You receive an emergency alert: "BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL." What do you do? How do you think your neighborhood will react? What memes be on Lemmy?
Same here. My city's buildings are not made with missile protection in mind. We don't even have basements for tornado protection since tornados barely ever happen here. And if an earthquake strikes, you're basically doomed to live in a tent for the next decade of your life assuming you survive.
I am "lucky" enough to live within a few miles of a place I'm pretty sure would be a ground zero in an all out nuclear attack. I live in a university town. And the university I attend has a nuclear engineering program along with an accompanying research reactor. In any all-out nuclear exchange, anything related to nuclear technology is at the top of the target list. A facility that trains new nuclear engineers is definitely on the target list. We've actually talked about this. If we get this message, our plan is to round up the cats, throw then in the car, grab every mind altering substance we can get our hands on, and go get wasted outside the front gate of the reactor building. We won't try to break into the building or anything; the alert could always be in error and we don't need a felony for trying to break into a nuclear facility on our records. But when hydrogen bombs are involved, the front gate of the reactor building is close enough to ground zero to do the job.
Sorry, but there are indeed fates worse than death. For one, we would be unlikely to survive the initial bombing anyway. But most people have this idea that you'll get vaporized by a bomb. That's not how these things actually work. If you're killed in the first hour by the bomb, odds are it will be from being slowly cooked alive in the burning collapsed remnants of your own home. And sure, we could drive out into the country, but that would only ensure that we would die slowly from fallout induced radiation sickness, slow starvation after the complete collapse of all supply chains, or worse.
Trust me. If that alert comes, the ones close enough to ground zero to be atomized will be the lucky ones. This is something that you do not want to survive. I would encourage anyone that if they ever get that alert, to try to travel as close to whatever you think is your most likely ground zero as possible. You'll be doing yourself and your loved ones a favor. Unless you're already an off-grid survivalist type living in a self-sufficient compound way outside of any blast or fallout zone, all you're doing by escaping the blasts is stretching out your own misery. Do you and yours a favor by making it quick and painless.
I've planned ahead. We're just three miles from a primary target. A millisecond of brilliant light and we're vaporized. Much more fortunate than millions who wander sightless through the smoldering aftermath.
I mean, it's not an irrational stance. Better to thoughtfully and rationally consider it and plan accordingly.
Really, it's another manifestation of that whole, "which would your rather meet alone in the woods, a lone man or a lone bear." A lot of guys simply couldn't understand why most women would take the bear. But the worst the bear is going to do is eat you. And there are many fates worse than death.
I mean, I'm not going to leave the cats to die in a collapsing burning house either. If I think being vaporized is the best possible fate for myself, why would I deny that mercy to my cats? And yes, in case it's not clear, we're driving to the reactor gates, with the cats in the car. They're joining us for the blast. They're going with us.
The plan is: grab cats and mind altering substances -> load up car -> drive to reactor ->park in front of gates -> get out of our minds, pet the cats tell bombs fall.
Oh! Oh! I have an answer for this. I remember around the time that The Day After aired, one of the local news stations ran a story simulating what would happen to my city were it hit by an ICBM. We lived on the far side of a hill, far enough away from downtown for it to be potentially survivable. I decided that if we got the warning, I'd grab my bike and light out for ground zero. Fuck surviving, I don't wanna take the chance of being alive but horribly injured, and that aftermath shit just wasn't worth it.
Oh, so if you ever wonder why Gen X/Xennials are so fucked up, there ya go.
My wife's cousin actually got this text while on vacation in Hawaii. Said he just sparked up a joint n hoped for the best. It worked, so maybe I'll do the same.
We were in this scenario last year, when NK launched a missile towards Hokkaido, and we were on the west coast, just next to a nuclear reactor.
After getting the altert, we put on clothes, went downstairs to the sturdiest room, stuck on the TV to the NHK news, and waited. The missle plopped into the ocean off the coast, and we had tempura for lunch.
There's really nothing you can do in these situations but stay calm and do the small, sensible things.
we hope. never having tested nearby strikes, there's no way to know how resilient to catastrophe these things are, and even when over-engineered with an eye on safety in the worst conditions, fukushima illustrates that everything can go wrong in a cascade and still render them unsafe.
honestly, coastal nuclear power stations like diablo canyon and fukushima are going to be interacting with larger and more violent storms in the future, and tsunamis etc., perhaps there are better places for them.
Not to make anyone nervous, but dropping a fuckass big missile on a pile of very secure and safe nuclear material will still scatter that material in a wide area, and wind will make it worse.
But no, making a modern nuclear suffer a meltdown is basically impossible
If they are built and maintained correctly. And meltdown isn't the only problem that could occur.
I don't have much faith in a corrupt, self-regulated industry, with strong yakuza ties, to do things 100% the correct way, especially given everything we know about the industry post 2011. Knowing how much local political power the company has, I know they could literally get away with murder, as no politician or police would want to be on their bad side.
Don't get me wrong, the missile was still the biggest threat, but I do believe the power plant isn't necessarily safe. An engineering and/or scientific understanding of a modern power plant doesn't mean shit if you don't consider the political and capitalist systems the that underpin their construction and maintenance.
I'd be setting off the pair of sirens I own, then awaiting the inevitable. Thankfully I live in an area where the chance of being vaporized is quite high.
The man sitting next to Ford was a bit sozzled by now. His eyes weaved their way up to Ford.
'I thought,’ he said ‘that if the world was going to end we were meant to lie down or put a paper bag over our head or something.’
‘If you like, yes,’ said Ford. ‘That’s what they told us in the army,’ said the man, and his eyes began the long trek back towards his whisky. ‘Will that help?’ asked the barman. ‘No,’ said Ford and gave him a friendly smile.
Cool 😎
19 hours of sunshine, 0-10 degrees Celsius, windy as fuck, and you better apply the strongest sunscreen you can get 3x a day or you'll regret it.
Clearly, war has come. My town won't be the one getting hit though.
Load a few jerry cans in the car, take out cash at the ATM, fill up as much fuel, clean water and firewood as possible, then stop by the local hospital and ask if they need extra hands. Meanwhile give my sis a call.
ATMs are offline due to EMP blast, which also killed your cell phone, cell towers, and battery to your car which is stuck in gridlocked traffic. Provided you made it far enough to actually get gas, others who didn’t have your foresight begin to eye your resources.
I'd immediately go into the basement and start memeing. I have redundant internet connections for these kinds of situations so I should still be able to post memes. I'm locally hosting a Mastodon instance so I can post even if the internet is down globally. I also have a TCP-over-HF setup so that I can post memes anywhere in the world without intermediate infrastructure. If humanity is completely destroyed, I would start memeing and rickrolling on cave walls for future generation
I am quite interested in that. How did you achieve it? Is there some license-free band? As far as I know encryption is not allowed for any ham radio transmissions. What's the bandwidth? It seems packet radio on HF is 300 baud.
TCP-over-HF is very slow, even with a lot of compression and low resolution the max throughput is about 4 memes per hour. I want maximum distribution of my memes so I wouldn't use any encryption.
I mean, I've got a WAN connection and two Sim Cards connected to different mobile providers, but at some point they probably all depend on parts of the same infrastructure.
Maybe I should look into some distributed networking stuff...
If you're my family, sleep through it while I frantically close windows because I didn't know what else to do. Most Hawaii homes have no basements usually, so its kind of just fucked
Humanity was forged by a hostile world and we've been pushed to the brink of oblivion at least once. We adapt. I probably live too close to a major population center to survive the initial hits or the first months of total collapse so that's a bummer, but I wouldn't just lie down and take it.
Is the pre-nuke world really anything to write home about? A life of hunting, fishing, and murdering drunk russian soldiers with piano wire is honestly more appealing than working an office job.
Meh, I'm in Scotland and the nearest even vaguely major city is 30 miles away, they could be setting off tsar bombas and I'd be fine from the several km of solid rock from various winding hills between me and the blast, probably wouldn't even feel much of a pressure wave. Probably just start filling every container I can find with clean water.
So a quick check on this, For a 50 megaton airburst on that city 30 miles away (bit closer by the crow flies) I am within the third degree burn radius and the light blast damage radius, However some basic trig and an altitude map say I have no direct line of sight to the airburst assuming its detonated at an altitude of 1km, so I'm free and clear as far as third degree burns are concerned due to that being a product of the flash. As for light blast damage its likely somewhat lessened by the lack of line of sight and very bumpy intervening terrain, though my village is right along a major river and gives us a comparatively straight (by the standards of river valleys) run right to that city so window breaking is probably going to be pretty hit or miss depending on building orientation and local obstructions.
There's also about 250m of elevation between Glasgow and Edinburgh which is fairly significant considering they're 50km apart, a rough eyeball on an elevation map suggests that they each get at least partial obscurity from a nuke dropped on the other.
Assuming it's nuclear, sit around and mourn the fact I don't have a basement. Hope that either A: missle defence works, or B: I'm in the evaporation zone. Radiation sickness sounds awful.
Even if the explosion and fallout completely missed my area, I think EMP disruption would be a huge issue and lots of people would be panicking, stealing, murdering trying to survive.
If I'm at work, I go to the gym (the gym's in a cold war bomb shelter) if I'm at home I start heading north. Put a couple of mountains between me and the city.
My phone is usually dead, misplaced, or the volume is at 0%. So I would probably crack a beer and stand on the porch wondering why the neighbors are freaking out.
You will likely still hear the cell broadcast. Alerts of this level make every phone give off a piercing sound and even if your phone is dead, you will hear it from your neighbours' because it's loud.
If your phone and early warning systems support cell broadcasting you will still get notified. Cell broadcast alarms are always at full volume, regardless of your settings.
There is "space for around seven million people" and Sweden's population is about 10.6 million, and the availability of shelters seems to match the population distribution pretty closely. You could at least let your neighbors know that they can have your space in a shelter (since there might be about 3.6 million people who won't fit in shelters), or show up anyway in order to help carry away any materials that were being stored in a shelter in peacetime, or to help get food or water into a shelter.
I would not believe that message, because real warnings would not be that specific around here, and they also would never add that funny phrase " this is not a drill"
(Actual drills outside of the military are announced at least several days in advance, if they expect people to cooperate)
Ohai, neighbour. My mom's about 9 realistic hours of travel away (aka 2 small BCFerries trips). Can I borrow your mom too? If you also can see the noodlebox location that used to be a starbucks, that is. I can sob like no one else; ugly-crying and everything.
I'd probably be safe and sound, since I'm in a small town a bit away from Melbourne, so an air strike wouldn't affect me unless they tzar bomba the shit out of Melbourne.
Technically it's not a text message here either. The government literally overrides your phone to play the alert. Unless your phone is turned off it will play the message.theyve tested it a couple of times now. It's pretty unsettling.
I would text my housemate my location and where I planned to shelter.
if i was at home I would go to the lowest floor in the middle of the house away from the windows. in my current place, I think I'd be in the ground-floor bathroom, so I'd also fill any available containers with tap water while I still could
I'd follow the news online as long as I could, switching to my radio if/when necessary
I live in a shithole 100km from a NATO capital. I'm not expecting a direct or near hit, so the fallout is my main concern. I should have at least 20-30 minutes to get comfy.
I've got potable water in jugs in the basement already. I'll just grab a couple of mattresses, sleeping bags, camping stove, food, solar/crank radio and head down there. Also some duct tape to seal up the ventilation.
Take me and my cat down to the basement with my phone, water, power bank and lantern/candles, call my mom so we could all be on the phone together, and hope I'm taken out instantly.
Nothing I can do. As far as I know there is no bomb safety infrastructure near my house plus I'm afraid of getting trapped underground so I wouldn't want to risk sitting in one.
I'd crack a beer, sit out on my deck and call my family and close friends to say my goodbyes.
Get with my kids and hang out... wherever. No basement, so either in a bathroom or get in a car and park it around behind my house and hope it's enough to protect us from the blast. If it doesn't, at least I'll be together with my kids when it happens.
Iodine is readily available at every drug store in liquid form. It's also readily absorbed through the skin. Just ask people who were around before salt was iodized. Parents used to rub it on the soles of their kids feet.
I will go as close as I can to the most touristy area as soon as I can in hopes I get vaporized so I don't survive the blast. If it's fake then I guess I'll go to some empty nowhereish area in a big touristy park and call 988, then go shoppin and buy some starbucks. The street vendors selling flavored honey and enamel pins and stuff probably are gone so I can't shop at their thingies otherwise I would. But honestly I'm sick of calling 988. I'm tired of fighting. Tired of trying. I'm going to have dementia in my thirties anyway might as well cut my losses.
I don't have to fully imagine since northern Japan has gotten alerts thanks to a certain neighbor. As for us, there's that can be done. Nowhere has basements. I do t know if anyone nearby even lives in a concrete building. Wed likely then make our way to the municipal office at some point as it's our closest designated disaster/evac point.
Russia has a nasty habit of attacking smaller countries to feed their imperialist ambitions and hiding behind their nukes whenever anyone says anything. It's better to risk a nuclear exchange to bloody their noses and teach them some manners, than let them continue their crap.
Both objective reality, and Russian perception, is that US is 100% responsible for instigating and perpetuating the war. The only objective for fighting is to continue to diminish Russia through NATO or US alignment. You are essentially saying that it is legitimate to make the "evil side" STFU through a nuclear strike potentially on civilian/economic targets. You can thank Putin for being so moderate and patient in this war so far, in not making the US choose to STFU and collapse.