Nuclear War Survival Basics

Nuclear war is one of those topics that can completely freak people out — often to the point of thinking "why even bother?". So the first thing to know about nuclear war is actually good news: Nuclear war is much, much more survivable than what most people believe.

I'll repeat this point since it goes so strongly against what is often presented in the media and in popular culture, and it's an important starting point:

IMPORTANT: Nuclear war is much, much more survivable than what most people believe.

Apart from the statement above, there are several other specific positive and hopeful facts about nuclear war survival that will surprise most people. This web page is still a work in progress, and there are already four of these facts mentioned further down the page (with more to come as the page gets added to). See if you can find them all.

NEW: The One-Paragraph Solution

This page is quite long, and getting longer all the time. So I've added a very quick summary of basic advice. This is an idealised summary, and you may be able to break some of these "rules" and still survive.

Realise that surviving nuclear war is possible. Be in the Southern Hemisphere. Be at least 50-100+ kilometres, ideally a few hundred or more kilometres, from where any nuclear warheads are detonated. Don't look at the fireball/flash, even from far away. Be able to survive without needing anything from the modern economy or "the grid". EMP-protect anything electronic you want to still work afterwards. Have some (EMP-protected) radiation monitoring equipment, and either a pre-made shelter or the knowledge to construct an expedient shelter if required. That's pretty much it.

Note also that if you're far enough away from any nuclear detonations (and ideally in the Southern Hemisphere), you may not need a shelter or radiation monitoring equipment at all. If you're too close to a nuclear explosion, there will be a wave of extreme heat followed by a shock (blast) wave, and other advice such as "duck and cover" will be required. And obviously if you're very much too close, it won't matter what you do.

I'll update this summary and page sometime (hopefully soon) to consider the risks from medium-term-decay-rate components of nuclear fallout, such as Strontium-90, and how to minimise them. For now, consider that 500 atmospheric nuclear detonations have already occurred, and we are nowhere remotely close to all dropping dead from fallout constituents with half-lives of a few decades.

What are the Dangers of Nuclear War?

The four main dangers of nuclear war (in order of time from when the bomb explodes, and also in order of geographical distance from "ground zero") are fire, blast, fallout, and nuclear winter. Another danger is EMP, or Electromagnetic Pulse, which is harmless to life forms but could potentially destroy almost all modern electronic devices within a certain distance of the nuclear explosion(s).

The effects of the first three of these dangers — fire, blast, and nuclear fallout — are very well known and understood, largely thanks to all those nuclear bomb tests they did in the cold war. The fourth danger, nuclear winter, is much less well understood. This is an area I will add more about later — but for now it's probably safe to say that very little definite predictions can be made — other than to say there will probably be some long-tem global cooling effect, which might range anywhere from the trivial to the severe.

The danger that will affect the most people, and is the most preventable, is nuclear fallout. Because of this, I will focus on it first (and then add more info about the other dangers later on...)

Cover image by breakermaximus.

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