nuclear war

[Sekwo]

(21 July 2023, 07:43)bigpaul Wrote: if anyone is inside the target area blast zone they are dead, pure and simple.
however how long the fall out stays around is open to debate, some say it will only last a month, other say it simple moves around the globe driven by the jet stream and stays around for years, certainly anything up to 5 years is the given.
as we have seen with Chernobyl radiation is the other problem, the ground will be infected with radiation and nothing will grow and any animals (Welsh Lamb were riddled with it and were unsellable for years)will be inedible.

It depends what you mean by the blast zone ... but there certainly is an area where if the blast doesn't kill you the radiation will, unless you have a very expensive bunker which is beyond the means of most people, and even if you had the money ... why would you stay in the blast zone?

I've done a lot of work looking at the fallout. In particular, I was trying to work out whether you could spend an extra say 10minutes, getting to a better shelter. The basic answer is no. You really have to get to the best shelter you can get to BEFORE the fallout arrives. For example, if the only shelter you have is a flimsy wooden building, with some single brick walls, and there's the best bunker in the world half an hour away ... you are still better to get in the flimsy wooden building for the first few hours, and only after the initial spike has died down, is it worth trying to get to the better bunker.

If however, you're in a really great shelter (cellar below ground) ... it's still worth moving if you can get somewhere without radiation quickly (driving!), but this time your optimum time is about 14 days (from memory)

These timings, are only what reduces your exposure ... and I'm not saying you're going to live if you follow this strategy, because if you are in a flimsy house in the middle of a fallout zone, you may reduce your exposure by doing what I suggest but only from twice the fatal dose to the fatal dose ... which still means you die. However, since most people will have no idea what dose they've had, they may as well act as if they could survive.

Longterm (>1month), the radiation hangs around. There will be radioactive poisons in the water. The atmosphere will have radioactive dust. Plants and animals in the area, and almost every where on the earth, will have some radioactive contamination. The only way to escape the radioactivity ... is to take a rocket ship ... but since there's also a high dose of radiation in space, you might not reduce your total intake if it took several years to get to your "escape".

Fortunately, the survivable limit for radioactivity is orders of magnitude greater than the threshold we currently put on radioactive exposure. However, it will mean those who are exposed are more likely to die earlier. But the only people who get to worry about that ... are the lucky ones who survive.