Could I survive a nuclear war?

For almost a century, the world has been terrified by the possibility of nuclear war. If one does occur, it will happen quickly, with the first strike triggering a domino effect of retaliation and chaos. So what can the average person do in this hellish situation? In tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel ask: Could you survive a nuclear war? If so, how?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radio.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
No, they call me Ben.

Speaker 4 (00:30):
We're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan the
Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know,
and we're coming to you with a feel good, optimistic
banger of an episode this evening, folks, fellow conspiracy realist

(00:50):
friends and neighbors.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Could you survive in nuclear war?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
No? All right, Well good to hear from everybody this way.
We'll talk to you next week.

Speaker 5 (01:02):
We'll do our ba hey, duck and cover, Duck and cover.
That's all it takes. Just get under that desk.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Oh yeah, I suck in.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
I know.

Speaker 4 (01:09):
We're from slightly different backgrounds, old enough to remember those
drills and just how surreal they seemed.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
It is straight you actually did duck and cover drills.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
Mm hmm yeah as a child.

Speaker 4 (01:24):
Yeah yeah yeah, not Cold War era, but just weird
teachers they would say okay, because you know, there was
the ones for funzies tornadoes where you had to go
and put your face go in the hallway, face down,
ass up. And then the nuclear war drills were like
Nola's saying, duck and cover, get under your desk, you know,

(01:44):
and just hope that your desk is magic for some reason.

Speaker 5 (01:48):
That way you'll you'll get vaporized in a fetal position
for posterity, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:52):
Yeah, so you can look like that guy in POMPEII
pomp exactly. He got caught, enjoyed himself. He didn't really,
it's just how the lava hit him. So Ever, since
August of nineteen forty five, the world has been terrified
of nuclear armageddon. And we know why. August is the

(02:13):
lynchpin here. It's because of the disastrous bombings on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. They fundamentally changed war. They fundamentally changed how
nations work for or with or against each other, because
it's the first time in known history that human civilization
had weapons that could not just end a conflict, but

(02:35):
could end civilization as we know it. And this is
a spiritual successor to an episode we did earlier in
gosh I want to say, May maybe of this year,
we asked what actually happens in a nuclear war? And
then toward the end, Matt noele as we recall, toward
the end of that it occurred to us that a

(02:56):
lot of people are listening were saying, Okay, yes, I
get the science and the conspiracy afoot, but what about me,
you guys, what about my family? The natural follow up
was could I survive this thing you're describing?

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Do you have a fallout shelter? That's the first question.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
This episode goes out to anybody who lives somehow in
the perfect places between military bases and large cities. There's
like there's a at least a dozen of them. So
this goes out to you.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
This goes out to you, and we're gonna we're gonna help.

Speaker 4 (03:35):
As a group, we're gonna figure out together the grand
escape room that any region becomes in the event of
nuclear deployment.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Here are the facts, all right.

Speaker 4 (03:51):
First, let's start with good news. Nuclear blast fact and fiction.
The good news is this, here's our headlight. Almost a
century after the two disastrous attacks on Japan, those are
the only examples of nuclear weapons being used in active
warfare so that's goodness.

Speaker 5 (04:09):
Maybe, but maybe today it might be that's what we
all wake up every day every.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
It'sy button finger right now.

Speaker 4 (04:19):
This isn't, however, to caveat this good news. This is
not to say those are the only nuclear explosions nor
the only nuclear disasters. In fact, that couldn't be further
from the truth. Since Oppenheimer the guy not the film,
since his first nuclear test, thousands of nuclear devices have

(04:40):
been detonated around the world, and they've also grown more
powerful with each successive generation.

Speaker 5 (04:47):
Yeah, it's funny though, I mean, I guess when we
think of nuclear disasters mainly, I think when it comes
to things that are maybe more likely to happen, our
mind tends towards nuclear power meltdowns and things like Three
Mile Island and.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
Obviously Fukushima very recent history.

Speaker 5 (05:06):
I mean, those are all products of the same technology,
just harnessed in a different way.

Speaker 4 (05:11):
Chernobyl as well, we see that there are there's always
going to be a threat of the kind of disasters
that you described, Nola, and I think you're absolutely on
the money there with the concept that you know, post
Cold War paranoia, that's usually what people think of in
the West, they think of accidental meltdowns, right, they think

(05:33):
of industrial disasters that, I mean, that could well happen.
All of this could happen to day to night as
you're hearing this. The tricky thing is, we still don't
know how many nuclear detonations have occurred. The official estimate
as of July fifteenth, twenty twenty five, while we're recording,

(05:57):
is something to the order of two thousand, four hundred
and seventy five nuclear detonations. Mostly these would largely be tests, right, right,
mostly tests, and the vast majority, like upwards of eighty
five percent were tested by the US and the USSR
during the Cold War. But we're still not sure how
accurate that number is. Shout out to things like the

(06:20):
Vela incident, remember that one.

Speaker 5 (06:23):
Yeah, And shout out to Iran and some of the
concerns over that, whether or not they are founded, that
is not for me to say. It feels like it's
become more of a political chip than an actual concern.
But maybe that's not true. I mean, maybe this isn't
the space to talk about that. But I do wonder
sometimes how much is being made of this if they
really are just seeking more nuclear power in that respect

(06:45):
to be technologically, you know, on the same page as
the rest of the world, or if they are being
bad boys and doing these kind of you know, weapons
tests in secret.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
Oh boy, yeah, it's a bag of badgers.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah. So let's remember the Veil incident and things like that.
The instruments that are used to determine whether or not
a nuclear blast has occurred, whether underground, in the atmosphere
or on land, those instruments sometimes are faulty, as in
you know, the or give a false positive.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
But then perhaps sometimes we miss something because it's a
smaller scale, like a tactical nuke that's being tested, or
just something different right, or it's.

Speaker 4 (07:29):
Very far under the ground such that it could be
perhaps confused with the natural earthfart, the fancy name for
that being an earthquake. That goes to the example of
something like DPRK, which is actively for a time was
actively rushing out production and now is actively attempting to

(07:52):
make things more reliable on their end. So a lot
of funny earthquakes. You know, a lot of conversations the
United Nations that sound like passive aggressive relationship arguments where
one ambassador is going, you know, North Korea. I just
think it's funny how you're not really on a tectonic

(08:14):
tectonic trouble zone anyway. This this is the issue we're at.
We know that to those excellent points, various countries have
and continue to pursue nuclear technology in secret, which means
we have a lot of unknowns. We don't know how
many nuclear weapons actually exist, and for the ones that

(08:35):
we know do exist, we don't know how many of
those extant weapons can actually work. After the fall of
the Soviet Union, all their stuff went pear shaped. You know,
a lot of their nukes got mothballed or fell into disrepair.
Because these are not who's that guy we mentioned on
Ridiculous History. These are not ron pappeal, set it and

(08:55):
forget it, made for TV gadgets. They need active mat Yeah,
you can't just show tab them. So this all leads
us to a fact as chilling as it is simple.
Once a nuclear exchange begins, we don't know how many
possible debtonations could occur in a domino effective retaliation. Right,

(09:17):
how many bullets does one side have? Bullets being bombs?

Speaker 3 (09:21):
I believe the term is mutually assured destruction, right, Right?
The theory of mad which has held more or less
for now. We really don't know.

Speaker 4 (09:32):
And second, you know, we the public don't have the
most accurate understanding of a nuclear attack how it would
actually work. And a lot of that falls at the
feet of earlier science fiction, dystopian and disaster films, right,
and novels and short stories, the stuff we're familiar with.

(09:55):
Some of them are highly accurate, like The Day After
Tomorrow is a great one, but other ones are kind
of falling into the blockbuster boom and.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
Smoke and fury kind of thing, like Moon like Moonfall.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Wait a minute, I'm recalling The Day After Tomorrow. In
that film, it's it's nuclear winter, right, That's one of
the things that it portrays.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
Jake Jillenhall is the protagonist.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Okay, I seem correct me if I'm wrong here. I
seem to remember a situation where they do nuclear winter
on like fast Forward, where there's a wave of absolute
frozen like well well below zero kind of temperatures where
it sweeps through almost like a blast, and then freezes

(10:43):
everything in an instant. I don't know, maybe it's.

Speaker 3 (10:46):
Definitely some freezy bits I do recall.

Speaker 4 (10:49):
I think it was, Yeah, it's the idea that there's
an ice age that I'm thinking.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
I'm like that is nuclear.

Speaker 5 (10:55):
Winter as a concept is I've always thought nuclear winter
wasn't actually referring to climate change, that it was more
of like an effect.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
Is nuclear winter?

Speaker 5 (11:04):
Does that refer to changing of like getting things out
of whack because of an.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
Explosion because of ro cumulonimbus clouds that.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
Got because of the stuff released.

Speaker 4 (11:12):
Yeah, wait wait, I'm thinking of I'm actually I'm thinking
of a different thing, similar to but more accurate, because
day after tomorrow now that for some reason, mentioning the
actor brought it back to my mind.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
So thank you.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
That's the one.

Speaker 4 (11:26):
That's the one that is that's an example of one
that is considered highly inaccurate. Oh, I think NASA scientists
later said it was. There was at least one who
said this was so bad it it inspired me to
become a scientist.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
So that so we see that, I mean that can be.

Speaker 4 (11:48):
A problem for the public because in this instance we
see two sides of the same problematic point, right, the
idea of embellishing and nuclear black as arguing that a
single bomb could spell doom for the Earth entire not
necessarily true. But then on the other side, some fiction

(12:09):
can underplay the possibilities to underplay the idea of retatatory
strikes and the newer classes of nuclear weapons. I mean,
let's remember, as we talked about in our previous episode
that despite all the horrific events those two bombs in
Japan wrought, neither the Hiroshima nor the Nagasaki bomb reached

(12:34):
their full theoretical capacity.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Right now, I believe both of those were detonated in
the air, like right before they hit the ground. So
I think we talked about that in our previous nuclear episode.
But man, just the concept of where you detonate just
from a I guess a vertical standpoint is freaky and fascinating. Yeah,

(13:00):
because specifically because of that initial fireball that they generate,
and how you know, those are so tiny compared to
the missiles and the warheads that are being developed right now.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
Let's talk about that. Let's kick some numbers real quick.
For sure.

Speaker 5 (13:15):
The Hiroshima explosion was fifty kilo tons, which is the
equivalent of fifteen thousand tons of TNT. The Nagasaki explosion,
on the other hand, was twenty one kilo tons.

Speaker 3 (13:28):
Unbelievable.

Speaker 5 (13:29):
I mean, I mean it's hard to even imagine, you know,
I mean you start getting into like I don't know,
when they talk about like, you know, characters and RPG
games who are like nukes, who can do nuke attacks
and do like fifteen.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
Million damage or whatever.

Speaker 5 (13:44):
That's the territory we're entering here, like Dragon Ball Z
level destruction.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Yeah, but if you like, I was trying to think
about this in a range of computers, like with kilobytes, yes, right,
And because those are in the kilobytes range, if we're
talking computer power, you're putting that over to nuclear power.
The ones that came right after are in the megatons,
which would be like megabytes.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Right, and then god forbid we get into gigatons.

Speaker 4 (14:12):
Right now, we can already see this escalation. And like
the computer processing analogy, I also like the this is
a weird one. I'm trying to keep things semipositive, the
Scoville unit or caps analogy. Right, people discover how to
make some hot sauce, and then the hot sauce war began,

(14:33):
which continues today right to well pass the point of
stuff people would recreationally eat the Oh.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, for sure, because of the the stuff that gets
really really crazy in one of those sauces is the
cap says, extract stuff that's concentrated, which is exactly what
you do. Yeah, it's exactly what you do.

Speaker 5 (15:00):
And shout out to speaking of hot sauces, shout out
to our listener Peter, who also is a fantastic gardener
and is coming over to help me with some yard
stuff in a bit and is bringing us all some
of his own home brewed Mega Mega.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
Mega spicy sauce. Looks like some of he gets these.

Speaker 5 (15:16):
He's really into horticulture, and he grows some of these
hottest peppers known to man.

Speaker 3 (15:22):
And so we'll see. We'll try it out to get Peter. Peter,
you went too far. You you could do it that.
You never asked if you should. No, great, We're grateful.
So sends up.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yes please, and let's double down and think Papa Caps. Yeh,
sending us another one of those awesome boxes of his
delicious stuff.

Speaker 5 (15:44):
It hasn't come yet, it has come. I don't think
I saw he wrote an email. Yeah, said he was
going to. He did send them before, and we tried them,
and I still have some of my fridge and I
had a little get together where I had one of
the ghost pepper ones or no, it was the reaper
ones out on the table, and I just assumed anyone
that was going to try a hot sauce knew what
a Carolina reaper was.

Speaker 3 (16:02):
But somebody did not and doused their food in it.

Speaker 5 (16:05):
And I felt really bad, like I had like dosed
somebody with LSD or so he.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
Didn't heal as bad as they did later.

Speaker 4 (16:11):
You know, truth, there are no there are no atheists
on the kommode in that situation.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
True, I'm gonna keep that. That's a weird one. We're
going to keep. You should Here's the.

Speaker 4 (16:21):
Thing, okay, So Giroshima, Nagasaki, Fat Man, and Little Boy terrible,
terrible weapons of destruction, but the new kids on the
block are vastly different kaiju. The one example would be
the B eighty three, the B eighty three American Maid yeehaw.
It can do detonate with the force of one point

(16:42):
two mega tons, so not quite gigatons, but a mega
ton is the equivalent of one million tons of T and.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
T again like unfathomable.

Speaker 5 (16:53):
So a little extra calculus here, some back of the
Napkin math. That means a single bomb, this single bomb
could create an explosion eighty times the intensity of Hiroshima.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (17:08):
And further, the B eighty three is not the largest
nuclear bomb out there. On the US side, The largest
ever that has been tested that we know of is
Castle Bravo at fifteen mega tons. And the biggest detonation
in all of history known so far was the Soviet

(17:29):
Union's sar BOMBA. This is the ultimate kind bramba where
we'll keep it well.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
And those are those are individual essentially not warheads, as
individual bombs, right, that are built with the purpose of testing.
The scary part is when you think about the number
of warheads that have been created and then adding to that,
multiplying that is the number of warheads that are fit

(17:57):
into the tops of some of these larger missiles that
are on prep around the world, not just the US
and Russia. We're talking India, Pakistan, a bunch of other
places where you launch one of those missiles and you've
got essentially ten nuclear bombs that end up going off.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
Right.

Speaker 4 (18:16):
Think of the firework canisters that hold multiple iterations of fireworks, right,
They look great in the sky because they're not getting.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
One of those pops.

Speaker 4 (18:25):
Each one of those is its own separate bomb. And
then also add to that, their locations are not necessarily stationary.
We've got some folks with a nuclear sub experience in
the audience tonight. You know exactly what we're talking about.
It's the reason you have to be so vague when
you talk to your friends and family back home. These
invisible locations. They're crucial to war, but they're also a

(18:50):
wild card that could come back to buy you. The
sar BOMBA was detonated in October of nineteen sixty one,
and it was right over this island chain in the Arctic,
Novaya Zimbla. The reports from the event tell us that
the shock wave from this blast, and we'll get through

(19:10):
the patterns in the process of a detonation here, the
shockwaves from the blast traveled around the Earth not once,
not twice, but three separate times. A nuclear dj khaled
just saying another one.

Speaker 3 (19:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (19:26):
It's also something like, isn't that a thing Superman do
that you circumnavigated the globe to reverse time.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
In one film? He did. Yes, he did do that.
By the way.

Speaker 5 (19:35):
I don't know if you've seen it yet. But the
New Superman is very good. I quite enjoyed it, a fun,
fun movie.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
I like when I like way.

Speaker 4 (19:43):
As a comic enthusiast, I love when new characters from
comic books are brought to the big screen so they
get st terrific. Terrific is great Metamorpho makes an appearance.

Speaker 5 (19:57):
Yeah, yep, I didn't know a lot of those Golden
Age Silver Age characters, but I just found it to
be a film made by someone who loves the source material,
which is James guns thing.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
So yeah, check it out. I think I think you'll
dig it.

Speaker 4 (20:09):
Also, no big spoiler here, but it's not the same
origin story which has been told a thousand times, which
I was cool.

Speaker 5 (20:17):
Though it starts in media arrests where he already has
established and.

Speaker 4 (20:20):
I don't know not to get to that's that's what
it's like. Great Spider Man started off without it being
an origin story all the time.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
Anyway, this is.

Speaker 4 (20:31):
Not mister terrific, but this idea of nuclear war is
mister terrifying. Still all out ability, all out wars theoretical.
To date, none of Earth's many regional and global conflicts
have crossed the threshold into nuclear exchange. The US attack
on Japan in World War Two was one sided, meaning

(20:53):
that nobody struck back at the US with nuclear weapons.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
There's plenty of blass he didn't have them.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
That's the main and only reason, to be quite honest,
and that should scare the crap out of everybody. But
there's plenty of blustery talking. But the truth and thank
you for the beep, Dylan. The truth of the matter
is most world leaders, with the capability to deploy and
detonate nuclear weapons in private, they kind of do not

(21:21):
want to do it. The geopolitical risk are super high.
Of everybody else in the room, at least a handful
of others have a gun as well. We don't have
to go into the details of mad mutually sure destruction.
But the gist of the argument here is that having
nuclear weapons and having other people know that you possess

(21:42):
them turns out to be way more advantageous than actually
using nuclear weapons.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, because everybody knows if two countries of sufficient size,
and especially if two conglomerations of countries right to things
like NATO and got together and had a little nuclear battle,
they know there's nothing left. So the calculus becomes could

(22:09):
we gain control over that which remains like literally on
the planet. If we wanted to go this route.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
And will it be worth it? Right? What will what
will the what will the advantage of owning ashes ultimately become?

Speaker 5 (22:28):
Yeah, I mean it's part and parcel. I guess of
the term fallout, It's like there are consequences? Well, yeah,
is that of this technology?

Speaker 2 (22:35):
That That's where the theories of you know, things like
the Great Reset are are pretty creepy because you imagine
someone who gets it in their mind or it becomes
their mission to do that very thing, to reset everything,
which would you know, if you wanted to go that route,
it would require a lot of destruction and a lot

(22:58):
of death and and a period of horrifying living, right,
And we're talking not just a year or two, right, right.

Speaker 3 (23:08):
We're talking one or two generations.

Speaker 5 (23:11):
Yes, And I mean if you're going to do it, right,
it require a lot of prep work.

Speaker 4 (23:16):
Yeah, it's a kind of it's it's an apocalyptic accelerationist approach.
And the accelerationism now is usually thought to be in
the realm of crazy dystopian tech religions, but a nuclear
version does exist. In fact, a story the Jedi won't
tell you. There were armchair talks and speculation that got

(23:39):
very close to the actual drawing board decades back about
having how to define a good nuclear war, and a
good nuclear war was ultimately a proxy war, wherein the
two nations at at odds privately or tacitly agreed that
it would only deploy their nuclear weaponry in this third

(24:03):
country that they had sought to be the proxy battlefield,
so that would be Afghanistan, but with nukes, you know,
And it got close.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
It got close. I'm gonna be honest.

Speaker 5 (24:15):
I don't know how far had they were in production
or thought about this, but a lot of the stuff
that's depicted in the new Superman movies very much a
lot of what's going on right now, and with some
of this nuclear saber rattling in terms of who controls
the superhero, who controls the meta humans? You know, I
think it's well done and not overly heavyly heavy handed,
are like politically divisive? I think it's good.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Yeah, do you check it out.

Speaker 4 (24:39):
And still, as we said at the top, the issue
is that this precarious balance that we often call mad,
it can shift at any moment. As we record tonight,
the world, You livid relies on a series of assumptions
that only hold because they have worked up to now,
and we hope they work today, and we hope they

(25:00):
work tomorrow. Matter of fact, if we want to be
super optimistic, we hope they work forever. But that is
super optimistic. We're talking about things like the assumption of
rational actors in positions of power that doesn't always exist.
We're talking about mutually short destruction, which could be violated
at any time. So what happens when that all flies

(25:23):
out the window, when the first bomb detonates in a
conflict and the other nuclear powers cry havoc and let
loose the dogs of war, feeling compelled to retaliate. How
far does it go? What could you do? Folks?

Speaker 3 (25:37):
Could you survive?

Speaker 5 (25:38):
Well, we'll find out after a quick word from our
sponsor Globocam and Vought.

Speaker 3 (25:45):
And of course McKenzie and our friends at Halibert.

Speaker 4 (26:01):
Here's where it gets crazy, all right, that question could
I survive?

Speaker 3 (26:06):
In nuclear war?

Speaker 4 (26:06):
Weirdly enough, the answer you're going to discover is the
same thing we always hear in real estate, location, location, location,
Similar to Matt what you were alluding to earlier, There
it's your proximity to the initial blast, your proximity to
high value targets, and as you were saying, no, not
just your ability to escape an area before or afterward,

(26:31):
but the possibility of having a reliable shelter in advance.

Speaker 5 (26:36):
Yeah, this also includes concerns about your proximity to other
things that could be affected by the blast. Some of
these knock on consequences like wildfires, chemical spills, leaks, rather
all the other dangerous stuff that could affect humans outside
of just the radiation and the boom boom of it all.

(26:57):
You know, there's a lot of things that this kind
of havoc would unleash.

Speaker 4 (27:02):
Yeah, think about, especially here in the United States. Think
about all the infrastructure that is hanging by a thread
like a loose tooth, you know. Think of the fact
that clean water is largely dependent upon water processing sites
that are already quite vulnerable. Think about the power grid

(27:24):
which is just going to get absolutely walloped by a
resulting EMP electromagnetic pulse. Think about you know, the wildfires
that happen without bombs every year, right, and all of
the as you said, all the toxic, nasty stuff that
is creasyly less regulated and just sort of put intakes

(27:47):
that are not hardened against nuclear blasts.

Speaker 5 (27:50):
Stuff that goes awry even in you know, outside of
the event of a nuclear blast, malfunctions and leaks and
chemical plant explosions and fires and let's not even talk
about the nuclear power plants themselves.

Speaker 3 (28:05):
Yeah, that's great. The whole other thing.

Speaker 5 (28:07):
You know, if there were a nuke detonated next to
the nuke, that's kind of double nuke.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
Well, it's at least radiation leaking out into water sources
that you would probably need.

Speaker 4 (28:18):
Yeah, ed if you wanted to seek treatment for any
of those sort of knock on consequences. Guess what, the
medical infrastructure is wrecked as well. So you could then
end up being in a situation where something as mild
as an infection that could have easily been treated will

(28:40):
kill you as surely as a nuclear blast, simply because
you do not have access to medicine or medical care.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Well, and the servers are down, so all the AI
robots can't perform any surgeries.

Speaker 4 (28:52):
Right or tell you really bad medical advice, you know
what I mean, how else would you know that you
should inject bleach?

Speaker 2 (29:00):
And this one wait, but this one goes in your mouth.

Speaker 4 (29:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, shout out to idiocracy. So there is
no clear cut way to estimate the impact of a
single nuclear bomb because it depends on so many other factors.
We kick some stats about payload, and yes those are
mission critical, it's important to remember those, but you also
have to remember the weather, the time of day of detonation,

(29:28):
the geographical layout of where it hits, whether it detonates
on the ground, in the ground, above the ground, and
if so, how high, what's the elevation. These all play
into what happens next, and there's been a lot of
work ever since. Honestly, since around the time of Oppenheimer,

(29:49):
there's been a lot of work modeling what would result
here and what we see time and time again. The
models don't always agree. By the way, what we see
time and time again is that theffects are catastrophic, far
further than we might assume based in film and fiction.
You can see plenty of videos about this sum of

(30:09):
more accuracy than others. Asapp Science did a cool thing
a while back with an analysis of the detonation of
a one mega ton bomb, so a little bit less
than B eighty three, and they say, okay, how far
away do you have to be as a human person
to survive. Even if you're within five miles of this detonation,

(30:33):
five miles you will still get riddled with third degree burns.
Without medical care, you will die at agonizing death. Within
seven miles you'll still get first degree burns. And that
depends on your clothing and on the weather in your
part of the world. We're not even counting radiation. Even
if you're seven miles outside of the city, which again

(30:55):
is really not that far, you'll be in a crisis
situation and you'll need to immediately skidaddle because more terrible
stuff is on the way. As a matter of fact,
seven miles away, you look at the blinding flash of light,
You're going to go blind. It is biblical stuff.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (31:13):
I think I mentioned this before, but there is a
book that I think was very much a response to
the stand or. It was like, you know, this lesser
known writer who was doing his own version of the standard.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
I really really like it.

Speaker 5 (31:24):
It's called Swan Song, and it's about a nuclear holocaust situation,
but with like magic as well. I mean, I don't know,
it's it's not Mcammon, I think is the right thing.
I want to say he's from the South, like he's
from Alabama or something. But it's really good and it's
it's very the standy, but it's also it really deals
a lot more with the nuclear stuff rather than a

(31:46):
disease or like a virus.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
I remember that. Check it out.

Speaker 4 (31:50):
I must read that because it's an older book, right,
it's an older book. It's from the eighties or the earl. Yeah, yeah,
we're th reread. I mean, one thing that a lot
of people do get right in fiction, and unfortunately we've
seen reflected in real world scenarios is that in most
of these situations, you will have very little time to react.

(32:15):
That's why you have to be proactive. I mean, we
can think of it in terms of three broad zones
emanating from that detonation point. The innermost zone game over. Sorry,
at ground zero, temperatures can be higher than that the
surface of the sun one hundred million degrees celsius within
one thousandth of a second, a massive fireball forbs. This

(32:41):
fireball alone again and I even counter radiation, it stretches
two to two and a half miles in every conceivable direction.
The temperatures again reaching over at this time ten million celsius.
If you're too close to this explosion, if you're in
this innermost zone, you are simply here and then gone.

(33:05):
You vaporize. You vaporize so quickly, in fact, that your
sensory array and your nervous system will not have time
to communicate to your consciousness what's happening.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
You're gone.

Speaker 5 (33:19):
Terrifying, but also, I mean, maybe a little bit of
a mercy in a situation like this to be I mean,
it's already be super dark about it, but it's like,
you know, the alternative that we're going to get into far.

Speaker 3 (33:32):
Worse than death.

Speaker 4 (33:34):
In many cases, it's a philosophical quandary, right, because then
if you are it's strange because if you visit Hiroshima,
you'll see that there was a nearby bank, and this
bank had a pretty hardened vault where people were actually
able to or they attempted to retreat to safety within

(33:58):
that vault and it helped a little bit, but they
were simply too close. So in some of these situations,
we know that even if you get a shelter and
you're in that innermost zone, even the shelter may not
be able to help you, depending upon how deep it
is and how layered it is a lot of folks.
If you are still kind of in this zone where

(34:21):
you're not close enough to get vaporized, you may die
immediately from the shock waves because the all the construction
materials will be weaponized. The flying glass would debris, bits
of stone, collapsing buildings. They will fly at tremendous speed.

(34:43):
You can see pictures of this clearly, you know, at
the Pirotia Museum, for instance, where the glass was flying
with such energy that it embedded itself into stone instead
of shattering, so it shatters first.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
And theyse become knives. The chilling stuff.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
Well, the shockwave itself too, without anything weaponized in it,
can obliterate you on the inside essentially from the way
your body reacts to that force.

Speaker 4 (35:17):
Yeah, because the shockwave can reach six hundred and fifty
miles per hour up to four miles away from the
detonation point. And the human body is in some ways
tremendously resilient, but it is not built for that kind
of PSI.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
No, and we're still we're still in the innermost zone, right,
but you know this shockwave continues out, Yes, And that's
why we're talking about all this weaponized stuff, because you
can be within a pretty big radius of that detonation
and you're still going to be dealing with the stuff
Ben's talking about.

Speaker 4 (35:54):
Yeah, we're and we're also I mean, we're also taking
pains to described this these situations where you don't really
have a chance, so that you can understand the we
can all understand the importance of location here. Let's move

(36:15):
to the secondary zone. This is a little bit less evil.
But also before we continue, have to remember, as Matt saying,
not just the shock wave, but the EMP and the
fireball will create other fires, right, including setting ablaze things
that you would ordinarily not consider flammable. So this is

(36:39):
a situation where stuff the bomb touched can touch you
and result in your death if you make it to
the secondary zone. This is where you know, if you
have a soundtrack you're playing, gimme shelter, if you were
not close to be close enough to be vaporized or
hit by those other things we just mentioned. Immediately, you'll

(37:01):
notice that blinding flash, and we are being literal. If
you look at it without protection, it will cause intense
retinal burns up the forty miles away, which just boggles
my mind, you know, forty miles away.

Speaker 3 (37:17):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (37:18):
I mean, wouldn't you instinctively look in that direction when
you hear the sound you see the.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Cloud, especially depending on the time of day, right, imagine
that it's close to dusk, you know, or like the
sun is going down or coming up, and it's beginning
to get dark. And this happens, then it is going
to look as though the sun is rising from one direction,
and you're you're probably gonna look at it, and you're

(37:46):
probably going to be wondering what the hell is that,
which is going to make you look at it a
little longer. And yeah, and you're not gonna hear anything either, Remember.

Speaker 4 (37:57):
Nope, because light travels faster. Let's say you're in a
slightly better position. Let's say you're still at least twenty
miles away. You're indoors, right, so you're not drawn to
that huge blinding light, even though it will be apparent
if you're anywhere near a window. Let's say the weather
conditions are favorable, you are not downwind for the moment.

(38:19):
That's a huge piece of the puzzle here. This means
you've got a good chance of surviving the initial impact
dot dot dot of the first bob. That's all that means,
because there may well be retaliation. And here I want
to do a little bit of game theory with you, guys.
How likely or unlikely is it that a bomb would detonate,

(38:42):
say in Atlanta, and then get hit again. I find
that somewhat unlikely. I feel like you want to hit
multiple urban centers military basis.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Well, okay, so none of this is absolute, right, because
these these are all like game theory based on what
would happen if we've got rational actors and they're following
through with previous plans that have existed in throughout countries.

Speaker 4 (39:11):
Yeah, versus like a messianic figure who has determined Atlanta
is the seat of earthly sin, or versus like a
mad dictator who is still pissed about the ninety six Olympics.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
Agreed, or some form of what would be considered a
terrorist attack, right, a one off bomb that goes off
for one reason or another, like you're describing everything I've
read states that military targets would be first, right, So
you wouldn't see a bomb over Atlanta immediately. You'd see
a bomb over a strategic base somewhere or some kind

(39:49):
of communications system or energy production. You would first go
for military, then infrastructure, and then third would be city centers,
as like make sure they don't recover right.

Speaker 4 (40:04):
Right, because then you're descending into what is called total war,
and total war does not consider things like Geneva conventions
or things like the importance of not harming civilians. So
it'd be first military and comms actually at the same time,
and then infrastructure because destroying one military base isn't good

(40:26):
enough if the others can still talk to each other,
or god forbid, in the case of the US, if
they can signal the subs. Because the subs are the
worst pop up nuclear restaurant ever invented. They'll just roll
up and deliver the mail.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
So do you have good food on them? At least
from what I've of.

Speaker 4 (40:44):
Course, you know the trick, right, You know, this is
a very specific thing. I love the imtch of the food.
A lot of people might not know this, but there
is a omen that people working on subs can clock,
and it's just it's such a catch twitty two crappy
thing to happen. But the word on the street or

(41:05):
the word on the sub is this. You can always
tell if things are about to get hairy or inconvenient,
or if you're you know, your deployment is going to
get extended because the food one night will suddenly get
better right before the announcement, like instead of you know,
instead of lazadia or meat loaf boom. Now we've got
lobster tails and I haven't had a steak in a

(41:29):
year or six months.

Speaker 5 (41:31):
Oh hey, meat love though those are delightful.

Speaker 4 (41:35):
Yeah, shades, the food is better because you've got to
give people something for being in such an unnatural environment
and for having we're having a hot rack.

Speaker 5 (41:45):
Oh boy, hot hot rack is what is that again?
That's like where you're sleeping shifts, yes, kind of.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (41:52):
You don't have your own bed, you have your own run. Man,
I know the headshe smells the smells the smells box
is more like it. Yeah, but tell us about your
life on a submarine to the degree that you are
legally allowed to and comfortable. Got to throw that in anyway.
Let's say, let's keep improving this situation. What if we're

(42:15):
in the outer zone, the third of the zones, right,
this is where you are measurably safer from the immediate
effects of the blast, but you are still at immense
risk of the insidious, invisible danger, nuclear fallout and radiation.
This is where if you've made it to a shelter,

(42:37):
no matter how good you feel, get rid of your clothing.
No time for modesty. Get rid of your clothing. Sanitize
the crap out of your body, just like Bruce Willis
in Six Monkeys. Twelve Monkeys. Six Monkeys is.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
The sequel.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
Only half the monkeys.

Speaker 4 (42:58):
Remember when they scrub rub him down and they decontaminate
his entire body. You have to do that and put
your clothing, assume it's contaminated, to put it in a
sealed bag, and get it as far away from your
shelter as possible.

Speaker 2 (43:11):
But is he is he time traveling in that? What
is the mechanism in twelve Monkeys.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
The mechanism and time there's time travel, there is time.

Speaker 4 (43:20):
Travel, and he gets basically delaust and decontaminated. Because in
the world of twelve Monkeys, in the present day, Earth
has been civilization has been destroyed, mankind has almost been
eradicated by a tremendously efficient virus.

Speaker 3 (43:39):
You have, like time, How does he what's the mechanism
for the time travel? Is that like drugs?

Speaker 5 (43:44):
I want to say, there's something like very It's not
like he steps into a cool time machine.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
It's something very like differently and ugly exactly.

Speaker 4 (43:52):
Yes, yeah it is the director was was it the
guy made?

Speaker 3 (43:56):
Oh it's Terry Gillion. That's so yeah, very much.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
So love love Terry really quickly. I'm so sorry I
keep bringing this up. This is that graphic novel, The
Secret History that I just remembered. A mechanism in there
is refined or concentrated er got but it's concentrated in
a way that the person who takes it is able
to phase in like almost travel through his mind right

(44:24):
to another time and place and then comes back through
his mind loop thing again.

Speaker 4 (44:30):
It's crazy, yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's not necessarily the
physical body traveling right.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
Yes, but then others can like see him and hear him,
and he exists, but it's almost as though he's projecting
internally into some other place.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
Oh yes, it kind of.

Speaker 4 (44:45):
It also makes us think of Lost, which is oh jeez,
all right, oh yeah, it's not Penny's boat, guys.

Speaker 3 (44:52):
So yeah, dear, speaking of really up to date.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
References, reminder that we still don't know what the smoke
monster was. We still don't know.

Speaker 5 (45:01):
Yeah, they never really Wait a minute, it was sort
of a guardian figure.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
Natural dorm Moore demand in black or one of the forms.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
Do we know that?

Speaker 5 (45:11):
I don't know that. The writers don't know.

Speaker 3 (45:14):
Sorry, saying that it's not problem.

Speaker 5 (45:20):
Remember when I got yelled at for saying that they
were all dead because I don't even think that's even true.
Like that was sort of like a bit of a
what's the word, A simplistic view, the writers saying they
never were going to do that, and then a lot
of people being mad because it seemed like that's what
they were doing.

Speaker 3 (45:35):
But I don't even know if that's what they were doing.

Speaker 4 (45:38):
Some kinds ambiguous endings are a great part of a story.
You know, I dig it when you don't explain everything.
That's how That's how H. P. Lovecraft work worked. Excuse me,
I can't. I can't violate the official story about his death.
That's also why Sinners is so compelling, because they were

(45:58):
already you other stories that you never really learn, right,
I'm not going to spoil them, And so with this
we're going to pause for a word from our sponsors.
Let's assume we're in the outer zone, We're in a shelter,
and the first thing you want to know is, can
I hear some ads? All right, we have returned folks.

(46:26):
Assuming you've managed to survive all the terrible, terrifying things
we just mentioned, you are probably already bunkered down or
you're on the way to a shelter. You may also,
depending on how things go in your neck of the woods,
you may have made the decision to take your chances

(46:48):
attempting to leave the area. Please know that's going to
be a tall order. We're going to be racing radiation
that can spread for hundreds of miles, and it contaminates
everything it touches. It's like evil glitter on the wind,
but invisible.

Speaker 5 (47:04):
Not my best comparison, Nah, evil glitter, I think it's fantastic.
Glitter is already a beli evil and it's it's in
its own right.

Speaker 3 (47:13):
No I dig it.

Speaker 4 (47:15):
We found speaking of things we did, we found a
great more recent model for what you should do, like
your root bric for action in these situations. It's from
a atmospheric scientist named Michael Dillon over at the Lawrence
Livermore National laboratory in California, and what he finds calls

(47:36):
into question some of the US government's official advice. And
they do have a course official advice. It's pretty clear cut,
but it's also at a certain point the official advice
is very much you're on your own.

Speaker 5 (47:50):
So one day Dylan's family, Michael Dillon's family, the scientist
was talking to them about his day job and literally
asked him what they should do if in the event
of a nuclear fallout situation, if they saw that, you know,
doom cloud looming on the horizon.

Speaker 3 (48:09):
Hey, you thought your six year old asked weird questions, right, folks?

Speaker 5 (48:12):
Mm hmmm, mm hmm. I did officially US stance, as
we discussed earlier, which in large part pretty useless, was
take shelter in the nearest and most protective building.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
To your point, Ben, even the folks that were inside
the heavily fortified bank vault did not escape clean.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
Yeah. Well, and this is still the prevailing theory in
many countries. We just mentioned on Strange News how Germany
is creating a bunch of shelters so places that human
beings who get early warning of a nuclear detonation on
its way, or that one just occurred places that you
go either underground, right or inside a protected, heavily concrete building.

(49:01):
But again, like wait, we're saying, are we saying that's
not what we should do?

Speaker 4 (49:05):
Well, the US stance is saying, take shelter in the
nearest building that essentially has the smallest amount of windows
and looks like it has the most concrete.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
What so many long lines building.

Speaker 4 (49:19):
Exactly so, but they'll probably shoot you upon attempt to
entry in that situation unless you know the right hand signals. Yeah,
But the difference here with Germany is that they are
building structures dedicated to the purpose of shelter. They're not
banks that happen to be rot of stone. So look,

(49:44):
if you're in California, you know this well. The idea
of fighting nearest most protective building is pretty great if
you're in the Northeast where people have a lot of basements, right,
they have a lot of sellers stuff like that. But basements, instance,
aren't that common in California, where Dylan is based. Michael Dillon,

(50:05):
the Scientist also early transit. Another recommendation is a tall milkshake.
Given both the short amount of lead time from deployment
to detonation, as well as the fact that you can
assume all transit routes will be non navigable. They will

(50:26):
be clogged. If we're talking trains, they're not going to
be working. If we're talking arteries and veins of the
American interstate system, they're going to be clogged very quickly.
That's going to result in car accidents and there are
not going to be first responders available for most of that.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
So that's why you need the zombie apocalypse vehicles, right,
so you can just go off road on them highways.

Speaker 4 (50:54):
Or to have a map in your head, especially if
you're lucky enough to live in a more rural environment,
have a map in your head of the back roads.
The back roads will tend to be more helpful. That's
one of my favorite things about not living in cities.

Speaker 3 (51:11):
Man. I'm more and more divided on living in cities.
I don't know about you guys.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Oh my gosh. And depending on where previous, if you know,
if we're talking about a bigger thing that's going down
while you find yourself in this situation, your GPS may
no longer work, right, Your ability to navigate via phone
may not work.

Speaker 4 (51:30):
Yes, always have a paper map. Check out our episode
on bug out bags one oh one or go bags
if you feel more comfortable with that phrase. Yeah, a
paper map in the ability to navigate that map is huge.
It's a good skill to have. There's also this issue
that Dylan finds with the usual survival logic. There are

(51:52):
serious gaps in it because a lot of the logic
was legacy thinking. It had been mapped sassively by boffins
on both sides of the Cold War, and they were
prioritizing their game theory on large scale nuclear exchanges, thinking,
you know, like hit military and comms first and then
hit infrastructure. Then if they don't bend the knee, start

(52:16):
breaking the civilians. They thought of it in terms of
trading cities and figuring out who runs out of bombs first.
They did not prioritize how the average person could survive
outside of you know, the ruling parties, the ruling class.

(52:37):
And so what Dylan finds here is fascinating, and he
says the hard part is figuring out what variables matter
most when you're on the run, and there's it's kind
of like, oh, this happens all the time in video games.
You're in an environment where you're damaged a certain amount
of points per second and you have to get to

(52:58):
something else.

Speaker 3 (52:59):
I'm thinking they call it like bleed damage, I believe.

Speaker 4 (53:02):
Yeah, term Yeah, so that happens a fallout, right or burn?

Speaker 5 (53:07):
Yeah, anything that stacks or that like you know, has
a has a clock on it for sure.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
Well, yeah, I mean games like Fallout in Metro twenty
thirty three, I think it was in the Metro series.
You it's all based on like taking on rads, right,
or the amount of.

Speaker 5 (53:22):
Radiation mitigating them with with drugs you know, rat away
or rat.

Speaker 3 (53:26):
X or whatever.

Speaker 4 (53:27):
And that's that's kind of the situation that Dylan is
gaming through. He's saying, the longer you stay outside, the
higher your dose of radiation. Right, But radiation intensity also
lessens over time. Thankfully, it lessens pretty quickly, quicker than
the movies would have us imagine. So your total radiation

(53:49):
dose is therefore a function of when you step outside,
your distance from the detonation, and how long you run
before you reach shelter or a better shelter, uh, and
then how much shielding you get from your quote unquote
local environment while you're out there. So a radiation suit
of some sort is going to be much better than Chino's.

(54:13):
And you're my mama told me TikTok.

Speaker 3 (54:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (54:17):
Uh, we're just working in a shout out to My
mama told me they have tank tops they should.

Speaker 3 (54:25):
Like, David, you got that one from us? I don't know.
I don't see a lot of taketoks.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
How about aless? My mama told me shirt. I would
buy that.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
How about a sleeveless turtle deck.

Speaker 5 (54:38):
I've been rocking a Bucky's tight eye tank top lately
since I've gotten all tatted up.

Speaker 3 (54:44):
It's pretty pretty dope, is it.

Speaker 4 (54:47):
You may want to keep that one form when you
get in the shelter, because I think that's probably the radiation.

Speaker 3 (54:52):
I don't know. I haven't I haven't read the tag
on that take radiation sun tan. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Okay, well, hold on one minute, let's hear a word
from our sponsors and come back to this exciting, pretty
harrowing thing we're doing now.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
And we've returned.

Speaker 4 (55:15):
In the end, the math boils down to this critical number,
the ratio of time you spend hunkering down in your
first shelter to the time you spend moving to a
higher quality shelter, and this model assumes that the first
place you go to ground is not going to be
your ideal place.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
It'll just be the place you could find.

Speaker 4 (55:34):
So he works out what happens with a variety of
shelter options and transit times. You can read the model
in full online. For low yield nuclear detonations, you can
do better than just sheltering in place, but you will
need a watch and good knowledge of your surroundings. If

(55:55):
the current place you're in is not ideal and there's
a high quality shelter you somehow know is less than
five minutes away, the model says you should skid out
all You should get there as soon as you can.
If you have a poor shelter but a better shelter
is available further away, you should get to it no

(56:17):
later than thirty minutes after detonation, depending on the size
of the city. If everybody follows this advice to the letter,
you could save between ten thousand and one hundred thousand lives.
But I don't think everybody's going to follow that advice,
you know what I mean. It's kind of like a
not too long ago when there was an evacuation order

(56:40):
given to parts of Taran right with oncoming attacks, everybody
evacuated if they could. There weren't people who said, oh,
the news is telling me my neighborhood is safe, so
I guess I'm just going to kick back.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
Nobody does that in these events.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
I got a horrifying thought. Guys, that's ten thousand to
one hundred thousand mouths that need to eat food and
to drink podable water and to be able to, you know,
go to the bathroom safely and sleep warmly, you know,

(57:23):
like oh my god.

Speaker 4 (57:25):
And drain limited resource capacity as well. And then you know,
our thinking becomes very soviet at that point. And these
are just hypotheticals, but they do need to be discussed.
Would it be possible to calculate that a certain number
of people who would be a resource train might indeed

(57:45):
stay home if they were told to. How much trouble
could you save if you just told them to stay home.

Speaker 2 (57:52):
I've got a vaccine you need to take, ben It's
really important that you take at least two now, and
then three more or later, and then seven and the
seventh one. That's key.

Speaker 4 (58:03):
Yeah, that's vaccine plus Yeah, I mean, these are dark things.
And that gets into real politics and dirty businesses that
we don't often discuss in mainstream media, but are very
much real conversations that occur. Let's talk about some of
your worksure. Okay, you make it to your shelter. Why
is your shelter the best? It's because it's made of
concrete or brick. It's ideally buried in the ground. Basements

(58:27):
and subway systems are going to be better than the
bank vault example we're using, because they are so much deeper, right,
and they have dirt, tons of dirt around them, and
got tons of metal and infrastructure that could protect you.
Of course, the ground could collapse around you, but that's

(58:49):
something you're just going to have to roll the dice on.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
Most preferential is a lead lined refrigerator that have every
thing taken out of it, and then you just take
shelter in that refrigerator. As we've seen Indiana Jones survived
an incredible nuclear explosion.

Speaker 4 (59:09):
Yes, yeah, he was just a yeah yeah, And I
guess there must have been some intense patting in that
refrigerator too, because he just popped out of it.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
Didn't it get didn't it get chalked around? Like?

Speaker 1 (59:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (59:20):
Yeah, very I haven't seen that one. I just skipped it.

Speaker 4 (59:24):
He would have been he would have been just a
glob of human sized anthropologist jelly in real right, Oh,
don't don't hide in your car, and please don't try
to hide in a mobile home.

Speaker 5 (59:39):
How are you thinking about desks though, ben our desks
the clear magical safety solutions they were promised.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
Of course, unless you have a cyber truck. Definitely take
shelter in your cyber truck. They made that claim.

Speaker 3 (59:52):
Have they made that claim? No, wouldn't put it past them.
I'm not gonna lie. No, there's too much glass on it.

Speaker 5 (59:58):
But if you you couldn't even survive a bow and
arrow shot, and let alone a nuclear explosion.

Speaker 4 (01:00:04):
If you find yourself in a building you're indoors when
this is happening, then head to the center of the
building as far away from windows and outer walls as
you can. Head to the basement if they have a basement.
And again that's going to be regionally dependent. Essentially, the
more layers you place between yourself and the outside, the better.
And look, we love improvisation, we love improv but start

(01:00:29):
with a plan. In this case, you don't want to
just sort of see a bright light or a mushroom
cloud in the sky and say I'm really good at yes.

Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
Handing, it's probably not going to have the ideal outcome.

Speaker 4 (01:00:41):
The most crucial aspect for nuclear survival is not putting
yourself in a place where you have to react on
the fly. It's putting yourself in a place where you
can leverage your proactive mechanisms. The stuff you did in
the past to prepare.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Yeah, like getting used to the taste of human meat. Sorry,
the very.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
Least ground up insects.

Speaker 4 (01:01:08):
Sure, ground up insects actually way better choice because as
we discussed there in Cannibalism Episode one, this sounds weird,
but here's the truth. One mistake people make about cannibalism
is that they don't do it until it's too late,
and the flesh they would have eaten has already been

(01:01:28):
exhausted of nutrients. And that's why you're gonna encounter something
called rabbit starvation. Rabbit like the hop hop animal, not
like a sickness. That has to do with these speed
of metabolism, doesn't it. And yeah, respective, yeah, And the
fact that usually when people are driven to survival, cannibalism
not religious cannibalism or you know, just for funzies varieties.

(01:01:51):
When it's survival cannibalism, they're usually eating the flesh of
someone who's already died of starvation, which means there's very little, uh,
there's very little nutritional benefit in eating that flesh, which, naturally,
if we're being cold about it, tells you that the

(01:02:12):
smartest I wouldn't say smart, but the ethics society, the
most efficient survival cannibalism is to choose someone in advance
and maybe immobilize them and then eat them slowly over
time before they themselves starve.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
Yeah, got it.

Speaker 5 (01:02:30):
No, I sort of goofed it. It's definitely more to
do with the nutritional quality of the of the food source.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
Well, that's why you got to get a group of
friends together who don't mind murdering folks. Hey, this is
gonna be fun.

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):
Or do the Stephen King thing from what was?

Speaker 5 (01:02:48):
It was the story where the doctor is marooned and
has to slowly eat one piece of himself at a
time and then he bandages himself up Survivor style or
survivor or something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
Yeah, it's it's intense. It was a good one.

Speaker 5 (01:03:03):
Yeah, it is a good one and no supernatural aspects
at all. It's just like you know very much the
story of brutal survival. Well, this is thankfully not a
point you're at yet. In this case, you're not at
that point because you have other You have other steps

(01:03:24):
in your plant. Your plan includes communication strategies with friends,
loved ones, family members, along with known roots and redundancies
for shelter and escape. And I think we I can't
remember if we talked about this on air off mic,
but did you guys grow up with those kind of
escape plans like your family ever talked about them with you?

Speaker 3 (01:03:45):
My parents weren't smart like that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Yeah, I real like fires and never about large scale
disaster like the whole town goes down or something.

Speaker 3 (01:03:55):
Like never escape the city. This is the root, this
is the meet up point.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
That's cool, I guess, but it's also I can imagine
that altering my trajectory a little bit.

Speaker 4 (01:04:10):
I thought it was normal until I made other friends.
Ah huh, I thought we all had those, But I guess.
You know, every every family is a country its own right,
So look in a mass casualty event, the reason your
communication plan is going to be crucial is because most
people are going to be unprepared, They're going to panic,

(01:04:32):
they're going to fleet. One thing that Blockbuster movies get
right is that there are a lot of people who.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
Are carrying guns.

Speaker 4 (01:04:43):
Carrying guns I would say also not in there at
their most rational, because they are consumed with saying, you know, hey,
my kid is at a daycare across town right, my
mom or my spouse is in the hospital twenty miles north,
So forget everything. I'm going there first. Even if the

(01:05:05):
news tells me that part of the city has been flattened,
I'm still going to go.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:05:12):
That that is That's one of the big human aspects,
very understandable that throws all of these mass movement strategies
out the window. No matter how well governments and rand
corporation researched them, you can't account for that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
That's really it's an intense thing. You guys could could
both like feel this, I'm sure, but I think in
particular Nol you'd feel this. Just this concept of knowing
that you have all these plans in place and you
might survive, but your child is just going to be
out there in the wind somewhere, Like could you make

(01:05:50):
that decision of I'm going to put my plan into
place where I'm going to survive without find.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
I don't think first people, I don't think most people could.

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
I I don't think I would be able to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:01):
No, I think if anyone, I mean yeah, and for
for sure.

Speaker 5 (01:06:06):
And then you know, I think we've talked about this
in the past, and we've talked about nuclear fallout stories.
Barefoot Gin is an example of a child that's kind
of out on it's on their own. And also The
Grave of the Fireflies is another story about the nuclear
attacks in Japan where a sibling, you know, older sibling

(01:06:27):
and is taking care of their young young sibling. And
it is a lot but it really does show, you know,
that untethered kind of you know, divided family situation that
Matt's describing that the thought of that is terrifying and heartbreaking.

Speaker 4 (01:06:44):
And Grave of the Fireflies is based on real world events,
which sorry, I think I say, you guys some stuff
from the Hiroshima Museum, but these are these are very
real things that could happen, and that's why having a plan,
if it all possible, were redundant escape routes that lead
to the same meetup place, even if it's far away.

(01:07:06):
That's why it's a really smart thing to do. Right
the interstate is clogged up. Luckily, I know that I
can go this way. It'll take a little bit longer,
but it's rural and people aren't going to be as
likely to have rendered that in navigable. And then we can,
you know, meet up at I'll say it because it's

(01:07:27):
no longer the case now, but a family relation has
had a compound way out in the Moonies and that
was always our spot and I knew how to get
there multiple ways. Weird thing to think about in retrospect,
but if you can do that, that is very smart.
We also can't assume access to resources like potable water, food, medicine, comms, equipment,

(01:07:53):
or fuel. It's great to have all of that in advance,
even if it's a mobile kit like a toble back in.

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
The trunk of your car.

Speaker 4 (01:08:01):
As long as you're always kind of close to your
car or stored in a safe place, you know you'll
be able to access. And then we talked about this too.
One thing people miss is that it's not enough just
to have those supplies. You've got to check them, you've
got to test them. You know, MREs don't necessarily start
off good, but even they can go bad if they're

(01:08:23):
stored at the wrong demperature for long enough time.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
That's why you need the tortilla bucket new from.

Speaker 3 (01:08:33):
New Chipotle flavor. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:08:38):
This is this is one hundred percent not accurate because
a lot of companies are selling this stuff leveraging fear Right.
You don't need a bunch of super high priced bespoke stuff, right.
You can go to a lot of local bulk grocery

(01:09:01):
suppliers and you can get the same thing for pennies
on the dollar.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
You know, yep, yep, Bruce's canned yams. If you don't
have a bunch of those in your basement, you should
get some now, Bruce's canny.

Speaker 4 (01:09:18):
Ms, little dotties. Canola oil, a little man with a
big deal. You don't really need canola oil or you
know what, We don't know your life.

Speaker 3 (01:09:30):
Maybe you do.

Speaker 4 (01:09:30):
Maybe you're like civilization will fall. I will keep my canola.
There are tons of resources available for this, including things
like checking schedules. You know, it's It would be similar
to that Twilight Zone episode spoilers three two one where
the guy who always wants more time to read, survives

(01:09:53):
nuclear tax it breaks his glasses. Imagine making it to
a shelter. You and a your loved ones are safe.
You check your huge industrial sized can of garbonzo beans
or whatever, and it expired three years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
Tut tut, you can still eat them.

Speaker 3 (01:10:12):
I still do it.

Speaker 4 (01:10:13):
Yeah, you'll have to try, I mean do check to
see if the if the can is dented or god forbid, bloated.
But yeah, you'll be in a non Michelin star situation.

Speaker 3 (01:10:24):
Just deal with that.

Speaker 4 (01:10:25):
You can also check out shows like our Friend's Casual
Preppers for more. So why don't we take a second.
When we're talking short term, let's talk about fallout. So
it's radioactive particles rise to the air with the mushroom cloud.
They settle back to ground eventually, not immediately. This is
this is one of the big dangers for a lot

(01:10:46):
of people because it's invisible. The debris is especially dangerous
in the first few hours. You have that small but
critical window of about ten to twenty minutes before the
fall begins to arrive. So if you do have supplies
but they're in your house twenty miles away, don't attempt

(01:11:07):
to get there, just don't try it. You're going to
get irradiated. Hunker down, lock all the windows in gressg
exit points you can. And this is the toughest part
for a lot of people, especially if you have a
left one that you're trying to reach. If you want
to survive, you have to plan to stay put for
a minimum of three days or about seventy two hours.

Speaker 2 (01:11:31):
Yeah. Hey, if you still have air conditioning, should you
turn it off?

Speaker 3 (01:11:38):
Yes? Why? I don't know. I'd be baffled if there
was still power.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
I know that's the thing. Well, if you still have power,
But imagine somebody who has prepped a whole bunch and
still has, you know, some kind of power source, whether
it's backup generators or something like that. What they've got
still an air source that is coming in from the
outside that isn't fully filtered or something. Well, you just
have to remember like you're exposing yourself if you do

(01:12:10):
something like that.

Speaker 4 (01:12:12):
Yeah, and not in a fun skin imax way. It
gets bad real quick. You've already sanitized your body, You've
gotten rid of your clothing, as we discussed earlier, and
once that's done, you take inventory of supplies for a
lot of gamers in the crowd. That's the most fun
part of the game. What do we have already? How

(01:12:33):
long will it last?

Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
What do we need?

Speaker 4 (01:12:35):
When will we need it? We can assume help is
on the way. Our most valuable resources are food, water, medicine,
and communications ability. This is the thing that gets me
to about communication ability. Because we're putting ourselves in a
quarantined situation. What is the most likely way we would

(01:12:57):
get news from the outside? Would be other people banging
on the shelter? Would a crank radio work? Who has
a crank radio? Other than us?

Speaker 3 (01:13:06):
We're terrible examples.

Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
I don't know. I would say you need a ham
radio or smoke signals.

Speaker 3 (01:13:13):
Every smoked Ham radio. I like smoked ham radio. Let's
make that a thing we're getting. I guess we're getting
close to lunch time as well. But I don't know how.

Speaker 4 (01:13:26):
It'd be tricky to figure out how to communicate with
the outside world, how to get news about what's happening.
In the short term, you have to wait for the
radiation levels to drop. And there's something called the seven
to ten rule, which I don't think we discussed in
our previous episode, but it states that after seven hours,

(01:13:46):
radiation from a nuclear weapon will the intensity will decrease
to one tenth of its starting level. After forty eight hours,
it's one percent of the original intensity. So it's a
waiting game. And on the upside, this gives you time
to think about the mid terms. You know, how do
we hear news about stuff outside the shelter?

Speaker 3 (01:14:09):
Are there more weapons in the air?

Speaker 4 (01:14:12):
Has the government made any statement about the military or
emergency assistance. Is it safe to go outside yet? Are
there specific shelters set up like the ones Germany has planning.
You'll also need to start thinking about how long you
can stay in that shelter past seventy two hours. Water
is going to be the key thing there, even more

(01:14:33):
important than food, because if you're a human adult, you
need between two point seven and three point seven liters
of water a day. That can come from beverages that
are not water, right, coffee, soda, whatever, It can come
from food. About twenty percent of the average human adults
water intake is from food, but that number doesn't count

(01:14:54):
anything other than water for ingestion. So washing clothes could
have drank, flushing commos with water you could have drank.
That makes a difference. Water is going to play a
big role in how you determine your next actions.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):
I'm trying to imagine, guys, the drive that it would
take to do all of this stuff that would be
necessary in hopes of simply surviving.

Speaker 3 (01:15:26):
I don't know, and surviving to what end? What world
do you return to?

Speaker 2 (01:15:33):
Well, I guess it. Maybe if you could somehow wrap
your mind around the possibility of something better being created.
We've seen it over and over and over again in
popular culture about like that's the concept we're gonna survive this,
and we're going to rebuild something better, something more, equitable,

(01:15:53):
something more or whatever. Just good God, it would take
the time it would take to get to that place.
I don't know how you put yourself in a mental
framework to just get through literally seventy two hours.

Speaker 4 (01:16:10):
Yeah, and it's such a gambit as well, because there's
so many unknowns.

Speaker 3 (01:16:14):
I mean.

Speaker 4 (01:16:15):
Another thing that would be rare for people to have
is a radiation detection device. Yeah, they who pulled up
their Geiger counter? Who's fiddling with that right now?

Speaker 3 (01:16:26):
A lot of.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
My buddy Nick, remember Nick, Yeah, we're talking about it,
like yeah, uap, he's got a crazy sophisticated nuclear detection
device he's out using right now.

Speaker 3 (01:16:39):
Great, Well tell them though, hold on to it and
give us a good give us a good wreck.

Speaker 4 (01:16:43):
Uh, and talk about price points because that can help
you determine if it's safe to go outside.

Speaker 3 (01:16:48):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:16:49):
But a lot of people aren't going to have that
because why would you. It's not a multifunctional thing. You
don't use it for other stuff. It doesn't also brew coffee,
which is another great idea. If we can make a
radiation detector device that does other stuff, more people will
buy them.

Speaker 2 (01:17:08):
That's a good idea.

Speaker 3 (01:17:09):
That's good. It's up.

Speaker 4 (01:17:10):
There was smoke dam radio right, yeah, radiation detecting. This
press the tool and there we go. So the concept
of long term survival is really tough to answer. Maybe
this is where we end. It folds in more and
more variables, and a lot of those are going to
be impossible to grasp until you're in that situation. Things

(01:17:30):
like does the government continue? Is help finally coming? Could
I and my loved ones escape to a safer region?
Are there humans that we need to worry.

Speaker 3 (01:17:41):
About on the way right?

Speaker 4 (01:17:44):
That that's where the collapse of rule of law will
naturally create that mixed with desperation will naturally create some
very hard case characters.

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):
Especially if you've got stuff and they don't have stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:17:58):
Right right, I was hanging with a dear friend of mine.
I don't know if you guys ever met him, but
he has very different philosophies than me and probably all
of us. And he told me one time, when we
were talking about some preparation things we were doing, he said,
I don't have to worry about preparing because I have this,

(01:18:21):
and he held up one of his firearms, and then
he pointed to other houses in this area and he said,
which means I have this, and I have this, and
I have this as well.

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
Good luck, buddy.

Speaker 4 (01:18:33):
Yeah, I don't know, man, because you don't know what
they have. Anyway, it's a bad way to think as well.
We hope this all stays theoretical. We think this is
important to know. There's a lot of stuff they don't
want you to know that we discussed here. Full on
nuclear war is still luckily considered an unlikely scenario, at
least that is until it happens. So we'd love to

(01:18:55):
hear if you and your loved ones have bug out
plans roots, prepared alters or without being nihilistic. Are you
one of the people who would just rather things end
quickly versus sticking around to experience all the consequences. Tell
us your thoughts. Thanks, as always so much for tuning in.

Speaker 3 (01:19:14):
Folks.

Speaker 4 (01:19:14):
We can't wait to hear from you. You can email us,
you can give us a call, or you can find
us on the lines until the EMP hits.

Speaker 3 (01:19:21):
That's all right.

Speaker 5 (01:19:22):
You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff where
we exist on the lines, that is to say, on
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Speaker 3 (01:19:38):
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Speaker 2 (01:19:43):
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Speaker 4 (01:19:58):
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Speaker 2 (01:20:28):
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