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Sulla
@ichthys30
A lot of people misunderstand what a nuclear wasteland would look like. It would not look like Fallout. Major cities would simply cease to exist. NYC wouldn’t be a decaying ruin. It would be just … completely gone. In 5 years it would be a prairie of grasses and shrubs and in 20 years a forest
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Sulla
@ichthys30
If the bombs are ground bursts instead of airbursts it is much worse and the ground will remain sterile and lifeless for ~20 years. Major cites would look like gravel plains / rocky deserts
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Sulla
@ichthys30
Oh yea … after emerging from your bunkers 30-60 days after D-Day you will need to remove 2 inches of top soil from basically everywhere. Even then, the ash in the sky will be so bad you won’t have good sunlight for 20 years. And everyone will get cancer and die by 40.
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Sulla
@ichthys30
This is what the fallout will look like on a windy day assuming a full nuclear exchange. You’ll need to live in your basement for 30-90 days, cover all openings with dirt, and then emerge into Hell after radiation is gone
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Readers added context they thought people might want to know
This overall fallout pattern is physically impossible for a windy day. The source graph aggregates fallout simulations of anti-silo nuclear war for every day in 2021: hundreds of times more lethal than one anti-silo nuclear exchange. Compare: One windy day: missilesonourland.org/images/map1.jpg vs. 365 days: missilesonourland.org/images/map03.j…
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Sulla
@ichthys30
On more thing … the “30 minutes of prep” is old advice. Our enemies have nuclear subs hiding off our shores (and ditto for us). DC for example will have 5 minutes of warning if they unleash their weapons …
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Sulla
@ichthys30
Not sure about Russian or Chinese boomers but our subs carry 20 missiles with 8 warheads each, meaning each sub was 160 warheads on it. And we have 18 of these, always vigilante, hiding under the waves, ready to strike. Diabolical ….
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Sulla
@ichthys30
If you survive the blast wave and the radiation the first thing to know is that the entire modern world is gone. You are on your own. No hospitals, no modern medicine beyond what you can loot (unless you prep), no food except what you can grow, no cops, and lots of hungry
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Sulla
@ichthys30
If you inhale any radiation it will either melt your lungs or your guts and you will bleed to death out of your ass or drown in your lungs so don’t do that. Avoid radioactive particles
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Sulla
@ichthys30
In a nuclear war the luckiest will be vaporized instantly. The unlucky will be left to wander the Earth. If your rural community is unscathed you will encounter mobs of people fleeing the cities looking for things to eat. They will be hungry, they will be desperate, and they will
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Sulla
@ichthys30
Will be smart to stock up on antibiotics. Disease we haven’t seen in generations will return. Starving people are more at risk of infection. Get ready for annual plagues and not just the flu
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Sulla
@ichthys30
40% of young Americans take some medication daily. Many people take anti depressants and others take something even more strong for worse conditions. In 30 days their meds will begin to run out. Diabetics are SOOL. Insulin requires refrigeration.
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Sulla
@ichthys30
Even if there is no nuclear winter as many in the comments have claimed, you will still need to remove the topsoil and begin farming. Depending on the time of year you could be fucked. If there are any EMPs you’re farming equipment is dead, and even if it isn’t, where are you
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Sulla
@ichthys30
A “singe nuke terror attack” while horrible and awful, is a cakewalk compared to total nuclear war. It will be the worst thing that ever happened in American history (except maybe the Civil War) but we would easily “get through it”
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Kushibo MPH, Monster Island (actually a peninsula)
@kushibo
Replying to @ichthys30
I don’t know if it’s more likely or not, but a great concern also is a single-nuke terror attack (or terror strike with a handful of weapons). In such a case, most WILL survive, and not all of the ill effects you describe will come to pass, but many still will.
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Sulla
@ichthys30
A single nuke attack vs a dirty bomb are very different. A dirty bomb is radioactive material dispersed with conventional explosives. Depending on where it went off, we might see a few thousand casualties at worst? A real nuke would be much worse.
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Sulla
@ichthys30
Let’s say a dirty bomb went off in Lower Manhattan or Times Square. You will have a few thousand people die to severe radiation sickness within a few days. Probably the worst way to die. Look up “Hisashi Ouchi”
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Sulla
@ichthys30
Back to post-war horror. Since there will be no more condoms and pills, if want to have sex you better track her period and learn how to pull out. If not, you risk pregnancy, and there are no meds anymore. The town doc will certainly help you but if she needs a C-section your
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Sulla
@ichthys30
The Feds will most likely want to start rebuilding ASAP. Your community probably has a year, maybe a little more, before the Army comes through and starts demanding things. They might draft your kids as well. On the bright side they might bring some MREs so there is that.
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Sulla
@ichthys30
Many people will laugh about how the MRE is not actually enjoyable but after 12 months of potato onion soup (if that) you might really be excited to have MREs !
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Sulla
@ichthys30
Btw did you know the Feds have a massive underground complex to survive this ? Indeed. It’s right near Gettysburg. Oh yes, all the top guys and their families will hide out here. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it
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Dorian Štern Vukotić
@SternVukotic
Concrete and steel are very resistant to nukes, and megaton+ nukes have been almost completely dismantled. There are simply not enough nukes to delete concrete and steel cities.
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Sulla
@ichthys30
Yea but what about fires ? Remember WTC 7? A bombing would cut the water lines, meaning they might not have any sprinklers.
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Sulla
@ichthys30
The Glowing Sea in Fallout 4 is more realistic of what cities would look like after a full nuclear exchange although in the game the environment is highly exaggerated for entertainment purposes.
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Sulla
@ichthys30
The good thing about nuclear war is that it’s highly unlikely to happen because of MAD. What scares some more are dirty bombs and terrorism.
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Wayne of the Wastes
@WayneOWastes
Dunno. In universe, they explain how many buildings survived as being due to a move to smaller payloads. IRL we're doing the same thing, and precision systems like b61 means we don't have to throw 10mts at a target anymore. And our weapons are cleaner, not dirtier.
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Fritz Johnson
@FritzTheDev
If you live in Argentina it might not be the “end of the world” - but most other places would have it pretty rough if their population survives at all.
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Harlan Stewart ⏹️
@HumanHarlan
The problem with this thread is that I know that at least one of the claims is overconfident and possibly wrong (the one about 20 year nuclear winter), so I don’t know whether to trust any of the other claims
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Glue Gobs & Paint Daubs
@GlueGobs
More people need to read Alas, Babylon. It may have been written in 1959, but there’s a lot to be garnered from it. I’m so thankful my sophomore English teacher had us read it.
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Stone2668
@stone2668
Deep in this thread, there are comments that think life won't be so bad... that people will be mildly inconvenienced. That we will carry on because nukes these days are cleaner. The point being missed is that a nuclear exchange of any sort would drastically impact modern
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Nevin Gussack
@ng874
Russian military doctrine is premised on targeting command and control centers, SAC bases, naval bases where subs carrying SLBMs are berthed, and ICBM silos. Major population centers wouldn’t be targeted because there’s no strategic value. Still, a nuclear exchange would be
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jack tar ak
@jacktarak126161
"Nuclear War, a Scenario" is an interesting and frightening book. Written by Annie Jacobson within the last couple years it gives insight into what a modern nuclear exchange would likely look like and how it could happen.
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Caspius
@ItsCaspius
I don’t think the Fallout from a nuclear war would be that bad. Hydrogen bombs don’t produce that much radiation and rain will clear most of the dust in days or weeks
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Wes
@occidensus
And people don’t understand fallout of modern weapons, either. It would be habitable within a year, probably.
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Luke ☦️
@orthodox_luke
Why are the 2,000 nuke scenarios clustered in 3 big clusters in a low pop density zone like that? Minutemen?
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Piotr Baczynski
@PiotrBaczynski
People assume each city would be hit with exactly one warhead when in fact key targets would be targeted with 50-100 warheads to make sure some get through air defence. End result would be then much worse than Hiroshima.
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paulyoder
@yoderpaul
Amazing that between 1945 and 1992 the US detonated over 1,000 nuclear bombs, based on the common perception it's amazing that the world itself still exists!
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Karen Rifenburg
@RifenburgK1435
This thread reminds me of coming of age in the early 1980's. We really worried about nuclear war back then. We knew where our fall-out shelter was located in our town.
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Joe Subset
@YSuperset
It would not cause major cities to cease to exist. Not even old nukes would level small WW2 cities. Our most modern and powerful nukes wouldn't level modern day cities either. And those are not even in use - the ones in use are exclusively more around the old nuke strength.
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Colin Glassey - Author
@cglassey_author
If ‘Fallout’ games became real, Sulla is correct. The 100 largest cities in the USA would be annihilated. I think after a year, a visitor to one of the nuked cities would see nothing more than remnants of freeways. The distant 3rd-tier cities like Salinas, CA or Syracuse NY would
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Don Rich
@Donnymack666
George C. Scott's character actually wasn't kidding; "Now I'm not saying our hair won't get mussed Mr. President. But ten, twenty million dead tops." IF war was confined to "counterforce" strikes THEN fallout is worry bc of ground blasts on silos. If "countervalue"=cities 🎯🤷‍♂️
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Ian
@IanSharar
Nukes only take out a couple of miles max, there would definitely be lots of ruins, it’s not a movie. The real power of nukes comes from the 20 mile fallout radius.
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TSA
@1776TSA
If the Earth is millions of years old but human civilization has only been around for supposedly thousands of years then wouldn’t there be good odds that we’ve already been through nuclear warfare if this is true?
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Hernan Cortes
@CyberPunkCortes
Every major city would be a dark forest dotted with piles of broken bricks, with deformed plants and animals turned black with melanin to absorb background radiation.
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The Fleek Futurist 🗽🚀⚖️
@FleekFuturist
Check out this thread & look closer into what the nuclear post-apocalypse would be like in the US 🇺🇸
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The Fleek Futurist 🗽🚀⚖️
@FleekFuturist
Tonight I'm going to post the state maps from Ephraim Ben Raphael's classic alternate history epic 🇺🇸 Stars & Stripes Forever: America After the Apocalypse ☢️ Which details the American post-apocalypse after a future strategic nuclear exchange in 2034
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pomuye 🛸📸
@everyonespomuy1
My question is, would Alaska even be a target? I mean, the only major city ( the one I live in ) is Anchorage, and even then the population of this city and military base is pretty small compared to every other state in the country.
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Aaron
@AaronGeneric
Most major cities would still be completely intact. As big as a nuclear blast its not nearly as big as youd think.
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M Yoha
@MYoha8of8
We use to get daily print outs for the morning briefing for the brass as to where the fallout would be in the event of an exchange. Weird to get that daily reminder when I was in the Navy and as soon as I got out, thing of the past.
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smartmark23
@EricRosso23
To me that makes it even more likely that it's happened before. I saw some petroglyphs in Utah, and something stuck out to me. They looked like a jumble of modern memes, without a unifying context. Like if you were to gather enough survivors to get a tribe going, and wrote
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Ma$oN
@ncognito120416
I struggle believing this map for one reason, the place where Abram’s tanks are manufactured is NOT on the map. That location is a twofer being that it is a quarter mile away from a refinery that produces ethanol and urea (along a grocery list of other chemicals). During the Cold
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Khryn Tzu
@Khryn_Tzu
Got a nice 2000 lb target 2 miles away from me. At least I'll be vaporized fast. Got a couple more 2k dots just north of me. I'm surrounded, there is no surviving for me.
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Jay Tiller
@JayTiller48
A great visual depiction of what you've described is in the British 80s movie, Threads. I watched it decades ago and it's still haunts. People these days are very blasé about nuclear war. They shouldn't be.
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