How long would you and your family survive?

[SSSnail]

Since most of us are so dependent on technology, and we have taken everything for granted. We assume that the supermarket will always be there, the fast food place down the street will always serve meals for a few bucks, the water we drink is always pure and the vending machine will drop a cold drink if we have the coins for it.

Now, in the very likely event of a nuclear holocaust, how long would you and your family survive? What would you do?

I honestly don't know what I would do. If I survive the initial blast, I may try and stay alive on whatever I can scavenge. Forget trying to cultivate anything, no internet, no powers, no water... I hate thinking about this.

 

[FoBoT]

we store extra food (not bomb shelter/crazy like, just extra stuff we normally eat)

and we live in the country with farmers all around, we'd make it quite a while, at least until the mobs from the city made it 40 miles on foot to our area. but the farmers/rednecks have lots of guns, so they could hold the horde off i think


i need to get some guns/ammo though, nothing like being prepared

 

[slsmnaz]

Originally posted by: FoBoT
i need to get some guns/ammo though, nothing like being prepared

What do you do when the ammo runs out? Get a bow, it's more reliable and ammo is easier to recycle.

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: slsmnaz

Originally posted by: FoBoT
i need to get some guns/ammo though, nothing like being prepared

What do you do when the ammo runs out? Get a bow, it's more reliable and ammo is easier to recycle.

its also a lot harder to aim and probably not as devasting as a bullet. its also tiring because to get any power out of it the draw has to be pretty strong and you have to be able to hold it. it also takes longer between shots. you also need room to be able to draw it.

 

[SacrosanctFiend]

Originally posted by: slsmnaz

Originally posted by: FoBoT
i need to get some guns/ammo though, nothing like being prepared

What do you do when the ammo runs out? Get a bow, it's more reliable and ammo is easier to recycle.

It would be a long time before I ran out of ammo...and even then, I can reload for quite sometime after I'm dry. As for food...all we have around here are tobacco and corn farms, so some bartering would be in order.

 

[Lonyo]

I would go to someone I knows house, who has a father in the army. And they live on a farm. Sorted.

 

[slsmnaz]

Originally posted by: pontifex

Originally posted by: slsmnaz

Originally posted by: FoBoT
i need to get some guns/ammo though, nothing like being prepared

What do you do when the ammo runs out? Get a bow, it's more reliable and ammo is easier to recycle.

its also a lot harder to aim and probably not as devasting as a bullet. its also tiring because to get any power out of it the draw has to be pretty strong and you have to be able to hold it. it also takes longer between shots. you also need room to be able to draw it.

Even though I mainly bow hunt now I'll sort of agree. Compound bows + releases have made it so much easier to learn to shoot and be accurate quickly. A bow with a 70lb draw and decent let-off is not that hard to hold for a few moments, long enough to get a good shot.

Might be a little harder with a recurve and fingers only.

 

[Zolty]

in the event of such a holocaust I would be manning the machine gun, tina turner would be driving, and mel gibson in braveheart garb will be riding shotgun.

 

[Mr Incognito]

It's funny how you all assume it won't impact near you. Not much to do after a nuclear fallout, I think I would just join the zombies and eat brains.

 

[nweaver]

Have about 4-6 months worth of food and water stored (assuming we don't get enough radation to contaminate that stuff). Water is powered by a well, so we can hook a gen up to the well, and the subdivision would have water (well pumps water to 2-5000 gallon tanks, and 1 10,000 gallon tank). I heat my house with wood/coal in a stove, and I might get solar panels to heat water for my other (radiant hot water) source of heat. I have horses (tranportation) and my in-laws are farmers (so we just have to make it the ~120 miles or so to the farm). Don't store any fuel right now (gas/diesel) but my in-laws have ~600 gallons at any given time usually. We also have a community disaster plan (with practice drills) so that we can take care of each other. This includes ~8 firefighters and 3 paramedics. I live out of town about 15 miles, and we have enough guns and ammo to qualify as a small militia


all in all, we are doing pretty good I think. Our goal is to get more food and water storage soon, and put a generator for the house in the shop, with an underground tank for fuel. Not sure if that will ever happen though (have the gen, just need to wire the house up and bury a tank...the gen will get running this summer)

 

[Mr Incognito]

It's threads like these that make me afraid of OT.

 

[effowe]

Well I live in a big city prime for a nuke attack, so even if I somehow survived the initial blast, I would definitely get radiation poisoning and die shortly thereafter. How big of a radius would a nuclear/hydrogen bomb leave, with todays bombs?

 

[BigToque]

Originally posted by: nweaver
Have about 4-6 months worth of food and water stored (assuming we don't get enough radation to contaminate that stuff). Water is powered by a well, so we can hook a gen up to the well, and the subdivision would have water (well pumps water to 2-5000 gallon tanks, and 1 10,000 gallon tank). I heat my house with wood/coal in a stove, and I might get solar panels to heat water for my other (radiant hot water) source of heat. I have horses (tranportation) and my in-laws are farmers (so we just have to make it the ~120 miles or so to the farm). Don't store any fuel right now (gas/diesel) but my in-laws have ~600 gallons at any given time usually. We also have a community disaster plan (with practice drills) so that we can take care of each other. This includes ~8 firefighters and 3 paramedics. I live out of town about 15 miles, and we have enough guns and ammo to qualify as a small militia


all in all, we are doing pretty good I think. Our goal is to get more food and water storage soon, and put a generator for the house in the shop, with an underground tank for fuel. Not sure if that will ever happen though (have the gen, just need to wire the house up and bury a tank...the gen will get running this summer)

/thread

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: Mr Incognito
It's threads like these that make me afraid of OT.

its nublet like you that do it for me.
WWYBYWB?

 

[deerslayer]

Originally posted by: Mr Incognito
It's funny how you all assume it won't impact near you. Not much to do after a nuclear fallout, I think I would just join the zombies and eat brains.

My thoughts exactly. Don't you have to survive the blast(s) before you worry about surviving the aftermath?

 

[Kntx]

I'd die in the first strike. One of the lucky ones.

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: deerslayer

Originally posted by: Mr Incognito
It's funny how you all assume it won't impact near you. Not much to do after a nuclear fallout, I think I would just join the zombies and eat brains.

My thoughts exactly. Don't you have to survive the blast(s) before you worry about surviving the aftermath?

um, i think its pretty much inferred by the OPs posts that you survive the initial blasts/attack. you guys read too much into stuff

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: deerslayer

Originally posted by: Mr Incognito
It's funny how you all assume it won't impact near you. Not much to do after a nuclear fallout, I think I would just join the zombies and eat brains.

My thoughts exactly. Don't you have to survive the blast(s) before you worry about surviving the aftermath?

I'm probably far enough away to be OK...unless they nuke the Toole army depot (which they might), then I would probably get rad poisening pretty quick. Other then that, the AF base near me is a more minor one (no first/second strike bombers iirc) and is far enought away I would probably be OK.

My inlaws are 30 miles from the closest gas station (also where they go to get the mail). The would probably survive the blast

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Originally posted by: effowe
Well I live in a big city prime for a nuke attack, so even if I somehow survived the initial blast, I would definitely get radiation poisoning and die shortly thereafter. How big of a radius would a nuclear/hydrogen bomb leave, with todays bombs?

http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html[/L

 

[dennilfloss]

Longer if you read this.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=38&threadid=2021543&enterthread=y

 

[Suture]

I'd eat all the food in my house as fast as I could, and then eat my roommate.

 

[TXHokie]

If I see a mushroom cloud, my first reaction would be to make a quick grocery run.

 

[effowe]

Originally posted by: JeffreyLebowski

Originally posted by: effowe
Well I live in a big city prime for a nuke attack, so even if I somehow survived the initial blast, I would definitely get radiation poisoning and die shortly thereafter. How big of a radius would a nuclear/hydrogen bomb leave, with todays bombs?

http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html

Fixed, ok so I wouldn't get hit by the initial blast if they set it off in Downtown Chicago, which would be the prime target, but I have done no stockpiling so I'd be out of luck.

 

[deerslayer]

Originally posted by: pontifex

um, i think its pretty much inferred by the OPs posts that you survive the initial blasts/attack. you guys read too much into stuff

Well, I figured a good share of the people on this forum were from relatively large towns/cities and would be screwed anyhow.

 

[Bryophyte]

We could make it a long time. We live in the country so we have lots of food around (pantry and deep freezer usually full), a generator (though we don't currently have much fuel on hand), 1500 gallons of fresh water at all times in a holding tank and a well that we can run off the generator (and we could get water out of the creeks and ponds and sanitize it if we had to). We have a rifle and shotgun, though we're currently almost out of ammo. The main problems I foresee in a disaster that would cut us off from the rest of the world would be me running out of Zyrtec (have a couple months' supply, it keeps me from having constant hives that could potentially cut off my airway), and not having enough ammo. We're ok for water, food, and heat (use a woodstove almost exclusively and have used it for cooking on on many occasions during extended power outages.) Having a supply of gas and diesel would make things nicer, and having more ammo would make hunting much more productive. I have enough garden seeds leftover from gardening last year that I could garden indefinitely (I could save seeds from crops from year to year) and we have an orchard (apples, plums, asian pears, cherries, kiwifruit, strawberries, raspberries, rhubarb, blueberries, lingonberries) along with native foods we could gather from our forest. If I have twenty or thirty gallons of diesel, I can keep my greenhouse running through the winter and keep cool season crops growing in there. We have chickens (9 hens and a rooster), so we have plenty of eggs to eat and could let the hens set nests once in awhile to get chicks that would make some fine eating after they grew large enough. I even have a banana tree, pomegranite tree, eight coffee trees, and three citrus trees (lemon, lime, orange) growing indoors. A neighbor has a bunch of goats, so we could probably find a way to barter for a breeding pair and end up with goat's milk and kids to raise for meat. We plan on stocking our pond with trout fry in the next year, so we'll be able to fish on our own place in the not too distant future.

Cliffnotes: All in all, we're much, much better off than most people.