Would you want to survive a nuclear war if bombs were launched on American soil?
When it was a daily concern from the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, at least for those of us near very obvious nuclear targets, that proximity meant we’d certainly die in the first wave of the attack or at best survive a week or so until the nuclear fallout blew in, rained down, or snowed down from all 4 directions (B-52 nuclear bomber bases along with 300+ nuclear missile silos.We all read a well-informed novel, “Alas Babylon” by Pat Frank about how people in Florida also surrounded by major targets might live, the less well-informed novel “On the Beach” by Nevil Shute with submarine-housed refugees dying last on an Australian beach, and Philip Wylie’s extremely well-informed (as a Civil Defense advisor nationally) “Triumph” where only a handful of people in a rich man’s elaborate fall-out shelter under a granite mountain in New England end up the only survivors in North America by being so deep and able to survive a year or more there. Later novels and movies especially got steadily stupider and then smartened up with better technical advisors and writers, like CBS’s “Jericho” series or ABC’s “The Day After”.As nuclear arsenals shrank through obsolescence, maintenance costs, upgrade costs, overall budgets etc. as well as became much more accurately guided so much smaller nukes or even neutron bomb versions with very short-lived enhanced fallout and reduced blast became common, surviving just about anywhere far enough away from the shrinking number of major targets looked more likely. That so many live in cities, potential targets or unlivable with relatively little disruption of infrastructure and food supply, and even in rural areas dependent now on the electronics the ElectroMagnetic Pulse of nuclear weapons would fry, it’s both lower impact attack and much lower resiliency than the 1950’s-60’s economy, technologies, food production, transport, power generation, etc..So now it’s more likely to starve to death (or be killed by locals looking for food 3–7 days after the attack) than in the blast or fallout or follow-up invasion forces anywhere on Earth. A few localized strikes and the system can heal around that pretty quickly.
To discuss issues related to the combat experience, Stolen Valor phenomenon, Veteran’s Affairs issues, musings and deep thoughts…etc.