I could be wrong, but wouldn’t the warhead separate from the missile body (especially if they are MIRVs) long before impact? So you wouldn’t ever see the missile itself, and the chances of seeing the warhead coming in at such a speed are slim to none.
I guess that would depend on whether the ICBM was of the single warhead type or carrying a MIRV. I think in this case we are assuming that only one American city is being attacked so a single very large warhead seems more likely. However, according to the alarmingly name www.missilethreat.com Russia has both types of ICBM which, if true, would render any anti-ballistic missiles pretty useless in the defending nation.
You won’t get very far by train either, at least not without smashing a lot of cars at crossings.
I’m not sure how much of a problem that is in the USA but I, being from the UK, was thinking of our rail network where you can travel the length of the country without crossing a road (bridges obviously being used where necessary). There are some rail crossings of the type you mention but they tend to be on the local short loop tracks rather than the cross-country tracks that you would ideally be on.
With any warning, start walking. If you can get several miles away from Ground Zero, and keep low, as **Smiling Bandit ** noted, then you just need shelter from the radiation wave of the explosion. Anything will do…a tree, a thick bush, just something to stop the light+ of the initial wavefront. Then you take your chances with falling debris. If there are prevailing winds in your area, walk upwind.
If i knew the nukes were flying, I’d stay right where I am right now. Shielded by hills from the nearest possible target (unless they are targeting my gun collection!) and in an earthquake-resistant building with food and water supplies. (I love my classroom!) Then head for home and the supplies there when the rubble stops bouncing.
Nope. That’s the whole missile, which is mostly fuel storage; the actual reentry vehicles (containing the bombs themselves) are quite small – 4 to 15 of them are carried inside the green nosecone of that missile (see the fourth set of pictures on this page) – and moving at hypersonic speed, so you’d probably see the plasma trail (like in Jurph’s pictures*) but not the RV itself.
*hey, it looks just like that old shoot-down-the-missiles video game!
How much protection could be affording by stealing a scuba suit and going deep underwater? Also, since I have no scuba experance and are am an average swimmer at best, how steep is the learning curve?
when i was in the third grade (1960) sister mary claver told us that all we needed to do was duck, and cover, under our desks and pray the rosary.
not being a physics teacher, sister mary claver did not take the fact that we were less than eight miles from strategic air command headquarters at offutt afb into consideration.
lh
I’m not even sure if you’d see much of anything at all- I’m betting that Jurph’s photos have a sort of long-exposure effect going on- if the RV is going Mach 10 and is glowing, even on a 1/32nd second exposure, it’ll show as a streak, while in real life it’d be super-fast, I suspect.
It sounds like Sister Mary Claver **was ** taking your proximity to the Air Force base into account. Since you were all going to be obliterated instantly anyway, prayer was about the only option you would have had left.
Pretty steep. Depending on how deep you go, and how much you know, it’s pretty likely you’ll get the bends or drown.
BTW, those who suggest hiding out in basement or similar and then making a run for it as soon as the debris stops flying, that’s a bad idea. Radiation levels decline fairly rapidly after the blast, but not within hours. If you are going to take shelter somewhere then stay there for as long as possible. Leave only when the need for food or water drives you out and when you do move out stay exposed as briefly as possible. Grab supplies and run back to shelter again.
…and duct tape, lots of it…plastic sheeting, too…
umm, what else did Tom Ridge say… :wally
you are right. the option to kiss your a** goodbye was not appropriate instructions for an eight year old.
i amp pretty sure there are clips of the old “duck, and cover” movies from that era
here in omaha, we were goners no matter what
lh
I’m rated (though not current with my dues) as a SCUBA instructor. If you have no experience, you have no business being under water without knowledge and certification, as you can hurt yourself bad in a lot of non-intuitive ways. (The reason I stopped instructing was because I got tired of filling out the paperwork every time I witnessed an accident.) You are more likely to suffer an embolism or DCI in the water than you are to suffer blast effects if you take shelter on land.
While the water acts as a pretty decent shield against radiation, it’ll also conduct ground shockwaves very effectively, which (if the weapon is a ground burst and you are within a few miles) you may be pulverized. If you are outside the immediate zone of lethality, a good basement or a nice berm will protect you from virtually all primary radiation from the device. Most of the short term damage is actually done by the blast effect (heat and pressure wave), which is caused by normal materials absorbing the radiation. Long term damage is done by radioactive fallout, which are bomb residue and elements irradiated by neutron flux, and the only defense is to get upwind or seal yourself away for as long as possible (several weeks should do for the worst of it.)
As for seeing an incoming warhead, forget it. Modern strategic missiles from the US, USSR, China, both single warhead and MIRV (multiple indepenantly-targetable reentry vehicle) configurations, deploy RVs that detatch from the booster before reentering the atmosphere. (There is, BTW, an important distinction between the booster or missile and the reentry vehicle.) This makes them both harder to target, more stable, and faster, unlike the V-2 “buzzbombs” that preceded them. As someone else noted, they are reentering at about 19,000 mph, and you literally will not see one before it hits the ground (or detonates in the air). Over-polar ballistic tracks will give you something on the order of 30 minutes from launch to detonation, and with modern early warning satellite systems we can detect a launch within seconds and confirm a ballistic track within a couple of minutes, so your command authority will have virtually all of that time to respond. How fast they communicate that to the populace, particularly in regard to the demise of the Public Broadcast System is another question.
You will probably have a few minutes, 15-20 say, to make preparations. The best thing you can do is collect all nonperishable food, potable water, blankets, clothes, and other basic survival provisions and find an underground or protected shelter. As smiling bandit mentions, unless you are near a strategic target you aren’t likely to be in the immediate blast zone (Washington DC and New York City excluded) so your best chance is staying put. If you must move, plan to go on bicycle or foot. Not only will modern cars near an air burst likely to be disabled by EMP but one imagines traffic jams, car wrecks, and fuel shortages will prevent you from getting far by motor vehicle.
Fortunately, we’ve gotten past the point (at least currently) where a large-scale strategic attack is something to be seriously concerned about. The two major powers who could launch such an attack against the US and NATO have neither the resources nor the imperative to do so. More likely is a terrorist attack by a rogue state or stateless group, which would likley be a ground burst out of a seaport or somesuch. Nasty, but it’s not particularly likely to be of immediate concern unless you live on San Francisco Bay or Port of Long Beach.
And the V-2 is definitely not an ICBM. It is, like the SCUD, an SRBM (short range ballistic missile) which was just capable of crossing the English Channel (100-1000km) and not very accurately at that. An IRBM (intermediate range ballistic missile) like the Jupiter is good for about 1000-3000 km (which is why we based them in Turkey), and an ICBM like Peacekeeper or the Russian SS-20 can make on the order of 10,000 km, depending on launch and target latitude and direction with respect to the Earth’s rotation. A FOBS (fractional orbital bombardment system) has a basically unlimited range for targets above the equator and can reach most points below, again depending on launch latitude.
Like I said, it’s not the thing to lose sleep over, as many of us did in the bad old days of the “evil empire”. Personally, I’m more concerned about the government mind control HAARP rays eminating from Area 51 or the polar reversal in 2008, but I have my Reynolds Wrap Tin-Foil Beenie all prepared and all my assets converted to whisky and gold, so I’m safe. 
Stranger