Nuclear explosion impact on humans indoors (2022)
aip.scitation.org
aip.scitation.org
My sincere hope for my family and I in a mid-grade to all-out nuclear exchange is that we perish immediately. This would spare us exposure to subsequent famine and the loss of things like acetaminophen and central heating, not to mention civil society.
I do not subscribe to nuclear winter scare-theory. My greater concern is that the petrochemical supply and complex chemical chain will be largely destroyed in any kind of a material nuclear exchange. Without fossil fuel subsidies for agriculture mass starvation is certain.
Obviously MAD has changed things, but Hiroshima was back to normal in about 2 years. Power was restored in just a few days for example.
https://davidson.weizmann.ac.il/en/online/askexpert/recovery...
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/18/story-of-citi...
I'm not as convinced nuclear winter is a scare theory either, I think it's hard to say, but it frankly doesn't even have to factor in the slightest.
Without fossile fuels for agriculture, starvation is certain. Without fossile fuel subsidies, we'd just pay a bit more for food and slightly less for other things.
The govt at one point was running massive warehouses to store cheese, as a way to keep up milk prices. This is the origin of “government cheese.”
TIL.
See also: council juice
Most famines in the last 100 years were at least partially caused by an inability to supply food from neighboring or just slightly more distant regions.
There are also people who say that the overproduction of food in EU and US causes underproduction of food in poorer countries, making them less self sufficient and more sensitive to price increases and supply chain disruptions.
My original plan was to see what happens and make a go of it, but to be prepared to take the quick way out if it becomes too horrifying.
But now I have kids and I’m out of ideas. Maybe something about fleeing to my cottage where there’s fewer people and more nature.
The short-term impact of a major nuclear exchange is fairly well supported by science. Nuclear explosions, particularly thermonuclear explosions, are powerful enough to propel fine particulate matter high enough into the atmosphere that no rain can wash it back to the ground. Unlike smoke from a forest fire, it will persist in the atmosphere for decades and spread globally, dimming the sun and negatively impacting global temperatures and insolation across the planet. That means crop failures for everyone, not just the combatants.
A nuclear first-strike that successfully wipes out the enemy's ability to retaliate will likely still lead to global starvation for decades. While scary, this does make it less likely for a major nuclear power to ever use such a first strike. Even if you win, you lose.
AKA The Putin Way.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Criticism_and_d...
I think we can be confident that the really definitive work on this subject hasn't happened yet -- thank heaven.
Here's a blog article about it [2].
Here's the abstract:
> A limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan could ignite fires large enough to emit more than 5 Tg of soot into the stratosphere. Climate model simulations have shown severe resulting climate perturbations with declines in global mean temperature by 1.8 °C and precipitation by 8%, for at least 5 y. Here we evaluate impacts for the global food system. Six harmonized state-of-the-art crop models show that global caloric production from maize, wheat, rice, and soybean falls by 13 (±1)%, 11 (±8)%, 3 (±5)%, and 17 (±2)% over 5 y. Total single-year losses of 12 (±4)% quadruple the largest observed historical anomaly and exceed impacts caused by historic droughts and volcanic eruptions. Colder temperatures drive losses more than changes in precipitation and solar radiation, leading to strongest impacts in temperate regions poleward of 30°N, including the United States, Europe, and China for 10 to 15 y. Integrated food trade network analyses show that domestic reserves and global trade can largely buffer the production anomaly in the first year. Persistent multiyear losses, however, would constrain domestic food availability and propagate to the Global South, especially to food-insecure countries. By year 5, maize and wheat availability would decrease by 13% globally and by more than 20% in 71 countries with a cumulative population of 1.3 billion people. In view of increasing instability in South Asia, this study shows that a regional conflict using <1% of the worldwide nuclear arsenal could have adverse consequences for global food security unmatched in modern history.
[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1919049117
[2] https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/03/16/even-limited-in...
Your conclusion doesn't follow. You're assuming that national leaders are rational: Putin's actions in Ukraine show that this is simply not something we can count on.
Personally, I think it's highly likely we're going to experience a major nuclear exchange in the next few decades or less, with all the horrors (including global starvation) that entails. It's apparent to me that humans are simply too stupid to keep a global society running without destroying themselves.
An available calorie reduction this fast means famine, nuclear winter or not. I think tangible consequences like this helps normal people to understand the risks of nuclear war more effectively than trying to explain nuclear winter.
Even a relatively small, compared to a global nuclear exchange, war in Ukraine sent ripples across the foods markets, because the war affected some noticeable amounts of wheat grown in the world, of fertilizers produced in the world, and of natural gas powering fertilizer production elsewhere in Europe.
Probably very few. Infecting yourself is pretty much an equivalent of killing yourself. Except in movies they often make it look like an extremely painful, prolonged, and torturous way of doing so. But I imagine quite many will resort to other methods of accomplishing the same end-result.
Her reaction was immediate and unequivocal: we are going to do everything we possibly can to survive.
I guess generations of natural selection on a genetically isolated population really -does- matter!
Needing to tough out headaches without Tylenol and wear a coat or put wood in the fireplace inside your cabin...post apocalyptic first world problems.
edit: less moist
Amen to that. With a family with small kids, I can only hope that we don't even realise what is happening and die instantly.
When COVID was new and we were deep in lockdown and there was no vaccine in sight, there was a definite feeling of "will the world ever be like it was again? Is everything we knew irreversibly changed forever?". It was a worrying feeling. I can only imagine how depressing and frankly terrifying it must feel to know that life as you knew it was over (and it will never "go back to normal"), and you and your kids are now going to live in some sort of hellscape and probably die of some "trivial" injury or accident, if you don't starve or get murdered first.
> Amen to that. With a family with small kids, I can only hope that we don't even realise what is happening and die instantly.
You probably won't, though, unless you deliberately decide stay very close to a high-value target at all times. IIRC, the casualty estimates in NukeMap (https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/) show large amounts of the population would survive the initial blasts.
My point is: most of the people wishing they'd die instantly will probably have that "fun," too, unless they have weird habits meant to maximize that possibility that and/or a solid suicide plan (e.g. running around with a concealed-carry pistol).
Wow, never read about this before. I see that it equates to Paracetamol. You mean that we would run out of that medicine? And if so, why is that? Happy if you could provide an explanation (I have no medical background, mind you).
> Wow, never read about this before. I see that it equates to Paracetamol. You mean that we would run out of that medicine? And if so, why is that? Happy if you could provide an explanation (I have no medical background, mind you).
Not the op, but by "acetaminophen and central heating" he meant modern comforts and conveniences would go away.
Beyond that things will not really be that bad. Society maintains continuity even through insane events like the black death or cities being bombed into ruins. I think this is because humans are socialized for a very long time, and have very little experience living through apocalypses, and have a hard time accepting the inevitability of their own deaths. Society doesn't break down during mass starvation even.
Speaking of mass starvation and lack of clean water, that will be how most people who survive about 3 days post nuclear war will die. This is easily avoidable, water filtration/sanitization solutions are extremely cheap, or even free if you have a bucket and some sand. Storing 1 year of calories takes so little space and is so cheap it isn't even a consideration.
Mass starvation will not be a problem in the long run because it will be a huge problem much sooner. People will starve in the 2 months post event because of the temporary breakdown in logistics. After 6 months trains will be running again and there will be plenty of food, and no cities full of people to eat it.
Please explain. My gut feel intuition is that you have to sacrifice at least a typical American closet's worth of space to do that.
So that would be like 1/4 of a US closet for one person? I know rice will get bugs if you don't eat it in a reasonable amount of time, so that would be a concern.
Apart from a gigantic global food crisis for at least a decade - see this comment for just a "small" nuclear war, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34448255 - and the disruption of the supply chain that makes what happend during COVID look like nothing at all happened there? Which means you can also forget about a lot of daily necessities like lots of chemicals and medicines, even if you yourself don't use them directly.
Good luck going into forests trying to get enough wood - together with tens of millions of other people from around you. Never mind food, after the first year, which can probably be covered from the reserves. Asia and Africa will be quite busy dealing with a large population they can't feed any more, anybody who can attempting to flee and they won't take "no" for an answer at the borders.
> After 6 months trains will be running again and there will be plenty of food,
How, magic? (see linked comment and the study there, and remember that's only a "small" nuclear war they are talking about there)
.
[silent sigh] Why am I even participating in this kind of discussion... I guess it's early morning and I'm procrastinating.
Enough wood? I live in a forest. You can't have it both ways, either cities are so full of flammable material it causes an ice age if a few of them burn up OR there isn't anything to burn to boil water to make rice, you can't have it both ways.
Tens of millions... Sorry, this state has 50 people per square mile. There aren't 10 million people within a 100 mile radius of me.
Supply chain? They didn't have an international supply chain 100 years ago. They barely had one 50 years ago. The world will be fine without one for awhile.
You are just not correct on any level here. People were trading and able to survive perfectly fine and even thrive 2000 years ago, with iron age technology and not much of that. 1 year after a nuclear war people would be rebuilding, 10 years after and day to day life will be very much like it was before the war.
Here is a map of the amount of rail in the Soviet Union in the 20th century. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/Ra... You can see that they went from basically 0 rail to a massive amount of rail in 20 years. How did they do this without a global supply chain and while fighting 2 world wars? It turns out people are more than capable of addressing problems even under trying circumstances. They don't just say "supply chain disruption!" and give up and lay down and cry.
[big sigh, shakes head, big show of having to deal with people despite of how much smarter and more important I think I am]
Apparently by working hundreds of thousands of gulag prisoners to death:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-63332...
The VAZ factories were built by the Italians, and the early Shiguli/Lada car models were phased out Fiat models.
The MiG-15 prototypes famously flew with English jet engines.
The Tu-95 turboprop engines have been designed by Germans.
Etc etc... my point being that self-sufficiency doesn't work in the modern world (unless the people are content with living like medieval peasants).
Yes, because they used to have local factories and mines that they built up over decades. Then as globalization and direct international investments were encouraged instead of trade, factories and mines were closed down and production moved to China/India/S Korea/Japan/Taiwan etc. Going to the point that cloth masks couldn't be produced in any significant numbers in the USA or Europe when a pandemic hit.
In all seriousness - even if you sincerely plan to commit suicide (and take your family with you?) if life gets harder, why use the nuclear attack itself to do it? Why close off options? Why not attempt to survive, and reassess afterwards if you really think life still isn't worth living?
I am not here for that lifestyle.
Plus, yaknow, your wife/kids/dog/$DEPENDENTS might feel differently.
That sounds like a fantasy over-"informed" by fiction. Might just as well be, that after that initial filter, most people just end up living in a village and farming like it's 1700.
Some people in Hiroshima had to have surgery later in life to remove other people's teeth from their bodies.
This is one of the scariest and ugliest thing I've ever read about Hiroshima.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eCd3qYCC6E
With the bomb curtain I mentioned, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKiig392a3I
There are bomb films similar to what you described, but they need to be added with a blast resistant window frame
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKjVbytYFHA
I presented these videos during a class discussing the effects of nuclear weapons and explosions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgT4Y30DkaA (trailer only)
It's about the lives of average people before, during and after a fictional nuclear attack in the UK.
That movie would have been terrifying with just firebombing alone, something that has/had happen all over the world. Nukes somehow surpass the hell on Earth that is conventional total war.
It's also impressive what they made on such a small budget, with something like ~$500k.
But the rest of the film is so apolitical, and so hauntingly well done, that even the "bad guys" in it liked it.
It's really a testament to the film's quality.
I think a point that they were trying to drive home is that there are no "good guys" or winners in a nuclear war, especially when it comes to those who perpetrate it on any side.
No you shouldn't - atleast not without thinking about it first. I still remember its dark, unremitting bleakness 38 years later - it really makes you think about whether its better for your family to die in the initial blast rather than 'survive'.
When I was in school, the teachers all put out an advisory about "The Day After (1983)". It was a big deal; many families were planning to watch it, and it wasn't on cable, it was on broadcast OTA TV, so it was highly accessible, even to children.
The school administration decided they needed to get in front of the controversy and put out a Christian message about hope and trust in God, when it seemed like the world was panicking over the Cold War and mainstream media was egging us on. Ever since then, I have appreciated their candor and willingness to tell us the truth about this world and the next.
We had fire drills at school; we knew about "duck and cover" but we didn't practice any air-raid drills that I can recall. However, when my mother took me shopping at the JC Penney across town, there was prominent signage for their old-fashioned Fallout Shelter in the basement. I was really intrigued by the bold yellow lettering and symbology, and I sometimes wonder what it was like down there, because we've never seen the inside of any bomb shelter whatsoever.
My dad worked around hazardous materials on a regular basis, as a safety professional, and he was on the science end of things, and spent time in the office as much as the lab. He often brought home tools like a Geiger counter, film badges, a radio pager, and I think there were other chemical sensors ("sniffers"?) Learning at his feet, I picked up a lot of geology, so I could recognize isotopes and chemical symbols and count in rems, etc.
Earthquakes were the primary hazard for us, and I suppose that any nuclear explosion would've had earthquake-like effects, among other things, to put it blandly.
I would say perhaps 1%, which in a sense is very little, and really a lot.
Also, if you think 1% is way too high, consider that in 1983 a nuclear war was averted by the decision of a single individual [0]. I'm pretty sure the chance that year would have been more than 20%.
The math is sobering. Even if we assume 'only' a 1% chance per year, that implies a 63% probability per century.
I'm not sure I'm following the math here?
Putting it in terms of "probability per century" is intended for forward-looking projection, not backwards.
So it's
P(bomb exploding in a century) = 1 - P(bomb not exploding in a century) = 1 - (P(bomb not exploding in a year)) ^ 100 = 1 - (1 - P(bomb exploding in a year)) ^ 100
Why is it not something simpler, like P(bomb exploding in a year) ^ 100 ?
That would be "bomb exploding EVERY year (= this year AND next year AND ...)".
What we actually want is "bomb exploding this year OR bomb exploding next year OR bomb exploding this year and next year OR bomb exploding in two years OR ...". But that's too complicated, so we use the trick with 1 - P(bomb not exploding in a century).
I would say the chance for that might be creeping up a little bit lately. Too many nuclear armed, trigger happy, and increasingly desperate despots around right now. Hard to put a number on it. But I'd say it's high enough to start thinking about counter measures, defensive strategies, and an appropriately violent and fierce response to disincentivize any further escalation. Doesn't have to be a full on nuclear war. But it can't just be a slap on the wrist either.
The religious zealots are not the only risk, there are quite many nihilists out there who don’t believe or even care about their impact on the world.
There are many sins of the US but overall I'm inlined to believe that the US is much more rational superpower that ultimately brings more good than bad because the US interests are in peaceful world that play on their rules. The relative world peace since the WW2 is known as PAX Americana and the moment it falters wannabe warlords start regional wars, causing big tragedies and any conflict happens wherever the US can't project it's force over the regional powers. The weaker the US the more wars happen.
You can argue that US rules are not fair and there is quite a lot of American exceptionalism but I'm not convinced that the proposed replacements are any better, thus the wars to change the system are wars fought in vein. IMHO, working with the US is much better any given day. The only risk is, the US itself changing into something bad or retreats voluntarily and leaving vacuum.
Statistics is only useful if you actually have sufficient numbers. Otherwise you can just make any claim you want supported by any arbitrary model you can think of to support your preconceived idea - and let's face it, nobody will blindly create a model and then believe anything it says, instead they will tweak it until the result "sounds believable", no matter where they started.
In the short-to-medium term the issue becomes: can you stay underground for the next week or so until the sky stops emitting gamma rays? Cement and dirt are both good barriers, but you'll need food and water eventually.
I'd also wonder if the air might become unbreathably bad or too hot due to everything burning.
Though counter-force requires so many warheads, that if you're doing that it wouldn't be hard to do counter-value as well. I read somewhere that a single sub's worth of warheads is enough to implement a credible counter-value strategy.
It seems kind of weird to expect Russia to conduct a nuclear war in a manner that's relatively humane, but I suppose there's also the possibility that in a nuclear confrontation with the U.S. they wouldn't want their own cities to get nuked either so maybe there's a sort of "let's not be the first to do counter-value" dynamic at play.
Really, there's no way to know what's going to happen until it happens, and we can hope it never does. Best case for survivability in a nuclear war is probably just: don't live near a military base or near anything important. Most rural land is relatively safe, since there just aren't enough nukes in the world to evenly blanket a large country.
Nuclear winter though might kind of doom everyone through food shortages if there's a full counter-value exchange, even if the cities are spared.
I'm not sure if that's valid reasoning because 1) nuclear targeting decisions are some of the most closely-guarded secrets and 2) if you could be subject to a counter-force attack there's probably little opportunity to "wait and see" what your enemy attacks before you launch yourself.
Though I might be clouded by thinking in terms of the classic missles-in-silos nuclear war. I suppose some subs might survive (but I'm sure a component of any nuclear war would be to try to sink those first), and they've got stuff like constantly flying mobile command posts. So maybe the subs have instructions to hold back a few missiles pending further orders from the last general sitting on that plane.
Blub
Edit: This can be seen often during the early stages of larger building construction, when they 'dig out' the hole for the basement, and optionally parking spaces below that, like in your case. There are large pumps, always working, 24/7 pumping it elsewhere. Those don't vanish. They are just being replaced by permanent installations integrated into the building, or near to it.
Similar things apply to many subway tunnels. Not always. Depends on the location of course.
Considering it is a shock wave, best to be sure to open your mouth slightly and not hold your breath, so as to not trap pressure differentials
This is a good thing to publish, because most people seem to casually think nuke=dead, period. But the fact it that the simple geometry means that the areas of medium and lower damage are more than 10X the area of extreme damage, so any random location is much more likely to see effects that are survivable depending on your actions.
Lets hope it never comes to that
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War_Survival_Skills
Food scarcity will place survivors into an unpleasant dog eat dog world. Zombie and disaster films are probably not far off in their portrayals of these apocalyptic survival scenarios.
All of the niceties of modern civilization - friendly and neighborly coexistence - will likely be replaced with the desperate animal need to eat and survive. And without a central governing authority, or aid or help of any kind, the new social order will be brutal and unforgiving.
I hope this never comes to pass.
Which is to say: the guy who decides to sit in place on a pile of resources is already dead, it's just a matter of when: if you're not establishing relations and trade, then you're just delaying the inevitable.
I won't be storming the bunkers, I'll be asking scientists at the university campus what support role lets them get on with highly productive labour, or helping at a hospital or sewage farm.
Looking at postwar recovery in Germany, food for labour cleared the bombed streets (mainly women too) and we'll see a lot of that, followed by more complex labour. Hunkering behind a wall with ammo and batteries won't get there. They're going to have to come to an accommodation with society at large and assuming guns equals boss is silly. Boss of what? A slave culture? The city state next door looks better and better.
(Sorry I've not got a link right now.)
I understand that's a bit of a modern ideological fiction. Social cooperation has a big survival advantage, and in difficult or precarious situations people often land on a strategy of being very generous and helpful to secure social capital to get assistance when they need it.
So our big society filled with lots of anonymous individuals obsessing over rights granted by a sophisticated state would probably give way to smaller societies controlled by interpersonal relationships with people obsessing over reputation.
I don't understand the details of the simulation, but I would have guessed incoming pressure waves would bounce off back walls and create a turbulent mess of forces in the areas hidden from the initial pulse.
Also ignored was the solidity of the walls. Concrete might survive, brick could possibly survive. But a partition wall with a couple of sheets of thin plasterboard nailed to weak wooden supports would be unlikely to offer much protection.
But if the walls are sufficiently solid (they were talking about concrete buildings), the velocities were orders of magnitudes lower just to the sides of the doors and windows, so hugging the adjacent wall or just under the window will keep you from being picked up and flung downwind, as well as having the shrapnel flying past you and not into you. Big difference.
I saw one post from a medic in the Ukraine war. He said 80%+ of the injuries he treated were because people didn't get flat on the ground fast enough. He then demonstrated how to do it correctly. Most people, when trying to get on the ground will first kneel, then lie down. He demonstrated how to do it in one motion, either straight like an inverse push-up or burpee exercise, or with a twist. Flat in <1sec instead of ~2-3 seconds makes the difference between "whew" and metal embdded in your body. Same can be true here.
That's also why I mentioned opening your mouth, since the shockwaves bouncing around can damage tissues if air can't escape, but if it can, it just goes by.
Nothing is a guarantee, but taking measures increased your odds a lot, which was the point of the study.
May we never need it.
If you have less than 2 seconds of warning of a nuclear blast while within ~5psi shockwave distance then your warning is probably a very bright light from your window. I'd hope for several minutes of warning via public alerting.
Unfortunately most people's reaction to a sudden bright light is to go stand by the window to see what it is. This gets you killed at distances that would otherwise be survivable with good probability.
I think nuclear war is survivable if you are in a good location and already prepped to survive 2+ years on your preps and have the means to grow all your own food and are in a solid community that doesn't go bonkers after shtf.
But that's not the vast majority of us, so it would be quite the shit show. If you aren't prepped, I don't know why someone would want to survive the attack.
If that's the criteria, it's survivable by practically no one. I mean, there won't be any "solid communities" left if you need 2+ years of stored food to survive, since practically no one has that.
Yeah, but the OP seemed to be talking about targeted countries. I just think he was setting his minimum "prepping" in a contradictory way that spelled doom.
Also, those southern countries may be severely affected, since the big northern countries are also big (staple) food exporters.
Straight trenches kill people - zig zag trenches with sharp turns save lives.
The point of war is to kill soldiers. Just ours hopefully a bit slower than enemy's.
And if you need to resist an invasion, you want to save lives of your fighting forces as much as possible, even if you sadly can't save everyone.
Look at the center of Europe right now. How to dig good trenches is not theoretical knowledge.
I won't be thanking you for saving my life through digging a trench correctly if you put me in it.
Not really. The point is to impose your will on the enemy, so to persuade him to give up. Killing soldiers is a means to an end.
Ends can be fake, aspirational, but means are what they are.
SimCity always had a "Disasters" menu...
Will Wright's Design Plunder (With Slides) -- 15:00: Failure States
https://youtu.be/c91IWh4agzU?t=900
"Really, failure can be quit fun, if you make it interesting." -Will Wright
"So I kind of at some point started calling this the Calvin Factor. The very first versions of SimCity I made had no disasters. All there was was the bulldozer. And I couldn't help but notice how invariably everybody would eventually discover the bulldozer, and then go attack the city with it. And they'd be laughing maniacally while they're attacking the city with this bulldozer. And so then I started thinking, well, maybe I should start feeding this, you know, get it out of their system, so that's when we adding the disasters to SimCity." -Will Wright
(note that shelters-for-all could only be a viable strategy for countries that do not have first strike capabilities)
But likely anything that prevents you from gaining velocity before hitting a wall should help, as long as it's not holding you so tight that you'd be ripped apart by an incoming wave.