There’s good terrain between me and the airport. And the terminal at Nigg is on the other side of the Dee and round the coast. I’d be well protected from a ground burst at either site. Air bursts are a different matter, of course.
ETA I was assuming that a strike by NK or similar would be more political in nature, hence the target of Balmoral.
I’d probably last for awhile, until the insulin gave out. After that, not so much.
I doubt I could. I can’t fit inside my mini-fridge.
Is it lead lined, if not doesn’t really matter now does it?
I’m pretty sure I’m half screwed. I work near DC, the line is one block away, though I live a good 20+ miles away. If they only wanted to hit DC, once, and I’m not at work, I might be ok. Getting further away from the aftermath might be a bit of a problem though.
Reminds me, I need to reread “Pulling Through,” and actually put together the Kearney Fallout Meter this time. Wonder what Dean Ing’s been up to?
Maybe after I pick up the latest from the Laundry Files.
The answer to the OP is, it depends. Yield, where the detonation occurs, is this Ragnarok or just a terrorist group making their last mistake, etc…
I live in DC, so I assume my attempt at survival would consist of “that’s a funny looking plane…”
That’s a short story waiting to be written.
Being a city employee, in any emergency I’m supposed to report to the Emergency Operations Center. That basically means reporting to work, although I do know the secondary location, in case of flooding. If neither of those is available, I’d have to wait for or seek out announcements.
From there, each department would be implementing their part of the Multi Hazard Functional Emergency Operations Plan. Most of the checklists under nuclear defense operations assumes that there’s been a warning, because if a nuke has already gone off in the area, there’s no prep time.
There is a list of ways that the Plan can be activated, including: “Automatically on receipt of an attack warning or the observation of a nuclear detonation.” I guess that’s sort of like the regulation that allows the DMV to issue a hadicapped plackard without a doctor’s signature if a person has a limb visibly missing.
Per the Plan, Public Works gets to support other departments; identify, improve, and/or construct shelters; deal with traffic; protect communications equipment from EMP; deal with sanitation and water; mark and list key personnel and equipment; review status of food and fuel; review utilities; ration electricity; and assist in distribution of food, clothes, lodging, and hygiene items.
There’s a nuclear weapons threat phone number on the Response Organizations phone list. There’s also a statement that such an emergency may be beyond local resources. It’s good to know your limits, I guess.
I grew up right outside DC, so since I was a little kid I’ve known what would happen if we got hit. I was pretty alarmed that we didn’t have a fallout shelter. Luckily in school we could crawl under our desks. Those things were indestructible. We should have just built a huge school desk to put over the entire metro area.
I don’t think I’d want to. In the Lansing area, we may not be immediately blown away. Certainly Detroit and Chicago would be. Power would be out, water would likely not be available, and food supplies would go out in a hurry. With transportation infrastructure in ruins, how would food get to the cities that are left? So we’d die of thirst, starvation, or radiation sickness. I’d much rather have the bomb go off a foot above my head.
I would probably move the liquor supply into the basement, and drink for the rest of my life, or forty eight hours, whichever comes first. Then emerge, shoot the radioactive mutants, and start setting myself up as warlord.
Or else just die.
Regards,
Shodan
If anyone wants to set-up a blast for their neighborhood and see the estimated effects, Nuclear Secrecy will do the calculations and map them for you.
If I have even a few minutes notice, I can probably make it through North Korea’s largest tested device of 10kt going off in downtown Fort Worth. I’d be outside most of the effects as I am about 6 miles from downtown and it looks like the worst of the effects only reach out about 2 miles.
If we make that a Tsar Bomba at 100Mt, I am not even sure having an airplane on stand-by to fly me out at first notice would help. Heck, my house would be right on the edge of the fireball itself.
Yes, I have 2 refrigerators! 
I suppose the most likely target here in the Houston area would be the Ship Channel, and I’m far enough away from there that I’d have no issues with blast effects, and probably little from fallout.
Plan A would be to hop in the car with a bug-out bag, drive to some unaffected area at least 200 miles away, and hang out there for a while.
If hunkering down is the only option, I have about a week’s worth of supplies that I keep around for the odd hurricane, and I know where to find a radiation meter if I really need it, so that’s all good. What I’m not in any way prepared for is the probable horde of refugees from the blast zone that would be likely to descend on the area.
If a nuclear weapon went off over Toronto, which is the nearest major centre, I’ve no doubt I could keep my family and I alive. Fortunately we live sufficiently far from the center of town that a nuclear weapon of significant size would not hurt us inititally (if you were unfortunate enough to be looking at downtown Toronto at the moment of detonation I fear for your eyesight, but oh well) and being west of the city we are almost invariably upwind of Toronto. I’d know to keep low, stay safe, and move us westward as quickly as prudence would allow.
When I was in grade school we used to have atom bomb drills. Sister Mary Claver would tell us to get under our desks and pray the rosary. This was the safety plan. My grade school was ten or so miles from SAC headquarters at Offut AFB. We wouldn’t have even seen the flash…
When are we supposed to know about the nuclear strike in this hypothetical? We know in advance that a nuclear war is possible? We hear about the incoming strike 15 minutes in advance? We realize it happened when we see the atomic mushroom?
Also : there’s a single North-Korean strike exactly 20 miles away? How big? I believe North Korea has only small yield nukes, so a single explosion 20 miles away might not be very threatening, in fact. Being 20 miles away from Hiroshima was quite safe, for instance.
We could have a fallout issue, here.
Exactly.
You were going to die. They wanted to salvage your immortal soul.
Much of my active duty career was at Offutt, and I actually lived in on-base family housing for a lot of it. When I stood on my front porch, in my mind’s eye I could paint the bulls-eyes on the ground where intel told us the Soviets were targeting.
Now? 20 miles away from any likely target, and upwind according to the fallout models I recall, so it wouldn’t be the clean instant death of being part of the mushroom cloud or the slower death of thermal burns or radiation illness… just the post-holocaust survival thing.
I know the general direction to go from where I live and have an idea about where to end up. However, I live close enough to an air force base that the thermal pulse would crisp my house, blow out the windows and likely kill most people inside anyway.
Assuming the thermal pulse didn’t kill us, the first thing I’d do is run by my parents house (after grabbing my wife and Les Paul of course. Oh, and water). My Dad did a bunch of work, back in the day, doing analysis of nuclear weapon damage and fallout patterns, etc. Basically the government asked his group to model a ton of different scenarios. I know the general way to go from my area that will avoid the worst of the fallout assuming they hit one or more big cities. But that is a lot of desert which sorta sucks on the whole survival end of things. So it’d be grab Dad and ask, which way?
Slee