Places to hide if there's a nuclear blast?

[Minmus Taster]

Obviously this still depends on luck a lot of the time but I was wondering if there any specific locations that a particularly good at keeping the people inside safe. One that I'm particularly interested in is subway stations and if the shock wave would still be lethal on the bottommost level. Also I heard that just lying down could allow most of the blast to pass over you. Could this work? Are there any better options for protection?

[kerbiloid]

Fridge.

Spoiler

 

[sevenperforce]

The major, immediate risk of death from a nuclear blast comes primarily from kinetic effects, not nuclear ones. In one sense, a nuclear blast is not that different from the blast produced by a conventional weapon; most of the damage comes from the initial overpressure wave and the subsequent firestorm. The difference is scale. Assuming that we are dealing with a strategic nuclear weapon, the blast is simply far far larger than a conventional high explosive weapon and thus the radius of total destruction is greater.

The prompt radiation from a nuclear blast is really NOT a serious problem in most situations. If you are in a building that is tough enough to protect you from the blast wave and firestorm, it will likely be large enough to shield you from the prompt radiation. There are some exceptions on the battlefield; certain tanks have armor capable of "tanking" the overpressure wave and fireball of a tactical nuke but the armor is not thick enough to shield the occupants from the neutron radiation. Certainly not meaningful for most people.

Distance and attenuation are the biggest factors. The farther you are from the epicenter, and the more barriers you have between you and the epicenter, the better. 

39 minutes ago, Minmus Taster said:

One that I'm particularly interested in is subway stations and if the shock wave would still be lethal on the bottommost level.

The overpressure wave is going to enter any opening and propagate through any structure that is not destroyed by it, above or below ground, but the path it takes before it gets to you will attenuate it significantly. The more of a maze that the wave has to traverse, the more it will weaken. Here in DC, the underground metro stations can be accessed from the surface via tunnel shafts that sink diagonally into the ground:

Being at the bottom of that tunnel is not going to be any different from being on the surface; the blast wave is just going to enter and rush straight down without noticing.

But if this tunnel opens into a rail stop that is set perpendicular to the escalators, and you're some distance away from the tunnel, you're in a much better position. Same if you are a layer or two down.

40 minutes ago, Minmus Taster said:

I heard that just lying down could allow most of the blast to pass over you. Could this work?

Lying down is better than standing up, but not with respect to overpressure itself. If you're close enough that the overpressure alone is lethal, then it's going to kill you no matter what.

If you're far enough away that the overpressure is survivable, lying down is better because the blast wave is less likely to pick you up and throw you around like a rag doll.

[kerbiloid]

Subways have hermetic pressure doors of various types.

Spoiler

 

 

[tater]

When I was in elementary school, my job was to close the Venetian blinds in the classroom (so the flash would not ignite our crayon drawings?), then we all went into the windowless hallway.

Pretty sure even if we lived, we'd die shortly thereafter only a few train stops from midtown Manhattan (in Rye)—it's not like we were prepared to live off the land, lol.

 

[farmerben]

Living near a subway especially in the United States, drastically increases your chances of living near a prime target.

[tater]

We kept looking at the house I live in now, and another one 3 doors down the street. The one we didn't buy actually has a bomb shelter—a quite nice one—and the building it is attached to also has a greenhouse. Course the firestorm likely takes out the neighborhood with a brushfire anyway, so not sure what the point it.

[Nuke]

dont live in big cities or anywhere of strategic value. fallout is still a problem, but at least you aren't on fire.

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Subways have hermetic pressure doors of various types.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Who is true if they are designed to be bomb shelters. UK metro became one during WW 2 and lots of the ones from the cold war has stuff like you show but usually less sophisticated. 

30 minutes ago, Nuke said:

dont live in big cities or anywhere of strategic value. fallout is still a problem, but at least you aren't on fire.

Some UK guy in 1980's was scared of war so then an job at the Falkland islands he jumped on it. 
And becoming an very small group of UK citizen getting occupied. Other is channel islands during WW 2. 

[darthgently]

4 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

comes from the initial overpressure wave

Are under pressure rarification troughs a thing?  Those couldn't feel that great either

4 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

The major, immediate risk of death from a nuclear blast comes primarily from kinetic effects, not nuclear ones. In one sense, a nuclear blast is not that different from the blast produced by a conventional weapon; most of the damage comes from the initial overpressure wave and the subsequent firestorm. The difference is scale. Assuming that we are dealing with a strategic nuclear weapon, the blast is simply far far larger than a conventional high explosive weapon and thus the radius of total destruction is greater.

The prompt radiation from a nuclear blast is really NOT a serious problem in most situations. If you are in a building that is tough enough to protect you from the blast wave and firestorm, it will likely be large enough to shield you from the prompt radiation. There are some exceptions on the battlefield; certain tanks have armor capable of "tanking" the overpressure wave and fireball of a tactical nuke but the armor is not thick enough to shield the occupants from the neutron radiation. Certainly not meaningful for most people.

Distance and attenuation are the biggest factors. The farther you are from the epicenter, and the more barriers you have between you and the epicenter, the better. 

The overpressure wave is going to enter any opening and propagate through any structure that is not destroyed by it, above or below ground, but the path it takes before it gets to you will attenuate it significantly. The more of a maze that the wave has to traverse, the more it will weaken. Here in DC, the underground metro stations can be accessed from the surface via tunnel shafts that sink diagonally into the ground:

Being at the bottom of that tunnel is not going to be any different from being on the surface; the blast wave is just going to enter and rush straight down without noticing.

But if this tunnel opens into a rail stop that is set perpendicular to the escalators, and you're some distance away from the tunnel, you're in a much better position. Same if you are a layer or two down.

Lying down is better than standing up, but not with respect to overpressure itself. If you're close enough that the overpressure alone is lethal, then it's going to kill you no matter what.

If you're far enough away that the overpressure is survivable, lying down is better because the blast wave is less likely to pick you up and throw you around like a rag doll.

Same advice if stuck in the open during a tornado.  Lay down in the deepest concavity or ditch that is handy

[SunlitZelkova]

6 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

There are some exceptions on the battlefield; certain tanks have armor capable of "tanking" the overpressure wave and fireball of a tactical nuke but the armor is not thick enough to shield the occupants from the neutron radiation. Certainly not meaningful for most people.

Actually most Soviet tanks since the T-55A mod. 1970 have had a liner built within the armor to stop neutron radiation.

6 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

The prompt radiation from a nuclear blast is really NOT a serious problem in most situations.

It can be. One of the crewmen of the Fukuryu Maru succumbed to radiation sickness after being exposed to fallout from the Castle Bravo test.

I’m just saying it can be. The other 15 crewmen recovered.

[Superfluous J]

As a child of the 70s and 80s I can with 100% certainty tell you that all you need to do is get under your desk.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Military training just said to dig a small trench and lay down in it. 

Again - as said above - your biggest threat is the blast effects. 

So safest place is to live in a small town that isn't a target.  Preference for towns with a thriving organic farming community (so that Monsanto single - generation seeds are not your hope for the future). Make sure you get along with the neighbors and have a useful skill, preferably something analog. 

Have canned foods in the basement. 

Survive the first year and you should enjoy getting to see your grandkids master living in a post-apocalyptic version of the 16th century. 

 

... 

 

(No zombies or giant bugs, I'm sorry to say) 

9 hours ago, Minmus Taster said:

specific locations

There is a map floating around that shows the best places in America from a prevailing winds and likely target standpoint.  Purpose is to identify places with the least amount of fallout.  Southern Oregon and Northern California mountain region were particularly good. 

Edited September 22, 2023 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[Nuke]

4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Who is true if they are designed to be bomb shelters. UK metro became one during WW 2 and lots of the ones from the cold war has stuff like you show but usually less sophisticated. 

Some UK guy in 1980's was scared of war so then an job at the Falkland islands he jumped on it. 
And becoming an very small group of UK citizen getting occupied. Other is channel islands during WW 2. 

still better than being on fire. 

[steve9728]

Speaking as someone who living in the city where DJI and Huawei and many other high tech companies was founded, our city definitely worth a bomb. So the metro in our city all design to make them can be the shelters. Meanwhile all the underground car parks under the apartments are required to be nuclear, chemical, biological and air raid proof based on the size of the flats. Those concrete doors are pretty thick and heavy have to say.

But of course, I would recommend to living in somewhere not that “hot”, probably somewhere inside the mountains, or somewhere plateau higher than 4000m.

As for me, if the bombs really incoming unfortunately, I’ll try my worst to find out where the direction maybe. Then find a white wall, show my fingers - at least leave something in the world, such as a strange shadow.

Edited September 22, 2023 by steve9728

[razark]

4 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

As a child of the 70s and 80s I can with 100% certainty tell you that all you need to do is get under your desk.

That's missing a couple steps I learned back in the '80s.

1. Get under the desk.
2. Place your head between your legs.
3. Kiss your ___ goodbye.

 

Spoiler

How has this not been posted yet?

 

Edited September 22, 2023 by razark

[monophonic]

10 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Some UK guy in 1980's was scared of war so then an job at the Falkland islands he jumped on it. 
And becoming an very small group of UK citizen getting occupied. Other is channel islands during WW 2. 

Oh well, the Argentine claims were public and known at that time. So, he failed the "strategic value" check. Same for channel islands, smack right in the middle of one of the busiest shipping routes in the region.

7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

It can be. One of the crewmen of the Fukuryu Maru succumbed to radiation sickness after being exposed to fallout from the Castle Bravo test.

I’m just saying it can be. The other 15 crewmen recovered.

Prompt radiation is radiation from the initial blast itself. Had Fukuryu Maru been close enough to suffer from that, it would have been detected and the test stopped until the range was clear. Delayed radiation from the fallout is a completely different beast. Especially deadly is breathing or swallowing radioactive gases or fine particles from the fallout, as the worst direction to have radiation hit your body is from the inside. Fukuryu Maru and crew got a generous serving of that thanks to winds blowing the fallout right on top of them.

[RCgothic]

Lying down not only protects you from being tossed, but helps to take you out of the path of flying debris.

If you survive the initial blast, within a few minutes do your best to put out any fires, restore the integrity of your current location's exterior against fallout, then retreat to the location furthest from any exterior boundaries for at least 24h unless immediately threatened by some other hazard like fire. The danger from fallout should reduce by ~80% over this time.

[DDE]

8 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Actually most Soviet tanks since the T-55A mod. 1970 have had a liner built within the armor to stop neutron radiation.

There's actually two liners. The neutron protection liner is external (надбой) and often quite visible, whereas the combined gamma-ray and spall liner is under the armor (подбой).

The turret is actually just one solid cast slab underneath, and what you see attached on this "bald" (pre-ERA) T-72A is its doomsday armor specific to domestic and Warsaw Pact models.

7 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Military training just said to dig a small trench and lay down in it. 

As cooler heads on the Z-telegram keep incessantly repeating, a single nuke can only really take out a bunched-up company of troops. Everyone to their right and left will be largely untouched.

Simple earthworks shelters are amazingly effective, as proven in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

15 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Subways have hermetic pressure doors of various types.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

That said, Soviet SOP was to shut the doors immediately. The major cities would be evacuated into the countryside ahead of The Big One, and so shelters were allotted only to what we in the COVID age call "critical workers".

The subway system was more of a bonus.

Edited September 22, 2023 by DDE

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, razark said:

 

  Hide contents

How has this not been posted yet?

 

 

A brief summary of the video.

Spoiler

1:23 Living in Greenland is what you need to feel safe.

1:24 If you are a teacher, and feel tired, just shout out "Duck and cover!", and you can have a minute of rest and silence.

1:27 Obey.

1:34 America of 1951 is a country of equal possibilities;
also, light-colored materials have greater reflective power, and protect you better...

1:38 ... but sometimes not.

1:41 You can finally come out and try a poledance, and nobody laughs at you.
But first ensure that the pole is not too hot for your man's pride, regardless of your gender self-identification.

1:49 Try to escape from the city by car, while others are hiding...

1:53 ...before everyone tries doing the same.

1:55 If you don't have a car, or you are a taxi driver, and your car is broken, try to wave with hands, maybe somebody wil take you aboard.

1:57 If you are a group, and a man in strange hat is waving with a white glove to you, follow him ...

2:02 ... and let the first one carry a candle, while others are singing hymns.

2:31 A nuclear blast is like a winter, but in summer.

2:43 Keep your turtles with rear side to the flash.

2:47 After being exposed to the flash, use tan lotions to make your tan smooth and uniform.

2:56 Study your local fauna. Turtle is a pound of edible meat, and can be cooked without a pan...

3:00 ... even if it's a radiation mutant, covered with fish scales, and your teacher is looking like Spock.

3:01 If your silly neignbor is wearing a dark-colored neck tie, prepare a pipe from carton, and scissors.
When his throat gets burnt by the flash light, he will need an urgent tracheotomy.

3:08 Protect your head top with hands, even if the medula oblongata (the general physiology part of your brain) is situated at the back of the head, close to the neck, where they wear a fur collar.

3:12 ... though, who knows, maybe the Vulcanians have it on top.

3:18 Get used to first show you presence by raising a hand before moving.
The teacher usually won't reflectively shoot at you, but others can.
It's just polite, because helps the people to save their rounds.

3:30 Study the warning signs.
"With warning" means that the guards will first warn you before shooting, while "No warning" means that they first shoot then ask.

3:35 The soldiers are manually rotating the huge antennas, because the motor is again broken.

3:44 People wearing a circled pyramid with eye on the arms are filling papers.
They are illuminati, they keep illuminating even when the flash is illuminating everything around.

3:47 Two minor illuminati in strange helmets are standing at guard in front of the Pillars of Creation.
One of them can't see, another one can't hear and is looking through binoculars at the third, the non-speaking one, who is smoking behind the black monolith.

3:49 If a horde of bombers is flying to you, try hitting them with a baseball ball. All you need is a bat.

3:58 Find any shadow place to hide. A baseball shadow is good enough.

4:01 Don't drop a rope! You will need it not once if survive.
To attach something, to hold the things together, to catch a gopher, to hang a marauder.

4:03 Walk into the flimsy school building. Tonnes of bricks and broken glass is what you need above.

4:16 Don't drop the things. Maybe you will need the rugby ball to exchange it for food or to make boots.

It's nice to live in a dungeon. You will laugh the last at the former laughers.

4:23 Count the cars on your parking.
4:28 On the siren, bless them.

4:32 Discuss the incoming attack with your neignbors.
Show them the bomber of your choice.

4:35 Go to the Spublic Sshelter.

4:41 The conical thing on the top of your house will protect you by dissecting the shockwave.

4:48 Don't forget the ignition key in your car, because it can burn.

4:55 Make the last photos of your suburban area. Use flash for better photos.

5:08 Mock at other pupils while the siren is sounding...
5:17 ... If you quickly fall down and cover your head, maybe they won't beat you too hard.

The ceramic tile is good, have it as much as you can, and don't cover.
Being broken by the shock, it makes a good storm of shrapnel in the room.

5:33 As the food supplies are limited, you can play games in the diner.
The loser dives under the table and leaves his portion on the table.
Others are laughing at him.

5:53 Nothing else is as safe as large glassy doors, even not covered with paper or reinforced by duct tape.

5:54 All lie and duplicity of the sweet capitalist propaganda in one shot.

"We have ar door made of glass to show how open and friendly we are, but at the same time the window is covered with grill, because we don't trust you."

Split personality as it is. Either put a normal door, or remove the bars from the window.

6:05 Don't step on the street hatches.
See, once the girl had stepped on one, immediately a nuclear flash happened.

6:10 Dive under the girl to use her as a protective cover.

On the other hand, you may vice versa fall on her.
Then while you are protecting her from the heat radiation, she softens your hit against the wall.

Improvise, there is no correct answer. All depends on the blast distance.

But it's rather eloquently that the boy didn't instictively try to fall on the girl to protect them both, but immediately forgot about her and jumped to the wall.
Probably, his social reflex was trained properly, together with "soft skills" and "small talk".

6:27 The more nooks and crannies you have in the street, the better for the civil defense...
... and for the street crimes.

6:34 Choose the dark side of the wall. The dark means no shadow.

6:50 If somebody is riding a bike, make him fall and put the teeth on the border. Now the bike is yours.

7:00 While awaiting a flash, have a sleep. Who knows if you have a chance more.

7:10 If you see a person, motionlessly lying on ground, give it a second, check his pockets, maybe there is something what you need more than he does.

7:12 If somebody is checking your pockets, immediately stand up and go away, even if a second before you were awaiting the nuclear blast.

7:25 A school bus. The safest place on the Earth after the blanket on your bed.

A minor detail.
On the flash, the pupils must immediately dive under seats, while the driver must immediately stop the bus.
Combination of the dive and the 40 mph speed inertia will look rather different from this faery tale movie filmed in a motionless car.
Actually, they should just prepare to collision, that's all they can do.
Btw, did anyway indeed test the kids diving in a suddenly stopping bus?

7:40 When you are working in a post-nuclear kitchen garden, and some rat is trying to steal a radish, smash his ugly face in.
It will be a good lesson for all other jerks.

7:45 Waving at the fire, always stand downwind, to make you clothes smell smoky, to kill the insects inside, and to inhale as much carbon monoxide as you can.

7:48 A nuclear blast can save some wood for your kitchen.

7:54 Put a reflective white plate near you. When some photons had missed you, it will reflect them into you.
Only standing at a white wall is more effective.

Of course, ignore the trees around, which can protect from the light and weaken the shockwave.

8:06 And finally, we came to the ultimate solution.
The tractor.
Run it in advance, get away as far as you can, through the field, ignoring the roads, hide in its shadow from the flash, plow the cropland to grow the post-nuclear crops on your own.

 

42 minutes ago, DDE said:

That said, Soviet SOP was to shut the doors immediately.

They have to confirm and get the order, to drive the personnel in, to let the trains pass in or out instead of ramming the tunnel doors (it has batteries, and the machinist wants to live), etc.

As the time between stations is standard 5 minutes, the immediately physically means 5 minutes.

So, they will try to close the glass doors immediately, and start heroically defending them for several minutes, while all of that is happening. Actually, the near-station market place is what has a chance to come in.

  

42 minutes ago, DDE said:

The major cities would be evacuated into the countryside

The mass evacuation is almost equal to the preparation of the first nuclear strike, so unlikely would be done by some nuclear country.

  

40 minutes ago, DDE said:

As cooler heads on the Z-telegram keep incessantly repeating, a single nuke can only really take out a bunched-up company of troops.

The Couch Division veterans of Third Nuclear Punic War were reading Veremeyev very much.

Edited September 22, 2023 by kerbiloid

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

3 hours ago, DDE said:

SOP was to shut the doors immediately

Sad for those who didn't get the message before the alarm sounded. 

[SunlitZelkova]

4 hours ago, monophonic said:

Prompt radiation is radiation from the initial blast itself. Had Fukuryu Maru been close enough to suffer from that, it would have been detected and the test stopped until the range was clear. Delayed radiation from the fallout is a completely different beast. Especially deadly is breathing or swallowing radioactive gases or fine particles from the fallout, as the worst direction to have radiation hit your body is from the inside. Fukuryu Maru and crew got a generous serving of that thanks to winds blowing the fallout right on top of them.

Doe!

3 hours ago, DDE said:

There's actually two liners. The neutron protection liner is external (надбой) and often quite visible, whereas the combined gamma-ray and spall liner is under the armor (подбой).

So would be possible to damage the neutron protection with an HE shell or near miss from gun or rocket artillery and thus “poke a hole” for a nuclear weapon’s radiation to hurt the crew?

[Terwin]

5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

So would be possible to damage the neutron protection with an HE shell or near miss from gun or rocket artillery and thus “poke a hole” for a nuclear weapon’s radiation to hurt the crew?

Non-particulate radiation is usually more of a lightbulb/flashlight type of dispersal as opposed to toxic fumes which only need a small leak to be dangerous.  (X-rays and Gamma rays are just specific wavelengths of light after all), and the steel shell should be pretty effective at stopping particulate radiation(neutrons and fall-out)

So small holes may cause certain parts of the cabin to be more dangerous, but still far less dangerous than an unprotected cabin.

[farmerben]

 

The most important feature of NBC protection is overpressure.  Filtered air pressurizes the crew compartment or shelter therefore nothing can seep in through gaps.

The most dangerous fallout threat is gaseous iodine.  But that decays away in days.

Edited September 22, 2023 by farmerben

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 9/22/2023 at 7:23 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

would be possible to damage the neutron protection with an HE shell or near miss from gun or rocket artillery and thus “poke a hole” for a nuclear weapon’s radiation to hurt the crew?

This is the thing I constantly get frustrated with in nuclear bomb discussions - the over-emphasis on (over-concern with) the radiative effects. 

1.  Primary effect is no different than any other explosive - with the exception of scale.  

2.  There is a danger of immediate deadly dose of radiation for people who are outside the crater / thermal zone - but you generally need line of sight to the explosion as it happens = nothing substantial between you and it as it happens, and are often in the 'secondary overpressure' zone (flying debris) anyway.  Far enough away and you get a less than lethal dose.  This opportunity is gone within seconds - so if you hear the boom and then go look?  You are fine.  

3.  Fallout is generally only lethal if you ingest radioactive particles (breathing, drinking, eating) - because it cooks you from the inside.  Slowly. Heavy metal poison is a longer term issue, but also a concern. 

... 

Modern tanks use overpressure to reduce the risk of #3. 

Being in the tank at all is like #2.  You have something between you and the bomb.  You have broken LOS. 

Being in a tank with specific shielding layers is because the designers anticipate that the tank itself (or the formation it's in) is the actual target of the bomb and thus it and the crew might be really close to the crater zone and thus hope that the armor will protect against #1 and the higher likelihood of #2 due to proximity. 

So - if you are close enough to a nuclear blast in the tank where surviving #1 is a concern, then shielding from #2 is maybe beneficial to letting you continue mission (said ironically).  (or not, CW concern was that the Soviets would lead with tac-nukes and follow up with massive tank assault, so if you live you might still need to defend yourself vs the Red Horde). 

... 

But as to the specific question: if you can hit a tank with something hard enough to punch a hole in the radiation protection layer - why Nuke?  Just enjoy the turret-toss and keep the bad bomb in storage! 

Edited September 23, 2023 by JoeSchmuckatelli