What is nuclear war going to feel like?

reply to post by TheToastmanCometh


Three main options for you.

First, you are in the blast zone, and either reduced to atoms, and blasted against the remains of the architecture around you, or shaken apart and burned to a crisp, by the overpressure and the temperature of the blast.

Second, you are in the immediate radioactive zone around the blast, and you get a x times the lethal dose of radiation in mere seconds. You die, but you do it slowly. This goes for anyone caught under a cloud of fallout material as well.

Third, you are outside the blast, and the reach of the radioactive fallout zone. You do not drink, or eat anything that has been exposed to radioactivity. You get the hell somewhere safer, you stay out of the rain, you get your hands on a Geiger counter, and a dosimeter, you get yourself and your people to somewhere deep, and hardened, and you only leave to scavenge. You never sleep with both eyes shut, or without a blade or a weapon in easy reach for the rest of your life, and you pray a lot, or maybe never again, depending on how things are for you.

reply to post by TheToastmanCometh

How will it be then and how will we prepare?

And for those who do survive, how are we going to adapt?

Will it be a future of dust and kipple or a wasteland beyond knowing.

There have been so many fictions accounts, so i want to know your takes

Well, we won't prepare any more than we already have. There are plenty of fallout shelters in every large city in the US.
I hear Russia has rebuilt theirs over the last few years....hmmmm......

You will be sitting at home, or out on the street, maybe a store somewhere when you hear this:


When you do, I advise getting underground.

In a large scale nuclear war, no one wins, everyone dies.
You can die quick, in the blast, or you can die slow from radiation, but the end result is death.
Not just you, but EVERYTHING around you as well.

(accept cockroaches who will survive)

You would be better off going in the blast.

Throughout history thousands of nuclear weapons have been detonated and guess what we are still here. I would think our opponents would nuke vital points of our infrastructure and supposed leadership. If another country were to nuke us it would be an act to protect itself or to destabilize the country or commit an act of terror to strike fear to the masses. As missile technologies have evolved and targeting accuracy is monumentally better then during the cold war nuclear war i feel would be far more surgical than that of the fear of lobbing missiles at the biggest targets.

How can one prepare for such an event? I guess that's what we have the survival forum for. Right? There is lot of stuff over there to help you ascertain what you should have to be prepared in case of war.

I don't worry about it. I just don't think it's feasible or conducive to life, and have a hard time believing the world powers are that stupid. You see, we don't just have bombs to worry about - we have nuclear power plants to. So any area they hit that causes the power structure to falter, would cause ticking time bombs of nuclear reactors everywhere there is a plant in the affected region. It would be a chain reaction and there is NO GOING BACK. We can never take down our infastructure, only repair and improve on the design.

Now just image nukes going off, mass power grid failures, and then nuclear power plant melt downs everywhere. Life wouldn't surivive as we know it, and what develops - results out of the nuclear soup - I don't want to be around to even imagine!

So I don't worry about world war III going nuclear. I don't think it will. Now that notwithstanding, I still think we might see WWIII - just not a nuclear one. I've always remembered conflict in the world my whole life, I can't ever remember a time of world peace - and I doubt I ever will see that time. The powers of the world will play their chess game to keep the machine grinding, regardless to the cost of life. Whatever. Maybe I've seen too much and am numb to it.

My stance is, as an American, let them work out their own mess, we have our own crap to worry about. I wish we wouldn't get involved. We have states in America threatening to separate from our Union, lets work on ourselves, instead of trying to show the world what happens when a state decides to switch sides across seas. I'm not scared or amused and quite frankly, wish to let them fight their own fight. Lets bring it on home and work on ourselves, the side theater show is boring.

CdT

reply to post by Shaiker


I hope you are right!


Because I grew up being taught that it was THE END.

There are no winners in a nuclear war.

It is dangerous for mankind to believe otherwise.

Gonna be like the book "Alas, Babylon"

reply to post by Elysarian


The Tsar bomb only had half the yield it should have as the scientists got cold feet about the size of the blast 50kt instead of 100kt if i remember right

reply to post by 999zxcv


That was an awesome/terrible experiment!


It scared the crap out of everyone, USSR included.

reply to post by TrueBrit


Watch this, it was made by Roger Waters during the cold war era. It's about a couple living out their final days after nuclear war with Russia.

drwill
reply to post by TheToastmanCometh

 

Though it's grim, you might want to watch the film The Road.

Good movie i second this! Although i had no idea that was a post nuclear war movie they never mentioned what had actually happened well not that me or my partner or my mum noticed because we were trying to work it out very grim indeed. That is one movie that has really stuck with me, and made me appreciate what i have.

A lot like this.

www.enlisted.info...

*Note this manual is from 1984

This is just part of the manual describing a 2 kiloton weapon.

"PVT Adams’ Preburst Environment
Adams’ foxhole is located to the east of the village. The point of burst is only 500 meters
(1,650 feet) to the northeast of his position. Although he survives the blast and thermal
effects due to shielding from the walls of his foxhole, his protection is insufficient to save
him from receiving a dose of ionizing radiation that will eventually kill him. The environment
he is subjected to is extremely intense. Although he temporarily and partially recovers
from the immediate effects of the detonation, his impressions remain blurred and confused.
The following describes Adams’ observations:
0-2 Seconds The flash of light is like that seen by Carter and Baker; Adams ducks lower
and crouches in the foxhole. Like the others, he is temporarily blinded and the subsequent
events happen so rapidly that he is unable to tell exactly what is happening. The heat
wave passes over the foxhole. Indirect thermal radiation reflected from the haze and
clouds penetrates Adams’ uniform; he feels a searing pain as his back is burned. His uni-
form is heavily scorched, but does not ignite.
2-3 Seconds Immediately on the heels of the heat wave, the blast and winds arrive. The
ground shakes violently, slamming Adams against the sides of his foxhole. The foxhole
partially collapses, throwing dirt and other debris on top of him. Shocked and
dazed.. unable to see due to the blinding bright light, Adams is only dimly aware of
the high wind and its effects. He has excruciating pain in both ears and his nose is
bleeding profusely. He does not see the tree that has blown down and partially covers his
foxhole, nor does he see the soldier—hurled through the air as if lifted by some unseen
hand—passing directly over his foxhole.
3 Seconds - 1 Hour Dazed and in shock, Adams remains crouched in his foxhole. After a
few minutes, he crawls from beneath the smoldering tree and out of his foxhole into a
scene of smoke, fires, dust, and overturned and scattered equipment. Several bodies lie
alongside trees and vehicles, hurled there by the violence of the explosion. Soldiers who
miraculously survived are in various stages of shock and pain from burns and other
wounds. Some are bleeding from the ears, their eardrums ruptured. Most are vomiting.
Prone bodies are nearby. Some are completely charred black on one side of their body.
Adams’ head aches and he is sweating profusely. He feels the onset of nausea and be-
gins to vomit. He feels weak. Later, while he is waiting his turn for medical help, he hears
that one of the soldiers’ dosimeters is pegged at 600 cGy...the maximum reading of the IM-
93. He has no way of knowing if he has received a dose greater than that.
The physical environment at Adams’ fox hole. The weapon effects at Adams’ foxhole in
quantitative terms are as follows:
Prompt radiation: 3,000 cGy. (Actual radiation outside of Adams’ foxhole was 11,650
cGy. Foxhole provided Adams a protection factor of 3.)
Thermal radiation: 21 calories per square centimeter that arrives within 1.2 seconds.
This is enough to immediately ignite painted surfaces and cause 100 percent casualties for
exposed persons.
Overpressure: 7.4 pounds per square inch arriving at 2 seconds after detonation and last-
ing for approximately 1 second.
Dynamic pressure (wind): hurricane-force winds causing a 165-pound standing soldier
to attain a velocity of 60 feet per second (35 miles per hour) by the time he has moved 10
feet from his original position.

This is pretty haunting...

What is nuclear war going to feel like?

...like having a kidney-stone migraine-headache childbirth
femur-fracture whole-body-on-fire drawn-and-quartered
while having your anal hairs tweezed by a sadistic blind medieval
clown...

And that's the good part

There are two movies that I have seen that both are really good nuclear apocalypse types:
The Day After -1983

When this came out, it was up to date with what we knew about nuclear weapon effects.
It seems to me though that nuclear winter is a debated subject,if I remember correctly.
Anyways, The movie is about a few families trying to survive during and after a nuclear war.
It is a very good movie, and pretty accurate to what I think would be the end result.


The Other movie is called Threads.
Threads -1984

This is the British version of The Day After
and also very good.

( I just realized that in this one,The movie starts on March 5th )

How would it FEEL? It would probably hurt.

Not for me, though. I've got a suit made of cockroaches.

have you ever seen the movie "The Road", many have said that this is probably one of the most realistic outcomes of a nuclear war.
even though the movie doesn't specify what happened.

the land is covered in ashes, hardly any thing left alive, there's nothing nothing to eat, those who are still alive resort to cannibalism, hunting, and keeping people that they catch in makeshift cages, until time to eat them.

watch if you get a chance pretty good picture show.

no unless you have many years worth of food and supplies i don't think i would want to live after a thermonuclear war. even then would it be worth living.

The only thing that can survive high radiation levels is the cockroach.
When my husband watches the evening news, he just shakes his head and mutters "The cockroaches are gonna win....".

If there is a nuclear war, I want to be in the best place on earth; ground zero.

I am prepared, and have the skills, to survive for a long time in the event of an earthquake or other natural disaster - but I could slip in the shower and die tomorrow. It makes me appreciate what a beautiful day today is!

You are all assuming it will be an all-out nuclear exchange...Russia unloads, the west unloads, and the devil take the hindmost.

Maybe it wont be like that; maybe it will be contained.

In the 70s and 80s there was much talk about the European Theatre.

Presumably the American and Russian bigwigs would be watching from the Royal Box.

Actually I don't think there will be any sort of armed conflict among the major players. U.S., Russia etc.
But low scale conventional proxy wars, those have been going on for years and will keep on happening.

but what am I supposed to expect when the bombs fall?

reply to post by TheToastmanCometh


All depends...how big the weapon is....how high it is when it detonates, your proximity to ground zero, and prevailing winds at the time....ect.

Just for any who may be interested....here is a site that you can use to calculate nuclear weapons damage for your area...you can adjust the size of weapon ect....it`s an eye opener to be sure.

NUKEMAP