I grew up even closer than that, about 10 miles. Bergstrom shows up on several of the US Cold War target lists. Back in the day, Bergstrom was home to the 4130th Strategic Wing consisting of B-52s and attendant tankers. Austin itself shows up on some of the lists as well so my ass would have been toast.
I grew up about 30-40 miles west of downtown St. Louis. According to the links posted upthread, it looks like I’d be in about the 25% casualty ring of a couple of bombs. So, I’d probably have survived long enough to die horribly.
Nowadays, I live in Columbia, MO, which looks like It wouldn’t have been a direct target. But according to the fallout shelter guys, the USSR really had a vendetta for Western Missouri, so the fallout would have been a bit unpleasant.
Anyway, I just heard today that we’re all enjoying a good old Cold War style showdown with Russia over the Baltics these days, so we might all get to find out for sure after all!
I grew up 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles in an area with two Navy bases and one Air Force base. The Air Force base was about a mile from my house and supported fighters armed (by my father and co-workers) with tactical nukes. The nukes were stored in above-ground bunkers around the base.
I would have been teeny tiny bits of Dr. Woo plasma.
I knew it too, from the age of 7 or so after reading some of the non-classified materials my dad had.
I grew up in Sacramento. In addition to being a purely political target, we had 2 Air Force Bases and and Army Depot in town, along with a couple more AF Bases within 40 miles or so. Oh…and a nuclear power plant a bit to the south.
We *might *would have survived the initial blasts, but we would have been toast all the same.
Depends if the USSR still thought Tulsa was “The Oil Capitol of the World”
When I first moved from a rural township into Minneapolis in my early 20’s, I said that if the sirens went off, I’d just go sit out on the deck facing downtown, as there would be zero chance we’d get far enough away to live.
Now I’m in a suburban apartment, but close enough to the airport that while the blast would probably not immediately kill me, the fires and radiation would probably do most of us in.
I lived in the middle of Los Angeles Aero-Space industry.
I would have been toasted.
No, nobody actually planned to use them, it was about using them if somebody else did first. But after 64 the world leaders knew that the effects of fallout would make using even a small amount of H bombs pretty much suicide.
It wasn’t until 1970 that what was feared sort of happened.
The thing that most people can’t fathom, is how powerful the bombs became. And how adding Cobalt would turn them into planet killers.
I’m not sure whether New Zealand was ever actually targeted at all,and if it had been the area I grew up would have been pretty low on the list. So a slight chance of minor fallout (depending on which way the wind blows) but that’s about it for me.
Before or after 1966? Before, I’m toast, as I lived in the suburbs of New York (Morristown, NJ). Post-66, rural Vermont. Probably OK, although Plattsburg AFB (upstate NY) was just across the lake.
At the time the TV movie Threads was first broadcast in 1984, I had the joint RN/USN ballistic missile submarine base and weapons store to the west on the Clyde, and to the east another RN base at Rosyth, and RAF Pitreavie, a command bunker for Nato ops in the North Atlantic. Given the hardened nature of some of those places, and the short distances involved (seriously, the central belt of Scotland is narrow), we’d have all been fucked even before secondary or tertiary targets like Glasgow, Edinburgh and the Grangemouth petro complex were struck.
Assuming the capital cities of US allies would have been hit as well: toast. One missile with 4-6 MIRV’s would do for Canberra easily.
Norn Iron had some prime targets for the Reds, so the chance of fall out drifting over the Republic would have been high.
There was an old book called Nuclear War: What’s In It For You, that explained in good detail the Soviet’s targeting strategy in the 60’s, which was to target any city over 10,000 population. Their missiles weren’t very accurate so they deployed large warheads and multiple missiles for each target. It would have been a slaughter only God could enjoy. A one megaton airburst at one mile causes heavy blast and thermal damage over 625 square miles, which happened to be the square miles of Dallas when I was growing up.
NJ suburb, I could see Manhattan from the roof of our house. In school we went down to the gym to practice for a “national emergency” (which was never explained.) It would have been better to go to the playground and watch the spectacle.
Near the river downtown was a major communications hub for the west coast. I would have been about 10 miles from ground zero. Insta-radiated-toast.
I live literally in the exact spot the missiles took off from in The Day After – less than a mile directly north of the University of Kansas football stadium. So, if the Lawrence-area silos were really where they were placed in that made-for-TV movie, I’d be vaporized instantly. The actual solos were a bit further away (ten or twenty miles?) – not as dramatic a movie scene – so in reality I’d probably have been fried a few seconds after the blast.
(The scene in The Day After with the muddy makeshift outdoor triage area is along the Kansas River, a three minute walk from my house – it’s where my 3-year-old likes to throw rocks in the river.)
Chicago.
Then, just West of Milwaukee.
Then Huntsville, Alabama(Rocket City USA, home of the Redstone Arsenal, NASA facilities, and Defense industries).
Chattanooga, with a hydro power damn & an artillery shell facility.
I’d have been toast.
Depends on when. Prior to 1962, I lived north of Sacramento in the Central Valley, probably not a prime target, but after 1962, I was living just south of the Port of Oakland and across the Bay from San Francisco, so a puddle of goo.
I grew up about 100 miles east of NYC. The blast would not have been an issue, and radiation from the blast would not have reached us. Fallout would have been a proble, and the background radiation would have gone up, making me prone to cancer.