A lot of people think that nuclear war would be the end of the world.
The truth is that, except in a worst-case scenario where both the US and Russia use their entire arsenals, it wouldn’t – and even if that worst-case scenario did happen, most people outside major cities (and many in them) would survive the war itself.
If you’re well prepared it’s possible to survive the aftermath, too. However, if you want to boost your chances of long-term survival, you need to start doing the right things as soon as you know what’s coming.
If you get a warning that a nuclear attack is coming, the first thing to do is find the safest place you can. At home, if you have a nuclear shelter – either a bunker or a fallout room with an inner refuge – go there immediately. If you’re away from home find shelter as quickly as you can.
A basement, subway station or tunnel is the best option.
An inside room in a solidly built building is also good.
Outdoors, look for ditches or culverts to shelter in, but stay away from trees, bridges or anything that’s likely to fall.
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If you’re caught in open ground then stand there, wait, and be ready to carry out the Nuclear Immediate Action Drill.
As you wait, make sure your sleeves are rolled down and put on a hat if you have one.
The Nuclear Immediate Action drill will help protect you from the immediate dangers of a nuclear explosion. These are:
Flash, Or Thermal Pulse
This is an intense burst of electromagnetic radiation, including ultraviolet, visible light and infrared. It is extremely bright and can last for ten seconds or even more.
The flash from a nuclear explosion has a characteristic double pulse – it flares bright, dims for a fraction of a second as the shockwave turns air to plasma and hides the fireball, then flares again, longer and more intensely, as the plasma fades.
Related: A Strange Thing That Might Save Your Life in A Nuclear Aftermath
The flash has enough energy to cause severe burns or temporary blindness miles from the explosion. Closer in it can melt steel or instantly vaporize a person.
Prompt Radiation
A nuclear explosion also sends out a pulse of high-energy gamma rays – but this is only dangerous out to around a thousand yards, so unless it’s a very small weapon the chances are anyone close enough to be harmed by prompt radiation is either in shelter solid enough to shield them from it, or will be instantly killed by the thermal pulse.
Blast
As the shockwave expands out from the weapon it compresses the air in front of it, creating sudden very powerful winds.
When the shockwave finally exhausts itself the atmosphere rushes back in to equalize the pressure, producing a second, weaker but still dangerous, blast wave in the opposite direction.
Related: How Far Away Would You Need To Be To Survive A Nuclear Blast?
The IA drill itself is very simple, but you need to do it as quickly as you can. Here’s what to do:
Stand and wait for the flash.
- As soon as you see the flash, close your eyes, turn to face it and get down on the ground. Just drop. Don’t worry about hurting yourself on the ground; you’ll get hurt worse if you take your time.
- Press your body as flat as possible, with your face on the ground. Tuck your hands under your body to protect them. A burned head is painful; burned hands can be deadly.
- Wait for the blast wave to pass over you. Because you turned to face it, your heavier torso will help keep you from being picked up by the sudden wind. Lying flat will also make you a smaller target for flying debris. And unless the ground is absolutely flat, very little of that debris will be low enough to hit you anyway.
- Once the blast has passed, KEEP WAITING. Anywhere from a few seconds to three or four minutes after the explosion the weaker inward blast wave will reach you. This could bring more debris with it, or be powerful enough to pick you up if you’re standing.
- As soon as the second blast passes you get up and move, as fast as you can, to shelter. Don’t stop to help anyone or collect things, because another danger is on its way.
Fallout
Fallout is just debris that’s been sucked through the weapon’s fireball. Depending on whether the fireball touched the ground or not, a nuclear explosion can create anywhere from a couple of hundred pounds to tens of thousands of tons of fallout.
Related: How To Make Your Home Fallout Proof
It looks like fine sand, and it’s dangerously radioactive. While fallout can be blown high into the atmosphere and not fall back to earth for weeks – by which time its radioactivity will have decayed to a fraction of what it was – heavier particles and any that was thrown out sideways will start coming down within minutes of the blast.
If you’re at home when the attack happens, stay as far away from outside walls and the roof as possible. Get into a room that doesn’t have broken windows or other damage.
If all your windows are broken quickly seal one room with stacks of books, sandbags, heavy furniture or other dense material. If you’ve prepared a fallout room stay in the inner refuge for at least 48 hours, and in the fallout room for two weeks if possible.
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For anyone caught in the open it’s vital to get into shelter as soon as possible. If you can get home inside five minutes, do that. Otherwise get into the least damaged building you can find.
Cover your nose and mouth with a mask or layers of clean, tightly woven cloth. If you can find heavy, ideally waterproof, clothing put it on. Rain boots, gloves and a hat will help too.
Then look outside. If you can see fallout coming down wait until it stops. Then get home as quickly as you can, but without kicking up dust. If you can get a vehicle, turn off the heater and A/C and close the air vents.
When you get home, take off your clothes before you go inside. Leave contaminated shoes and clothes outside. Before going into your fallout room brush your hair thoroughly to get any dust out of it. Then put on clean clothes.
As quickly as you can, turn off gas and electricity supplies to cut the risk of fire. There will probably still be water in the system so fill any containers you can and put them in your fallout room, along with all the food and survival gear you can access without going outside.
If your fallout room has taken any damage, weatherproof it as well as you can to keep dust out. Don’t spend more than an hour doing all this – and when you’re done, go to your fallout room and stay there.
Starting Over
After two weeks the fallout’s radioactivity will have decayed to less than 1% of its initial level – enough that you can leave the fallout room and make short trips outside. In a month it will be safe to move around normally.
At that point you can get on with the business of surviving. It will be hard, but if you did the right things in the minutes and hours after the attack you have a fighting chance of making it.
WOW.
Never though we would be asking this in an article.
Sign of the times,
Well, if so, then Good Tomorrow…
stay sharp.
The Problem with this article is that within 20 miles of the blast your dead no matter if your in a bunker or not. If your say in a bunker within 20 miles then everything above your bunker is gone and you will be trapped in it. So you will die eventually from running out of food and water. There wil be no rescue attemp at all because all of Fema will be looking to save themselves.
What the article does not say is the distance you can survive is dependent on the yeld of the bomb, and if it is air burst, space burst or ground burst.
Most of the them will be air burst for maximun effect. This mean anything within 20 miles will receive a lethal dose of radiation for the smaller warheads. The medium size is 30 miles and large size is 40 miles. Outside that range up to 40, 50 and 60 miles is the people who will have a dose that will kill them if they don’t recieve medical treatment fast. This means Iodine tablets, beinig washed down and clean cloting. But this may not stop you from dying from cancer. The effects of fall out can not be determined becasue there is to many variables. This depends on the direction of the travel of the dust cloud witch will be the direction of the prevailing winds. But there will be some fall out all around the area but just not as much as under the cloud.
Take me for instance I live about 100 air miles from a major city NW of me and about 60 air miles from a airforce base SSE. My prevailing wind are generally W to E with a slight W to SE to NE slope almost like a very shallow bowl or saucer. So there will be two warheads going of around me and the wind will carry most of the fallout to the east from the blast near me but then you will vae blast that are farther away and this fall out can travel 1000s of miles. Though I would most likely survive depending on the warhead size, if I could get to some type shelter, and if I had iodine tablets. But the after effects would be shortage of food, water and medical aid. It will not be safe to gather or grow food for at least a year due to the fallout would contaminate the ground. The animals will also be contaminated so hunting is also out. So long term survival will depend on the food and water I have stored and if I have iodine tablets. So the odds of my family and I surviving long term is not very good if we have a nuclear war.
The odds are not very good for anyone on earth if a nuclear war happens. The fall out will destroy most of our planet.
You make it sound like iodine tablets are some miracle worker to keep you safe. All they do is block the lymph nodes from gathering radiation there. If you get any particles of radioactive material in your lungs, your esophagus, inside your body, you are going to die of cancer or worse. Radiation sickness. If there is any radioactive dust and you don’t have respirators for it, you’ll probably die. Everything else you said there is pretty spot on.
People need to do research when using medications like this. It is very age specific for dose and effect and adds it’s own level of risk just using it.
The best thing to do if you do not have a fallout shelter is to have PPE ready to go in your house and your car. If air is coming in from outside you are going to get exposed, if you have PPE, gas mask and respirator, duck tape, wait 2 days and then get out of there. Get in a car, block it’s vents with clothing or anything you can find and drive away from prevailing winds and away from epicenter.
Mira safety has the best equipment and reliable filters that are newly manufactured and available within the U.S.. Don’t buy out of date filters or old masks. They are useless. There is a whole lot of training and knowledge you need to learn to use these as well.
See the CDC’s guidelines by googling KI (iodine tablets)
Really depends on the size, type and distance but if…. your close enough to center … let it kill me then.
just our gov is useless, our military is a joke so don’t expect anything but more losing
I feel like we just took a 60 year step backwards.
Those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it good or bad.
Suddenly Cuba might be paradisio
I don’t need any of this. My “brilliant” teachers taught me to hide under furniture during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Being “teachers,” I must believe them.
works for the pressure wave of debris. they didn’t lie
every one looks at those photos of school children hiding under their desks as the advice for surviving a nuclear attack. Living through the 50’s and the ‘duck and cover’ era … it wasn’t said as if a desk would keep you out of harms way. A school desk, would help shelter you from falling ceiling and roof debris, rather than standing or laying uncovered on the floor. It’s a funny joke, but get real.
Those in charge back then knew that stuff was BS!
Better off outside then buried under a pile of rubble and a flattened desk.
After all those big world govt.’s doing nuke tests back then kept the public from knowing the classified information.
People were more trusting of the official govt. until these recent times. When the truth is suppressed by these corrupt officials we have.
There is still classified information being hidden that may cast doubt on surviving a nuke attack.
The old Duck and Cover! Did you get it with the Hurtel the Turtle (I think that’s his name) cartoon?
It’s so sad we have gotten to this point of extreme. Elitists & politicians have ruined our way of living and our country. I just became a grandma and I am scared for my grandson’s future.. or lack thereof. We are all doomed unless we turn it around.
Well you had every chance to stop it…. but you kept voting and sitting around
Guess you didn’t vote or your candidate didn’t win…
The best thing we can do is pass down to our children —— Jesus! And prayer/ constant prayer
Yah is culling the weak sheep Christians out
The nuke threat is the least of our problems. Do we have a society worth saving?
It’s hilarious those low informed voters keep voting in the same idiots over an over expecting a different outcome.
History is repeating it’s self as real education of reading, writing, math, history is not taught in liberal public schools dominated by the unions. Oh not to forget no teaching of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence.
Today it’s reeducation of Marxism and alternate lifestyle dress-up teachers shaking their ugly booty in young students faces.
Is our nation falling apart?
Sobering read. I appreciate the solid information. Thanks.
Something to ponder. Those feckless politicians will be bunkered in with their pages not their families. Pages become breeding stock. Also Putin knows Biden is weak along with General Smelly and his GF. So he might send up a missile but not with a core. Then self destruct the missile before it arms. It is called a bluster. Or rope a dope. This is why we need to start arresting those who have Abused their Authority under the color of the law. We have video evidence of this. However IMHO I don’t think it will get to that point. I would worry more about our own government creating a False flag event that was Depicted in the series Jericho.
They could all huddle down at Jeff Epstain’s island for that scenario. Epstain would have been their host. But Epstain had too much kiss an tell dirt on the elites. That could have gone public, interesting who their names are. Where’s Wikileaks when we need them?
Don’t forget your potassium Iodide tablets!
When do we take the Iodide tablets, just after the nuke accident? Is there a safe time period to take Iodide before the radiation takes over it’s destruction of the body? Are there other forms of Iodide we can take if we don’t have those pills? How long must we take the Iodide to keep us safe?
There probably won’t be health officials around to help, they’ll be taking care of their family. So can a person take too much Iodide and what they are allergic to Iodine?
The tablets are meant to protect your thyroid . If you’re older than 50-55 the tablets won’t help and may actually cause harm.
If people are older than 50, what would those people use in place of Iodide to protect themselves from thyroid destruction?
Is Iodine the only possible treatment? Are there new medical approaches for all age groups, are young kids more at risk than older adults?
Make a tincture using the green hulls of the black walnut.
KI tablets right after the warning of a nuclear attack. It blocks the radioactive Iodine from saturating the thyroid because the GOOD Iodine has already saturated the thyroid. Radioactive Iodine is one of the MAJOR fission byproducts of U235 and Pu238 from a fast fission explosion.
The Last Train From Hiroshima gives second by second descriptions of the two nuclear blasts in Japan. Horrific, but fascinating. Radioactive rain can fall afterwards and everyone is very thirst and want to drink the rain, but it is poison. Anyone near a window had curtain patterns imprinted on their skin. Some Japanese lived through both blasts but never told anyone because they were discriminated against until more recently (no one wanted to marry or have kids with know survivors).
I have food and water ready, unfortunately no basement. Praise be to God – it is all in his divine hands.
What are the best consumer water filters that will filter out the radioactive materials?
People surviving in the shattered cities and in the wild will probably be burning wood. Will those contaminated wood exposed to radiation be safe to use? Could there be risk of respiratory issues from burning the wood.
Even preppers can store so much stockpiled goods they will need to scrounged too.
What wood
I’m not to sure there is anything that can filter out radioactivity. Contaminated water will have to sit, until it’s radioactivity has reduced to human tolerant levels. You can filters fine particles and dust, even heavy metals and some impurities…but not this. Anyone care to chime in who knows more? I am just thinking it belongs in a yellow poly bag to be given a wide berth…for A-WHILE!
The future may look like Soylent Green scenario as crop failures will happen and livestock will be at a premium to those that can afford it.
The aftermath can be based on scientific theory and the Hiroshima survivors testimonies. Don’t believe there are many in the USA that have the guts to survive. Many will die as their social media is gone, like Trick Toke, FB, Twatter, no one left to advise them.
Look at Chernobyl the wildlife and plants fairly survived, still too dangerous for human habitation. Do experts really know when it is safe to eat the new planted crops?
People may survive but at what costs?
What happened at Chernobyl was an explosion that involved nuclear rods weighing a 170 tons throwing dust and solid chucks.
A nuclear bomb uses about a large fist size amount of uranium that is vaporized during the explosion.
2 totally different scenarios.
Not true! The end health results are the same. Fast fission and thermal fission (power plant reactors) develop the same fission byproducts with just a few minor ones being stronger with fast fission (bombs) but have shorter half-lives compares to radioactive iodine. Another MAJOR fission product of concern is Cesium.
Power plant fuel is (depending on design, and I am unfamiliar with the enrichment in a RBMK reactor) is less enriched but has enough U235 and U238 to thermal fission for longer periods of time as opposed to a “fist sized” 90-100% enriched U235/Pu238 nuclear bomb. The difference is TIME and enrichment.
Yes, there’s one important thing the author left off the list, and it’s the most important – pray!
Amen to prayer!
And a bottle of Jack D, to smooth the pain of radiation sickness.
Very informative article … having gone through this during the 50’s and early 60’s … little of this is new information, but nice to be reminded. Living in Phoenix, the main nuclear targets would be our nuclear power plant and the AF base … over 30 miles from my concrete brick walled home. I’ve been to Nagasaki, visited the site where the bomb would have hit if it had been a surface blast, and toured the museum of relics and photos of the blast. Eye opening to say the least. I find it sad, that the democrap fear mongering was that ‘wild man’ Trump would have his finger on the nuclear missiles and might start WW3 … biden was selected as puppet president, and we are now concerned with ‘ACTUAL’ nuclear war.
Spot on!
The Denomcrats fear-mongered Trump, but look who’s in charge now, eek!
More concerned with the ilk currently in charge. Bite Me and Camela are more scary to be around the nuke football, ready to launch a couple nukes for show.
Trump isn’t going to save us
Much of this is about what I was taught in my radiological monitoring training in the ’80s. In addition to all of this, you must remember not to eat any fruit or berries that were exposed for 4 to 6 months. You should also not drink any water for that time that might have washed down radioactive ash. You might be able to eat roots or tubers like carrots and potatoes if you clean them off well.
After 2 months, when the radioactive ash has finished falling out of the atmosphere, you should carefully remove the top 4 inches of topsoil and dispose of it somewhere downhill, but try to avoid poisoning the water going downstream because everyone needs water.
For those of us who live within 200 miles of the coastline, we need to be aware of the Poseidon torpedos that will most likely sweep us away in tidal waves. If you have an underground shelter in this zone, you should probably make it water-tight and have enough air for 4 to 12 hours, depending on how close you are to the water.
Who will have a better chance to survive former military vets or the general public?
Can we imagine how many radiation suits and gas mask filters we will need, to survive at least 6 months worth.
Will there be any official emergency system left to give the ‘All Clear’ signal.
A friend in the military one time said; In some scenarios, the group or unit picks a ‘volunteer’ to be the sacrificial lamb. That individual gets to be the indicator of safety for the rest of the group.
The volunteer unmasks, breath the air, eat, drink, then they decide if it’s safe. Is that true?
The military lied to you… you would die in a NBC event. Your masks had expired filters and the suits where good for 24 hours. You only where expected to save the equipment and die
If you voted you caused this problem
A good viewing is on Imdb and Amazon right now…
While the Rest of US Die.
Challenging our government’s devotion to saving their own asses while we are SOL.
While the Rest of Us Die
Pretty much the only thing that matters to the politicos is COG, continuity of government. They are more concerned with saving themselves in tax payer funded shelters. Of course they let the old civil defense shelter get run down without so much as a “see ya suckers”. I’m sure congress voted the funds to go somewhere else, like dotgov preservation shelters. During the Cuban missile crisis I was in grade school, the schools then sold “dog tags” with your name and address under child safety. It was likely so government could recover your body from the school and know who you were.
Make a tincture using the hulls of black walnuts. It creates iodine as a replacement of the potassium iodine tablets. Chernobyl survival technique.
How do you use it?
Here’s a good interactive nuke calculating map where you can plug in various scenarios and get an idea of what might happen, as well as casualties, damage and fallout.
It gives over pressures too, but it can be hard for someone to understand what an over pressure of 2 to 5 PSI really means. So, for reference, an EF5 tornado with a 300 MPH wind, creates and over pressure of 2.8 PSI or 404 pounds of force per square foot against a structure.
A couple of PSI is a MASSIVE amount of force, and you will not survive it, and neither will most buildings, unless they’re steel reinforced concrete.
Nuke Map
A very welcome article! niio
I also saw similarities to the old duck and cover theme, but I am comfortable that most of the readers here are already ahead of 90% of the general population to deal with the aftermath. On the subject of radiation sickness, one of the effects is it messes with the bone marrows ability to produce platelets. Amgen (a pharmaceutical company) can now produce an injection called Nplate that helps with this condition. Just saw that the US gov has bought about $300 million worth. It might concern you that they see a need right now, or you might think it is the most prudent thing they have done this year. Either way I found it interesting.
My own actions?? I’m gonna be praying. Getting directions from on high. ?
Read Deuteronomy 28 then compare this pattern to any one of the prophets’ messages in scripture. Nuclear war is only ONE of MANY things that are coming soon to a city near you! A household or a nation’s ONLY hope is to repent and return to the Torah of Yehovah our Elohiym! Or else we will be taken over by a foreign nation that has no respect for women, children and elderly and does not know our deity. Remember what Pharaoh said when he hardened his heart? “I do not know Yehovah…” Either Yah will produce a “Reed Sea” type of event or we are going to be killed by a pagan army. That ALL depends on our obedience to HIS constitution; The Torah. If you don’t believe me then throw away your Bible because you don’t read it anyway or you would see that EVERY nation’s destruction recorded in it pivoted on this principle. It plainly states this hundreds of times in every translation. The religious leaders and the Roman’s persecuted the Messiah and his disciples for teaching this. Every individual is being given a choice. Serve man and live as a slave to his laws or serve Yah and live freely under HIS righteous law, The Torah, which protects us and keeps us innocent in HIS courtroom when ha Satan brings accusations against us. If do not abide in the shelter of the Most High then ourselves and our families will die!
what about nuclear winter that can last for years, years where there is no sunlight and all the plants will die without sunlight and the animals will die because there are no plants to eat?
G-D has hosts at His command. Microscopic, our size, astronomical sized, insects, animals, —He can split atoms, Etc.
But He can also save. He notices who is choosing to do what.
I appreciated reading all these comments.
It is amazing to me not this article or one person here mentioned having PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) for such an event. Instead of spending $250k – $1,000,000 on a fallout shelter you could get trapped in anyway, why not spend $3k (per person) and have all the PPE you need to safely escape the area?
Mira Safety sells to the general public and military. They have everything you need. You should have a full kit in your car and at home. Now, you can shelter in place if you have enough filters, or you could just escape while wearing this gear.
Get to a safe distance and ditch the PPE and get cleaned up. But, this all needs a lot of training and information to work. Get started.
One of my favorite quotes is from the movie World War Z “movement is life”. If you have the proper equipment and know how to use it, you don’t have to wait for the fallout to hopefully slow up in 2 weeks of being a sitting duck without the proper air filters!