If there were a nuclear war on Earth, would you rather
be stuck in an underground bunker or in the International Space Station?
ISS: The universal acronym for “I’m Seriously
Screwed…”
There
are various reasons that I wouldn’t choose the space station.
For
example, did you know that you’ll lose 1 or 2% of your bone mass every month you’re
up there? Presumably that means that if you’re in space for five
years, your bones melt away into nothing and you become a blob-monster.
You after five years in space, probably.
Of
course, you wouldn’t actually turn into an invertebrate puddle of goo, because
1. That’s stupid; and
2. The ISS isn’t self-sufficient for food. Without anyone sending up ships to re-supply
you - and given the whole “There’s a nuclear war” thing, I think it’s safe to
guess there aren’t going to be any ships coming - you’d have starved to death
three to four weeks after your on-board food supplies ran out. Except you
wouldn’t starve, because
3. You would also run out of water (Maybe: see below). After the water
supply runs out, you’ll live for maybe three or four days, and that’s it.
a. Elly Bro commented that the ISS recycles water from urine
and sweat. This is true, but as far as I know, that only prolongs the supply.
You would still eventually run out. I guess it’s possible, if the recycling is
efficient enough, that the water supply lasts long enough for you to starve.
But you still starve. But I’m not an expert, so this point has been edited to a
‘maybe’.
In
all: the ISS sounds like a bad option. If the Federation
could time-travel a ship back to rescue me, then sure. But unless
the USS: Ohhh, Bugger (NCC 80085) is
around, then my fat ass is going in the bunker.
Bunker Hill
No,
wait. That’s something else. And as a British person, I’ll steer clear of that;
it didn’t go well last time.
My Beloved Bunker and Me
That’s
my choice.
I’m
going to choose the bunker, because I think it would give me a slightly better
chance of long-term survival.
Of
course, there are various other things to consider that would further increase
my chances of survival. Unlike other answers here, I believe that it would be
possible to live a fairly long, decent life after a nuclear war if you are
careful about where you live, and how you build your house and your life.
If
you are, for some reason, trying to plan where to live in the event of a
nuclear holocaust, keep going.
Otherwise,
you can stop here.
The Vault in our Stars
So,
first off, there are actually two kinds of bunkers.
Many
people seem to assume they’re the same thing, or otherwise get them confused.
Some people don’t even realize that there are two kinds of bunkers. But there
are.
One
is a fallout shelter, and one is a blast shelter.
What’s the difference? Well, in short:
·
A
blast shelter is designed to be able to withstand a nuclear blast. That is, you can drop a nuclear bomb on top
of it, and anyone inside should survive. Assuming the last person in remembered
to close the door, anyway. That’s why it’s important not to let idiots in your
blast shelter. But the point is, like my brother, these things are extremely
sturdy and usually filled with canned goods.
·
A
fallout shelter is designed to protect you against nuclear fallout - the radiation. However, it isn’t
designed to survive a direct hit from a nuclear weapon.
When
I say that blast shelters are sturdy, I mean it.
They
will often have enormous doors - the Cheyenne mountain complex has doors that,
as far as I know, weigh more than 25 tonnes each.
Blast shelters will often have double doors, like an airlock system, so that if
the nuclear shockwave blows the outer door open, it won’t breach into the main
shelter. Inside the bunker, there are frequently branching corridors, or abrupt
turns in the corridors - shockwaves travel in straight lines, so a sudden turn
prevents the force from continuing in a straight line and killing everyone in
its path. Blast shelters are also usually buried far underground, so that the
soil and rock can absorb the force of the bomb.
All
of these features are what allows the blast shelter to survive a direct hit.
They also mean that blast shelters can withstand fallout.
The
fallout shelter can’t survive the hit, but it will protect you from the nuclear
radiation that would otherwise turn you into a blob monster.
You after getting a dose of nuclear radiation, probably
Rather
ironically, given the name of the game series, the Vaults from Fallout look to
me to be blast shelters, not fallout shelters. But I guess
calling a game “Blast” is just going to make it seem like you’re blowing stuff
up.
Wait…
That’s totally rad, dude
So,
now it’s worth talking in more detail about radiation.
As
I mentioned before, fallout shelters are designed to protect you from the
nuclear radiation - also know as fallout. A few years
ago, I read a guide for soldiers that told them how to make a simple fallout
shelter in the event of a nuclear war. Put simply, you need ten halving
thicknesses of… whatever substance you have at hand.
A
halving thickness, for the record, is the amount of [substance] you need to cut
the radiation in half. So one halving thickness would leave
you with a radiation of 1/2.
Two
halving thicknesses gives a radiation level of 1 / (2^2), or 1/4,
If
you have ten halving thicknesses, you will cut the radiation to 1 / (2^10) - or
around one one-thousandth of the initial radiation. (Actually it’d be 1/1024,
but who’s counting? Other than Geiger, obviously.)
Geiger, who liked to count radiation.
And also hot babes, probably.
All
of this raises the question - what are halving thicknesses for [substances]?
Glad you asked.
There
are three kinds of radiation - alpha, beta, and gamma emissions. Alpha
particles don’t penetrate the skin, and beta particles would be stopped by a
piece of wood. So, a normal house would protect you from those.
The
real problem you’ll have after a nuclear strike - other than, you know, being
on fire and all - is going to be gamma rays. They are the hardest thing to
stop. And for those, the halving thickness values would be:
·
For lead, around half
an inch (0.4″, or ~10 mm).
·
For concrete, around
2.4″ (~60 mm).
·
For soil, around
3.6″ (~89 mm).
·
For air, around 500
feet (~152 m).
What
this means is that if you can surround your house with around 3 feet of soil on
all sides, including the top, the inside should have 1/1000 of the outside
nuclear radiation.
There
is more good news, too!
We
often tend to assume that after you’ve nuked a place, it’s going to be heavily
irradiated for centuries afterwards - that Hiroshima ‘glows in the dark’, that
sort of thing. This is not true.
According
to Wikipedia, the LD50 - the dosage that would likely kill 50% of people - is 3.5
grays. Most people would become sick, but not incapacitated, after exposure to
1 gray. At the surface-level crater of an explosion, one hour after the nuclear
blast, the radiation is 30 grays.
However,
Wikipedia also suggests that a nuclear blast zone is “ fairly
safe for travel and decontamination” between three and five weeks after the
explosion. Apparently, there is also the Seven Ten Rule - a rough calculation, that radiation levels will decrease by a factor
of ten over a seven-fold increase in hours after the event.
So,
after 7 hours, you’ll be at 1/10 of the initial fallout; at 49 hours you’re at
1/100; at 2 weeks you’re at 1/1000; at 14 weeks you’re at 1/10000; and so on.
So,
assuming the initial surface-level contamination is 30 grays after one hour, then at 2 weeks, it would be 0.03 grays - well under the 3.5
gray fatality limit. You could feasibly travel through the area, but you
wouldn’t want to go camping there.
You, if you went camping on a site that had been nuked two days
before, probably.
Finally,
as far as I can tell, the only birth defect caused by radiation is microcephaly
- where the brain doesn’t develop - and studies from people exposed in the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings only showed 50 cases.
So,
the radiation problem isn’t as bad as people might think.
It’s
not all good news, of course. Nuclear radiation can be spread very far - after the Chernobyl disaster, radiation spread as far as Wales.
Apparently, 344 farms had their meat monitored before safe, despite being
around 1,500 miles distance from the disaster.
Furthermore, some radiation
is very long-lived. The number of nuclear tests from the 1940s and 1950s has
left radiation in the atmosphere that is detectable to this day. This kind of
radiation can cause increased cancer rates too.
All
of this information is useful in working out where I want my fallout shelter to
be, and why.
Apocalypse Now?
But
I’m a little busy. Can we maybe schedule it for next week?
Yes?
Wonderful. Now, where do I want to go and live?
Well
first up, who has nukes? The nuclear club consists of nine members:
·
There are the five
original members of the Club;
o USA
o Russia
o UK
o France
o China
·
There are three other
states who have declared they have weapons;
o India
o Pakistan
o North Korea
·
And there is one state
who is believed to have nuclear weapons, but hasn’t confirmed;
o Israel
Goody
gumdrops.
Now,
do me a favour and look at those countries. They have
one important thing in common. What is it?
Need
a clue? Think about the geography.
Perhaps
this map will help:
Still not sure?
They’re all in the Northern hemisphere.
There
are no nuclear states in the Southern hemisphere. There was one, once, but
South Africa has the other distinction of being the only state ever to
unilaterally disarm.
So,
that’s good to know.
Next,
we can assume the nuclear club will all nuke each other. It would depend on the
circumstances, of course, but something like the following seems likely:
·
USA
+ UK + France nuke Russia
+ maybe China;
·
Pakistan nukes India, possibly
with China joining in;
·
China
and North Korea nuke the USA
That’s
all going to be reciprocal. By that, I mean that the people being nuked will
nuke back. The USA, UK and France nuke Russia, Russia nukes the USA, UK, and
France. Pakistan nukes India, India nukes Pakistan. And so on.
All
of this is going to leave all of those countries decidedly less fun to be in.
British, American, Russian, Chinese, French, Indian, Pakistani,
and North Korean people after a nuclear war, probably. Except imagine they’re
also on fire.
Israel
might not use its nukes, but if the chaos of the nuclear war leads to a
conventional war - which seems like a strong possibility to me - then they
might use them in self-defense.
End
result: Europe, North America, large chunks of Asia, and possibly the Middle
East are devastated. Depending on weather patterns, we can also assume that
radiation will affect most of Europe, Canada, SE Asia, Japan, and - if the
Middle East is also involved - North Africa.
Even
those people who don’t die might suddenly become refugees. And this is the
other thing that’s important in my final decision about where to put my bunker.
Obviously,
I want to be in the Southern hemisphere. It’s further from the fighting, and
there is a lower chance of being involved in the war that follows.
That
basically gives me three main options:
·
South America
·
Sub-Saharan Africa
·
Oceania
Given
the problems of refugees, I’m going to decide against Africa and South America.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with either region, but both have numerous
countries, with varying levels of stability. If a nuclear war does lead to
global conflict and increased instability, I can see those nations suddenly
being less friendly to one another.
In
addition, both are likely to find they have a migrant crisis. Africa would be
at risk of getting European (and Middle Eastern) migrants coming south, and
South America - in an ironic take on current events - would be at risk of North
American refugees coming.
Oceania,
however, has two main benefits. Firstly, the largest landmass is Australia -
which is a single, stable country. There aren’t multiple nations that suddenly
decide to fight over resources. Secondly, the fact that it is an island would
make it easier to control the flow of refugees.
And
within Oceania, in my humble opinion, the best place for my bunker would be New
Zealand. Again, it’s a single nation, it’s an island, it’s very far south, and
the only sizeable neighbour is Australia - a
friendly, stable nation with no land borders.
Virat Rathore asked
in the comments why I wouldn’t choose Australia. I should have explained that
before. The primary reason I chose New Zealand instead of Australia is how
remote it is. It’s considerable further south than
(most of) Australia, and it’s a chunk further East too. I’m assuming that this
would mean less radiation would drift over, and thus I’d be that much safer
from the fallout.
Of
course, Australia is still remote enough that it would probably be fine. The
other reason I selected New Zealand is climate and wildlife. I generally prefer
colder climates, and animals that aren’t always trying to kill me.
Don’t
get me wrong, I like Australian people, and Australia would be a perfectly fine
choice for a bunker too. I would go for New Zealand out of slight preference,
but Australia works as well.
Anyway.
New Zealand. Lovely.
In
terms of radiation, I’ll be okay. The very north of the northern island of New
Zealand is far away from everyone. Specifically, it is:
·
Around 5,300 miles to
the Chinese coast;
·
Around 6,700 miles to
the southern coast of India;
·
Around 6,400 miles to
California.
New
Zealand isn’t going to be getting much radiation blown over it from the
warzones in the North.
(Side-note, continuing from an earlier point regarding why I
chose New Zealand over Australia: Darwin in Australia is 2,600 miles from
China, or around 3,700 from India. Sydney is around 4,500 from China, and 5,600
from India. That extra distance seems like a good idea, but Australia is still
likely to be very safe.
Further, while distance alone should be rather good at keeping
me safe, being in the Southern Hemisphere would also help, I think. Although my
understanding of the Hadley cell wind movements isn’t great, I think most air
movement tends to happen within a hemisphere, and very little air moves from
Northern to Southern hemisphere. Assuming this is correct, that further
protects Oceania from fallout contamination.)
Sea
currents will bring some radiation over, so there would still be some
contamination of fish in the ocean, and of the land through rainfall.
Nevertheless, living after a nuclear war isn’t going to be perfect, so I’ll
just have to suck that up.
I’d
build my fallout shelter out of earthbags. This
involves filling bags with soil and then laying them down in layers like
bricks. A standard earthbag is 18 inches wide - half
of the required 36″ (ten halving thicknesses for soil). So, if I did a
double-earthbag wall, my house would have all the
fallout protection it needs. I could then earth-berm it, adding further protection.
This
also has a secondary benefit that I forgot to mention. Nathaniel Nuneza asked about a
nuclear winter. This is a good point, but one my house-design preempted. Earthbag construction gives houses a high thermal mass, so
they tend to maintain steady, comfortable internal temperatures. If you
combined that with earth-berming - as I suggested -
you would be able to see yourself through all but the coldest temperatures.
After
that, there are other tips about reducing nuclear fallout. These include:
·
Cleaning out gutters,
clearing rooves.
o Irrelevant if I earth-berm the house.
·
Bricking up windows,
or raising the sill to make the hole smaller.
o I would probably build the house with no
windows; dark, but safe.
·
Pile earth, or other
materials, against the walls of a house to add shielding.
o Hence the earth-berming.
·
Use water to cover
gaps in shielding. Water is thicker than glass alone, so it helps absorb the
radiation.
·
Remove the top inch of
soil, or mix it with subsoil, so that the radiation emitted is reduced.
·
Wash roads down to
remove dust and debris. This was done in Kiev after Chernobyl.
·
Remove nearby trees,
to reduce fallout that might collect on leaves and branches.
o So, I would cut down any trees near my house.
With
an earthbag, earth-bermed
house in New Zealand, radiation shouldn’t be much of a problem. I’d fill the
house with canned goods and wait inside for as long as I could - ideally, 14
weeks. This would mean that any radiation that was coming would be at 1/10,000
of the initial amount.
With
that done, I would need to be able to grow food for myself. The ideal would be
to remove the top inch or so of soil and discard it, so that any fallout that
settled on it doesn’t contaminate the food.
Here,
Australia actually might have the edge. Furthering the point about the nuclear
winter, you would expect the temperature to drop slightly. Australia, being
warmer to begin with, would be more able to grow food despite a temperature
drop.
Nevertheless,
I think that New Zealand would still be liveable. I
think that the temperature drop would be less pronounced in the Southern
Hemisphere. Simple put, most of the dust produced by
the war will be in the Northern Hemisphere, and consequently that’s where I
would assume the sharpest temperature drops would be.
Also
worth noting is that this war would come against a background of climate change
and rising global temperatures. If the war happened tomorrow, then it makes
little difference - but if it happened in forty years, the cooling effect of a
nuclear war would be partially offset by climate change.
Overall
though, I think that even in New Zealand, I should be able to relatively normal
life. Farming might be difficult, but even if crops didn’t grow well, New
Zealand has a great many sheep. It wouldn’t exactly be a luxurious life, but I
believe I could survive a fairly long time. Decades,
probably.
That
rather beats the weeks I might manage before I died
of thirst on the ISS.
Revenge of the Blob Monster
It’s
also worth remembering that Trump will set up his Space Force soon.
That
raises the possibility of a nuclear war in space. Thus, it’s
possible that anyone choosing the ISS would be not only dead, but also a blob
monster. A dead blob monster.
Astronauts after the Russians and Chinese nuke the American
Space Force. Probably?
Probably not.