A recommendation: buy a HEPA filter, and also some P100 masks. I imagine these may help a bunch in a “shelter from fallout” scenario. I hear HEPA filtration was originally invented to get radioactive contaminants out of the air.
+1. General emergency preparedness (keeping a few weeks of food/medicine, having a generator and fuel, knowing first aid, etc.) is low-hanging fruit, and pays off in a HUGE range of scenarios.
If you wouldn’t mind, I would love to hear you elaborate on this. It’s something I’m confused about. For example, HEPA filters, food, etc. would only be useful if you were sheltering at home, right? But, wouldn’t you want to escape to the countryside if there were an attack coming?
I guess there is the scenario where you didn’t have time to escape to the countryside. But for me at least in Portland, even if I had 20 minutes of notice, I would be able to at least run on foot a few miles east and get out of the likely blast radius. This diagram indicates that there is a very high value in doing that. I assume the same thing is true for a lot of people: they’re somewhat centrally located and it’d make sense to venture outwards if you had any sort of advanced notice of an attack.
Honestly, HEPA filters are probably limited—they require power infrastructure, and provide a quality boost to life, but rarely the difference between death in a week and a much longer lifespan.
Other forms of emergency prep (food, medicine, knowledge) matter a lot in the case where you don’t die immediately but almost all public services are disrupted. This is available with a lot less commitment than moving to a bunker in the woods, and is portable and valuable if your risk assessment changes and you later decide to move.
It’s not the difference between death in a fireball and living, but it CAN be the difference between death in the week following an attack or collapse and living much longer.
I see. Thanks for the response. As I research this more, I’m starting to think that the scenario where food would be useful is quite, quite unlikely, and probably not worth preparing for. For example, in the 80,000 Hours podcast episode with Daniel Ellsberg, Ellsberg talks about how it is extremely likely that we’d end up in a nuclear winter scenario where only you’d only survive if you were located in a few select areas of the globe like Australia and New Zealand.
Yeah, the likely “full war” scenarios don’t leave many humans a year later, no matter how much prep they’ve done. So the question becomes about how much probability weight you put on lesser events that destroy and disrupt some things, but don’t permanently render most of the earth uninhabitable. And are there any such scenarios where Bend is significantly better than Portland for a survivor?
That said, New Zealand is beautiful, and if you put enough value on your life in those possible worlds, you should seriously move there.
I’m starting to think that the scenario where food would be useful is quite, quite unlikely,
I am very confused by this, to the point where I wonder if you missed a negative! Remember the bare grocery shelves of early covid? Wasn’t that a scenario where food storage would be useful?
No I meant it as is. If there is a nuclear winter, it kinda doesn’t matter regardless. Suppose crops all die out within a year. Maybe you stored 18 months worth of food and stick it out longer, in a bunker let’s say, but then you end up dying after that anyway. So in that scenario, I think having food stored doesn’t really help much.
Then there are other scenarios where I think the safer thing would be, at least for me in Portland, to escape as far from the city center as possible, in which case I wouldn’t be able to carry too much food. Then there’s the fact that food is useful when society has collapsed enough where it can’t provide it to you. But in that world it seems like it’d be quite difficult to protect your food supply if you don’t have a bunker. Eg. people would be desperate and would break in and try to steal it. And also, in the scenario where society has collapsed enough where it can’t provide you food, I think that points pretty strongly towards enough nukes having been used to trigger a nuclear winter, in which case it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Sorry, I don’t think I broke this down very clearly, but hopefully it communicates the gist of where I’m coming from. When I imagine the various scenarios, it’s seeming to me like a large supply of food would rarely be useful.
Thank you for explaining! Our models of the world are just very divergent in this particular spot. To simplify near the edge of uselessness, your model says that there will be no more food for you if the grocery shelves are empty, and mine says that edible things will appear out of the ground for me if I wait long enough. (Both oversimplifications have their inaccuracies, of course)
I guess for an urban person who’s highly entwined with modern society and not interested in setting up a homesteading type lifestyle pre-SHTF, nuclear winter might qualify as a “welp guess I’ll die” event.
Then there are other scenarios where I think the safer thing would be, at least for me in Portland, to escape as far from the city center as possible, in which case I wouldn’t be able to carry too much food.
In prepper communities, there’s the concept of a “bug-out location”. They realize, as you have also observed, that there are many types of disaster in which the best thing for an urban person to do is go somewhere more rural. However, the next step in that plan is to think through where they would go, and how they would get there. Many people have family or close friends who live rurally.
The trick to making that work, of course, is to talk to them about it before showing up on their doorstep. The urban lifestyle often involves much higher disposable income than the rural one, so there are many ways that a “hey can I store some stuff here and show up if pdx gets nuked” relationship can be mutually beneficial. Maybe there’s some infrastructure contribution you could make to the place that would increase the whole group’s odds of doing well in a disaster. Maybe an agreement that they’re welcome to start in on the food you stored there if you don’t manage to make it out in x time would be mutually beneficial. The details vary from friendship to friendship and from family to family, but the goal is basically to contribute to a community which would be able to help you meet your survival needs if you needed to show up there.
If you have a location where you’d be welcome to stay if you had to get out of the city, I’d highly recommend establishing some perennial food crops there if at all possible. Naturalizing edible stuff that’s harvestable through the year, rather than letting a space get taken over by the himalayan blackberries that are useful for a whole 3 weeks, makes an ecosystem much easier to forage in (and passers-by have a hard time stealing food if they don’t recognize a plant as being edible!). But that’s a whole other conversation :)
I’d love to dig into this further. I find it both interesting and useful.
Our models of the world are just very divergent in this particular spot.
Where exactly are they diverging?
One possibility is that they diverge in the likelihood of a nuclear winter being triggered, given a US-Russia nuclear exchange. On that question, I think my belief is something like a 20% probability. I basically am taking Luisa Rodriguez’ estimate of 11% and bumping it upwards a bit based on my impression of her estimate being a little lower than what is typical, and based on me being just broadly more pessimistic.
Another possibility where they diverge is, in the event of a nuclear winter, how survivable we each think it would be. I lean towards thinking it’d mean crops die out and I’d die within a year or so. You lean towards thinking that it’d be survivable long term. Crops would come back, society would rebound, and storing large amounts of food would help you get past the initial chaos and survive long enough until things rebound. Is that an accurate summary?
In prepper communities, there’s the concept of a “bug-out location”.
Cool. Thanks for introducing me to that term.
Tell me if this is naive, but I’m kinda thinking that, one situation is if you anticipate the attack early enough, you can probably just find an Airbnb (and hit the grocery stores) then. Eg. suppose Russia mobilized weapons against America or something and society in general doesn’t panic/react much.
Then another situation is where, let’s say Russia nukes NYC but not Portland. In that situation, I expect the government would have various places set up to take people in who are seeking to shelter from a subsequent attack, like at high schools or whatever. So I’d be able to head out to, say eastern Oregon and have access to one of those places.
If so, the question becomes whether it’d be safer to be in a private residence or something than say a high school.
If the private residence had a bunker or was particularly insulated, then it might do a better job of shielding against the initial impact of the bomb. But if the initial impact of a bomb something to worry about in eastern Oregon, then that sounds like a world where we’re basically doomed anyway, because eastern Oregon is low on the list of priorities to nuke, and thus it’d mean all out war, nuclear winter, anarchy, etc.
Another reason why you might be safer in a private residence is if you’re stuck there for a long time. Ie. if in the world where you shelter at a local high school, they run out of food there and you die, vs the world where you shelter in a private residence you don’t run out of food. But if that were the case, it sounds like it’d also mean the US-Russia war was extremely severe, meaning the same stuff about nuclear winter, anarchy, it being difficult to survive for various other reasons, and it not being a particularly fun world to be a part of.
Yes, HEPA was in fact invented to get radioactive contaminants out of the air, or so I heard, but they are unneeded for protection from fallout because most fallout (by mass, not by particle count) consists of particles about the size of peas, which of course do not stay suspended in the air.
Of course things like N-95 masks are very useful in emergencies for other reasons.
A recommendation: buy a HEPA filter, and also some P100 masks. I imagine these may help a bunch in a “shelter from fallout” scenario. I hear HEPA filtration was originally invented to get radioactive contaminants out of the air.
+1. General emergency preparedness (keeping a few weeks of food/medicine, having a generator and fuel, knowing first aid, etc.) is low-hanging fruit, and pays off in a HUGE range of scenarios.
If you wouldn’t mind, I would love to hear you elaborate on this. It’s something I’m confused about. For example, HEPA filters, food, etc. would only be useful if you were sheltering at home, right? But, wouldn’t you want to escape to the countryside if there were an attack coming?
I guess there is the scenario where you didn’t have time to escape to the countryside. But for me at least in Portland, even if I had 20 minutes of notice, I would be able to at least run on foot a few miles east and get out of the likely blast radius. This diagram indicates that there is a very high value in doing that. I assume the same thing is true for a lot of people: they’re somewhat centrally located and it’d make sense to venture outwards if you had any sort of advanced notice of an attack.
Honestly, HEPA filters are probably limited—they require power infrastructure, and provide a quality boost to life, but rarely the difference between death in a week and a much longer lifespan.
Other forms of emergency prep (food, medicine, knowledge) matter a lot in the case where you don’t die immediately but almost all public services are disrupted. This is available with a lot less commitment than moving to a bunker in the woods, and is portable and valuable if your risk assessment changes and you later decide to move.
It’s not the difference between death in a fireball and living, but it CAN be the difference between death in the week following an attack or collapse and living much longer.
I see. Thanks for the response. As I research this more, I’m starting to think that the scenario where food would be useful is quite, quite unlikely, and probably not worth preparing for. For example, in the 80,000 Hours podcast episode with Daniel Ellsberg, Ellsberg talks about how it is extremely likely that we’d end up in a nuclear winter scenario where only you’d only survive if you were located in a few select areas of the globe like Australia and New Zealand.
Yeah, the likely “full war” scenarios don’t leave many humans a year later, no matter how much prep they’ve done. So the question becomes about how much probability weight you put on lesser events that destroy and disrupt some things, but don’t permanently render most of the earth uninhabitable. And are there any such scenarios where Bend is significantly better than Portland for a survivor?
That said, New Zealand is beautiful, and if you put enough value on your life in those possible worlds, you should seriously move there.
I am very confused by this, to the point where I wonder if you missed a negative! Remember the bare grocery shelves of early covid? Wasn’t that a scenario where food storage would be useful?
No I meant it as is. If there is a nuclear winter, it kinda doesn’t matter regardless. Suppose crops all die out within a year. Maybe you stored 18 months worth of food and stick it out longer, in a bunker let’s say, but then you end up dying after that anyway. So in that scenario, I think having food stored doesn’t really help much.
Then there are other scenarios where I think the safer thing would be, at least for me in Portland, to escape as far from the city center as possible, in which case I wouldn’t be able to carry too much food. Then there’s the fact that food is useful when society has collapsed enough where it can’t provide it to you. But in that world it seems like it’d be quite difficult to protect your food supply if you don’t have a bunker. Eg. people would be desperate and would break in and try to steal it. And also, in the scenario where society has collapsed enough where it can’t provide you food, I think that points pretty strongly towards enough nukes having been used to trigger a nuclear winter, in which case it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Sorry, I don’t think I broke this down very clearly, but hopefully it communicates the gist of where I’m coming from. When I imagine the various scenarios, it’s seeming to me like a large supply of food would rarely be useful.
Thank you for explaining! Our models of the world are just very divergent in this particular spot. To simplify near the edge of uselessness, your model says that there will be no more food for you if the grocery shelves are empty, and mine says that edible things will appear out of the ground for me if I wait long enough. (Both oversimplifications have their inaccuracies, of course)
I guess for an urban person who’s highly entwined with modern society and not interested in setting up a homesteading type lifestyle pre-SHTF, nuclear winter might qualify as a “welp guess I’ll die” event.
In prepper communities, there’s the concept of a “bug-out location”. They realize, as you have also observed, that there are many types of disaster in which the best thing for an urban person to do is go somewhere more rural. However, the next step in that plan is to think through where they would go, and how they would get there. Many people have family or close friends who live rurally.
The trick to making that work, of course, is to talk to them about it before showing up on their doorstep. The urban lifestyle often involves much higher disposable income than the rural one, so there are many ways that a “hey can I store some stuff here and show up if pdx gets nuked” relationship can be mutually beneficial. Maybe there’s some infrastructure contribution you could make to the place that would increase the whole group’s odds of doing well in a disaster. Maybe an agreement that they’re welcome to start in on the food you stored there if you don’t manage to make it out in x time would be mutually beneficial. The details vary from friendship to friendship and from family to family, but the goal is basically to contribute to a community which would be able to help you meet your survival needs if you needed to show up there.
If you have a location where you’d be welcome to stay if you had to get out of the city, I’d highly recommend establishing some perennial food crops there if at all possible. Naturalizing edible stuff that’s harvestable through the year, rather than letting a space get taken over by the himalayan blackberries that are useful for a whole 3 weeks, makes an ecosystem much easier to forage in (and passers-by have a hard time stealing food if they don’t recognize a plant as being edible!). But that’s a whole other conversation :)
I’d love to dig into this further. I find it both interesting and useful.
Where exactly are they diverging?
One possibility is that they diverge in the likelihood of a nuclear winter being triggered, given a US-Russia nuclear exchange. On that question, I think my belief is something like a 20% probability. I basically am taking Luisa Rodriguez’ estimate of 11% and bumping it upwards a bit based on my impression of her estimate being a little lower than what is typical, and based on me being just broadly more pessimistic.
Another possibility where they diverge is, in the event of a nuclear winter, how survivable we each think it would be. I lean towards thinking it’d mean crops die out and I’d die within a year or so. You lean towards thinking that it’d be survivable long term. Crops would come back, society would rebound, and storing large amounts of food would help you get past the initial chaos and survive long enough until things rebound. Is that an accurate summary?
Cool. Thanks for introducing me to that term.
Tell me if this is naive, but I’m kinda thinking that, one situation is if you anticipate the attack early enough, you can probably just find an Airbnb (and hit the grocery stores) then. Eg. suppose Russia mobilized weapons against America or something and society in general doesn’t panic/react much.
Then another situation is where, let’s say Russia nukes NYC but not Portland. In that situation, I expect the government would have various places set up to take people in who are seeking to shelter from a subsequent attack, like at high schools or whatever. So I’d be able to head out to, say eastern Oregon and have access to one of those places.
If so, the question becomes whether it’d be safer to be in a private residence or something than say a high school.
If the private residence had a bunker or was particularly insulated, then it might do a better job of shielding against the initial impact of the bomb. But if the initial impact of a bomb something to worry about in eastern Oregon, then that sounds like a world where we’re basically doomed anyway, because eastern Oregon is low on the list of priorities to nuke, and thus it’d mean all out war, nuclear winter, anarchy, etc.
Another reason why you might be safer in a private residence is if you’re stuck there for a long time. Ie. if in the world where you shelter at a local high school, they run out of food there and you die, vs the world where you shelter in a private residence you don’t run out of food. But if that were the case, it sounds like it’d also mean the US-Russia war was extremely severe, meaning the same stuff about nuclear winter, anarchy, it being difficult to survive for various other reasons, and it not being a particularly fun world to be a part of.
Yes, HEPA was in fact invented to get radioactive contaminants out of the air, or so I heard, but they are unneeded for protection from fallout because most fallout (by mass, not by particle count) consists of particles about the size of peas, which of course do not stay suspended in the air.
Of course things like N-95 masks are very useful in emergencies for other reasons.