I live in Seattle, which is a definite strategic target. I’m planning to spend the next few weeks in a cabin in the California mountains for unrelated reasons, but it’s still the case that I don’t expect to survive a full-scale nuclear exchange. I don’t think there’s a level of escalation that would give me sufficient warning to do anything about it. In fact, most nuclear doctrines explicitly avoid smooth escalation with a knowable tipping point.
I give it less than a few percent that such an exchange will take place within my planning horizon (call it a few years), and haven’t prepared specifically for that. They also say that big earthquake and/or major volcanic eruption is gonna happen someday, and those I do hope to survive. I’ve long kept a fair bit of food, water, medicine, and first-aid supplies handy, and my reaction to any major disaster would generally be “shut off power, water, and gas, live in the basement for a few days, and react as seems best”.
I highly recommend a permanent policy of keeping a few weeks to a few months of necessary goods and equipment. It’s fine to use current events to get you over the threshold to do so—that’s true for almost everyone. But once you do so, plan to maintain it forever (which means rotating out the semi-perishables, not “put it in a box and forget it for years”).
The Doomsday Clock, in practice, has a strong ratchet component. They are much more interested in recognizing bad news than good, and “time passed with nothing going wrong” isn’t an ‘event’ that they update the clock on.
It also includes non-nuclear impacts, such as growing recognition of climate change.
Yeah. The current Doomsday Clock is what happens when an organization has outlived its usefulness and is trying to remain relevant even though it really isn’t.
but it’s still the case that I don’t expect to survive a full-scale nuclear exchange.
There’s no reason whatsoever to expect you can’t easily survive a full exchange with a few simple preparations as long as you were outside the immediate urban blast radii. Nuclear winter is effectively a myth. I’m both astounded and dismayed by the amount of misinformation and misconceptions surrounding nuclear issues within the “rationalist” community.
Nukes aren’t remotely inescapable Armageddon in the same way unaligned AGI is, and people really need to stop the silly resignation to death when talking about them. People in this community can easily all survive a nuclear war if they simply understand that they can and do what needs to be done.
With a full scale nuclear war supply chains will collapse. How will you survive starvation? And if you have enough food or food production capacity, how will you be able to protect it from armed gangs?
I don’t expect to survive a full-scale nuclear exchange
Looking at Russia’s performance in the war so far, I could see a Russian attack that is much smaller than historical plans because it’s all they can manage. This would be large enough to be massively destructive, but still small enough that lots of people survive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock#Timeline and https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/ would agree that it’s more likely than any time in history (and they haven’t even updated for February events).
I live in Seattle, which is a definite strategic target. I’m planning to spend the next few weeks in a cabin in the California mountains for unrelated reasons, but it’s still the case that I don’t expect to survive a full-scale nuclear exchange. I don’t think there’s a level of escalation that would give me sufficient warning to do anything about it. In fact, most nuclear doctrines explicitly avoid smooth escalation with a knowable tipping point.
I give it less than a few percent that such an exchange will take place within my planning horizon (call it a few years), and haven’t prepared specifically for that. They also say that big earthquake and/or major volcanic eruption is gonna happen someday, and those I do hope to survive. I’ve long kept a fair bit of food, water, medicine, and first-aid supplies handy, and my reaction to any major disaster would generally be “shut off power, water, and gas, live in the basement for a few days, and react as seems best”.
I highly recommend a permanent policy of keeping a few weeks to a few months of necessary goods and equipment. It’s fine to use current events to get you over the threshold to do so—that’s true for almost everyone. But once you do so, plan to maintain it forever (which means rotating out the semi-perishables, not “put it in a box and forget it for years”).
The Doomsday Clock, in practice, has a strong ratchet component. They are much more interested in recognizing bad news than good, and “time passed with nothing going wrong” isn’t an ‘event’ that they update the clock on.
It also includes non-nuclear impacts, such as growing recognition of climate change.
Yeah. The current Doomsday Clock is what happens when an organization has outlived its usefulness and is trying to remain relevant even though it really isn’t.
There’s no reason whatsoever to expect you can’t easily survive a full exchange with a few simple preparations as long as you were outside the immediate urban blast radii. Nuclear winter is effectively a myth. I’m both astounded and dismayed by the amount of misinformation and misconceptions surrounding nuclear issues within the “rationalist” community.
Nukes aren’t remotely inescapable Armageddon in the same way unaligned AGI is, and people really need to stop the silly resignation to death when talking about them. People in this community can easily all survive a nuclear war if they simply understand that they can and do what needs to be done.
With a full scale nuclear war supply chains will collapse. How will you survive starvation? And if you have enough food or food production capacity, how will you be able to protect it from armed gangs?
Looking at Russia’s performance in the war so far, I could see a Russian attack that is much smaller than historical plans because it’s all they can manage. This would be large enough to be massively destructive, but still small enough that lots of people survive.