My cousin is in Hawaii on vacation, and she Tweeted up a storm during and after the errant missile attack alert. She spent the morning on the lowest floor of her hotel, where among other things, she noted that “there’s no way to plan” with only 15 minutes warning."
What about you? If the real thing happens, would you rather have 15 minutes warning to grab your survival kit and go to the basement? Or would you rather be going about your daily business until an immense flash blinds you?
What if you aren’t at home?
Does it matter whether you’re in a primary target area?
As a kid raised in the 60’s who went on to read a lot of science fiction, I have no illusions that surviving a nuclear war would be something I’d want to do. If I’m gonna go, just get it over with.
With the fears, in the US, at this point being driven by a nation that has a deliverable capability at most in the low single digits with relatively low yields, it’s not necessarily the end of the world or country. At ground zero, you’re pretty much screwed even in any kind of reasonably accessible shelter. As you get far enough away from that point seeking shelter increases the odds of survival compared to standing in the street. I prefer to maximize my chances of surviving while minimizing the amount of radiation I am exposed to. That takes warning.
Anyway, I’m disagreeing with Dino’s comment about a blast not being necessarily the end of the country. A 100-150 kT blast, in a major US city, will be the largest US public health disaster to date, with casualties and damages on a dollar scale being anywhere from one to two orders of magnitude beyond that of 9/11. Make it three if the device is as large as some of the more baroque established nuclear powers’ designs. Stuff that actually sat on an ICBM, not showpieces like Tsar Bomba.
And we know how much 9/11 changed the relative power of the Executive Branch and Federal Government relative to the States.
I cannot see that large of a shock to our system leaving the United States as it was. The successor may still have the name, but I’m not at all confident that we now would recognize it as truly the USA, 10-15 years afterwards.
I’ll take the 15 minutes; I might get just far enough away to go out as a Radioactive Mutant Zombie (which is always a hoot), instead of a (sad, brief) puff of radioactive carbon dust.
Or as Beyond the Fringe put it in 1964, “I’d remind those doubters that there are some people in this great country of ours who can run the mile in four minutes.” - YouTube
I live near, but not in, a major metropolitan area. It’s highly unlikely that I’d end up in the radius of blast damage unless the targeting mechanism is way off-kilter, but 15 minutes would at least allow some minimal preparation for such an event, so I’ll take it.
Back in the stone age when I lived in the Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis, I used to joke that if the warnings went out, I’d sit out on the deck with one of those suntan reflector things, because there was no way I’d get out of the cities in time and I’d prefer to die instantly.
Now I’m in a suburb and likely within the blast radius of the large nuke that would hit out airport, but there’s a tall ridge line about 2 miles south of me and if I could get on the other side of that, I at least would not be killed in the initial blast.
I like life and I’ll take as much of it as i can get.
15 min isn’t a lot of time so id be trying to pack as much dense material around my interior bathtub as I could and getting in with my wife and kid. I’ll deal with the aftermath later but step one is to live through the blast and minimize damage. Maybe I’d pack food water and weapons in the bathroom too so we can survive in that room after the blast for a bit.
I used to be in the “gimme warning” camp. These days, for a number of reasons that fall under the general umbrella of “age”, I’m not so sure.
Plus, this thread brings to mind the stories, “Alas, Babylon” and “The Day After” (the made for tv movie), not sure I want to live in that world, or even could live in that world
Would Hawaii get any warning or reasonable warning in anycase, if this was an actual attack? The Russians no doubt have detailed plans on taking the islands out PDQ in an exchange, probably using submarines just off the the chain. Would they even have time to send out such a text message when the Motherland sends her love?
I would want the notice if the attack is real. However, I’m glad the wife and I missed all the hoopla yesterday morning in Hawaii by not knowing about the attack message until the incident was completely over.
I voted no. But, if there is a chance I would have any chance of a existence that is not horrendous, I would want a shot at it. If I am gonna be real sick or starving or have to watch my family suffer and die, I would rather just die quickly and be done with it.
I probably live in a place where it would be highly unlikely that I would be killed in the nuclear blast. So radiation fall out and years of no crops would get us. Or people coming away from more urban areas would come scavaging and threaten us. Anyway you look at it, it would be bad.
Isnt there, or wasn’t there, nuclear silos in Arkansas? Pretty sure there was a major mishap at one of them. But anyway, silo sites were/Are targets even if nobody cares about little rock or ft Smith (My extended family are in both those places and *they * don’t even care)