Funny, but I’ve been musing on post-apocalytptic scenarios lately. Keep running into problems with just about any option. One main factor is how many other folk are around. Which is more hazardous - the city, or the country?
I’d like to set up in some idyllic countryside, and do the best I can “living off the land.” But I realize how difficult - and potentially vulnerable - that would be. To really set up for the long run, I’d like to be able to raid a WalMart for a semi full of canned foods, meds, probably weapons, and hijack a gasoline tanker.
Maybe as a hybrid plan, I’d try to move into and defend a super Wal-Mart type of store, somewhere not terribly populated…
Just staying in my suburban home without food, water, power would get difficult pretty quickly.
Would it really be that way over the entire globe? I think North America, Asia, and Europe will all be screwed. North Africa and Australia will probably also fare poorly. I think that South America and sub Saharan Africa would probably be OK, but I admit to not knowing how much they depend on the northern hemisphere nations for their basic supplies.
Here’s a similar question that I think is just as interesting. Let’s say you’re going about your regular business and the news comes out that the nukes are being launched. What do you in this situation?
I’m building a mess of rough, brutal weapons, then I’m going burglaratin’ and murderizin’.
If I’m not murdered myself during this rampage, which is extremely likely, probably within seconds of entering the street, I fully envision myself building an evil road army and going full-on Lord Humungus. Either way, I’m looking at a very short, extremely violent existence.
Although the “barricade up a shopping mall/big box store and live the life of a fortress king” is a common trope in zombie and post-apocalypse films, it really wouldn’t work out too well in the long run. Malls and stores are not designed for security against determined siege and are poorly constructed for defense. They, like all modern buildings, are also dependant upon HVAC, running water, and regular exterior maintenance for basic integrity and habitability. Looking at an abandoned house will aptly demonstrate how poorly such structures fare when they are exposed to intruding elements, and you are going to be hard pressed to find building materials readily available in this post-apocalyptic world for very long. (Actually, if you wanted to hold up in a building the best would be a warehouse or home improvement store where you’d at least have ready access to building and maintenance materials, hand tools, and generators.) Realize that by staking a fortification in an urban area, you are basically setting yourself up as a target for attack, and unless you have sufficient resources to support an unlimited number of people for an indefinite period you are going to come to conflict. The notion of fending off looters or zombies might seem workable but it would basically turn into an Somali warlord situation, huddled in ruined buildings and basically conscripting or enslaving people to do your bidding in exchange for basic necessities, which is not a very tenable position.
Also realize that modern automotive fuel is volatile and has a useful storage life of about a year or a little longer if you add stabilizers before it starts to turn into varnish. Long term you are either going to have to figure out how to use a fuel you can synthesize from natural sources or abandon powered systems and just use human and animal effort for whatever mobile needs you have. Solar energy could provide power for electrical devices but isn’t fungible for transportation needs, and as any blue water sailor can tell you, keeping a solar system up and running for long periods of time without access to parts and replacement cells can be quite a challenge.
South America and Subsaharan Africa are just as dependant today on industrial manufacturing and agriculture as the rest of the world and would fare poorly as well. In the case of global thermonuclear war, we can expect immediate casualties of somewhere around a billion people from proximate causes (blast effects, firestorms, radiation from fallout and contaminated food and water supplies), followed by civil breakdown and panic, disease, famine, and transitory alteration of climate and loss of agricultural land and supplies. It is not at all a stretch to anticipate deaths in the following years to reach 80% or more of the human population from proximate and ancillary causes, and reducing humanity to pre-industrial levels of population and productivity. My pick of places to best survive would be New Zealand, South Africa, and Argentina/Chile as having basic resources, geographical defensiveness, and basic industrial capabilities to sustain something like modern civilization, but let’s not pretend that they won’t be dramatically impacted as well, especially if someone starts lobbing weapons off at targets in the Southern Hemisphere.
I do have significant outdoor survival experience and I would not want to face such a challenge. There is pretty much no where you can go in the continental United States that is sufficiently remote and habitable to support you without conflict, and unless you have a large group of trustworthy and like-minded individuals and enough supplies for all you’re going to be facing the ugly truth that you can’t really defend yourself indefinitely without some kind of civil order. “These violent delights have violent ends,” is as appropriate for post-apocalyptic fantasy as it is for tragically idiotic teenage lovers.
Interesting, I’m just beyond the **Thermal radiation radius **of a 9000 kiloton bomb. I might survive a blast, but they might also hit the nearby naval base and then I have no worries, I’m toast.
anomalous1, I would expect severe winters to follow a major nuclear exchange, so heading to Canada is probably a bad idea, I’m thinking head west then south. Look for a coal power plants near coal mines. Keep checking the radio, find a shortwave and hope for the best.
Hate to tell you this, but the country is going to be more hazardous for city folk. Your better off staying in place and working on rebuilding your city, if its been hit or joining aid groups for citys that have been hit, and offer to billet survivors.
Assuming I survive the blasts (unlikely based on where I live and work), I guess I’d try to round up any of my family I could and get away from as much radiation as I could. I live near St. Louis. Mid-Missouri is pretty rural. We might be able to live out an agonizing last few days/weeks there. But without electricity I guess the gas pumps aren’t going to work, so unless I happen to have enough gas in the tank, I won’t get very far. I’d probably spend a lot of time cursing myself for my opposition to firearms ownership.
I used the NukeMap to drop a Dong Feng 5 on Lambert Airport. According to that site, the 5Mt Dong Feng 5 is China’s current ICBM. I picked Lambert because the ANG and Boeing are there. It was also a reassuring thought in that I work right next to the airport, and if anyone drops a bomb there I’ll thankfully be instantly vaporized.
Do you have any missile silos that will get ground bursts? Are nuclear power plants being targeted, do you think?
Actually, once, a while ago, I read speculation that back in the Cold War, the US/USSR would target non-nuclear regional powers (particularly those that were ideologically aligned with the enemy, even though not official allies) so that they (US/USSR) did survive, they would not have that powerful potential-ally-to-my-enemy left untouched. I guess this would have been at least late 60s, once USSR had missiles to spare and range enough to hit places like Australia. No idea if it’s true, but was just thinking of it in the context of some of the places people thought would be less affected/not nuked.
Do we know anything for certain regarding soviet nuclear targets? I’ve seen a US list (from way back in the 1950s, and things are so different now, I understand why they didn’t mind releasing it), but I don’t think I’ve seen one from the USSR or any of the other nuclear powers.
Counter force or counter value, do you think? Doesn’t matter so much with US or Russia, I guess - so many nukes if they decided to lob them all there’s not a lot of distinction.
Also, does any know the original source for this image? I see the sources on the key, but wasn’t sure if they produced the map, or just their resources were used for locating nuclear power plants, etc. I see it used a lot, sometimes with the implication it’s something official, but I recall reading it was just speculation (not even from a government/intelligence source - not sure) when it first came out. I’d just like to know. This was for ca. 1989, right? Or have I gotten it mixed up with a different one?
I’d pack up as much as I could and head for one of the nearby rural locations where I have extended family. There are enough of us that we could just about establish a post-apocalyptic city-state all by ourselves.
Nope! Nothin’ out there but cows and corn! Nothing to see there!
I’m not sure about silos. The B2s are based at Whiteman, in West-Central MO. The image you linked had Columbia, MO getting hit in a 500-warhead scenario and Fulton, where there is a nuclear power plant, getting hit in a 2000 warhead scenario. Interestingly, that map doesn’t have Ft. Leonard Wood in Southern MO getting blown up at all. We have some wildlife refuges and national forests in Southern MO that, according to that map, would be spared the brunt of the attacks. If I had a full tank in the Prius, I could make it there to die.
Like I said, I don’t know the source of the map. But that is interesting.
Whenever people talk about going to the woods (to live long-term, not to die very soon) after a country-wide disaster, I always wonder how many city-dwellers are going to go to the same woods, and, even if incompetent, strip it to bare of food resources based on the sheer number of people who manage to make it there. Before those teeming masses die, too.
Practice is by no means perfect, but I have successfully created my own water filters, fire from scratch, hunted small game and built different types of shelters before. This City Dweller will have an edge over the rest. I love the Nuke Map, its so fascinating, I wonder if the NSA monitors the hell out of that website. I really didn’t think of the nearby targets or the Canadian winters as a problem, now I do lol.
As for gas pumps not working, just pry open a well on the ground and syphon some out. Battery doesn’t work, try pouring fuel in the intake and igniting it, who knows.
Depends on how you define surviving the blast.
I might not be vaporized but could still be sentenced to die by bleeding out my ass ears eyes any every other body orifice you can imagine.
Or other lovely bi-products of radiation poisoning.
If that’s the case, might as well go visit ground zero and just cook myself.
If i am all clear as far as radiation poisoning, i dont think i prefer the hunker down, or go underground and live like a tunnel rat scenario either.
Not any longer than i need to to allow the fallout to decay, which is actually pretty fast.
Stock up on good shoes, because while i can find you all the gasoline you could possibly use, and even pump it for you with no electric, inside of 30 days it is mostly going to turn into crap that can not be used in a car.
If you really gotta have a car, may i suggest something early 70’s or older
points ignition, simple carb, no electronics, and stick shift.
I can at least convert that to alcohol that you can distill from sawgrass etc with nothing more than a hand cranked drill, a screw driver, and some neoprene (which i can find you truck loads of)
Get used to not relying on it, because eventually you hit the problem of not being able to manufacture parts to repair it.
First thing i might recommend is you go as far away from people as you can, so that when people start shredding each other over a can of beans, you are not victim to it.
Bombs are only the 1st dying, people are the 2nd one.
Make sure you check out every farm and feed type place you come across.
You will find a lot of useful medicine type stuff there, tools various supplies, and yes food.
I think a lot of the “mob” will ignore these places, as there is no obvious human food on the shelf, but there is a bunch of stuff there you can actually learn to eat.
I second not trying to make a fortress out of a mall or walmart etc.
for one the building is not impenetrable, 1 man could go through the side of a walmart super center with nothing but an 8 pound sledge hammer, and thats assuming one does not just enter through all the glass frontage.
Plus these buildings fall apart really fast with no HVAC systems and no maintenance.
They are not designed to last with out a lot of help.
Not to mention these places would be big targets for the mob mentality minded.
Better off going out to no mans land, where you can see anything coming for miles and have unlimited avenues of retreat.
10’s of thousands of years man lived in north america with nothing but sticks rocks and bones for tools, and you got quite a bit more than that to work with, so the opportunity to survive is there.
Actually, it has only been a few hundred years that it wasn’t just sticks rocks and bones, was not even horses until the Spanish dumped them here, and everyone did just fine.
You know that lovely stuff in your yard that you attack with the lawn mower?
Yea, that grass stuff.
You can eat it you know?
Yes honestly, you can eat grass.
It isnt terribly nutritious and we do not digest it so easy, but you can eat it.
Boiling it will make things a ton easier on your teeth and stomach.
Common things you can find so you dont starve.
Grasses, dandilions, acorns and various tree seeds/nuts.
Humans require meat, yes vegans the human body requires meat or an artificial supplement to survive, human being on 100% veggies gets sick and dies.
So for meat…
Various rodent types mice rats prarie dogs etc.
Anything from the grasshopper family (It’s kosher too!)
Those are easy to acquire, they are everyplace and if you have survived that far, so should they.
You wont need tons, but you do need a meat source if you don’t want to get sick.
Eat the bones, grind them boil them smash them etc, you will need calcium.
Unless you happen to have an ass load of vitamin pills, i don’t suggest hiding underground, cause lack of sun will cause things like vitamin D deficiency, and you cant just go to the store and buy milk.
Remember all those old buildings is musty old paper books?
Libraries?
Yea, when it seems safe, be sure to hit them up.
All the things you dont know, like what can i eat besides this awful tasting grass soup?
You can learn it in there.
And you can find libraries in small places that are hopefully devoid of nutbag mobs.
Everyone goes killing each other at walmart over the last can of hormel chilli with out beans, no one thinks to go look at a book on north american plant life to learn what grows where, can you eat it, etc.
Learn to collect water.
Very important.
You can go days with not eating, go days with no water and your brain dehydrates and starts thinking nonsense things like how to cease breathing, and before that happens you get really pissy and stupid.
You can boil water easily, you can build water filters with rocks sand and some home made charcoal easily.
You can get all the drinking water you want from any salt water source, you just make a very simple still, no rocket science needed, and as a bonus, you get some salt too.
In humid areas, you can collect water by hanging plastic or tarps that the dew collects on.
If you are in a desert area, you can not make magic happen, located yourself in good proximity to a water source, a solar still only makes a small amount at best, you wont survive long on it.
Animals know where water is, watch them.
DONT go hack open a cactus for water.
most likely it’s poison
if it isnt poison, it will still most likely make you sick and vomit.
Lovely fact, you can distill your own piss, and get pure water back.
The still is going to smell like, well…
…piss
Learn all that nifty paleo stuff while you are still able to scrounge modern things, so that when all the modern junk is gone, you wont need it any more.
This is not some kind of how to survive guide, just some off the top of my head ideas.
Hey, at least you dont have to worry about zombies
