New York City's video on how to survive a nuclear attack.

[Jehanne]

Apparently, it was not well-received:




I don't agree with the "closing windows & shutting doors" piece, nor getting into the center of buildings.  A thermonuclear bomb will, of course, produce in a millionth of a second a hypersonic shock wave, an impulse, that will shred anything and everything in its path, which means that any and windows will be utterly fragmented and many (perhaps all) buildings will collapse.

One's best bet would be to head into the sewers.  Of course, that's where many of NYC's rats live, but in the ensuing Apocalypse, it will likely be Us against them anyway.

[Anomalocaris]

I recall reading the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and postwar tests, show a person inside a sturdy building can survive at much wless than half the distance from the hypocenter as the minimum distance a person in the open has any chance of surviving the blast.     There was a case of a Japanese woman inside a reinforced concrete bank building lobby who survived with remarkably little physical injury something like 300 feet from the hypocenter.     

It is actually not easy to get a lot of people into the sewers on short notice.    One also wonders whether the sewers provide survival advantage in the case of a ground blast, since the sewer tunnels are usually quite close to the ground, so a ground blast fireball would seem likely to breach the sewer tunnels, providing potential for sewer tunnels to confine and channel the blast, causing the blast to remain lethal in the     sewer system much further away than in the open air, where the blast is easily dissipated and its intensity attenuates by a factor equal to square of the distance form the blast.    The amount of liquid in the sewer would also seem to bear in the survival shelter value of the sewers.   If a ground blast breaches the sewer system with a high liquid load, would the blast cause a mini tsunami and drown or wash away those seeking shelter in it? 

Btw, if it really is us against the rats in the sewer, i don’t think in the end we will win.    Both humans and rats are smart, but rats are less conceited and breeds more.

[Jehanne]

A hydrogen bomb is, of course, an apples to oranges comparison with a fission one, the former being two to three orders of magnitude more powerful, and, hence, more destructive.

[Anomalocaris]

A hydrogen bomb is, of course, an apples to oranges comparison with a fission one, the former being two to three orders of magnitude more powerful, and, hence, more destructive.

Hydrogen bombs can be many orders or magnitude more powerful than pure fission weapons.    But Most modern nuclear weapons are not.   They are generally within roughly one order or magnitude of the Hiroshima bomb yield.

The yield of the bomb still does not invalidate the finding that sturdy buildings offer considerable protection against immediate physical effects of the nuclear blast.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Closing the windows at first alert allows you to not worry about closing them after the attack, if they survive the attack.

[Jehanne]

Closing the windows at first alert allows you to not worry about closing them after the attack, if they survive the attack.

They won't. Even the Mother of All Bombs that Trump dropped on the Taliban shattered windows 30 km away from ground zero, and that was only 11 tons of TNT.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Apparently, it was not well-received:




I don't agree with the "closing windows & shutting doors" piece, nor getting into the center of buildings.  A thermonuclear bomb will, of course, produce in a millionth of a second a hypersonic shock wave, an impulse, that will shred anything and everything in its path, which means that any and windows will be utterly fragmented and many (perhaps all) buildings will collapse.

One's best bet would be to head into the sewers.  Of course, that's where many of NYC's rats live, but in the ensuing Apocalypse, it will likely be Us against them anyway.

You seem seriously obsessed with end-of-the-world scenarios.

Boru

[Thumpalumpacus]

Underground is where you want to be.

[Jehanne]

Underground is where you want to be.

Agreed. I can understand NYC's reluctance to mention the obvious, but going into any building within the 20 to 25 km kill zone of a thermonuclear bomb seems to be pitiless advice. In addition to the fallout, there is a going to be a firestorm of anything remaining after the initial blast wave, and so, it is going to be impossible for anyone who survives the detonation to remain inside any structure for very long anyways.

The subways or sewers is where people need to go, if they wish to live.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Underground is where you want to be.

Agreed.  I can understand NYC's reluctance to mention the obvious, but going into any building within the 20 to 25 km kill zone of a thermonuclear bomb seems to be pitiless advice.  In addition to the fallout, there is a going to be a firestorm of anything remaining after the initial blast wave, and so, it is going to be impossible for anyone who survives the detonation to remain inside any structure for very long anyways.

The subways or sewers is where people need to go, if they wish to live.

Aside from anything else, the shock wave will follow the path of least resistance and flow along the surface of the ground. Any penetration will only occur under the blast itself, and even so the overcharge will remain largely atmospheric because earth is thicker than air, and energy seeks the easiest outlet.

Penetrator warheads are a thing, but they're not wasted on cities, they're spent on first-strike silos or underground C³I facilities.