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Comment by lightbyte | Hacker News Reader

Considering school shooters actually happen, and quite often at that, I'd say it's a bit more scary than a nuclear drill.

Nuclear drills don't really do anything anyway, if a nuke is coming you're going to be dead regardless of you hiding under your desk.

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That depends on how far away you are. There is a radius within which you simply die, and a radius beyond which you will be fine regardless. Between those two radii, you can absolutely reduce your risk of death.

The instant death zone of nukes will kill, I believe, significantly less than half the victims. Many more people will die of fairly "pedestrian" causes like building collapses or even fire. In other words, a nuclear explosion at medium distance is pretty similar to a chemical bomb hitting somewhere close. So hiding under your desk isn't actually that useless.

...if a nuke is coming you're going to be dead regardless of you hiding under your desk.

Ridiculous as it may seem, I remember some information in the late 1970's about 'what to do in the event of a nuclear attack' and 'underneath a table' was one of the places they advised as a good place to hide.

This is actually quite good advice. If you're close enough, you're dead regardless, but even miles away from an impact you still need to protect yourself against things like flying glass and falling debris.

Kind of like the Israeli standard warning to get into a concrete stairwell if you hear a missile alarm and don't have a real bomb shelter available. In a direct hit you're dead anyway, but mild defensive measures can vastly reduce the lethal radius of an attack.

EDIT: Here's a vintage poster on the subject. Fairly factually correct, but awful for morale: https://i.redd.it/fw2xx579qw401.jpg

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