
“I’m a nuclear armageddon survivor: Ask me anything” (2015) - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/11/im-a-nuclear-armageddon-survivor-ask-me-anything/
======
mysterypie
> _you will die from dehydration in about three days or from starvation in
> three weeks_

The figure given for starvation is a common myth. With access to water, you
can expect to live 2 months even under total starvation, or many months in
"near-total starvation"[1]. Another medical source that I can't immediately
find says that even after ~4 weeks of total starvation, once you have food you
can expect to recover completely with no lasting effects.

[1] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-can-a-
pe...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-can-a-person-sur/)

~~~
sjtgraham
Totally depends on how much bodyfat you have. Today I just broke a 14 day wet
fast. If it came down to it, I think I could survive for another 2 months at
my current TDEE before I hit essential fats. I think that people with obesity
could survive significantly longer without food.

~~~
pault
My google-fu is failing but there is a famous case where an obese (scottish?)
man didn't eat anything except vitamins for an entire year and didn't suffer
any significant health effects.

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Animats
This is a real worry. We're one bad decision by Kim Jong-un or Donald Trump
from a small nuclear war. The SF bay area is a likely target. North Korea can
probably hit the west coast of the US, but not the east coast. SF and LA are
the only worthwhile targets on the west coast; attacking Portland or Seattle
or Anchorage seems unlikely for North Korea.

LA has some missile defenses at Vandenberg AFB, but northern California
doesn't.

~~~
staunch
Those interceptors are almost useless, especially against high altitude EMP
attacks. There are 44 interceptors total and it takes 4 interceptors per
incoming missile. NK could easily end up with dozens and then hundreds of
ICBMs. Plus those interceptors probably don't really work very well.

The entire NK stand off may be a trap laid by Putin/Xi Jinping to take over
the world. Once Trump attacks, they launch EMPs on the US and make it looks
like NK did it.

They could possibly knock out the US nuclear triad. The ICBMs are the main
component and they're vulnerable to trickery due to the super short launch
window.

All it would take is Trump refusing to launch for 8 minutes and then
eliminating 18 x Ohio subs. Russia/China might take some return fire but it
wouldn't threaten Putin/Xi personally at any point.

The US should be scrambling to get every nuclear weapon onto a launch
platform, like nuclear Tomahawks on every naval vessel, and just shred the
START treaty. Major US allies should have 500+ independently developed
weapons.

We're currently living in a dangerous time where MAD may not actually be in
effect and it could lead to WW3.

~~~
superbrama
It’s fun to speculate and worthwhile to perform thought experiments. However,
is there any basis for your theories regarding Russia/China and NK?

Also, why is it a only triad? Where’s space in all of this? Wouldn’t paranoid
sociopathic policy makers with their inflated USA military budgets have
already considered the scenarios you’ve described and put multiple contingency
plans into place? Just asking.

To offer an alternative, I’d speculate that between USA, Russia and China, all
three have privately advanced their own technology to maintain deterrence for
the foreseeable future. Just pure speculation of course, I’m not a government
employee nor do I have any clearance or special info. Just seems improbable
that the USA hadn’t planned for a superpower or alliance trying to disarm
_all_ of their nuclear arsenal at once.

Thanks.

~~~
staunch
Basically, the US military declared itself the victor of the cold war and
stopped worrying about China/Russia. After 9/11, it reoriented its resources
around anti-terrorism and and smaller "rogue states" like NK and Iran.

At the same time, China and Russia have gone on massive military spending
sprees that are entirely aimed at global war.

World peace relies on a single point of failure: the US nuclear forces, which
rely primarily on obsolete ICBMs. Failing that, Russia and China could easily
take over the world using conventional forces and their own nuclear power.

The US nuclear triad is highly vulnerable, relying on 3 incredibly obsolete
and vulnerable delivery mechanisms.

1\. US ICBMs were supposed to be replaced and were not due to government
bureaucratic bungling. The contracts to replace it are being awarded in 2017.
There are 400 ancient ICBMs, in fixed silos, that can't be called back after
launch and so may not be launched in time.

2\. The 18 Ohio SLBM subs are old and easily found by major enemy navies, and
are just one nuclear torpedo each away from being gone. Some may survive but
not enough. They should've been replaced long ago.

3\. The few dozen ancient B-52s have to fly for many hours to be able to
launch their cruise missiles, which means they'll be shot down. Their their
run ways may get destroyed before most even take off.

~~~
cocoablazing
Your whole thread of comments simply sounds paranoid and detached from the
reality that the US maintains and funds the continued development of the most
advanced strategic warfare system in the world.

The Russians and Chinese can't even deploy a reliable survivable force. Their
boomers are either rusting or poorly tested and their forces underfunded.

They can't even regularly deploy attack submarines to the Atlantic Ocean --
how are they going to simultaneously fix, track, and neutralize the US boomer
force?

Your entire train of thought on US/RF/PRC deterrence relationships is
fantastical.

~~~
staunch
Fantastical, is it? Oh...really. Then why are there Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse?

Donald Trump + Xi Jinping + Vladimir Putin + and Kim Jun Un

Checkmate.

------
Someone
_”the sort of fallout radiation provided by standard thermonuclear weapons […]
decays by a factor of ten for each factor of seven increase in time—in other
words, after seven hours, the radiation has decreased tenfold. After two
weeks, it’s down to one thousandth. 14 weeks, one ten thousandth.”_

With a mix of radiation sources of varying half lifes, it won’t be a 100:1
decrease after 14 hours, but is this, as I guess, just a rough fairly easy to
remember fit to some sample curve, or is there some simple mathematical model
behind this?

~~~
cocoablazing
It's a rule-of-thumb. The fission of Uranium and Plutonium results in an
incredible diversity of both isotopes and nuclear isomers.

Most of these isotopes exist on distinct decay chains. An unstable nuclear
state may decay in more than one mode, each with a distinct time constant.
Many of these decays occur as groups of decay chains that occur on extremely
short time-scales, and may temporarily remain in metastable states (isomers).

So this general rule results from the superposition of many thousands of
reactions, that proceed stochastically with distinct time constants and energy
released.

There is a mathematical rule relating the time constants and energies of these
reactions, but it is not simple:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%27s_golden_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%27s_golden_rule)

~~~
effie
According to the golden rule, rate constants are not directly connected to
"energies of reactions", but to matrix elements $<f|H'|i>$ for different
eigenfunctions i,f. The energy gap between two eigenfunctions may be very
large, but the corresponding element may be zero and the rule would predict
rate of transition as zero. It is only approximate rule, so the transition may
still happen.

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DaniFong
These people would almost certainly die in the disaster scenario described.
You are going to need to know more of the survival basics, like, how do you
eat?

