I live in Oklahoma City. Pretty well in the center east to west, within the USA, and a bit south, from the north south direction.

No one here would have ever thought there could be an attack of any kind. But then there was Timothy McVeigh. He blew up the Federal Building 22 years ago.

Anything can happen, any place, any time.

I wasn't taught the duck and cover thing either.... but I have lived such an interesting life, done such awesome things... even survived the bitter divorce crap... I think, it would just be my time to go.

Moni

Laughed out loud at that, Lucille !!

I’d prefer to go fast too. Remember Chernobyl?

I’m with Lucille on that one. Realistically, would I be able to get to somewhere suitably safe in the amount of time I had left? Probably not, so better to use the time to call loved ones and tell them I’ll always love them, wherever I end up.

If we were to face nuclear holocaust, I'd prefer to be under the bomb than face the aftermath...

When I read the title of your thread, the first thought to my mind was, “who says I’d want to survive? Is there something wrong with me because I wouldn’t?” I’m relieved to see I’m not alone.

Right, Annie. Anyone curious about experiencing a nuclear attack should read Hersey’s Hiroshima. Even if people survive the actual impact, the nuclear fallout extends far beyond that point causing burns and long-term illness. The possibility of nuclear attack is horrifying.

i would not want to survive it. to what end?? starvation?? live underground for months or years. no thank you...

A threat is survivable. A hit is a other matter.

I remember talking with a friend who had a nuclear power plant basically in her backyard.

What if a plane flew into it, or it somehow blew up and large doses of radiation escaped?

She said she'd walk out her back door and breathe deeply ;-)

I wouldn't. Very few would. As I said in another post read the book The Fate of the Earth.

Crawl under the bed with a bottle.

Head to the nearest ice cream store and order the biggest hot fudge sundae they've got!!

Well, I live in the Phoenix area, so I would probably just stay inside my house. I would pray that I wouldn't get hurt, but I still might. I'm not sure!

Since I almost never look at my phone....I would probably miss the text....so I guess I would be blown to smithereens, which would probably be as good a way to go as any.

"IF" we were still alive and well.....yeah....like we'd be unscathed....but in this scenario....I'd move. (Home owners insurance does not cover war. Walk away and start over. You'd still own the land...but it would be easier to just move.) Dave Ramsey claims in Tennessee you can get a lot of house for your money and no state taxes. I try to look at every tragedy as an opportunity. If my DH & I were still alive....that would be the miracle.

For a while I was an aficionado of post-disaster science fiction and while it is all fiction some of it has some science facts underneath it. The stories mostly dealt with less-than-all-out nuclear war, probably because in an all-out war, the stories would be short and not very interesting -- although "On The Beach" and "Down to a Sunless Sea" both plumbed those depths to good effect. Other stories like "Alas Babylon" or the non-nuclear disaster book "Lucifer's Hammer" had more limited destruction and dealt with the human stories of coping with the aftermath.

Somewhere on the Internet I found an interactive tool that let you select a location and a presumed mega-tonnage and it would then display the different regions of effect ranging from instant total-annihilation, to mere high-likelihood of death and according to that site, and another that shows likely target locations:

I tried to look up the number of deaths from Chernobyl and the Official numbers are something like 38 people in the immediate aftermath and 4000 early deaths due to radiation and fallout, other less official estimates are up to 6000 deaths among those who participated in the clean-up, and nearly 900000 attributable cancer deaths.

Nicole's plan of move to Tennessee and buy cheap may not be good given the above map, but also it is based on the assumption that credit or even cash money will mean anything in this imagined apocalyptic future.

According to your map ... Canada is only white space.

(Does that mean we're a "whites only" area?).

I figure that, not being near any target areas, I'd just stay in my rural home.

But ... if there were more than a few of the catastrophic weapons ... it wouldn't matter much, for the radioation'd get us after while, anyway. As some said - I'd just as soon die in the beginning.

But ... but ... if there are quite a few of them, even though the radiation doesn't get us, all of the dust and crap thrown up into the stratosphere and above that (which means they'd be slow to settle to earth, if they did at all) ...

... there'd likely/almost surely be nuclear winter, with the sun's rays so heavily depleted that crops wouldn't grow for quite a few years, and we'd (almost?) all starve.

I've never been major hungry ... but I don't like that prospect, either, having seen some refugees undergo a part of it.

Best we tell our politicians to stop this hugely risky/damn-fool sabre rattling.

ole joyful

Immediately following the mistaken alert in Hawaii, people discussed their feelings on the Trip Advisor travel forums. Many people said they telephoned family -- thus blocking emergency communications, but probably inevitable.

Some people urged doing what you *could do* for the immediate moment, rather than just give up. They cited people who did survive Hiroshima with no warning -- the bomb and the aftermath. Not everyone would sustain a direct hit. Given warning, you'd seal up your home best you could and hunker down as far interior as you could. You'd draw a reserve of water. You'd stay isolated while the fallout settled. Then...who knows?

I live within a few miles of a nuclear plant and if something happens, we are to drive the opposite direction to a school in nearly town and will be bused to a much larger city and take refuge in the basement of a college building.

I am not afraid of the plant. My son works there and if he goes, I don't want to live either.

Hmmm. I think I'll go to Jim's house.

When we were in Maui for our honeymoon in a small motel on the beach we received a phone call around 6 or 7 AM saying we should evacuate due to a Tsunami Warming. The evacuation site they directed us to was an elementary school right across the street from the motel, which was maybe two feet higher in elevation, and which didn't seem any safer. Instead we went to a road on the west end of the island that overlooks the ocean from at least 100 ft up. The said they wouldn't know how big the tsunami would be until it reached land. In the end it was a 6" tsunami and only the scientists could tell when it arrived.

edited to add: Sorry I thought I was posting this in the Surviving a Disaster Thread

If it were a nuclear attack, I doubt there would be many survivors, and those who did survive would have radiation poisoning. It's unthinkable...

Ditto Lucille! I am about done with major disasters.

Get a double margarita and watch it come in. I'm sure we are on the list.

On the map Bob posted, why are there so many "targets" in the upper midwest? I know what the one is in NC (nuclear plant), others I can guess. But Nebraska? South Dakota, Montana?

I also live a few miles from a nuclear plant. We were issued some sort of pills to take in the event of a nuclear accident. They keep the radiation from settling in the thyroid, IIRC. I doubt they are still good, and I don't think they were reissued.

I guess I would try to seal up the house and stay inside, if I was already home. Otherwise, no idea. Die?

@aok27502 That's where our missile silos are.

Oh, that's why. I thought they were Chick-Fil-A and KFC locations provided to Russia by the CIA (The Chicken-Protection Institute of America) ?

They may come for our lives, and they may come for our freedom, but not our chickens. Never our chickens!

Pretty surprised to see the CDA, Idaho, area on the map. What did we ever do to anyone? LOL

FIL always said, "I'll be a'settin in a lawn chair in the front yard watchin' it all go down". My sentiments exactly!

Love the map... They leave out Canada and the rest of North America.

@Angela Id turns out that one is a missile silo, as well!

I think the pills aok mentioned are probably potassium iodide pills. The thyroid stores iodine, and it cannot tell normal iodine from radioactive iodine which is one of the fission products from uranium. The pills make sure the thyroid has all the iodine it needs so it won't store the highly radioactive iodine from the fallout. It is one of the biggest dangers immediately after a "nuclear event" but it has a short half-life of 8 days so staying inside and away from fallout for a couple of weeks can make a big difference.

I would go down my cellar, the same thing I would do with a hurricane or tornado warning. Not that it would do any good. I don't want to think of the aftermath.

A friend and her husband in Hawaii got the alert, opened a bottle of wine, and went out on their balcony to sit together holding hands to admire the beauty of Hawaii as their last act on our planet.

In reading that post I was afraid it was going to end with them jumping off the balcony together -- choosing to die quickly together rather more slowly and awfully due to burns and radiation. I really hope that no one in Hawaii took serious, irreversible action based on the false warning.

In the early 1960's we were taught to move away from windows and tuck your head drill for both tornado and missle attacks. Living across the river from Detroit and with the automotive industry on both sides we were always told the area we lived would be a target. We also could see US missile silos on Belle Isle right close to where I live. We also had alert sirens that were tested at 1:00 pm every Saturday until the 1970s. I don't recall anyone talking about fall out shelters, I imagine they would have been at schools nearby. I can't imagine getting that alert in Hawaii and waiting for it to happen. I hope it never happens.

I'm not sure where I go. I have looked at photos of actual housing at a nuclear bombing site and fear that a basement is not a good place to go. It does offer some reduction from the initial radiation flash, but your house falls in on you. If I had a bomb shelter, that's where I'd go. I don't have such and don't see me digging fast enough to do any good. That's one time that an underground house could have merit provided its roof structure is strong enough to withstand the over-pressure from the blast. If you are unfortunate enough to be within a few miles of ground zero, it doesn't matter where you go - you are toast.

The US hit map is educational, but I take issue in that I don't think it got all of the prime target zones. I covers the missile silos and the greater LA area. LA is the major center of California's activity and there is a major naval base at San Diego. Several of Calfornia's power stations are along the coast. San Francisco should have been included in the red zone, Its a financial center: Silicon Valley is there, Berkley and the Golden gate bridge. There are shipyards in the bay and the airport is at the end of the bay. Not far away in the mountains is Lick observatory, a major seismic monitoring center. It, Berkley, and others are part of a wide spread network of monitors that locate earthquakes and bomb tests.

I am surprised that Chicago and Milwaukee are not in the red zone. These are the machine shops of the midwest; Chicago is a financial and rail center. Surprisingly, the map sis not target Washington DC. Maybe they think there is nothing there worth anything <smile>.

Maybe there is a devil in the details. One thought is that a first strike adversary does not want to destroy the infrastructure; they want to bring their foe to its knees and when they take over, stuff still standing is useful to them. However, how do you predict what madmen may do???

First strike is to wipe out anything that could attack back, mostly missiles and long range bombers, which is why some of the things mentioned such as Chicago and DC were not shown. As far as military installations most would not be able to do anything immediately so why target them first.

The house falling in on you is one of the reasons living where tornados are frequent I worry about being hit by one.

I'm glad I didn't see this...well, I am aware of it now....

If I received that on my phone, I might be dead already. I DO know that it would take me a very long time to mentally recover from such a "mistake".

"Best we tell our politicians to stop this hugely risky/damn-fool sabre rattling."

I don't think politicians in Canada or Mexico have anything to do with this. Unfortunately, we just get to experience the end result. The map above leaves us out, like we're just collateral damage. lol

jemdandy, I'm going to disagree with your geographic interpretation for California. I understand the map is just an approximation, but I see the northern-most one being the SF Bay area, then Monterey to the south, then likely it's the Vandenburg missile site on the coast north of Santa Barbara. Of the two inland dots, one may be the Lemoore Naval Air Station, the land site for carrier based fighters and other planes. I don't know what the other is. There's nothing south of these, nothing in LA, nothing in San Diego.

Some of your other comments are off the mark too. Most of the shipyards in the SF Bay area have long been closed. Oakland is an active container port but I don't think plastic toys from China are viewed as a strategic target. Lick Observatory on Mt Hamilton is an important astronomy site, with optical telescopes. It may have seismological instruments as any other academic site does but astronomy is it's game.

I suspect the dot inland and due east of Point Conception/Vandenberg AFB was probably meant to represent the Naval station at China Lake. Years ago during the cold war, I was told by someone from that area that CL was high on the list of targets. Not sure if that was actually true, or just a rumor :^) There is also Edwards AFB just south of that. If the map is older, it might reflect some of the military aircraft plants that were (and to some extent still are) in the LA area.

I'm in the camp who hopes not to survive.

"Duck and Cover" was that era's 'soothing syrup'. Now we have "Homeland Security". At least the former was cheap. Have you seen the budget for "Homeland Security"?

Although I posted the map I'm not really sure how old it might be. The dots could easily be based on information from the Cold War era.

One of the dots on the east coast does appear to on top of DC

I've read a few articles on what to do in the event of a nuclear blast, assuming you survive it and are near enough to worry about fallout. I need to put together an emergency kit. I'm not worried about nuclear attack but it's good to have on hand with the much more likely natural disasters.

Luckily, world leaders love themselves more than anything in the world so I don't think it's anything to worry about. No one is going to send a nuke without massive retaliation. If it gets to that point, most of us won't even know it.

But world leaders know how to take care of themselves. In West Virginia at the storied Greenbriar Resort the government built a large lavish underground bunker where Congress and their families could safely shelter in luxury while the rest of the county burns, crumbles into chaos and starves. That resort is where the GOP Congress members were headed for their second retreat in as many weeks when the Amtrak train they were on struck a garbage truck not too far from me. I was surprised they would be taking public transportation and thought how uncharacteristically frugal of them. Then I found that it was not a normally scheduled train, they had chartered an entire train just for themselves.

bob, both parties have long used the Greenbriar for their retreats, It's nothing new and no coincidence that that the little town has an Amtrak station - right across the street from the hotel. And Union Station in Washington is very close to the Capitol. The train has run to there from Washington since the 1800s (I just looked it up). I'm surprised as someone who lives in the general area that you didn't know that.

I went to a business meeting at the Greenbriar (with my wife) > 30 years ago. It's a lovely and stately place. We too took the train from Washington, it's too convenient to miss. I just looked up the timing of the Congressional bunker, it apparently was there when we visited in the 1980s but its presence was still a secret. It would be fun to go back and see it.

Sorry I left out the word "not" in my last sentence above. I've edited it to add it in. I was aware that the Amtrak Cardinal goes from DC through Charlottesville and through West Virginia eventually reaching Chicago. I didn't know it went that close to the Greenbriar Resort, but it doesn't surprise me. It surprised me that to travel to the Greenbriar by train they would charter an entire train. It would never occur to me that that could be done. I'd image the cost would be "If you have to ask you cannot afford it." Its especially surprising when the Amtrak Cardinal was scheduled only about three hours after the chartered one went through.

A co-worker who has a friend whose property abuts the tracks near where the collision occurred said she saw police on the tracks the day before the collision