World War II ended in 1945. Two short years later we were involved in another conflict; one with the potential of being even more deadly… the Cold War.
While the United States and the Soviet Union were “allies” during WWII, it was always an uneasy alliance. Even so, supporting the Soviets made sense, as every German soldier they killed was one less that our military wouldn’t have to.
In the cold calculus of war, that also meant that every Soviet soldier who died was one less American soldier who would have to give up their life.
Defeating NAZI Germany propelled the Soviet Union onto the world stage, in a way that Russia never had been before. At the Yalta Conference, after the war, Russia successfully gained occupation of Eastern Europe, allowing them to unify the countries under their control and ultimately create the Warsaw Pact.
While the United States was busy reducing their military after the war, going back to peacetime levels, the Soviet Union never really did. Nor did they retire old equipment like we did. I distinctly remember briefings about Soviet forces, back when I was a captain in the Army.
Related: Survival Lessons from the Old Army C-Rations
One of the striking things to me, was that they still had World War II equipment on the books, including vehicles supplies by the USA as part of the “lend-lease” program.
Military Moves
The other major military move that the Soviet Union undertook was to pour resources into their own nuclear program, which started in February, 1943. The Soviet leadership had learned about the Manhattan Project, with spies implanted into the facility at Oak Ridge and sought to duplicate it.
Before the war even ended, Soviet intelligence services were working hard to bring German scientists into the fold, in order to boost their own nuclear program.
This led to the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) Operation Paperclip, bringing German scientists to the US for the same purpose, and to keep those scientists out of the hands of the Soviet Union.
Hence, the Cold War was begun. Which side could develop, build and field enough intercontinental ballistic missiles to defeat the other and protect their own population first?
That war lasted 44 years, without ever turning hot and without either side ever winning the victory. Rather, the Soviet Union fell apart on December 26,1991, effectively removing themselves from the contest.
Civil Defense
The federal government not only put a lot of effort into building our nuclear arsenal, but also in (halfhearted) ways of protecting our civilian population.
The Office of Civil Defense (DCPA), an organization started during World War II, took over these efforts, building and identifying fallout shelters and training the population in what to do in the event of a nuclear attack.
Part of this was stocking those fallout shelters with food, water and sanitary supplies, for those who would be staying in the shelter.
I remember growing up in the Cold War. We had fallout shelter drills in the elementary school I attended, just like the schools have fire drills today.
Our fallout shelter was under a staircase and looking back on it, I wonder how they expected us to survive in those crowded conditions for 30 days.
I also remember the bomb shelter we had, attached to our home. I have no idea how old the shelter was or why it had been built in the first place; but it was an old house, perhaps dating all the way back to the Revolutionary War.
The bomb shelter was clearly an addition, many years later. Still, it was designated as our community fallout shelter and stocked with Civil Defense supplies.
Emergency Kit
A typical fallout shelter for 50 people (ours was less) would be stocked with the following kits:
• 10 Water barrels
• 10 Cases of Food
• 1 Sanitation kit
• 1 Medical kit
• 1 Radiation detection kit (ours was too small to have this)
Were any prepper you or I knew to have this as their stockpile, we’d look at them and shake our heads, calling them a “newbie” or worse. Were anyone to try and survive on what’s included in this kit, they could.
But it would literally just be survive, as in just barely survive. The only parts of the kit which are at all impressive are the medical kit and the radiation detection kit.
So, what would happen if we tried eating that food and surviving on that water in a survival situation today? That’s assuming you just happened to find a shelter with those supplies still stockpiled, but let’s assume that for the sake of discussion.
Civil Defense Water
The water in these Civil Defense supplies was packed in 17.5 gallon steel drums. Some earlier versions used a fiberboard drum, rather than the metal one; but the changeover happened quickly, leading me to think that the fiberboard ones weren’t very good. 
The water itself was encased in a double polyethylene bag; the inner of which was either tied shut with a wire tie or heat sealed.
Each drum supposedly provided water for 5 people, for two weeks. Dividing that out, we get one quart of water, per person, per day, assuming that there aren’t any extra people in the shelter; not something to be counted on.
Modern understanding of survival states that we need one gallon of water per person, per day for drinking and cooking. Even modern nutritional theory states that we need eight, eight-ounce glasses of water per day to maintain health. That’s a half gallon.
Related: The SHTF Diet: Minimum Food And Water Supply For 3 Months
While it would be possible to survive on a quart of drinking water per day; that would leave people weak, dizzy, and with some confusion. Left too long, it can lead to some severe medical conditions, including permanent kidney damage. It’s not something to be taken lightly. Still, that’s better than dying of radiation poisoning.
Filling Process
The other interesting thing about the water was that it was ordinary tap water. Pictures exist today of men filling those drums with water, using an ordinary garden hose, in the basement of government buildings where they were stored.
Those men were merely following the instructions printed on the drum. No chemical purification was added.
While that waster was considered safe to drink; that doesn’t mean that it was bacteria free. Rather, just like today, the bacteria level was low enough that it was safe to drink.
But would it stay that way over a prolonged period of storage? Instead of saving people’s lives, that water could have killed people, by bringing on dysentery and the dehydration that comes along with it.
According to the Office of Civil Defense 1966 report, that water should have been able to last 10+ years in normal storage conditions and 5 – 8 years in adverse storage conditions.
Food
Most preppers today would be shocked at what the Office of Civil Defense decided should be stocked as survival food. Those rations would make even the worst of modern prepackaged survival food look like gourmet meals.
There were three different types of survival food stored in those fallout shelters, which would give the inhabitants 700 calories of carbohydrates per day; no more.
The three types of food were randomly stocked in cases, each case containing only one of the following:
• Biscuit/Cracker
• Bulgur Wafer (cracked and parboiled wheat of various types)
• Carbohydrate Supplement (hard candy)
Rations
Putting that simply, a day’s ration in the fallout shelter would consist of roughly the equivalent of 12 graham crackers per person, along with a few hard candies, assuming the candies were available.
Since the boxes were randomly stocked, there was no guarantee that all shelters had hard candy.
Such a diet would keep you alive, but you could count on losing about a pound per day, even with the sedentary activity of being trapped underground, along with 49 other people.
Since it would only be for two weeks, it is unlikely that such a diet would cause any serious problems, except for people who already had underlying medical issues.
But what if you found one of these cases today? Could you just add it to your prepping stockpile as extra carbohydrates?
While you probably could, it would not be recommended. Most of this food was put in place in the early 1960s. But efforts to replace those stocks were curtailed in 1969, when Congress decided to stop appropriate funding for shelter supplies.
In 1976 laboratory tests led DCPA to publish the determination that the majority of the food stored in those kits was likely to have become rancid. Their recommendation was to destroy those stocks of food, leaving the shelters without any food stocks at all.
What happened to the biscuits, crackers and bulgur wafers? Those which were considered to be in “good condition” were mixed into animal feed and fed to livestock.
Related: Turning Flour into Hardtack Biscuits With Over 100 Year Shelf Life
But any which was in rusted or otherwise damaged containers was destroyed; or more likely hauled off to the local landfill.
Civil Defense Food
So, what would happen if we were to eat it anyway, even if it was rancid?
Eating rancid cereal products like these causes irritation to the stomach and intestinal tract, causing vomiting and/or diarrhea. Once again, we’re faced with the issue of death by dehydration, as both vomiting and diarrhea take water out of the body.
While that might not sound all that bad, severe dehydration leads to death. This can happen though bacteria and amoebas in the food, but it can also happen with rancid food.
The bottom line is that it wouldn’t be a good idea to eat Civil Defense food stocks, even if you could find them. While you might survive such a situation; it would clearly be unpleasant.
But there’s a chance that it could go farther than that, especially in a survival situation, leading to your death by dehydration.
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Good to know. We have a can of the biscuits found in a packing house near us. i will donate it to our local museum.
I like the picture of the family in the shelter. Dad is wearing his necktie and Mom has on high heel shoes. Two week later, I am sure Dad would have shed the tie somewhere along the line as Mom would have ditched the high heel shoes while padding about the shelter.
I recently sold my van and in cleaning out the bug-out supplies ran across some of my original prepper supplies which had been buried in the bottoms of the boxes I used to store the bug-out supplies. They were packed in the 1-quart paint cans you see in the picture depicting the medical supply kit. That’s really the ideal way to store supplies that you want to preserve for the long haul. You can buy new 1-gallon paint cans at paint stores. They may even sell new 1-quart paint cans.
Even if vacuum sealed with your vacuum sealer, putting the vacuum sealed materials in the metal paint can will protect it from rodents and insects as well as physical damage. Should it be necessary to abandon your vehicle, a paint can just might be a handy device to have. Worst case, you can always leave it with your vehicle if you decide it weighs more than its utility. In your vehicle, the paint can won’t weigh much more than a cardboard box and certainly is more durable than cardboard, although the cardboard I always felt could aid as a fire starter.
I definitely am going to put my fire starting supplies inside a new paint can. With the lid tightly closed, it will be waterproof even if the vehicle is submerged. It can server as a water bucket and I am sure in an emergency situation I would find other uses for it.
Looking at the dates on some of the items I dug out, I realized that I have been prepping for twenty years. Still am not completely satisfied that my preps are complete. So much to do, so little time and MONEY.
I work part-time at a big box home improvement store, blue not orange ?, and yes we have the 1 gallon and even 1 quart cans. Also have food grade buckets.
The good thing about those cans you mention is they awesome for marking large amounts of char cloth at once, or small amounts of bio char.
Early 1950 my Dad would buy boxes of rye hardback. All he’d say was just incase. Mom had me try 3 different kinds of hardtack. I liked the rye best. Sort of like eating rocks till soaked in tomato soup. She explaind it was food sailors could survive on when they were at sea for months. She also showed me how to soak a corner in my mother untill it softened enough to bite it.
Not sure but maybe we’d label them peppers way back then. I learned to forage with Mom. We were vegetarians but dad made me learn to fish, then clean, cook, and eat the fish I caught. They made sure I learned knots, campcraft, tracking, trail blazing, and trail marking ect. Dad made sure I taught my kids some of that as well. Maybe living in farm country then through the depression and WWII made them plan ahead. It’s still a good way to be.
I too looked back into old coffee cans of stuff carried in cars, packed up with camp gear, later on burried across the mountain above me. I didn’t think of it as prepping. It was just having what we might need in different situations. I’d lost everything three times. I wanted a change of clothing of somekind, food, something to cook in and eat with. Simple things but comforting after times of absolute dispare with nothing. It was a long time until I could be relaxed about food.
My sons climbed the mountain and some hunted there. They each knew where some caches were but not all. It was for their provision, just in case.
I learned the difference between K-Rations and C-Rations. K-Rations came in a green can w/black lettering and the C-Rations came in a grey can with black lettering.
1970s and 80s we were given a lot of those little green cans. Kids liked them. I liked the canned cakes with my home canned fruit. I probably wouldn’t touch them today.
I think you may have that reversed. Thw C-Rats I had in the Marines in the 70’s were all green cans with black lettering.
I agree with AZ Hawg. All the C-rats I ever saw in the 50s and early 60s were in green cans with black writing. I only had K-rats once that I can remember and it came in a sort of paper tube and looked like toothpaste that one pushed out from the bottom and ate of the top of the round container. The taste was indescribable. The texture was sort of Vienna sausage texture but firmer. The taste was kind of Vienna Sausage tasting but not nearly as toothsome. As a personal preference, I would have rather had sausage patties in gravy which I hated than K-Rations. Of course, after a day in the field running military exercises we were prepared to eat grasshoppers and snails. so the K-rats got scarfed down.
I can’t say anything about K-rations, all I know is that the C-rations I ate in the Marines came in green cans.
The family in the shelter is well dressed and nicely coiffed, what’s odd is I’ve been watching some old nuclear test videos on YouTube, all the way up to Operation Plowshares in the early 60’s and all the workers and technicians can be seen man handling nuclear bombs while dressed in shorts and boots, no shirt, no gloves, no hardhats. Funny to see them hauling a thermonuclear bomb in the bed of a farm truck bouncing down a dirt road. But you have to dress for dinner locked down in your fallout shelter?
I’ve never been able to stock enough for a true SHTF long duration event, I always hope it is not a Black Swan when it comes and I’ll have the chance to stock up in a hurry. This is not the course of wisdom, but I’ve always been the grasshopper and almost never the ant.
2001 and 2014 I was given other folks Y2K food stores. I was widowed in 2002 and lived most of 2 years on that food. The rest was later given away. The second gift was just canned dry grains and pasta. I still have those cans and would imagine they will be good for more years to come. I have them in boxes in a shop building where they stay dry and out of the worst heat.
Funny with the stereotypical picture of the ‘family in the shelter’, right? That’s the same images they used with TV advertising in the 50’s, dad in his white shirt and tie, mom with her prim lace apron and heels, and a polite, clean child or two (usually brother and sister)
Frankly, if finding anything from a shelter stocked 70 years ago, I seriously doubt any of it would be worth the risk of consuming it.
I kept expecting to see Henry Mitchell and Mr Wilson in those pictures lol.
Imagine sitting in a fallout shelter eating crackers with 49 of your closest friends for two weeks. It’s a bit challenging.
Now imagine sharing one toilet with those 49 friends in the same fallout shelter while dealing with gut-wrenching diarrhea for two weeks. It’s a bit horrifying.
I imagined that and it made me slightly bilious. In fact the second paragraph made me a lot more than slightly. A the end of two weeks I am confident they would all be 49 former friends some even bitter enemies.
One of the best ways to store water is in the form of ice.
Colder the better too.
Less than 38F and bacteria does not multiply.
With the dressing for dinner and the high heels and the polite children! You have to remember that this was the time when married couples always had twin beds in the bedrooms, and the opposite sex was never shown in a bedroom. And people of color were assumed by the powers that were that they would be obliterated in the blast or because of the fallout.
“And people of color were assumed by the powers that were that they would be obliterated in the blast or because of the fallout.”
Stumps, I am wondering why everything in the last couple of years as been about “people of color” and LBGTQ people. You have succeeded in inserting people of color in a story about eating old Civil Defense food? Congratulations.
And please share your source for claiming that the powers that be assumed that “people of color” would be obliterated.
(I am wondering just how long there will be Black Friday sales before that term is accused of being racist.)
I can see where a fallout shelter would still be useful as a storm shelter and as a place to store your backup preps, also if you have extra people in your house come shtf.
I wonder how many houses still have these?
Here in the big city, you see haunting Civil Defense decals and symbols on buildings indicating that it is a place where one would be directed to go in a National Emergency. If there still a Civil Defense Program of any kind, one would not know it here on the locale level. Even the armories are empty buildings without a single desk or chair let alone a generator. They say logistics wins the war. One wouldn’t have a clue around here or a chance if they weren’t prepared.
And yet, the Russians have a massive shelter system waiting until it is needed.
The last I heard, the Federal CD program was abandoned sometime in the 1960s….(please advise if some similar program is in effect iin any individual states). Some sirens still go off on Tuesdays at 10:00am in some places ( or on the radio, emergency sounds buzzing at that time) -a relic from the old “duck and cover” days of the 1950s..
When FEMA advises families to “have a plan” it may be because that is all they can guarantee – one certainly would be unwise to rely upon their plans….
In the back of my mind, buried deep in my data banks, I seem to recall that the Brits allocated ten square feet per person in their bomb shelter designs. My house is a mini-McMansion of 1850 square feet including the 1 3/4 bathrooms. I just cannot imagine spending two weeks trapped in my house with 50 folks I wave hi to when seeing them on the street and that’s with a spacious 37 square feet per person. I don’t have a clue what the U.S. used as a design feature for their fallout shelters but I suspect it wasn’t far from 10 square feet per person as with the Brits. If my old timey math is correct that is 500 square feet for 50 people for eating, sleeping, and whatever. If you didn’t have the personality disorder where being in a crowded space sends you into panic mode I am quite sure two weeks of such crowding would drive everyone stark raving bonkers. I can see the scenario now:
“Screw the radioactivity. I’m outa here” as the crazed fat guy tramples people in his rush for the exit hatch. Of course he is not as fat as he was when he first entered the shelter after two weeks of crackers and water. The most interesting drama would be with smokers who probably wouldn’t have brought two week’s supply of tobacco with them. And, also, any drug addicts who might have slipped into the shelter. Wowza!!! Talk about fun and games!!!
Jeez, in the Old Corps, even when a prisoner was on bread and water confinement, he had to have a full meal every third day. Usually 30 days bread and water made a Christian out of everybody. There was also no limit to how much bread and water such a prisoner was allowed. The advice was to drink as much water as possible. Eating nothing but bread has a certain impact on movement along the digestive path and lots of water helps hold down the impaction. I would assume eating nothing but crackers and water would have a similar effect. Well, on the bright side, it would cut down the long lines at the bucket.
The only place where I ever experienced crowding like that, and we usually had the weather deck to escape to where at least we had fresh air was three pleasure cruises on U.S, Navy Attack Personnel Auxillaries of a six week total duration during my tour in the Marines. The troop compartments had racks six high. You decided whether you wanted to sleep on your stomach or your back for the duration of the night before you slid in. Of course, you could change position by sliding back out and getting in the other way. You never wanted the bottom rack. Remember the old saying about what flows downhill? It also applies to vomitus. On my first pleasure cruise I made the mistake of getting the top rack right next to the loudspeaker so that I was acutely aware of every bosun’s piping for watchstanders, sweepers and any other messages that had to be broadcast. If I recall the drill, normal watches are every four hours except for the 0000 to 0200 watch and the 0200 watch to the 0400 watch which you can see are not four hours. Besides the piping to stand watch, there is the piping for the availability of watchstanders’ chow and I don’t recall this many years later how many pipings there were from 2200 lights out in the berthing spaces to 0600 when everyone was piped to reveille. I remember it seemed as if I had just fallen asleep again when the screech of the bosun’s pipe in my ear gave me a rude awakening. Did I mention you also shared your rack with your rifle, helmet, cartridge belt with 782 gear, your kapok life preserver and your seabag with all your uniform clothing?
Actually, the old 50s mandate of two weeks in the bomb shelter really anticipated that you would be almost at ground zero. Even a couple of miles away, the half life of the radioactivity would allow you to leave your prison before two weeks elapsed. And if you really were that close to ground zero, unless you were really really deep in the ground in the bomb shelter, you probably were a crispy critter anyway, so two weeks didn’t matter. Even in the SHU at Pelican Bay ultra max prison the prisoners have a bigger cell than 37 square feet. Of course they spend more time in the SHU than two weeks most of the time.
As a somewhat morbid aside, if you are in a bomb shelter that close to ground zero, you will be carbonized by the heat and lack of oxygen. My wife’s cousin, his wife and two children were in a bomb shelter in Yokohama during one of the fire bombing raids. My wife told me her father said the only way he identified them was there were two large bodies and two small bodies all together in the bomb shelter with all the other bodies but otherwise they were just lumps of charcoal and totally unrecognizable as human beings. They had taken shelter in the neighborhood bomb shelter when the firestorm swept over the neighborhood . The bright spot is that they most likely died of asphyxiation as opposed to being burned to death. The firestorm consumed oxygen in the immediate path of the flames at ground level. The fire was fed by the vacuum created which drew in fresh air to feed the fire. If you are at or close to ground zero in an atomic blast not to worry. If you are not immediately vaporized, you will die promptly of lack of oxygen. Hey, it could be worse. You could be several miles away and have all your clothes welded to your body and any exposed skin immediately very well done to the point of being like a sausage left in the pan too long so that you resemble a moving lump of charcoal.
Well, enough gruesome thoughts for one evening.
That’s a similar thought to what my grandfather told my mother when as a child during the fifties. They had had a nuclear drill at school, and she had asked him about bomb shelters.
His reply was that even if you survived the initial blast, it wouldn’t do you any good, as when you came out of the shelter, everything would either be destroyed or irradiated, and you would likely starve to death or die from radiation poisoning in a couple of weeks, so why bother?
Cheery guy, but not wrong. To quote Robert Louis Stevenson, “Them what dies will be the lucky ones.”
Surviormann99 – The Chinese too have a massive underground shelter system in place In Beijing in particular. Recent news reports indicate that they are also busy building hundreds of new missile silos.
Nuclear war would be a horror by anyone’s estimate, but, sorry, Miss Kitty, your grandfather knew little about the subject. I don’t even know where to start with your comment.
It’s my opinion that so many uninformed people claim that they will just walk out and be vaporized because they simply use it as a copout for dealing with the problem in a realistic way. Too much mental energy is required.
Anyone eating poorly packaged, 50 year old food or drinking water that old would have to be an idiot. It would be a temporary delayed suicide. I starved once during the Vietnam war at sea…on only WWII crackers with weavels and peanut butter so hard you had to chip it with a knife and the water was contaminated with jet fuel. Lost 25 lbs in two weeks before we got resupplied. You will eat anything if things get bad enough, trust me….got delirious at times and cofused.
I was privileged to enjoy the candies from Civil Defense shelters in the mid 60’s as the painter across the street snagged a can of them some where. I didn’t know where they came from but they were good. yellow and red but the same flavor covered in sugar.
I also had the c-rations that fed me when I left home the 2nd time at 15 when I wound up in rural Oregon and a neighbor 20 miles away offered me a bunch of them, but although they had the 4 cigerette pack in them they took out the 2 benzadrine tablets but they were od cans with black lettering and they were still good. Liked the crackers and blackberry jam, 2 different tins. Now I keep about 12 cases of mre’s and they are all edible, but have about 1.5 years of canned goods and frozen goods, chest type deep freeze set at -10 also have genset to keep it all going and fuel for 6 months. Been prepping off and on since the 60’s. Stick with it cuz I don’t share.
At present I have 2 years of canned foods, 1 year of mre’s
Yes! It is prudent – and responsible – to prep as one is able!!! However, it may be wiser to rethink the “always unwilling to share” policy, because life is not just about physical survival – it is mostly about winning the reward – and privilege – of a happy life, eternally, with the holy ones in Heaven?
True enough, one cannot share with everyone – however, the miracles of “always being enough” are promised only to those who think of others too. Not everyone will agree that this is true – or even possible …however I am compelled to testify of this greater reality. Best regards to all???
We had a family in the neighborhood in the 50s that built a fallout shelter to spec. Reinforced concrete, the roof a concrete dome under 2 feet of heavy black clay soil. The door was a commercial steel clad door, the concrete stairwell went down parallel to the shelter lower than floor level, then turned 90 degrees and stepped up to the shelter’s steel door. I later found out this was because gamma radiation easily penetrated a steel door but traveled in a straight line and on into the soil, so the turn kept it out of the shelter. It’s scary to learn how much shilding it takes to survive two weeks in the fallout footprint from a nuclear blast.
Do you remember how many square feet it was for how many people? What were the sanitary arrangements? A bucket or was there a septic tank built under the shelter? A bucket would anticipate a fairly short stay as a 5-gallon bucket would fill up rather quickly. Without a method for disposal, the fumes would dictate a short stay. Or maybe you get accustomed to it. It seems to me that was always an overlooked detail in most shelters, but probably more important than food.
I’m from the government and I’m here to help. Thanks but no thanks.
According to Ronald Reagan, the scariest words int he English language.
I used to cringe every time I heard that the city had a new plan to help the downtown merchants. I always felt we could do just fine if they would just stop “helping” us. Every project they did cost me more money in lost sales than if I had undertaken the project in front of my business myself.
Survivormann99:
Not saying you’re wrong in your assessment, but my point in mentioning it was more to point out that
A) in the 50′ s, the average person didn’t have access to the information and resources that we have now. Remember, they had those ridiculous nuclear attack drills in schools where the children hid under their desks or in a hallway with their arms wrapped around their heads, as if that would be any use, except to freak out two generations of school kids. Perhaps the ground work for the “Great Reset”, with its constant parade of terror had started even then?
B) in the event of an all out nuclear war, his feeling that all of the infrastructure, a lot of agriculture, water supplies and other necessities would be destroyed or irradiated to the point of being unusable may have been accurate, albeit overly pessimistic.
I think his real point in this was that the government couldn’t or wouldn’t be of much help, and in an urban area the destruction would be on an unthinkable scale, with subsequent further loss of life as people emerged from their bunkers hungry and thirsty with no available resources. Hiding in a bunker, therefore, was simply prolonging the inevitable in his opinion.
We already know that the government does NOT have our best interests at heart, unless you happen to be in the top 1% economically…that much hasn’t changed.
“Remember, they had those ridiculous nuclear attack drills in schools where the children hid under their desks or in a hallway with their arms wrapped around their heads, as if that would be any use, except to freak out two generations of school kids.”
Wrong.
Your statement paints with a very broad brush. While the kids would have been toast if they were short distances from the burst, you classify all such drills as being worthless. They were not.
Question: What is the blast radius for light physical damage from a Russian 800 kiloton airburst? If you don’t know, then you shouldn’t express opinions about the amount of destruction, life’s not worth living, hiding in a bunker is merely prolonging the inevitable, etc.
If you decide to live in easy walking distance of Luke AFB, for example, you should simply hope that you are not home when the day comes. Otherwise, you simply can kiss your derriere good-bye. If you have wisely placed some distance between yourself and most Tier One military targets and large urban centers, you have a decent chance of survival.
About emerging “from their bunkers hungry and thirsty with no available resources,” I have to think that you would not find yourself in that class of people or, otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this blog. OF COURSE, you would have available resources. To say otherwise and say it is all useless is a pure copout, and it is simply a dodge so as to make a person feel good about himself, and let himself/herself off the hook when he/she is doing nothing.
I am not saying that every point made in this article is without any question correct, but it certainly makes some excellent points: https://defconwarningsystem.com/2021/02/22/you-can-survive-nuclear-war/
Go to this site and plug in your location. Choose a 300 or 800 kiloton warhead, for example, and choose an airburst. https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ Then choose a ground burst. I am confident that you will be surprised with the results.
Go to this web site and it will give you some idea of current prevailing winds.https://www.windfinder.com/#9/34.2629/-118.8364 One problem I see here is that the prevailing winds at ground level are often very different at, say, 1500 feet. I don’t know at what level the wind directions shown here were measured. Nevertheless, I find the information there to be useful.
Now, rethink your view that survival is hopeless. Even if the resulting radiation reduces life expectancy, life expectancy in the 1820s was around 35. If you were lucky enough to be borne in 1900, the life expectancy of white males increased to about 46, and the life expectancy of black males was only 33 or 35.
No one (or at least, only a few) said then that life wasn’t worth living unless you could die peacefully in your bed at 85. No one has a constitutional right to live to 85. (“Fun Fact”–For a 200 year period during the Middle Ages, no king of England ever lived to see age 60.)
As many survivors as possible will be needed to rebuild society after a nuclear and to make the world once again comfortable for our grandchildren. There is no reason for people to reduce the number of potential survivors as a result of inaction now. So get crackin’.
Survivormann99:
Again, you miss my point. I was speaking of the prevalent opinion during the fifties, sixties and early seventies, not now and not to be conflated with our own situations and preparedness. Us preppers will fare better than the average person, but for the average person in the fifties dependant upon the Civil Defense “survival packages” the story would have been much different. They would indeed have emerged into a world with potentially little to no available resources for radiation sickened survivors.
Those school air raid drills I mentioned were indeed supposed to protect against a direct nuclear hit. I know….I was there, albeit at the tail end of their being held in my school district in the early seventies. Did the drills, saw the Civil Defense movies dating back to the fifties. It was real, if unrealistic in the supposed effectiveness.
Back then, there was a lot less information available to the public on the situation.Even those who served in the military in many instances were on a “need to know” basis as far as nuclear weapons information went. That was all part of the propaganda machine designed to keep the people off balance and increasingly dependant on the government to “protect” the country against the outside threat of foreign aggressors, particularly Communist Russia and China. Some things haven’t changed, have they?
Back then, we were in a cold war that was constantly threatening to go hot, all to get public approval of increasing the military budget until we could claim “the biggest, best, most powerful and best equipped military in the world”. Then, as now, it was about appropriating money.
Although the risk of all out nuclear war has diminished, and less destructive but equally effective means of attack have been developed, the greed still remains. The greater threats now are germ warfare, the sabotage of the chain of supply and cyberattacks on vital infrastructure. Those have the potential to kill nearly as many people as a nuclear strike, with far less risk to the aggressor and much more usable loot to be picked over after the invasion and subjugation of the attacked country.
Personally, I’m far more worried about the cyberattacks that are becoming more common. Those can be far worse than just information breaches and disruption of service. Several years ago there was a “computer error” that over pressurized gas delivery lines in the Merrimack Valley region of Massachusetts. Only one person was killed in the “incident” when the chimney from a destroyed house landed on his car, but there were thousands of homes and businesses damaged or destroyed by the explosions and fires. I thought then and I still think that that was a deliberate act of sabotage, despite the company claiming that it was an unfortunate human error. In either case, it points out that all an attacker has to do is hack a computer remotely. This is the new warfare we need to be concerned about, these remote attacks which can be carried out by foreign governments as well as lone wolf attackers. A group of innocent tourists or business travelers deliberately infected by a deadly disease. A computer hacker gaining control of an air traffic control tower or municipal water treatment plant. A deliberate shutdown of US ports or a stoppage of even a few days to gasoline supplies. All of these can cause a great deal of damage up to and including deaths.
We’ve already seen it happen, yet little seems to be done to prevent it happening again and far worse in its consequences.
This is the new warfare we need to be concerned about.
Miss Kitty, no, I didn’t miss your point(s).
“…but for the average person in the fifties dependant (sic) upon the Civil Defense ‘survival packages’ the story would have been much different.” The average person in the 50s was not dependent on Civil Defense survival packages. The Civil Defense fallout shelters were, in an overwhelming percentage, located in urban areas where substantial buildings were located. Who in their right mind would head to a downtown high rise to take shelter? A fortunate few actually built shelters in their own home’s basement, or they planned to leave town, if possible.
I recall that every time I looked at my hometown’s TV listing, there was a contractor’s ad for a fallout shelter to be constructed in basements. Plans for shelters were available to those who wanted to construct their own.
“Those school air raid drills I mentioned were indeed supposed to protect against a direct nuclear hit. I know….I was there…”
Maybe a child like yourself would believe that the drills were supposed to protect you against a direct nuclear hit, and it may well be that you were actually told that it would (Parents, for example, frequently tell their young children during a crisis that “everything will be alright” even though they have absolutely no way to know that it will be.)
The fact is that since no one knew exactly where the nuclear weapon would detonate, how large a potential bomb might be used, or how high it might detonate, no one knew exactly where Ground Zero would be, and the Russians weren’t sharing information. Large numbers of the kids taking part in those drills would have benefitted from them because they would be far enough from Ground Zero. Others, of course, would be toast. Just because all kids couldn’t be saved doesn’t mean that the drills were “ridiculous” and wouldn’t of been of “any use,” as you claimed.
“Back then, there was a lot less information available to the public on the situation.” Not if you actually studied the matter and asked the government for information. Sure, there was no internet, but I had a stack of Civil Defense pamphlets and other information. The information was quite thorough.
“Even those who served in the military in many instances were on a “need to know” basis as far as nuclear weapons information went.” True, but only because your statement is so broad. There was plenty of useful, unclassified information available to the common soldier, Marine, sailor, or airman. Manuals were distributed. Classes were conducted. Some, like me, were sent to division level NBC Schools.
“That was all part of the propaganda machine designed to keep the people off balance and increasingly dependant (sic) on the government to ‘protect’ the country against the outside threat of foreign aggressors, particularly Communist Russia and China. Some things haven’t changed, have they?” Keeping the people dependent on the government to protect them from foreign aggressors? Forgive me. I thought that government’s paramount, fundamental, and most sacred duty WAS to keep its people safe from foreign aggressors. Are you saying that Communist Russian and China were no threat to the American public? Seriously? Got it. Good to know.
“Back then, we were in a cold war that was constantly threatening to go hot, all to get public approval of increasing the military budget until we could claim “the biggest, best, most powerful and best equipped military in the world”. Then, as now, it was about appropriating money.” Okay, so you are moving the discussion into the area of pure opinion with no factual support. It is hard to rebut your opinion when you are drifting into Unabomber Territory. You believe what you believe and the facts be damned.
End of discussion.
Survivormann99:
You know, this whole discussion started by your need to refute the words of a long dead man to a young girl seventy years ago, which may well have been misunderstood at the time, or in the retelling of the story to me, and my comment that “he wasn’t wrong”.
While you clearly have done a great deal of research into the subject, you are not entertaining the notion that given a particular set of circumstances surviving a nuclear war would be difficult for most, if not impossible. That is what I meant by “he wasn’t wrong”. Most people haven’t done the level of research that you have, and most of the people who had fallout shelters probably didn’t either.
As to my comment about the Civil Defense Rations, if these ration boxes weren’t either given out by the government or made available for purchase, why then did so many people wind up with them if they were responsible for making up their own food storage? Wouldn’t you rather have food that you knew your family would like and eat, and plenty of it? That’s prepper 101.
As to your remarks about my opinions on what the real threats are that we are facing today, all I can say is that it was unnecessary. Turning up your nose at the argument that there are other threats facing the world today and dismissing them as “Unibomber Territory” is at least as disingenuous as anything that my late grandfather opined about at the supper table regarding nuclear war.
Good day to you sir.
Miss Kitty, you wrote:
“As to my comment about the Civil Defense Rations, if these ration boxes weren’t either given out by the government or made available for purchase, why then did so many people wind up with them if they were responsible for making up their own food storage?”
The federal government never gave these rations out to people. In the years after Russia fell apart, the government decided to get rid of both the rations and the water stored in the shelters. (These shelters were fallout shelters, not blast shelters, thus the ubiquitous black and yellow signs in urban downtown areas with the designation “Fallout Shelter.” Many of these shelters actually did provide considerable protection as blast shelters, however.)
The simple fact was, however, that the rations stored there had not been refreshed for years, if not decades. When these supplies were designated as surplus, they were often sold to the public at auction. Many survival-related vendors bought large quantities of them and sold them to those members of the public who believed “they were responsible for making up their own food storage.” I have never heard of a private citizen being issued any of these supplies.
You wrote:
“As to your remarks about my opinions on what the real threats are that we are facing today, all I can say is that it was unnecessary. Turning up your nose at the argument that there are other threats facing the world today and dismissing them as “Unibomber Territory” is at least as disingenuous as anything that my late grandfather opined about at the supper table regarding nuclear war.”
You are now deflecting. Here is what you actually wrote:
“Back then, we were in a cold war that was constantly threatening to go hot, all to get public approval of increasing the military budget until we could claim “the biggest, best, most powerful and best equipped military in the world”.
You did not mention “other threats in the world.” You simply said that we were in a Cold War and you claimed that the American government was constantly threatening to:”go hot” in order to get public approval for an increased military budget. That way the government could claim to have “the biggest, best, most powerful and best equipped military in the world.” Your claim that the government was threatening to start a hot war in order to increase the military budget is why I declared that your allegation was in Unabomber Territory.
One of the problems with Comment Sections is that they are often used as a “chit-chat Facebook alternative.” Frankly, I just happened to catch what you said. I fully expect that there are other comments that I didn’t read that contain more egregious errors.
A chit-chat discussion about an article concerning which manufacturer’s multi-tool is superior to its competition is one thing. On the other hand, what you say about nuclear war matters. When you offer opinions they need to have factual support. Otherwise, some people will take them as “Gospel” and be misled. The results could be life-threatening.
Survivormann99:
What I said was that there was a constant threat that the cold war would go hot, not that the US government threatened to be the aggressor. If you recall correctly, the US government always pushed the likelihood of Russia or China being the ones to start the bombing, so we needed to build our military reserves so we could intimidate the “Reds” with our military superiority and thus stop a world takeover by the Communists. Because we were “the good guys” we would never ever be the ones to instigate such a thing, at least officially.
Saying the government used the threat of a nuclear war to get extra appropriations isn’t “Unibomber Territory”…it may be cynical, but certainly not crazy talk. The government has lied to us before about a lot of things. Don’t forget, too, that military contracts are worth a great deal of money, so keeping the public interested in maintaining a big military would have been in the best financial interests of a lot of powerful people.
As to my comments about nuclear war being taken as gospel by other readers, I haven’t said anything regarding actual procedures, safety protocols etc. I made a casual comment about the subject of bomb shelters in the case of a nuclear strike and my personal opinion, which I’m sure is not the be all and end all of any one here as far as researching the subject. I seriously doubt that I have that much influence amongst a group of people who are doing their own research and have their own opinions, some of them very strong.
The reason I have chosen to engage you is that YOU chose to blow the whole thing out of proportion. To talk down to me and be condescending in your tone as you “corrected” me. Being rude was not necessary if you really just wanted to correct what you felt was an error… rather, you seem to feel I need “putting in my place” by singling out select passages and picking them to shreds all with an attitude of self-righteous superiority. And no, I’m not overreacting. I have had other conversations with people here who have corrected my information or I have theirs without it degenerating into a smack-down aimed at tearing down the other person and treating them like they’re soooo much stupider, that I have to dumb down my comments so they might understand. There is a way to engage without being disrespectful of other’s opinions. You should try it, sometime. Regardless of your snide remarks about the comment section degenerating into a “chit-chat Facebook alternative”, I have made the effort to talk to you as an equal. But since you seem to have determined that I am somehow beneath you and have chosen to make your comments personal, please be advised that I WON’T sit down, I WON’T shut up and I’m certainly NOT going to “mind my place” and run out to the kitchen to fetch you a cold beer and a sandwich!
If you can’t handle people disagreeing with you, and you lack the personal skills needed to have a constructive, mutually enlightening conversation without being disrespectful to the other person, perhaps Farcebook IS the best place for you. They protect their own over there by allowing their chosen ones to say whatever they want whilst siccing the censor bots onto anyone who isn’t marching in lockstep with the rest of the drones… you’d love it there.
I strongly suggest that you NOT respond to this unless you are prepared to apologize, not for disagreeing or correcting my errors, but for your egregious rudeness.
Again, good day…sir.
Miss Kitty,
Sorry, but no apology will be offered.
I suppose that by now, we have turned this article into the “Miss Kitty and Survivormann99 Show.”
If you go back and look, my original reply to you I said simply that your grandfather was wrong on so many points that I “didn’t know where to start.” You then engaged ME and began making several points for which no factual foundation existed.
What really annoyed me from the get-go was your clear affirmation that your grandfather was correct when he said that “when you came out of the shelter, everything would either be destroyed or irradiated, and you would likely starve to death or die from radiation poisoning in a couple of weeks, so why bother?” You then said that he was “not wrong.” It is such pessimistic talk, when added to half-baked opinions from others, that could make a nuclear war even more of a disaster than it would be otherwise.
I once stood in Nagasaki at the exact Ground Zero in a park where Japanese kids were playing soccer a few yards away. I read on a sign neaby that there had been predictions that nothing would grow there for 500 years, Other than a black monument that looked very similar to the mysterious object in the opening of “2001:A Space Odyssey” there was almost no evidence of the bombing in the city. I am quite confident that few Japanese survivors of the bombing, of whom there were still a great many who were alive at that time, said that “life was not worth living after August 9, 1945.” Life sure sucks at times, but life goes on.
You said: “What I said was that there was a constant threat that the cold war would go hot, not that the US government threatened to be the aggressor.”
What you actually wrote was: “…f[W]e were in a cold war that was constantly threatening to go hot, all to get public approval of increasing the military budget until we could claim ‘the biggest, best, most powerful and best equipped military in the world'” Read your statement again. You said that the purpose of “threatening to go hot” was so as to get public approval for us to claim the “biggest, best, most powerful military in the world.”
Saying in advance that life would not be worth living and that you would want to die is simply glib nonsense (as if a person will likely be able to control whether they are vaporized or not). “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but not today.”
It is the human condition for people to claw for every day on this earth. The choices we make now will greatly influence how many days we get.
Survivormann99:
So, you chose to make a whole big issue about an off the cuff remark I made because of your belief that someone somewhere would read it and think “Oh, well, Miss Kitty says trying to survive a nuclear strike is useless…so I might as well serve the Kool Aide right now and get it over with.”
And then when I tried to explain the context, you persisted in being dismissive of my views because I disagreed with you.
Then you became progressively more abusive, and yet it’s my fault because I’m stupid and I made you mad.
Ok, I think I’ve got it now. My biggest mistake was in thinking you were normal… clearly I was wrong. You’re crazy as an outhouse rodent, and you get off on being a bully.
Right then…feed your own monkey. I’m not playing anymore. Find yourself another punching bag.