A Tell?
(click to enlarge)
When the NYT (no direct link due to their silly registration policy) notes newfound attention to nuclear detonation survival, we have entered an interesting new phase of the 21st century.
Here's the document referenced in the article.
A more realistic, less happy-talk (e.g., modeling effects of weapons greater than 10kt) presentation is here:
Vulnerability of populations and the urban health care systems to nuclear weapon attack – examples from four American cities
Maybe it's clear now why this resource has been in the WRSA left margin since launch.
But remember -- 85% of nuclear weapons effects are heat and blast.
The hard work comes in the aftermath -- not from radiation so much as the consequences of a devastated society.
See this excerpt from the "Vulnerability" resource above:
***
...The nationwide trend of locating a majority of the major urban health care institutions in downtown areas would result in a staggering loss of the total institutional health care delivery following nuclear weapon use. Data is shown for the four example cities in Table 4, though we have seen very similar results in the 20 largest U.S. urban areas (data not shown).
The four cities in Table 4 show 50–56% loss of hospital beds within a 20 mile radius of a 550 Kt detonation, and a 41–43% loss of beds at a 40 mile radius from a downtown ground zero. These results are strikingly similar in view of the very different geographic and demographic landscapes of these four cities. When considering the actual number of hospitals lost, Washington D.C., New York, and Chicago are similar in magnitude of the percentage of hospitals lost, between 41–48% within 20 miles, and 33–37% lost within 40 miles of the detonation. Atlanta, which is the smallest city of the test sample, had a smaller percentage of hospitals lost compared to the others. Due to the pattern of having the larger hospitals in the downtown area, Atlanta still had a similar percentage of bed loss, even though the number of hospitals lost overall was smaller...
***
Are you ready?
Burt is:
posted by Concerned American | 4:21 AM
8 Comments:
Maybe they heard about Iranian Shahab long-range missiles being stationed in Venezuela (where Chavez has asked the legislature for a year as absolute dictator)? The southern tier of the US should be no problem to hit from there. Like ... Atlanta.
It's so embarrassing when the survivors demand of the media "How come you never said anything about this?" Well, here's ONE thing they deigned to tell, among many they still are not.
....interesting new phase indeed!
No matter what happens, there will be survivors. There always are.
Make your preps. Say your prayers and hunker down kids.
KPN3%
Regarding the NY Times silly registration policy...Just cut and paste a little of the article if you have it and throw it into an internet search. You'll get the entire article while giving the finger to the antiAmerican, antiChristian, filth loving Times.
There was a large study of this same thing done in the late '70's or very early '80's commissioned by the US Senate I believe.
My public library, Winston-Salem, NC, had a copy so I read it there. Many large towns are US government publication repositories, the one in downtown W-S was such, that's why it had a copy.
The study looked at three possible attack scenarios. All out nuclear strike from the Soviet Union, a surgical strike against US government strategic resources, and finally, a terrorist nuclear attack against a large city such as New York with a single, very small warhead.
Damage and fallout patterns were analyzed, and placed on maps of the USA.
All very interesting, no surprise that it might be done again with color graphics instead of the original black and white.
Studied and trained extensively for and with this stuff in the Army. Problem with that map is, it only shows ONE weather scenario. Weather at the time of the blast, and in the 48 hrs preceding and after it, is the biggest determination of what the fallout will do. It still follows that if you survive the blast itself, you have a better than 80% chance of surviving the fallout. But the biggest problem after that, is surviving what the govt. does, and what the surrounding populace does as well. The best thing one can do is: Don't live inside any major metropolitan area and: Don't live NE,E, or SE within 50 miles of such an area. If you do, and there is a nuke strike, and you live, you have about 12 hrs max to relocate. The closer to ground zero you live, the less time you will have. Forget dosimeters, they'll only tell you up to 100rads of what you've absorbed, and that's enough to make you very ill.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-- H. L. Mencken
The Bad People have been feeling up air travelers' genitals more than ever, but all that molestation still hasn't found a bomb carried by a teenage girl. The national thrill of fear from masked ghostly terrorists is wearing off.
Next week the new existential threat might be banana peels dropped at the tops of stairways. Or a killer asteroid on a collision course. Or maybe giant bees mutated by nuclear radiation. What black and white film is on the science fiction channel tonight?
The only country that currently is both making war talk and has the industrialization to carry it out is the USA. Fact is that every state's big plans for wartime relevancy are being snuffed by state bankruptcy. The ability to wage big war has gone way down uniformly worldwide. This is a goodness thing. Swing flu, bird flu, whatever flu is a fake. Making Al Gore the world energy monopoly emperor is a fake. Instead of repeating the NYT's hysteria, we should point and laugh.
What new hobgoblin will the regime come up with? Oh, right, revealing celebrity politician gossip is equivalent to revealing troop movement orders. Either you let the government feel around in your financial underware, or you're with the terrorists. Prepare for widespread tax evasion as suburbanites decline to file a 1099 on the neighbor kid who mows their lawn for $25, just as everybody declines to file one now. Even the tech-curmudgeon Republicans are getting serious about encryption. Can a free market for smaller purchases be that far off?
50KT is a "tactical" size for a weapon, used by the handful to spread out overpressure and blast on multiple battlefield targets and to make a wide cloud of fallout over downwind units (think cold war Soviet mechanized units, forward air bases, and masses of troops). Military forces are not stopped by fallout or chemical weapons, only slowed/inconvenienced, but civilians without training and defensive gear will die by the millions in affected areas. 550KT is beginning to be the smallest "strategic" size weapon that a Nation-State would use on the urban centers of an enemy (3 per target, spaced out in time and slightly geographically offset around high-value targets, "to be sure"). As has been noted, effective use of these weapons depends on delivery vs. target type: hard-targets like an ICBM silo demand very-close detonation perhaps burrowing and underground-burst (if the systems are so sophisticated as to allow this kind of delivery). Soft targets like high-density cities made of brick/glass/steel and filled with unprepared civilians should be targeted with a low air-burst to put direct overpressure (but not so much fireball) and heat/radiation onto surrounding area flammable <3 story buildings. Ground-burst is less effective on immediate area but sucks up more debris for downwind fallout effects. Lower-tech terrorists might do a "tall-burst delivery" from the roof of a high building or a heavy-lift helicopter flight with suicide pilot/remote pilot (thus remaining off of FAA flight plans and radars). Device packaged as a big rooftop HVAC box would be almost invisible to most while being craned or helicoptered into place. Defense against this is loyal American citizens doing heavy construction and installs (the cheapest imported labor is not the best overall deal).
As always, accurate assessment of capability and intention is very important. It would also be useful to consider that Islamic Terror serves the long-range objectives of their handlers in Moscow well, while allowing pretty-good deniability.
Big Sis is welcome to consider any of my suggestions and contact me for advice on OpFor capabilities and innovation. I've only been concerned about this since 3rd grade in 1976 when the devices were going to be 10MT+ H-Bombs just minutes away by SLBM.
Cheers.
50KT is a "tactical" size for a weapon, used by the handful to spread out overpressure and blast on multiple battlefield targets and to make a wide cloud of fallout over downwind units (think cold war Soviet mechanized units, forward air bases, and masses of troops). Military forces are not stopped by fallout or chemical weapons, only slowed/inconvenienced, but civilians without training and defensive gear will die by the millions in affected areas. 550KT is beginning to be the smallest "strategic" size weapon that a Nation-State would use on the urban centers of an enemy (3 per target, spaced out in time and slightly geographically offset around high-value targets, "to be sure"). As has been noted, effective use of these weapons depends on delivery vs. target type: hard-targets like an ICBM silo demand very-close detonation perhaps burrowing and underground-burst (if the systems are so sophisticated as to allow this kind of delivery). Soft targets like high-density cities made of brick/glass/steel and filled with unprepared civilians should be targeted with a low air-burst to put direct overpressure (but not so much fireball) and heat/radiation onto surrounding area flammable <3 story buildings. Ground-burst is less effective on immediate area but sucks up more debris for downwind fallout effects. Lower-tech terrorists might do a "tall-burst delivery" from the roof of a high building or a heavy-lift helicopter flight with suicide pilot/remote pilot (thus remaining off of FAA flight plans and radars). Device packaged as a big rooftop HVAC box would be almost invisible to most while being craned or helicoptered into place. Defense against this is loyal American citizens doing heavy construction and installs (the cheapest imported labor is not the best overall deal).
As always, accurate assessment of capability and intention is very important. It would also be useful to consider that Islamic Terror serves the long-range objectives of their handlers in Moscow well, while allowing pretty-good deniability.
Big Sis is welcome to consider any of my suggestions and contact me for advice on OpFor capabilities and innovation. I've only been concerned about this since 3rd grade in 1976 when the devices were going to be 10MT+ H-Bombs just minutes away by SLBM.
Cheers.
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