You get five minutes to escape a nuclear blast, what will you do?

[Braznor]

You get a call from a friend in the military warning you that your city is about to get nuked in five minutes. You are at work at this time and you know your location will face 50% mortality rate at this distance. Your job is to escape being on the wrong side of this 50%.

Assume the nuke is a 100 kiloton yield bomb launched by a rogue state and try to figure out how you will try escaping from the explosion and its aftereffects?

What will you do?

Head for the basement or the manholes?

Try to drive out of the danger zone?

Give up immediately and die?

 

[edro]

Refrigerator

 

[Maximilian]

I was gonna say run away but holy shit yeah the manholes! Thats a good fucking idea :biggrin: Id do that!

 

[TheSlamma]

Climb on my roof.. hold arms out.. bring it on!

 

[Mixolydian]

Go to the basement, I guess. Not that it would do much good.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

I work next to the freeway on the north side of the city, so I'd try to drive. It would take me 3 minutes to get to my car and get onto the freeway, so if I drove extremely fast (100+) I would likely make it 3-4 miles away when the blast occurred. Of course, I would not stop driving at that point.

 

[Sonikku]

Move to the center of the blast. Everyone knows you survive if you're dead center of the explosion.

Ducking out in a Fridge is also a viable option.

 

[CPA]

I work next to the freeway on the north side of the city, so I'd try to drive. It would take me 3 minutes to get to my car and get onto the freeway, so if I drove extremely fast (100+) I would likely make it 3-4 miles away when the blast occurred. Of course, I would not stop driving at that point.

yep, you an a million other folks. Be prepared to die as you sit in gridlock.

I'd pick out the hottest chic and see if she's willing to go out in a blaze of glory...

 

[Bateluer]

yep, you an a million other folks. Be prepared to die as you sit in gridlock.

I'd pick out the hottest chic and see if she's willing to go out in a blaze of glory...

How many people were called by your buddy?

 

[IronWing]

Back in the 80s the nuclear freeze folks staged a "run like hell" event in my fair city. The event started in the town center and the participants would try to escape the kill zone within the twenty minute warning window thought to be reasonable at that time. Folks walked, ran, bicycled, drove out of town at the starting bell. I was on a bicycle. The goal of the event was to show folks that there was no escaping so we should get rid on the nukes. The problem was that the drivers and many of us bicyclists did make it out of the danger zone within the twenty minutes. The event organizers simply ignored the results and proclaimed that everyone had died. Pissed me off and taught me (in high school at the time) a lesson in propaganda.

 

[marvdmartian]

I work next to the freeway on the north side of the city, so I'd try to drive. It would take me 3 minutes to get to my car and get onto the freeway, so if I drove extremely fast (100+) I would likely make it 3-4 miles away when the blast occurred. Of course, I would not stop driving at that point.

Well, actually, still being that close to the blast, the resultant EMP (which doesn't just happen in high altitude explosions) would probably kill the electronics in your vehicle, and you would stop driving.

Climb on my roof.. hold arms out.. bring it on!

Well, at least then, you'd get to enjoy the show! :thumbsup:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASzBAOzRaBw

 

[alzan]

I head for my car.

I actually think about this possibility several times an hour and consider variables:

- which highway out of town is the least congested

- average traffic speed on that highway

- closest bar off that highway that's got an all day Happy Hour

 

[mnewsham]

I live on the outskirts of DC, plenty of fall out shelters around here left over from the cold war era. Probably head to the closest one about 1/8th mile away.

 

[brianmanahan]

Refrigerator

you gotta make sure its lead-lined

and has airbags

 

[DrPizza]

There are videos out there (someone else can search) of American soldiers training for the nuclear battlefield. They duck down in trenches, a nuke goes off, and they survive. Then, they're brushed off by whisk brooms in the video. (LOL)

So, it depends on the altitude that the nuclear device is detonated. If close to the ground, then a basement is actually a relatively safe place. Thus, my five minute goal, given that it wouldn't give me enough time to be more than 3 miles away, would be to find a fairly deep culvert to jump into. (i.e., the manhole idea, except I'm not in a big city with access to manholes.)

 

[WaTaGuMp]

Stick it in the nearest hot chick.

 

[chelhxi]

Dig straight down twenty blocks or so...wait...

 

[M0oG0oGaiPan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yfXgu37iyI

 

[_Rick_]

In an ideal world, I'd steal a motorcycle and head for the hills.
Ideally an older bike, with less susceptibility to EMP from the explosion.

With five minutes to go, I'd probably have around 3 minutes time to get out of the 50% kill-zone. Fast neutrons and initial gamma burst would probably be the second greatest problem to face, so ideally I'd spend 2-3 minutes driving away from expected ground zero, until I spot a decent opportunity to take cover. Something like a river bank, bridge head, subway station, cliff, trench, depending on circumstances.

Then I would wait out the initial explosion, before heading cross-wind or up-wind to get out of the plume. I'd take a bicycle, if there's no motorbike there, due to the worries about EMP, and the higher mobility that two wheels allow. 100kt should be small enough, that even with a perfect airburst, you can escape to a distance, where you get a bit of reaction time between flash and blast so you can take cover if you misjudged, as well as getting you out of the worst of the blast-wave and heat-wave.

Of course, in the future I'll be working in a rural place, and unless somebody wants to nuke Porsche, I'll be tens of miles of any significant target away. Suck it, city slickers!

 

[SlitheryDee]

If I dropped everything instantly I could be on the highway in 2-3 minutes, but do I drive north or south?. I think I'd pick north because there are no traffic lights for about 15 miles in that direction. It's not that I was actually planning on obeying any traffic lights, but the fewer intersections I have to cross the less opportunity I have to get T-boned by a car on the other street.

 

[Brainonska511]

Being that I work in Manhattan, I'd probably run down into either: the 2nd basement of my building (it's a labyrinth down there) or the nearby B/D/F/M station, as it is the deepest publicly-accessible place in the immediate vicinity.

 

[BudAshes]

My city is a nuclear free zone so I don't have to worry. The bad guys would see the sign and have to detonate their nuke elsewhere.

 

[_Rick_]

My city is a nuclear free zone so I don't have to worry. The bad guys would see the sign and have to detonate their nuke elsewhere.

How does the hospital cope with being nuclear free though?

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Grab a beer and head for the roof. Who wants to die of radiation poisoning while trying to avoid the CHUDs that will take over the Earth?

 

[BudAshes]

How does the hospital cope with being nuclear free though?

Instead of radiation they use "good vibes". Proven to be effective 60% of the time, every-time. Either that or they just ignore whatever stupid hippies put up that sign.