's less harmful than cyanide. Strange, my teacher did this whole thing about the dust being distributed by global air streams. Well, that's a relief... I'll just go back to worrying about smallpox and nanobots.

Even then I'd bet that the combined total of all the nuclear air blasts in the 20th century have put more than a kilo of plutonium in the atmosphere. It seems that plutonium's danger only comes from its radioactivity as well, which isn't really worse than the radioactivity from the elements in nuclear fallout.

Isotopes and compounds of plutonium are dangerous due to their radioactivity. Contamination by plutonium oxide (spontaneously oxidized plutonium) has resulted from a number of military nuclear accidents where nuclear weapons have burned.[81] However, based on chemical toxicity alone, the element is less dangerous than arsenic or cyanide and about the same as caffeine.[82][83]