What’s the best place to be in case of a nuclear war (Russia vs. America, basically?) My guess would be South America or South Africa. Any other suggestions?
The Galapogas.
New Zealand would be good so long as you get the Kiwis to leave. Similarly, Australia would also be good but again, you’d need to ask the Kiwis to leave. SE Asia would be nice (for a while) but then you’d need to ask the Australians to leave. Unless you like middle aged paedos and drunken louts on end of season footy trips. In which case you’d still be faced with having Muslim neighbours and that’s a deal breaker isn’t it Paul?
Perhaps prevention is better than a cure and a worthy goal to work towards.
California, of course. Where else can you run around and shoot bandits and mutants and oversized bugs with Dogmeat by your side after the nuclear exchange?
The only problem is that it royally sucks in the peacetime.
The cynic in me would say, “put me at at ground zero, let the fucker land on my head, because it ain’t gonna be pretty afterwards.”
Assuming you were in glorious Hawaii or New Zealand or The Falkland Islands…life would be so much worse. The destruction of world economy, transportation, medical response, not to meniton the environmental factors; then there will be the wars to grab what is left.
Are you writing a novel, or are you predicting a Bush re-election?
If you all read the link Patty gave Tierra del Fuego is the closest thing we have to a studied answer on this but it sounds like a place you wouldn;t want to live anyway.
The pessimist side of me (as mentioned) says I hope it lands right above me…I probably won’t even know I’m dead.
The optimist side of me hopes I am on board a US ballistic missile submarine. The chances of that being the case are worse than me happening to be in Tierra del Fuego if (when?) the shit hits the fan (but not by a lot) but for the ultimate safety place I figure the bottom of the ocean in a boat meant to avoid all detection is likely the safest place.
As long as I am being an optimist make that a ballistic missile submarine doing a USO tour with with all of last year’s Playmates and somehow, someway I’m the only guy aboard yet magically manage to run the ship…hey, someone has to repopulate the species!
Canada.
Brrrrrrr, that Canadian winter sure seems warmer than the nuclear one.
The Texas Air National Guard?
There’s Pitcairn Island. Of course, you’d have other problems to deal with . . .
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Patty O’Furniture already posted an excellent link.
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You sound extremely naive.
Have a look at what a relatively small (by today’s standards) bomb did in Hiroshima. The effects of a nuclear bomb on civilians don’t last for just a few seconds.
Study the nuclear capabililties of the countries involved. You don’t think they are just going to destroy each other, do you? Every city in every allied country has got its own bomb.
Incidentally, would the casualty list bother you at all? Even if you do dodge the radiation cloud for a while, aren’t you going to have nightmares forever?
That explanation is two measley paragraphs long (and the second paragraph is almost irrelevant.) I’d expect more than two paragraphs on such a cosmic topic from someone like Cecil Adams. And it doesn’t even attempt to provide a thought-out, strategical analysis of the situation: it only assumes that in the event of a nuclear war, every single country in the world will be destroyed, and you’ll be screwed no matter where you are. Why assume that? Why assume that Russia would nuke Africa if it were attacked by America? Why assume that after two or three cities nuked leaders wouldn’t come to their senses and end further carnage with some kind of agreement? Why assume that all the nuking would happen all at once? And do all possible forms of international nuclear conflict fall under the blanket term “nuclear holocaust?”
I was hoping for a better answer.
As for Tierra Del Fuego, not all of it is a “godforsaken pile of rocks.” It is in fact a series of islands, some of which are cold, rainy and windy, and some of which aren’t. I’ve seen photos from someone who’s visited it, and I must say at least the ones I saw looked fairly beautiful, actually. This,for example, doesn’t exactly look like Hell. And even if Tierra Del Fuego is an impractical place to be, what about Argentina? Chile? They’re far enough south to seemingly be safe from nuclear devestation in North America.
Even in the event of an all-out nuclear war, there are varying degrees of nuclear damage. There’s the initial blast radius, the “ground zero,” which would vary depending on the type of bomb used, obviously, and whether it was detonated over an area or dropped directly on the ground. There’s the fallout and radiation, which would be quite variable depending on where you are relative to the bombs. There are all kinds of factors to be talked about.
I thought the theory of “nuclear winter” was discredited.
No, not quite. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter
Tahiti, Fiji, some place liket that. Nice places, nobody is mad at them, and tourists pay good money to get there. If nothing else, I could always catch my own dinner. I love to fish anyways.
Argentina or Chile would be a safe bet. We donn’t have nuclear weapons therefore we are not a “fair target”. Incidentally Tierra del Fuego is a beautifull place, one of Argentina’s (I really don’t know much about chile’s side) best places to live. Sure it’s colder than hell but its’ lovely.
My plan in the event of a nuclear war was to head to northern Ontario, Canada. I’mthnking somewhere north of the star on this map.
The first major benefit was that it was close to home (I grew up in Sudbury, and go to school in Ottawa). The second was that it was far removed from major habitation… sure, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and North Bay would be targets, and maybe even the important mining towns of Sudbury and Timmins, if the attacker wanted to be thorough. But if you go far enough north, you’re many hundreds of kilometres from any of that.
You could camp on the shore of some lake in the endless forest of the Canadian Shield, with all the fish and berries and deer you can find, to eat. Fresh water is no problem, nor are materials to build a shelter. If, in this post-apocalyptic world, you ever need to travel, rivers are plentiful.
The only problem is the winter, but if the Ojibway could do it for ten thousand years, it’s not impossible to put up with it. And if northern Ontario isn’t far enough away from the big targets of the war to afford some protection from fallout, there are other places in Canada - the northern parts of Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, or the British Columbia interior… even, say, the mainland of Nunavut. Cold, but livable.
Is this idea even feasible, or would the fallout and radiation kill me anyway despite my efforts?
I was under the impression that all-out nuclear war wherein every weapon in the world was employed in order to assure mutual destruction would create such vast quantities of radioactive fallout that it would cause an extinction event similar or even greater than to the Cretaceous/Tertiary event 65M years ago. Even then, some places such as New Zealand were inexplicably unscathed.
I guess the chaotic nature of the global weather currents at the precise time of the war would determine where these pockets existed, if at all.
With my family at my side at ground zero. I’d prefer instant vaporization to the slow death from the environmental catastrophe.
In the bank vault.
With an extra pair of glasses.
From my vantage point, I feel the same way as BobLibDem. However, I’m open to the possibility I, he or both of us would act differently if the situation arose. People, and life in general, can be extraordinarily tenacious. I hear about how people survived years in concentration camps, gulags, prisons and the most abominable conditions and marvel at how or why they bothered with no end in sight.
It seems impossible to predict someone’s behaviour, even our own, in the most extreme circumstances. I’m quite sure every point on Earth would become hellish but I don’t know if anyone can say every spot would become unlivable. No matter what the case, I think there would be people everywhere like Bob and me trying their best despite what they thought when posed with the hypothetical.
On the other hand, I’m equally sure there would be others who’d try and go as painlessly and dignified as possible.