Surviving a nuclear attack seems like something that only happens in the movies when the hero is trapped in a building near the blast’s center. While hiding in a refrigerator like Indiana Jones won’t save you from a nuclear blast; there are some tips you can follow to help you survive one if you’re in an urban area when a bomb goes off.
Note: Nuclear explosions and terrorist attacks are serious business. This post references the EPA’s Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation, published in 2010. Preparing for a disaster of this magnitude is serious business, so while there are some excellent points here, please reference the manual itself for more detailed information.
Nuclear Weapons
During the Cold War, the fear of nuclear war was so high that countries built bigger and bigger bombs, like the 25-megaton B41 bomb, but today the fear of nuclear attack comes from smaller weapons in the .01 to 10 kiloton range. These smaller weapons will still decimate the center of a city, but even 3/4 of a mile outside the point of explosion is a survivable area, if you know what to do.
There are three major parts of a nuclear weapon detonation that can kill you:
- The blast
- The Radiation
- The Fallout
Each of these by themselves are more than enough to kill, which is why it’s best to deal with each of them separately. During the Cold War school kids were taught to “duck and cover” and today we believe this to be silly and only told so kids would feel safe, but with the size of weapons that would most likely be used today, duck and cover may very well save your life as a building collapsing is more likely to kill you than the blast itself. Let’s take a look at each of these three and what you need to do for protecting yourself and getting appropriate shelter.
The Blast
The biggest killer in a nuclear explosion is the blast itself. With its intense shockwave, buildings will collapse and people completely out of shelter are likely to be severely hurt or worse.
This diagram that was in this recent guide published by the US government shows how a 10 kiloton blast would affect a made-up urban area.
As this map shows, even as close as half a mile from the blast could be a possibly survivable area, given proper shelter. This idea goes against everything we’ve ever been taught and while you’d have some bad injuries, a smaller nuclear explosion is survivable at a fairly short distance.
At two miles away the worst part of the explosion you’d have to be afraid of is shattered glass and older, weaker buildings experiencing some structural damage. What does this mean? Well, it means that if you’re living in a city you should prep for surviving a nuclear blast as well as plan where you live accordingly since there’s a good chance you’d survive the blast itself.
While the explosion is the first part of a nuclear detonation that will affect you, it’s far from the only part. Even if you survive the initial blast, there’s the radiation and fallout to contend with. Luckily, the news is not as bad there as you may think, either.
Radiation
Radiation and fallout are known as the silent killers of a nuclear blast. After the shock wave is long gone, radiation stays behind to keep killing. This is actually the reason why smaller yield nuclear weapons are the ones to fear today, as they’re smaller and easier to use and still give the radiological effects of a big bomb.
It is actually possible to survive the radiation and fallout of a nuclear attack, but shelter and time need to be on your side. Check out the chart below to show how radiation affects different structures to see what we mean.
As this chart shows, even the room in an apartment building you choose can make a pretty big difference in how well you can survive the radiation from a nuclear explosion.
Once you survive the initial blast of radiation in a building, you now have to worry about the lingering radiation and fallout. Most people think that once an area is affected by a radiological event that it’s ruined for 10,000 years or more. This is actually pretty untrue, as shown in this chart:
This means that if the radiation dose 1 hour into the event is 1,000 R/h, it will be down to a survivable 23 R/h only 24 hours after the blast. While this is terrible news for someone trapped in a collapsed building, it’s great news for reclaiming the area and for anyone able to escape as quickly as possible.
Fallout
Both the initial explosion and initial radiation can possibly be survivable, but the last danger to deal with is the fallout from the blast. Before we deal with this danger, it’s worthwhile to go over what fallout is exactly.
Fallout is the dust and particles that are thrown into the air by a nuclear explosion. These particles are highly charged with radiation, as they mostly came form the center of the blast itself. These tiny radiological dust particles get carried by wind and fall back to the ground sometimes hundreds if not thousands of miles away from the blast itself.
This means that a 10 kiloton nuclear blast can send fallout over 50 miles away, spreading radiation along with it. The chart below shows how far fallout can travel.
This chart shows that being down-wind from a possible nuclear target is just as dangerous as being close to one. When planning your bug-out spot or just buying a house or apartment you should pay attention to wind patterns and what you’re down wind of.
Potential targets include:
- Strategic missile sites and military bases
- Government centers and capitals
- Transportation and communication centers
- Finance centers
- Major ports and airfields
(Source: Ready.gov)
Bringing it Together
So what does all this mean to you? Well, this doesn’t mean you’re invincible to nuclear explosions at all. What it means is that you should prepare for the possibility of surviving a nuclear explosion. Instead of assuming you’ll be vaporized you should start prepping now.
There are many ways to prepare for a nuclear attack to make sure that you’re as safe as possible before, during, and after the attack. Start your prep now and assume that you will survive a nuclear attack.