Name: Nuclear War Survival Skills
ISBN: 9780942487015

Nuclear War Survival Skills

A field-tested guide to surviving a nuclear attack, written by a revered civil defense expert. This edition of Cresson H. Kearny’s iconic Nuclear War Survival Skills (originally published in 1979), updated by Kearny himself in 1987 and again in 2001, offers expert advice for ensuring your family’s safety should the worst come to pass. Chock-full of practical instructions and preventative measures, Nuclear War Survival Skills is based on years of meticulous scientific research conducted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Featuring a new introduction by ex-Navy SEAL Don Mann, this book also includes: instructions for six different fallout shelters, myths and facts about the dangers of nuclear weapons, tips for maintaining an adequate food and water supply, a foreword by “the father of the hydrogen bomb,” physicist Dr. Edward Teller, and an “About the Author” note by Eugene P. Wigner, physicist and Nobel Laureate. Written at a time when global tensions were at their peak, Nuclear War Survival Skills remains relevant in the dangerous age in which we now live.

What Hacker News says

User23Jan 2023

Contrary to what the RAND corporation would have had us believe, there are significant steps that can be taken to improve survival odds. Oak Ridge published a nice handbook[1]. I strongly recommend getting a hard copy, because duh.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War_Survival_Skills

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ericdJan 2023

Obligatory link to the very thorough free book, Nuclear War Survival Skills: https://ia800501.us.archive.org/35/items/NuclearWarSurvivalS... , originally published by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

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elihuOct 2022

Nuclear War Survival Skills (1987) has a lot of suggestions about what to do:

https://ia800501.us.archive.org/35/items/NuclearWarSurvivalS...

I'm no expert, but I think the general idea is: don't be caught out in the open when the blasts go off -- you're likely to be blinded and/or burned even before the shock wave gets to you.

If you survive the initial blast, then "skyshine" becomes the main threat. Radioactive elements resulting from the nuclear reaction emit gamma rays that can go through most materials including walls. Best bet is to either be underground or under something made of cement. Basements generally aren't very good shelter, but you might be able to improvise something workable -- like hiding under a sturdy table surrounded and covered by sand bags or whatever dense materials are immediately at hand.

Fires also might be a problem. You might be forced to leave your shelter if everything is burning.

The worst radiation is in the first hour or so, and unfortunately that's time you'd normally be spending trying to get somewhere safe or improvising shelter. It falls off over the next few days or weeks. It's hard to know exactly when it's safe to come out without a device to measure gamma radiation (which can actually be built out of basic materials) or government reports which you might be able to receive by radio or something.

Radioactive ash is a problem. Use masks to avoid breathing it in, and don't eat or drink anything that might be contaminated. Peeling fruit is usually good enough. If you can leave the area, it's probably a good idea to wash yourself thoroughly and throw away your contaminated clothes.

Being near a nuclear blast isn't necessarily certain death. For some people it will be, but there will always be a large radius around the blast where people could survive if they're reasonably lucky and/or do the right things.

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kkfxApr 2022

Well, USA are essentially the only country in the world who have a certain official idea (since decades) of "possible usage of tactical nukes" and actually are the only who have used nukes in wars and who have officially planned to use them against another country, without a formal war declaration, that country happen to be Soviet Union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dropshot witch actually is the USA more modern version of an old UK WWII plan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable against the very same country and at that time a formal ally. Reasons behind those emerged ops are the same: "we do not like other powers who think different then us" so I can say yes, really.

NATO itself was not born to ensure protection but to counter Soviet expansion and NATO expansion in eastern Europe, starting from the (in)famous Berlin air-bridge who led to the (in)famous Berlin Wall, was and is a clear violation of Yalta agreement after WWII, agreements the Soviet have respected and Russian Federation have respected thereafter. Who actually need a war, and Ukrainian one in particular is very clear, who have created the condition and VALID reasons for Russian ops are declared formally, for instance https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/e/7/233896.pdf or even more clear https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html since it's also clear they can't win, they fail in Iraq (a war done for very similar purpose, secure the now almost lost dollar dominance, remember that Saddam have decided to go for euros for Iraqis oil and remember the narrative and the admission of the initial lie about mass destruction weapons, genocide etc the same we read now)... Nuke are for last resort, and to avoid a total destruction since westerns populations, especially here in EU are not that sold to any specific propaganda and we are already on the brink on a civil war...

Make your conclusions. I suggest to read an ancient USA book: Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson H. Kearny, Edward Teller also available for free for some past editions https://www.oism.org/nwss/ and you can read how the USA have always imaging nukes tactical usage.

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tspikeMar 2022

This is a common misconception. I highly recommend having a read through the book "Nuclear War Survival Skills" by Kearny. It's an older book more focused on the Cold War, but still highly relevant today. It systematically dispels this kind of myth. You can find PDF copies online or pick up a used copy cheap.

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credit_guyMar 2022

Read "Nuclear War Survival Skills" by Cresson Kearny [1]. You can find a pdf online.

If you live a distance from a city center and you can work from home, try to do that when tensions are high.

Nuclear bombs are not that powerful. By that I mean they still are stupendously powerful compared to conventional bombs, but in the popular imagination they are capable of erasing countries off the map. It's not quite like that. A typical Russian ICBM warhead has a yield of 150-300 kT, which means it's 10 to 20 times larger than Hiroshima. The effect of a nuclear explosion however varies with the cubic root of the yield, so such a weapon would have twice to three times the effect of Hiroshima. Actually, it appears it would be much smaller than that if the target is an urban area as per wikipedia [2]:

"Advanced computer modelling of real-world conditions and how they impact on the damage to modern urban areas has found that most scaling laws are too simplistic and tend to overestimate nuclear explosion effects".

So, if you go to the nukemap [3] and model a bomb, take the results with a big grain of salt. But even if you take the nukemap results at face value, you'd be surprised to see that the effects of a bomb are less than you'd expect. For example the link I provided shows the effects of an airburst of a 150 kt nuke in lower Manhattan:

- fireball radius: 450 m. Everything inside is vaporized instantaneously. But the optimal height for the detonation (chosen to maximize the radius of the 5psi blast) is 1660m, so there's only air inside the 450m radius).

- radiation radius: 1km; most people inside this radius die within a month. Good thing there's nobody inside this radius either, only air again.

- moderate (5psi) blast radius: 3.7 km. This is quite bad: lots of buildings will collapse, either outright, or they'll catch fire and collapse eventually (not clear how effective the firefighting would be after a nuclear detonation). What's inside this radius? All lower Manhattan up to about 30th Street, a good chunk of Jersey City, and a slice of Brooklyn. But what's surprising is what's outside: about 3/4 of Manhattan and Jersey City, 90% of Brooklyn and 100% of Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island. What happens if you are in the subway? Quite likely you'll survive. Why would you be in the subway? Because the US has satellites and is able to tell that an incoming ICBM is coming at least 15 min ahead of time, and most likely all iPhones will beep really loud.

The most important lesson though is this: if you are, let's say in Newark, NJ, or Greenwich, CT, or Scarsdale, NY, then you will not die from the blast.

How about the radiation from the fallout? That might kill you, so you need to be careful. As a rule of thumb, after 2 weeks the radiation disappears. But will you have food and water to survive in some basement for 2 weeks? I'll stop here, I already wrote a wall of text. Read Kearney's book, and you'll get a lot of useful info.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cresson_Kearny

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions#...

[3] https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=150&lat=40.71427&lng...

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