How to Survive a Nuclear Attack

AP

Touching on a subject most people prefer to avoid, the Obama administration is planning to educate the public about dealing with the effects of a nuclear bomb.

"We have to get past the mental block that says it's too terrible to think about," W. Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told the New York Times. "We have to be ready to deal with it."

Martin Hellman, professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford and co-inventor of public key cryptography, who has been focusing on nuclear deterrence for the past 25 years, said that a baby born today, with an expected lifetime of 80 years, faces a greater than 50-50 chance that a nuclear weapon attack will occur unless the number of weapons and available weapons-grade material is radically reduced.

A nuclear attack would most likely come from a terrorist group. "Al Qaeda is especially notable for its longstanding interest in weapons of useable nuclear material and the requisite expertise that would allow it to develop a yield-producing improvised nuclear device," John Brennan, White House chief counterterrorism adviser, said in April.

Crude bombs could be made without classified knowledge, but they would have a higher probability of success if they had someone who knows how to machine uranium for bomb parts, said Matthew Bunn, an associate professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and an expert on nuclear proliferation and terrorism. "They don't need an Oppenheimer," he added. J. Robert Oppenheimer was the scientific director of the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear weapons.

The Department of Homeland Security has published a guide, "Nuclear Detonation Preparedness: Communicating in the Immediate Aftermath," which offers the following advice:

• Find the nearest building, preferably built of brick or concrete, and go inside to avoid any radioactive material outside.

• If better shelter, such as a multi-story building or basement can be reached within a few minutes, go there immediately.

• If you are in a car, find a building for shelter immediately. Cars do not provide adequate protection from radiation from a nuclear detonation.

• Go to the basement or the center of the middle floors of a multi-story building (for example the center of the 5th floor of a 10-story building or the 10th to 20th floors of a 30-story building).

"Shelter in place. That's the single biggest message," L.A. County health director Jonathan Fielding advised. "That's the best way to save lives and prevent radiation-related illnesses. It runs counter to your basic instinct to get away and reunite with family members. If their kids are in school or in day care, that's where they should stay," he added.

Brooke Buddemeier, Certified Health Physicist (Radiation Safety Specialist) in the Global Security directorate of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, studied the impact of nuclear bomb blast in six U.S. cities for the Department of Homeland Security. "You can't outrun a fallout cloud," Buddemeier said in a presentation in Los Angeles, "and fatalities from fallout are 100 percent preventable."

An estimated 285,000 people, a mile away and unsheltered from a detonation in Los Angeles, would be sick or die from radiation exposure, Buddemeier said. "Even with a poor shelter, like a wood frame house, you would save 160,000 people from significant exposure," he maintained. "If people were to find shelter in a shallow basement or a multistory apartment or commercial building, 240,000 out of that 285,000 would be saved from significant exposure. If you can get into an underground parking garage or the core of an office building, you'd have no significant exposure at all," he said.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is trying to pass a treaty that would modestly reduce the number of nuclear arms held by Russia and U.S., who control the vast majority of nuclear material. But slowing down nuclear proliferation, and keeping nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists, doesn't appear to be getting any easier.

[wyodutch]

A nuclear war should come unexpected. Ideally, there would be no time for our cockroach politicians and bureaucrats to be whisked-away to the comfort and safety of taxpayer-funded shelters before the mushrooms start popping.
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Ideally, the war would catch our politicians in the midst of their daily routines. Negotiating their pay from lobbyists... promoting wars that someone elses' kids die in... stealing more and more of whats left of the Bill of Rights.
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I think the least thing America would need to recover from nuclear war would be an army of parasites and thugs emerging from their shelters to pick-up where they left off. Better that WE, THE PEOPLE start freash and restore the Republic to it's former glory.

[ricscore]

Russia is not the problem. Let them rebuild their nukes. Its just talk, Russia can't afford rebuilding or modernizing their nuclear program. The only thing Russia will reduces is out of date rusting nukes. The good stuff they sell. All Obama is doing is reducing Americans strength and opening us up for future attacks. The problem is China, Iran, North Koran. Where's Bush when you need him?

[wyodutch]

Your congressmen, both senators, state governor and most of the upper-echelon military and civilian ruling class have shelters prepared for them. They are located in various parts of the country and are stocked with everything from food and fuel to thousands of movies, surgical centers, etc.. The shelters were built with your tax dollars.
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Please contact your congressman, senators, governor or federal bureaucrat... ask them if you and your family would be allowed inside their shelter or would be left to die outside the blast door.
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I've always held the belief that in the event of a nuclear war... those that brought it about should be the first to be charcoaled. Just seems right.

[j_flood]

I'm too old now for "drop and cover" - but I'm well practiced....

[Cassarit]

It's been known for years that survival after a nuclear blast is not that hard. But that news has never gotten out to the public thanks to the fear mongering of anti-nuclear activists who would rather continue to terrorize people by continuing to promote the image of a nuclear apocalyse where only cockroaches survive.

[Hobotron2084]

Thank you, Dr.Strangelove.

[skepticalJM]

Here we go again: fear tactics. What won't these connivers and con-artists use to make the public believe their flim-flam nonsense. I grew up with a fallout shelter in my basement; the liars then had us all scared with the Communist threat. There is, and has been only one threat in this world for the last 3000 years: the capitalist huckster racketeer and his ability to distort anything into its opposite. When will the American people wake up, and rid themselves of these vicious little pricks that want everything their way; these Masters of the Universe and their Evil Empires created on the sweat and blood of other people? They would sell their own mothers for a profit. They are the cause of all the wars and all the misery this planet knows.

[jgg000101]

so, are you a marxist, communist, socialist, or anarchist?

[Hobotron2084]

Thank you, Dr.Strangelove.

[Birdman04]

"If a frog had wings it wouldn't bump it's a$$ when it jumped"
Stop already. You are scaring grandma and grandpa.....

[magnumdr]

Bend over, put your head between your knees, then kiss your ass goodbye.

[newsterI]

if you are twice as far from the source of the radiation, i.e. the particle, you'll get 1/4 of the dosage. It's proportional to the square of the distance. I'd stay in the shelter until the authorities said it was safe to come out,"

And you REALLY believe all that? you only need to inhale one minute radioactive particle and you are basically dead, if not by radiation poisoning, then by CANCER.
Fallout would contaminate everything, you think the 9/11 dust was bad? you aint seen nothing.

[kaylag04]

An electrical Engineer from Stanford calculating probabilities of nuclear attack over the next 80 years? A nuclear attack "would most likely come from a terrorist group"...but our President is trying to arrange a treaty with Russia? Is this like a Saturday Night Live Parody of a news story?

[Hobotron2084]

The treaty with Russia is about reducing the available material.