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Probaway – Life Hacks

~ Many helpful hints on living your life more successfully.

Tag Archives: thermonuclear war

15 Minutes – a quick review – and beyond

01 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by probaway in B-47, Lifehaven, policy, survival

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

15 Minutes, Armageddon, Curtis Lemay, The Cold War, thermonuclear war, US v Soviet war

We are all still living comfortable lives, and few people think much about thermonuclear war, but it wasn’t that way in the late 50s and early 60s. Everyone was worrying about the possibility of hydrogen bombs falling on their city, which was strange because everyone wants to live a long and healthy life while having as much fun as possible with their friends and family, so who would be trying to make H-bombs and preparing to kill millions of people? Unfortunately, it was primarily Americans and soon after the Soviets in Russia who were in a potentially civilization-destroying arms race. It was insane, everyone thought it was insane, and yet both of these countries were pursuing this craziness to the brink of Armageddon and to the very last hair trigger point before backing off.

15 Minutes: General Curtis LeMay and the Countdown to Nuclear Annihilation by L. Douglas Kenney clearly shows how intelligent sane men can push all humanity and the rest of our living world to the brink of extinction. Even though this was called the Cold War, and it was a war that never went into all out combat mode, it was the most dangerous time for humanity since Mt. Toba erupted 73,000 years ago. These two events almost destroyed our species. What worries me about nuclear war is that it is being conducted by sane people with positive human motives.

Stanley Kubrick, after making his Academy Award winning black comedy movie about the advent of a Doomsday war, Dr. Strangelove, is quoted as saying, “I suspect that few planets survive their nuclear age.” That comment is probably still true at the moment because we still have a super abundance of weapons and the only thing protecting us is dumb luck and fear of retaliation. That isn’t a stable situation! We have been very lucky so far, but our luck seems to be running out. Iran and Israel seem to be at loggerheads over each other’s right to exist. India and Pakistan don’t seem much more accommodating to one another’s existence. At present the U.S. and Russia have recognized their ability to annihilate one another but at the expense of self destruction, so they just respect each other’s power and live in a tight little peace. The major coming problem seems to be who will control the world when China surpasses the US in overall economic and military power.

After 20 years of aerial combat experience Curtis Lemay had created and was in control of what he thought was necessary to protect America: a collection of fabulously powerful weapons and a highly trained fighting force who were loyal and committed to his cause – the Strategic Air Command. At the end of 1961 – “we also know that the actual number of SIOP alert forces totaled 1,551 delivery vehicles—bombers, missiles, submarines, navy aircraft—with 3,382 megatons on hair-trigger readiness. There were 27,387 nuclear weapons in the national stockpile.  The Soviet stockpile numbered 3,322 bombs.” p. 284

Potential Nuclear Targets

A year before the Cuba Missile crisis, on November 24, 1961 because of a minor fault on a radio tower near Black Forest, Colorado, SAC went onto a War Alert readiness status and every available bomber was either in the air or was loaded and with engines running at the end of the runways. The majority of SAC’s power could have been in the air in under 15 Minutes. That was caused by a technical error, but the Cuba Missile Crisis was worse because it was intentional and in some ways we came even closer to … _ _ _ …

Below is a promotional video seeking workers for the National Labs. Watch it and you will see that the people working in these occupations are normal and intelligent and apparently moral. That is what makes this a problem so dangerous and so intractable.

You can help make the world safer by working at the National Labs.

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Lifehaven – The green zone of possible survival after an Atomic War.

18 Friday Apr 2008

Posted by probaway in Lifehaven, survival

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

atomic war, lifeboat, Lifeboat Earth, Lifehaven, thermonuclear war, zone of survival

This map is the the flight domain of the Northern Royal Albatross Diomedea sanfordi . This green zone is very similar to that one which has been used for creating the list of possible Lifehavens. Because the range of this Albatross is derived from empirical observations of a bird species, it might well demonstrate an understanding of basic natural conditions which were not considered in my armchair peregrinations.

The main difference in these birds travels, from the Life-haven locations, is the inclusion of all of New Zealand, all of Tasmania, and all of the coasts of Chili and Argentina. Because, these birds live in the air, and rarely come down to the surface it means that there is a steady flow of air across the water. They use the resulting wind shear to generate lift, and thus these birds are able to stay in the air almost all the time. Thus this map may be a good one for finding good new Lifehaven sites, and eliminating some other potentially bad ones. The forces that created that wind pattern are probably the same ones which are going to create the winds which will carry the radioactive fallout south after a major atomic war. These world wide wind cell patterns are known as Hadley cells. It is the semi-isolation of the flow of radioactive air from the northern hemisphere atomic bombed targets across these cells to the southern hemisphere that makes the green zone possible. The antarctic zone south of the green zone isn’t really habitable without sustained support from the more temperate regions so I haven’t located many potential Lifehavens there.

Hadley cell cross section.

For example, half way between South Africa and Paraguay there is the island of Gough -40.323 -9.921 which might be okay, but the island of Tristan Da Cunha, -37.113 -12.288 only a little to the north, might not be. There is an Amsterdam Island -37.797 77.572 half way between Australia and Madagascar which is just outside of the green zone on this map which might mean this otherwise seemingly good site might not be such a good one after all. The photos of this island look grassy and bleak, and because of its remoteness, and its lack of military value it shouldn’t be a target, but it might get heavy fallout because of the winds. It is garrisoned by about 50 French people for weather observations or whatever, and some wild cattle. It might be a possible Lifehaven site if it were well dug in. But these particular albatross species which I have been following, in this post, seem to have excluded it for some reason other than fallout.

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