The first thing you'd see if a
nuclear bomb exploded nearby is a flood of light so bright, you may think the
sun blew up.
Wincing from temporary blindness,
you'd scan the horizon and see an orange fireball. The gurgling flames would
rise and darken into purple-hued column of black smoke, which would turn in on
itself. As a toadstool-like mushroom took shape, the deafening shock
front of the blast would rip through the area — and possibly knock
you off your feet.
Congratulations! In this
hypothetical scenario, you've just survived a nuclear blast with an energy
output of about 10 kilotons (20 million pounds) of TNT. That's roughly 66% of
energy released by either atom bomb dropped on Japan
in 1945.
This scenario may sound
far-fetched, but more than 14,900
nuclear weapons exist in the world, and kiloton-class nukes (like
the one we just described) are now proliferating
in favor of larger weapons. In fact, a 10-kiloton-or-less nuclear detonation by
a terrorist is the first of 15 disaster
scenarios that the US government has planned for.OS
North Korea's
May 2017 missile testSEE G
No one could fault you for
panicking after the sight and roar of a nuclear blast.
But there is one thing you should never do, according to Brooke
Buddemeier, a health physicist and radiation expert at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory.
"Don't get in your
car," he tells Business Insider — don't try to drive, and don't assume
that the glass and metal of a vehicle can protect you.
Why vehicles and nuclear survival
don't mix
Avoiding driving after a nuclear
blast is wise because streets would probably be full of erratic drivers,
accidents, and debris. But Buddemeier says there's another important reason to
ditch the car: a fearsome after-effect of nuclear blasts called fallout.
Fallout is a complex mixture of
fission products, or radioisotopes, that are created by splitting atoms. Many
of the fission products decay rapidly and emit gamma radiation, an invisible
yet highly energetic form of light. Exposure to too much of this radiation in a
short time can damage the body's cells and its ability to fix itself — a
condition called acute radiation sickness.
"It also affects the immune
system and the your ability to fight infections," Buddemeier says.
Only very dense and thick
materials, like many feet of dirt or inches of lead, can reliably stop the
fallout.
"The fireball from a
10-kiloton explosion is so hot, it actually shoots up into the atmosphere at
over 100 miles per hour," Buddemeier says. "These fission products
mix in with the dirt and debris that's drawn up into the atmosphere from the
fireball."
Trapped in sand, dirt, cement,
metal, and anything else in the immediate blast area, the gamma-shooting
fission products can fly more than five miles into the air. The larger pieces
drop back down, while lighter particles can be carried by the wind before
raining over distant areas.
"Close in to the [blast]
site, they may be a bit larger than golf-ball-size, but really what we're
talking about are things like salt- or sand-size particles," Buddemeier
says. "It's the penetrating gamma radiation coming off of those particles
that's the hazard."
Which brings us back to why a car
is a terrible place to take shelter.
"Modern vehicles are made of
glass and very light metals, and they offer almost no protection," he
says. "You're just going to sit on a road some place [and be
exposed]."
Buddemeier says he's asked people
what their knee-jerk response to a nuclear blast might be. It wasn't
comforting.
"There was actually a lot of
folks who had this notion — and it may be a Hollywood notion — of 'oh, jump in
the car and try to skedaddle out of town if you see a mushroom cloud.'" he
says.
However, fallout is carried by
high-altitude winds that are "often booking along at 100 miles per
hour," he says, and "often not going in the same direction as the
ground-level winds. So your ability to know where the fallout's gonna go, and
outrun it, are... Well, it's very unlikely."
What you should do instead of
driving.
The protection
factor that various buildings, and locations within them, offer from the
radioactive fallout of a nuclear blast. The higher the number, the greater the
protection.
Your best shot at survival after
a nuclear disaster is to get into some sort of "robust structure" as
quickly as possible and stay there, Buddemeier says. He's a fan of the mantra
"go in, stay in, tune in".
"Get inside ... and get to
the center of that building. If you happen to have access to below-ground
areas, getting below-ground is great," he says. "Stay in: 12 to 24
hours."
The reason to wait is that levels
of gamma and other radiation fall off exponentially after a nuclear blast as
"hot" radioisotopes decay into more stable atoms and pose less of a
danger. This slowly shrinks the dangerous fallout zone — the area where
high-altitude winds have dropped fission products. (Instead of staying put,
however, a recent study also suggested that moving to seek out a stronger
shelter or basement may not be a bad
idea if the only one around is flimsy.)
The dangerous fallout zone (dark
purple) shrinks quickly, while the much less dangerous hot zone (faint purple)
grows for about 24 hours before shrinking back.
Finally, tune in.
"Try to use whatever
communication tools you have," he says. He added that a hand-cranked radio
is a good object to keep at work and home, since emergency providers, in
addition to broadcasting instructions, will be tracking the fallout cloud and
trying to broadcast where any safe corridors for escape are located.
There is only one exception to
the "no cars" rule, says Buddemeier: If you're in a parking garage
with your car, the concrete might act as a shield. In that case, you could stay
there and listen to a radio inside your car.
If everyone followed these
guidelines after nuclear blast, he says, hundreds of thousands of lives could
be saved.
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