Let's punch this puppy into a website. One nuclear armed madman plus large city... Not including fallout. How many millions dead?
@ai6yr So the only flaw is that they would most likely use a Minuteman III which would have a nominal yield of 300KT
@cvvhrn @ai6yr
Why would he only use one?

@Dougfir @ai6yr

I would assume because of the fallout literal and political would be more than the cult GQP can bear

If you start hitting places on the gulf side you may frag our "allies" with fallout etc

@cvvhrn @Dougfir It's bad to nuke the people who give you planes
@ai6yr @cvvhrn @Dougfir It's bad to nuke people.
@driusan @ai6yr @cvvhrn
And yet here we are.
@Dougfir @driusan @cvvhrn Well, I'd argue it's bad to nuke ANYTHING (plants, animals, planets, people, fungi, etc.)
@ai6yr @Dougfir @cvvhrn maybe squirrels or mosquittos.
@driusan @cvvhrn @Dougfir Ah, but even a tactical nuke at the squirrel hideout on the hill next to my house will make Los Angeles uninhabitable for a generations. (well, at least for those who don't want extra limbs)
@ai6yr @driusan @cvvhrn
Fun little story from back in the day.
We would have air raid drills in junior high in the 60s. One fine day, our teacher said don't bother climbing under the chairs. Between March AFB and Norton on the other side of Box Springs mountain, there was no way any of us would survive. While probably true, that was less comforting than he intended.

@Dougfir @ai6yr @driusan @cvvhrn
So yeah, I went to an elementary school adjacent to the Alameda, Naval Air Station, and this was during the Vietnam war, and we too, had to do the duck and cover under our desks, unfortunately, as has been the case since my time began…

Even at the age of seven, I was a highly logical thinker and had the audacity to inform the teacher that hiding under our desks was a waste of time because we were gonna get blown up anyway

Yeah, that was a phone call to my parents …

@MsMerope @Dougfir @ai6yr @driusan @cvvhrn

LOL.

i had a similar discussion about how a wooden desk wasn't going help either a nuclear bomb or a tornado. :)

my mom's ambition, never realized, was to be able to walk into a school office where my sister and i attended and not be instantly recognized by the entire office staff. :)

Duck And Cover (1951) Bert The Turtle

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@MsMerope @Dougfir @ai6yr @driusan @cvvhrn

gack!

i think we got a 60s remake but it was still "duck & cover"...

@paul_ipv6 @MsMerope @Dougfir @ai6yr @driusan @cvvhrn I didn't understand this at the time, but the bigger a bomb is, the larger is the penumbral area where the blast/radiation doesn't kill you but the flying debris does. In the 1950s bombs were getting very big. Later, as missile guidance got more precise, they switched to smaller but more numerous bombs. In a full exchange survival may be pointless. But if you do want to survive for a while, even a thin barrier can really increase your odds.
@hattifattener @paul_ipv6 @MsMerope @ai6yr @driusan @cvvhrn
I can understand that as an adult but back in the 60s, I would never have understood such nuances.

@hattifattener @paul_ipv6 @MsMerope @Dougfir @ai6yr @driusan

Spot on. As missiles became more accurate, the emphasis on city busters like the W-53 (Largest even in service int he US) which was a whopping 9MT or 600x the Hiroshima blast delivered by a Titan II which had a CEP of up to 1.5km, where as a modern Trident D5's CEP is 90m or so its W88 warhead is up to 475kt

@hattifattener @paul_ipv6 @MsMerope @Dougfir @ai6yr @driusan

Yep, assuming you survive the initial blast wave, radiation exposure has three primary things you can mitigate

1) Time, less time exposed is a no brainer
2) Distance, get far away from the source. Easier said than done in a full exchange
3) Shielding: The more the better but even an improvised shelter made up of a trench that you reinforce and cover with dirt will provide a degree of shielding

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0787483.pdf