
If a nuclear bomb explodes nearby, never get in a car - diminish
http://www.businessinsider.com/survive-nuclear-attack-fallout-shelter-cars-2017-5
======
LinuxBender
I would add that if a car is your only option and if it still runs, you
actually should get in it before the wind brings any fallout. Most modern cars
have some air filtration. It's not as good as a HEPA filter, but it's better
than nothing and might get you to a nearby building faster. Unlike in the
movies, the EMP won't likely harm the cars computer.

~~~
linkregister
It seems like the article claims it's unlikely that you could outrun the wind-
borne fallout.

~~~
LinuxBender
There are many factors in this, such as proximity to the blast, elevation of
the nuke, surface shape and soil/sand content, wind direction, ambient temp,
humidity levels, your age, your pre-existing health condition.

There are way too many factors to generalize any proper response. If you are
too close to the blast for the filtration in a car to be of use, you will
probably be in a state of shock anyway, so just get in, drive away, go to the
closest convenience store, help yourself to water, food, etc and drive away as
fast as you can. Otherwise, if you are in a busy city, ya, yer pretty much out
of luck.

Oh and this is just a guess, but save up on bottle caps.

------
daly
See the move "Command and Control' on Netflix this week. They point out that
the Nuke in the video, if it had exploded in DC would have killed everyone up
to Philadelpha, half of NYC, and some people in Boston. That was a U.S. Nuke
on U.S. soil, part of one of over 1000 Nuke-related accidents so far...

If you survive a Nuke explosion you can see then you can assume you will
starve. Nobody is going to truck food in any quantity anywhere near you
anytime soon.

A single modern Nuke explosion in any populated center anywhere on the earth
is going to change EVERYTHING about how you live.

~~~
apsec112
That is not even remotely true. A 5 megaton nuke in DC - about the upper limit
of modern active-duty warheads - wouldn't directly injure anyone in Baltimore,
never mind Philadelphia. If the wind was blowing the wrong way, Philadelphia
might get some fallout. But that would take many hours to arrive, there'd be
plenty of time to evacuate or take shelter. And even a lot of fallout wouldn't
come close to killing everyone in the city.

Alex Wellerstein made an awesome map, where you can "nuke" any city with any
size bomb and see all the effects:
[http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/](http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/)

~~~
daly
Did you watch the movie? I'm simply quoting the analysis. They modeled their
results by taking the actual plume from a test blast of similar size and
overlaying it on the U.S. mainland. So they are working from recorded data,
not a model.

Wellerstein does not model a lot of the effects in Nukemap, as he admits.

The fallout issue depends on the height of the blast, the material attacked,
etc. A ground blast lofts huge amounts of radioactive material into the upper
atmosphere. Depending on the firestorm to follow there is yet another source
of uplift.

Low background steel ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-
background_steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel)) is
highly valued because it is not contaminated by nuclear tests which affect all
post-war, pre-1963 manufacture.

Chernoble affected Europe in detectable amounts and it wasn't even a warhead.

Just yesterday I read an article ([http://investmentwatchblog.com/a-nuclear-
spent-fuel-fire-at-...](http://investmentwatchblog.com/a-nuclear-spent-fuel-
fire-at-peach-bottom-in-pennsylvania-could-force-18-million-people-to-
evacuate/)) pointing out that a fire in the spent fuel storage in Pennsylvania
would affect millions
([http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs24vonhippel.p...](http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs24vonhippel.pdf)).
And that's just a fire, not a Nuke. If the Nuke hit a spent fuel pool things
would get ugly fast.

I admit it might not kill everyone. But it would certainly ruin their morning
coffee.

------
tdeck
I think the information from "Protect and Survive" (an old UK civil defense
pamphlet) is still relevant in scenarios like this. It recommends building an
"inner refuge" \- a sort of fort of dense objects (cans, suitcases, etc)
around yourself in an inner room of your home or basement to attenuate gamma
radiation. The advice is based on experiments carried out in the 1960s:

[http://www.atomica.co.uk/main.htm](http://www.atomica.co.uk/main.htm)

~~~
huxley
I suppose building an "inner refuge" gives you something to do in the roughly
half hour between an ICBM launch and its arrival on target.

------
wand3r
Pretty worrying that this article even needed to be written. In a scenario
where a nuclear bomb has detonated it is rather likely many more will as well.
I hope we aren't in a scenario where this becomes likely.

Also, if I'm sat home during a one-off detonation; what good is waiting for
that nuclear material to rain down on my house?

------
gregatragenet3
Afaik after the explosion no nearby car would run, and the advice to 'tune in
a radio' seems futile as the EMP would zorch the modern electronics in either
device.

BTW if you want real nightmare stuff, google the casualty rates after 1 year
from the EMP of a nuke detonated high above the United States.

------
znpy
Thanks for the nightmares.

