➡ The article features an interview with Mark Rush, a U.S. Navy veteran and author of a book on nuclear survival. Rush discusses the misconceptions about nuclear warfare, explaining that it’s more survivable than most people think. He also talks about the reduction in nuclear weapons, from tens of thousands during the Cold War to around 5,500 today, and how this changes the dynamics of potential nuclear conflict. Rush believes that even with fewer weapons, the threat of nuclear war remains a strong deterrent due to the massive destruction and loss of life it would cause.
➡ The text discusses the survivability of a nuclear war, arguing that it’s not an automatic death sentence for everyone. The speaker, an operations analyst, spent two years studying declassified documents and came up with a scenario where only about 20% of the population would perish in a large-scale nuclear war. This is because modern warheads are smaller and less destructive than Cold War-era ones, and the damage zones of these warheads would only cover about 1% of the United States. The speaker also questions the validity of the nuclear winter hypothesis, suggesting that it’s based on models funded by people who already had a predetermined outcome in mind.
➡ The text discusses a hypothetical limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan, questioning why this scenario was chosen over others. It suggests that the location and season of a nuclear war could significantly impact the outcome, with a war near the equator in summer potentially causing more damage due to better circulation patterns and more sunshine. The text also discusses the effects of different types of nuclear blasts, explaining that air bursts are more efficient and cause less radiation than ground bursts. The author suggests that in a realistic scenario, most nuclear weapons would be used in air bursts, reducing the overall fallout.
➡ The text discusses how to protect oneself from radiation in the event of a nuclear detonation. It suggests building a fort with sandbags in the center of your house or in a basement, as this can block out 99% of radiation. It also recommends having a Geiger counter to measure radiation levels. If you’re in a city, being in the middle of a high-rise building can offer more protection than a wooden structure’s basement.
➡ The text discusses the importance of preparing for a nuclear event, focusing on the need for shelter, food, and water. It suggests using sturdy storage totes filled with water as a makeshift radiation shield and emergency water supply. The text also explains that food and water aren’t made radioactive by gamma rays, so they’re safe to consume if sealed and not contaminated. It advises filtering surface water before drinking and assures that deep wells should remain uncontaminated. The text also debunks myths about nuclear weapons, emphasizing the need to understand the science behind them to prepare effectively.
➡ The text discusses the importance of being prepared for potential disasters, such as nuclear attacks, and how different locations may require different preparations. It also highlights the use of websites like Polymarket and GMC map.com to track potential threats and radiation levels. The author argues against the common belief that everyone would die in a nuclear war, stating that survival is possible with the right knowledge and preparation. However, he also emphasizes his desire for arms control and reducing the threat to the population.
➡ The text discusses the importance of preparing for potential nuclear threats, challenging the fatalistic narrative that there’s nothing we can do. It criticizes the lack of practical advice on survival measures like storing food, water, and having a radiation meter. The author also questions why governments maintain a narrative of inevitable doom instead of encouraging preparation. Lastly, it raises concerns about the vulnerability of nuclear power plants in fallout zones, especially if they can’t be resupplied or staffed.
➡ The text discusses the potential impact of nuclear fallout and EMPs (Electromagnetic Pulses) on various regions in North America. It suggests that while some areas may be heavily affected, many places could survive and recover, similar to post-World War II Europe. The text also highlights the importance of strategic relocation and preparation, including understanding wind patterns and proximity to nuclear power plants. Lastly, it discusses the potential for EMPs to disrupt electronics, but suggests that not all electronics would be rendered useless.
➡ The text discusses the potential for survival in the event of a nuclear attack, suggesting that while survival in bunkers like Cheyenne Mountain and Raven Rock is possible, it would be extremely undesirable due to the harsh conditions. The author also mentions the strategy of multiple nuclear strikes, which would eventually reach even the most fortified locations. The conversation ends with an invitation for readers to ask questions in the comments section and a promotion for a survival gear website.

We’re starting to lose our memory of how horrible these weapons are. When you have a part of your ruling class in charge of these weapons that don’t understand how they work or what the consequences are, that is what is dangerous. People are willing to sacrifice your well being to advance their political agenda. There’s this narrative that you’re going to die, but that is roughly 1% of the United States. So if you’re part of the 1%, you might die. People living in that other 99% have a pretty good chance of survival. I’m not challenging nuclear war, its outcome.

I’m challenging the narrative. World War three is already happening. This is a house of cars and it is in the process of collapsing right now. You’re going to see an economic crash the likes of which we’ve never seen. Hi folks, Canadian prepper here. Today’s guest is Mark Rush, a U. S. Navy ballistic missile submarine veteran and former nuclear power plant engineer. He’s the author of the book after the flash, a modern guide to nuclear survival that I would strongly recommend. It’s an excellent book. It’s a book that cuts through the cold war myths in Hollywood, fear mongering with current science backed tactics for ordinary people and argues that nuclear war is in fact very survivable.

So today I’m hoping to pick at Mark’s brain about what kind of misconceptions there are about modern nuclear warfare, why it’s survivable and why it being survivable. And this is where I might put my own spin on things, makes it unfortunately more likely, not less likely. Mark, thanks for coming today. Really looking forward to this conversation. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Appreciate the time. So what do you say is the biggest misconception about nuclear war in your opinion? The biggest problem I see there’s a lot of people that are still reciting the cold war narrative.

Back when we had, or the Russians had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. With the arms control that’s been going on since the nuclear test ban treaty in 1963, those levels of nuclear weapons have dropped. No longer does Russia have 40,000 nuclear weapons, it’s down to roughly 5,500. But many of those weapons are waiting to be disassembled. So they’re still in the process disassembling roughly 1500. There’s another 1500 held in reserve, and roughly 1500 tactical short range nuclear weapons that would be used on a battlefield maybe in Europe. And then what concerns us are the warheads that can strike Canada and the United States that is Roughly, I use 1600 in my book.

A lot of sources say 1700 during the Cold War, that number the warheads able to be delivered to the United States and Canada was closer to 10,000. So we’ve seen a 85% reduction in deliverable warheads to North America. And I think that’s great news. It is great news. I guess one of the issues might be though is that if there are less nuclear weapons, and I mean one of the deterrence factors is this concept of mutually assured destruction. So the more nuclear weapons you have, the greater the deterrent. Because I guess the idea is that everybody dies.

You know, if, if, if, you know, if you die, then we die. So that’s kind of a deterrent. So nuclear non proliferation is good if you see it through to its completion. But if you find yourself in a situation where you maybe have less nuclear weapons and not enough to destroy the planet, then that also potentially increases the likelihood of them being used because that mutually assured destruction deterrent is no longer there. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I still believe that the, the numbers are adequate. In fact, I would like to reduce them a little further.

Right now, 1600 is still high. I would like to see that down to a thousand. And I believe if you hit the United States with 500 nuclear weapons, you are still going to cause tens of millions of deaths. If you target cities, it’s not absolute death, but it’s still totally destroying the economy, infrastructure of the United States. The current levels, my estimates are roughly 20% of the population would perish in the United States during a large scale Russian attack. And that’s tens of millions of people. That is still a deterrence in my opinion. So there’s two different approaches to engaging in a strategic nuclear warfare.

There’s counter force and counter value. Counter value is targeting, you know, cities and various places of economic interest, whereas counter force would be targeting things like missile silos, ports, military bases, airstrips, that sort of thing. If, if they were to take a counter force approach, which seems to make sense because I don’t know why you would target something that couldn’t strike back when you had a limited amount of weapons at your disposal. I guess the thinking is, I was talking to the late Peter Vincent Pry and he thought that it would be more of a counter force strategy that was deployed and that they would then use the remaining nuclear weapons to hold the cities for ransom.

Now obviously we’re, we’re in the realm of speculation. I’m sure you know things that I don’t that you are not at liberty to discuss, and I can appreciate that. But what are your thoughts on those two approaches and how they might be employed by the Russians against us or the Chinese? I suppose we’ll go with the Russians and say, have the most warheads that can hit the United States. So that’s more of the worst case scenario. I did a pretty deep dive on the missile fields and here’s my logic on that. I’ll get to that in a second.

The bombers. Absolutely. That’s a first round. All the bombers are in basically three bases. Not many of them are loaded, ready to go. It would be difficult to see our bomber force get off the ground in less than say, 20 minutes from a sub strike or 30 minutes from an ICBM strike. So those add little value as a retaliatory weapon, in my opinion. I did look at the missile silos and being a submariner, of course the submarines are the best. But I gained a new respect for the Minuteman silos. The design of those silos, you know, they’re spread out all over the place.

So no one single nuclear weapon, Cold War era nuclear weapon, which are larger, can hit more than one silo at a time. And we’ve reduced the number of warheads on those missiles to one. So if you have 1600 warheads and you’re trying to strike 400 silos with one nuclear weapon each, and your warheads are no longer in the thousands of kilotons, megatons range, and these silos are designed to withstand megaton strikes nearby. I mean, if direct hit is a direct hit, you are unlikely to eliminate all those silos in a first strike attempt. Bare minimum, you’re going to need at least two ICBMs to take out a single warhead.

So you’re trading two warheads for one, there’s going to be failures. You know, rockets blow up, you’re sending a nuclear weapon through the stratosphere, Mach 20. So there is failures. So you’re trading two warheads for one, and there’s no guarantee you’re going to take them out. I kind of run through the statistics in my book and basically if you commit 800 warheads, you might take out 300 of ours, give or take. And with the ability to launch, if you know for sure that 800 missiles are coming after your missile fields, it only takes a few minutes to launch those weapons.

So I would embrace the Russians if they were doing a full scale nuclear attack on the United States, I would embrace the Russians to attack those missile fields because they got to dedicate at least 800 warheads to the task, which is 50% of their portfolio, and that is 800 cities that don’t get nuked. And that’s also presuming that they would have to presume that they hadn’t already fired from the missile silos and it wouldn’t just be a waste. Right. 15 minutes in even 10, let’s say the President waits until 10 minutes until impact. He can still launch all those weapons prior to strike.

So if they want to dedicate 800 warheads to strike corn fields in the middle of nowhere with no warheads in them, they think that is a very unproductive target. Now, we can go back and forth whether that’s a valid strategy or not, but that is going to reduce the death toll in the United States by not targeting cities by tens of millions of people. Interesting. Now, do the Russians have a underground missile capability of their own, or is it all on mobile launchers? They do have some silos, fixed silos, but predominantly they’re going with mobile launchers, you know, kind of shoot and scoot type type deal.

And obviously our plans are to try to deny that area where they might be as a counter strike to that. So, you know, it’s a balance. So why did the Russians go with a mobile platform instead of of these silos? Like what, what is their rationale? I mean, they have a massive country. They could have put these silos anywhere. Why did they choose to go with this, in your opinion? We put our silos in the center of the country. They’ve got Siberia. So it’s a vast open area where it’s fairly cheap to put something on a truck and drive it around.

You can hide under the trees because, you know, Siberia is big forest where the center of our country is planes. Now, they did talk about the, I think it was the MX missile program back in the, I want to say the 80s, where they wanted to put them on train cars and shuttle the missiles around. That way you would have a moving target. You know, it’s harder to hit a moving target. These are not imaginary super weapons. There are limits to how much destruction a modern warhead can do. And you can really only, you know, the blast radius, severe damage zones, about two, two and a half miles.

So unless you’re within two, two and a half miles, and if you’re a moving target, it would be much harder to hit because once the missile is launched, there’s no changing where it’s going. So that’s the rationale behind that, okay, so we’re talking about how we have potentially 1600 megatonnage and above missiles inbound, maybe 800 are committed to the missile silos. That leaves another 800. So explain why nuclear war is survivable, because there’s a lot of authors right now, like Andy Jacobson and others, saying that, hey, you know, it’s. It’s a lost cause. Don’t even bother preparing for this because everybody’s going to die.

What do you say to that? I flatly deny that. So kind of a background. Just, you know, I’ve been, you know, an operations and analyst type guy most of my life. When I went in to, like, look at this issue during the beginning of the Ukraine war, I had no agenda. I was simply going out there to tell everyone I knew, my friends and family, what I thought the most likely outcomes were. No agenda. I wasn’t like, oh, I’m going to survive this. I didn’t know. And I actually told people before I wrote the book, it’s like, it’s not survivable.

You’re going to die because of the missile fields. So I was like, that was a little bit of my mindset. And then with. I didn’t work for two years. All I did was, for two years was read all the documents out there that are available online, the declassified stuff, and went through and analyzed everything and came up with my own scenario, went through and checked, you know, everything to make sure I was accurate with. There are people out there that do cite these things that I found independently. So bottom line is, if you look at the 1600 warheads, you know, a military is always going to hold summer reserve.

So I assume 1200 get launched. Of those 1200, there’s going to be some failures. I just. To make the math easy, let’s say 200 warheads fail. Either the rockets, the, the bombers, whatever. That leaves you a thousand warheads. Multiple warheads hit single targets. So once you do all that math and you can go to nukemap and calculate the severe damage area of all these warheads, and what I come up with is roughly 1/4 of 1% of the continental United States. So I didn’t throw Alaska in there to skew my results. That area, if you’re in that area, and if your wish is to die instantaneously during a nuclear war, you have to be in that 1/4 of 1% of the United States, which, you know, granted, will be a lot of people.

If you run that ring out a little further, the next is the moderate damage zone. Roughly speaking, about a third of the people are going to die, about a third of the people are going to be injured, roughly a third of the people are going to be unscathed. But that is roughly 1% of the United States. So if you’re part of the 1%, you might die. People living in that other 99% have a pretty good chance of survival. That’s incredible. So 99% of people would survive at least the initial salvo. 99% of the physical area. Ah, the geographic area.

Okay, I see. Again my estimates and it falls in line with other experts in the field. Roughly 20% of the population will perish under a large scale nuclear war because that 1% area quite a bit of the population lives in. And that assumes a full scale counter value attack. And that is just the acute phase of things. That doesn’t include, you know, potential knock on effects of EMP grid down prolonged. Correct. Which some people estimate would be much higher after a year. Correct. Or so. Okay, can you maybe talk a little bit about, you know, the precision of these weapons, the yield a little bit more just so we can get a better understanding of how modern weapons differ from Cold War era ones and why that might also, you know, curate the numbers a little bit.

It’s actually a huge factor. Not only has the numbers shrunk, but the destructive power of those warheads also fell during the Cold War. And you know, looking at this 50 years beyond analyzing back, I really don’t know what their thought process was with the bigger, bigger, bigger, more, more, more. What the popular media got right back then is it was overkill. It was not uncommon for going to use kilotons instead of megatons to keep the math straight. For most people during the Cold War, deliverable warheads were up to 15,000 kilotons. The range was from 3,000 to 15,000 kilotions.

But if you understand the physics behind a nuclear weapon, most of that energy of those larger warheads goes into the air over the target. Today, most of the Russian warheads are. The average mean is right around 200 kilotons instead of 5, 10, 15,000. And that kind of works out to my other point here about misconceptions is that we’ll call the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs 20 kilotons for simple math here. And if today’s Russian warheads are 200, that means they’re 10 times larger. That’s a deception of either will for deception or not understanding the mathematics involved. And this if something, if a nuclear weapon, because if you take a one Dimensional measurement of something and you’re applying it to three dimensional space.

That radius is actually the C cube root of that distance. So a 20 kiloton warhead has a severe damage zone of about 1 mile. A 200 kiloton warhead, severe damage range is 2 miles because the cube root of 10 is about 2.1. So that energy is going in this direction, it’s going in that direction and it’s going up. So that 90% of that extra. Now don’t want to say 90%. Most of that extra energy is being dispersed over the target unproductively. And that’s why the warheads have shrunk, because this, there’s diminishing returns with larger and larger warheads.

You want more reliable warheads, you want smaller rockets, you want decoys and all these things. If you’re not in a manhood comparison contest, megatons and, and throw weight is not relevant to achieve your goals. Three 100 kiloton warheads will do more damage then spread out and you know, in an area than a single 1 megaton warhead, more and smaller is more destructive than many because you’re not trying to kill the atmosphere at 20,000ft. Interesting, very interesting. So, so you think that this is very survivable then because we’re being told that, you know, there’s no point in preparing and the picture that you’re painting is such that 80% of people will survive.

I mean that’s a lot of people, that’s hundreds of millions of people. What are your thoughts then on the nuclear winter hypothesis? Because I was doing some research and apparently back in 1962, they detonated a combined total of 140 megatons of nuclear warhead. Now granted there were no firestorms and these weren’t detonated in cities. And you know, but there’s been other cases throughout history where 200 megaton volcanoes distributed all kinds of ash throughout the atmosphere. I think it marginally, in 1883, they say it had like a marginal effect on the weather, like 0.3 degrees Celsius or something.

What are your thoughts on nuclear winter? Because that would be the knock on effect that a lot of the doomers would say, well, okay, maybe the blast doesn’t get you, but nuclear winter, we’re all screwed. I, I try to stick to facts that I can directly verify. So the problem with these claims are these, these individuals that produced these models, they were the original group with Carl Sagan back in the 80s. They’re still, if you want to fund me for five years, to look at this and give me a government grant. I’d be happy to do that.

So these people have been funded their entire life to create these models and you know, produce outputs. And there’s, there’s the people who funded these models. There was no doubt how it was going to turn out. So that’s my first qualification here. The second was during the, the first Gulf War, Carl Sagan went on TV saying the, the earth was doomed because of all the oil fires that Saddam Hussein was lighting off. And nothing came of that. They were horribly wrong. Of course they got more funding to continue the research. So my initial thoughts, kind of looking at this and I can’t without looking at the models and how they got there, it’s going to be difficult.

But just what popped out right at the front was why India and Pakistan and initially like, oh, that’s a good place for a nuclear war. Well, so can you explain that they base this on a war between India and Pakistan, Is that what you’re saying? Yes, a limited nuclear war based against Pakistan and India. Okay. And that’s what they use. This is the, this is the latest reversion revision to this model. So they’re saying we’re going to apply this scenario of a limited war in summertime, not during monsoon season against Pakistan and India. And we’re going to apply that.

They didn’t apply, they just said, so see this happens. So nuclear war is bad. My first question is why didn’t they apply that same model to a limited nuclear war between Russia and United Kingdom? They both have that kind of arsenal. And the answer is obvious. You’re further away from the equator, solar irradiance is lower and the building codes are much higher. And if you want to go one more, what happens in wintertime? So those are initial flaws again. If someone wants to fund me to look at this for next five or ten years, I’d be happy to.

So you’re saying that because it was in a war that would take place on the equator, that that meant that it would, the effects would be more conducive to the nuclear winter hypothesis. Right. The circulation patterns are better, the solar radiance, you’ve got more sunshine. And that part of the world, that part of world is drier, that part of the world has less concrete, less building codes that would prevent large scale firestorms. We didn’t see this effect during, you know, in Japan. We caused plenty of firestorms there. Or Germany, plenty of firestorms there. So most experts that have looked at this critically will Tell you, it depends a lot on the season for this to occur.

If you have a nuclear war in the wintertime, it’s just not possible. Right. And the worst case realistic scenario is more of a nuclear autumn. And what I love when I’ve discussed this with people is like, well, if the bombs don’t get you, let’s say you’re right and the bombs don’t get you, we’re all going to starve to death anyway. And I’m like, well that’s what I’m telling you is to store food. So you know, the worst case scenario, store some food and seeds and get ready for these kinds of scenarios because they’re, they’re a possibility.

But again, no one was in doubt what the outcome was of these models when they were funded. So that would be my criticism. And during that time, like you’re saying, there was a higher quantity, the yields were bigger and they were less precise. And now, yeah, this is, they used, they use the warheads that are available in India and Pakistan. So they are comparable, I suppose. Yeah, everybody’s kind of agreed that the 1 to 500 kiloton warhead is what you want. You know, anything larger and you really start getting, you need to make a much larger warhead to get a slightly bigger effect.

So, okay, so the blast radius we’ve established or the, the blast effects, the deaths, casualties from that are much less than what Hollywood has depicted. The nuclear winter hypothesis is a subject of debate. What about radiation? You know my background, I’ve worked in nuclear, I’ve worn those anti contamination suits before. I’ve been, I’ve been involved in three reactor core refuelings, I’ve been in spent fuel pools. I have done all this stuff. So my expertise is more in radiation. And when I was in college I took some graduate level courses. I reviewed all the health physics going into this.

And with the smaller warheads, the smaller yields, we get a much smaller effect. Let me kind of walk through this. So let’s say 1600 warheads, 1200 get launched, a thousand make it. I think the weapons Delivery is roughly 20% of what cold War levels were. So right there we’re 20%. If we go and factor in the smaller warheads, I’m going to, I would say 66% reduction, but let’s just go half to make the math easy. So we’re down to 10% of the potential fallout just with this easy basic math that really can’t be argued. The next step we go.

And if we eliminate the missile fields from being struck As I and others propose, that won’t happen. Doesn’t make military rational sense to do this. 50 to 75% of the fallout on the United States during the Cold War projected by the Department of Defense was the radiation coming from those missile fields. So let’s just make it simple. We were at 10% of the radioactive material. The missile fields. Don’t get struck in my scenario. Let’s not use the 75%. Let’s just cut it in half. Still a conservative estimate. That gets us down to 5% of the radioactive material landing in the United States.

I take it a step further. Most of to the ground bursts that occur are going to be along the Eastern seaboard in the United States. A lot of that radioactive material is going to float out over to the Atlantic Ocean before it participates out of the air and land on the ground. Can you just. Let’s maybe just go back a step here because not everybody understands air bursts, ground bursts, radiation difference. Maybe let’s just try to really dumb this down for people who don’t know this subject at all. So there’s a difference in the amount of radioactivity that is emitted by a ground burst versus an airburst.

Can you explain that? And why would you do an airburst for a ground versus ground burst? The primary reason you would. Let’s start with the why you would do it. An air burst is far more efficient. There is a limited amount of warheads with a limited amount of yield. And if you want to maximize your inventory, you’re going to choose an air burst. Because a ground burst, you know, let’s just say it goes on the ground. This is just a rough visualization here, but 50% of that explosive force goes into the ground. What doesn’t go into the ground gets reflected up into the sky.

So the amount of area that you’re destroying is significantly less. You’re much more efficient. With an air burst. You get something called a mock stem. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that term. No, the, the blast wave hits the ground and bounces up and it meets the incoming wave from the surface. So if you imagine a circle hitting the ground, the reflective wave and the coming down wave, let’s say we’re here 45 degrees, this wave coming down and this wave coming up meet, and it’s called a mock stem. And it travels horizontally. And that is like literally like a knife cutting through the landslide.

It’s just. So when you see those trees, like doing the big. That’s the mock stem, you know, Supersonic air. So those two converging pressures form the blast, for lack of a better, just a narrow blast wave, you know, something akin to, you know, just a blunt instrument racing across the landscape. And that does far more damage than simply it does more damage to the localized area, the ground burst. So if you’re targeting a hard target, you want that ground burst because you’re trying to radiate that energy into the ground to shake apart the installation that’s underground.

If it’s normal civilian area, you’re never going to use a ground burst. It’s wildly ineffective. Why is there more radiation from a ground burst? There’s this big myth, mythology, hollywood mythology that paints radiation and all these events going on as some kind of magic, like just some kind of magic, evil magic that occurs when you have a nuclear device. All 100% of the radiation comes from the fission fragments. So in an air burst, these fission products really don’t come back down to earth in a meaningful way until they’ve already decayed and then been highly diluted around the globe versus, if you do a ground burst again, this $10 million, 10 million degree fireball evaporates the earth, the concrete, whatever’s there, and all these fission products that I should say the earth is, you know, normal temperature, but these fission products are 10 million degrees.

So they played on to all the dirt and debris that they get ejected up into the air. And because of the weight of these, we’ll call them sand particles that get thrown up there, they fall back out of the sky because they’re heavy and they’re bringing these fission products with them. Hopefully that wasn’t too convoluted. No, I mean, it, it makes sense. So basically, the radiation diffuses in an air burst and it doesn’t come back down to earth, or when it does, it’s not as radioactive, but at the ground burst level, that’s when things are, are more radioactive.

So. And what you’re saying basically is that a lot of the, the use of weapons in the scenario that you expect to be most likely are not going to be ground burst detonations, Is that correct? Correct. Roughly. I mean, there are certain targets, military command structures, certain, certain runways, certain military targets, air force bases. I would suspect that shipyard or not shipyards, ports, you know, you want to prevent ports, Navy bases, a few hydroelectric, large hydroelectric dams need a ground burst because you’re trying to shake, shake it apart. Yeah, but as far as population centers, I don’t envision any ground burst unless there happens to be a military base that either has a Runway.

If it doesn’t have a Runway, a hardened target can runways. You kind of need a ground burst to disrupt that. It would be easily fixable if it was an air burst. Yeah, right. So, okay, so we have the prevailing winds typically in North America moving from, from west to east, I presume, more or less. And so presuming that very few targets are ground bursts and radiation is also going to be minimal if a person did live, and we could talk about where, you know, is strategic to be located, but if a person did have to deal with radiation and they wanted to prepare on the cheap, do you have any recommendations for that? Two cheap ways to do this.

My preferred method is have enough sandbags on hand that in 30 minutes you could build a little sandbag fort. You know, take your kitchen table, move it to the center of your house. If you can get, say I recommend a hundred sandbags, build basically a little fort. You know, you want to try to get at least 10 inches of sand between you and the rest of your house. You want to make sure the table’s not going to collapse, so you put sandbags on top of it. That is in case this fallout sand falls on your roof, gets stuck in your gutters.

So that radiation from that fallout will penetrate from overhead. And there’s another effect called sky shine, where the gamma rays ricochet off the air molecules and continue on in a random direction. So if a ground gamma ray is pointing up, it may ricochet off of an air molecule and come back down. So even in a basement, you can totally eliminate, just by going in a basement, that horizontal field from camas. But you need to be concerned about the ricochets coming off of the air back down. And I include, I’ve got a webpage free material of all my sources, thermonuclear101wordpress.com and it just lists all the links to all the material that I went through in the book.

But there’s a list in there. It’s a, it’s a technical document meant for engineers or physicists that explains in three dimensional calculus how all these particles work. And that’s one of the sources that I came up with this material. So in a lot of bunkers, there’s a 90 degree turn when you go down into the bunker. What is, what is that what you’re explaining right now? That’s why that is because the reflection. So again, we’re getting into Compton scattering, which is one of the methods that radiation could take a turn if we were in free Space and you shot a gamma ray out, it would continue on forever.

It would. You wouldn’t. When you. The reason you want at least one possibly two 90 degree turns if you can pull it off, is the radiation has a hard time making that corner. It wants to go straight. But if it hits an air molecule or the wall, it can ricochet. It always will lose a little bit of its energy in that interaction with matter, but it will be reduced. So if you can get two or three 90 degree turns, you’re really. A rough estimate is a 90 degree turn is roughly 90% reduction and the strength of the gamma so an order of magnitude less just by having a 90 degree turn.

Correct. If you put this. So if you build this fort in your basement, that’s ideal, would you say that’s correct? Yeah. That would give you probably a 99% reduction. If you have the basement which is a 90% reduction and then you build a one sandbag layer thick all around, including, you know, I would actually want the top to be the thickest because a lot of the radiation is actually going to be coming from overhead down. That will remove 99% of the radiation. If you really want to be, you know, super OCD about to put in two layers and that’s going to be 99.9%.

So every layer of sandbags is a 90% reduction. And so if you do happen to find yourself in one of these very rare instances where there’s going to be a ground burst utilized and you can build this, this fort if you happen to be one of the unlucky ones in the pathway, which probably, as you’ve stated here, are likely going to be few and far in between. How long would you have to stay in this shelter then in order to write out the worst of what the radioactive effects. A bad case scenario would be probably two weeks.

The more likely scenario is 48 hours. And I encourage highly in my book that you get a Geiger counter. Just it’s impossible to know exactly what happened and how much radioactivity is in your area unless you have a Geiger counter. And you can get a really cheap Geiger counter on Amazon, on Amazon for 50 bucks. It’s not what I recommend. I mean I would rather everyone get a rat eye. Those are fifteen hundred dollars, you know, that’s a professional grade radiation meter. The next level down is probably the GQ500 plus and that’s a dual tube Geiger Mueller counter.

And that will get you up to about 4 rem, which is pretty high and survivable but it’s got to be the plus. Only the plus has the two. One tube is for low range, the other tube is for high range. And I think that’s. They’re about 125 bucks. The other thing, for the people who want to think long term, you might want to get a radio code 103. There’s various versions, but the most popular One is the 103. They’re about 275, I want to say. And that’s not a GEICO counter, that is a scintillation detector. We actually have a company locally and we’ve had a physicist on the Channel before who makes a scintillator that’s specifically designed for this kind of scenario.

Right. And so a scintillation detector will allow you to determine the exact energy of the radioactive fallout. So you know exactly what isotopes you need to be concerned about. So if it’s, you know, if the scintillation detector says, oh, it’s iodine 131, well, you just let that item wait for a month or two to decay and then it’s perfectly fine. Most of the Geiger counters that you find online aren’t custom made for nuclear war. There is, however, one radiation detector or scintillator that was designed here by a physicist who’s a friend of the Channel. It’s made in Canada and it detects alpha, beta and gamma radiation from low to dangerous levels.

That’s very important because not all Geiger counters do that. It’s lightweight, compact and rugged. Watch our demo videos and grab yours via the link in the description. Use discount code NUKE10All lowercase for 10% off. So we’ve basically ascertained here that the arsenals are smaller, the precision is higher, the likelihood of survival is much higher than is being depicted. And I don’t know, is there, is there? I mean, there’s a lot of detail I guess we can go into. So you have this diagram here that I’m seeing in the book, and it shows different apartment buildings. So I think there’s this idea that if you live in the city, you’re pretty much screwed.

But looking at this, if you’re in an apartment building, a lot of that radiation is going to be tempered by the floors overhead that’s falling directly on top. So if you live in like the center of an apartment building, then is it safe to say that, you know, a lot of that radiation is, is going to be just diffused around you? You don’t want to be, say, a 10 story building just for an example, you don’t want to be on the top floor because the fallout will land on the top floor and it’s only got to go through one floor of structure to get to you.

And these floors are generally concrete and very heavy. So being in the middle of a high rise is actually more radiation protection than being in a basement of a wood structure. Ideally, if there’s a basement in that building due to the heavy construction of supporting that building, many buildings could handle, especially has a sub basement or in my book I use parking garage, multi tier parking garages underground. You could take just about any level of potential radioactive fallout being in a sub basement or in the middle floor of a heavily constructed building. Now you know, you got to be in the big, in the center.

You don’t want to be the windows on the perimeter. But if you’re in the center of that building, there’s a lot of building material. I mean if you just think about, you know, sand, one sandbag as your like, you know, base radiation protection. Yeah. Think about how many of those sandbags went into building that structure, you know, all the concrete and steel. So yeah, I mean it is possible in an urban environment. The, the challenges though become food and water, right. That’s, that becomes harder and that gets to another kind of last ditch emergency sheltering method that I came up with for the book.

If you, you need to test this ahead of time to make sure that the, the totes that you bought work. But if you could get a bunch of totes, storage totes that are sturdy and fill them with water, you need about 24 inches of water instead of just 10 inches of sand. But if you could double stacks and storage totes, the municipal water is probably going to run for a day or two. You’re going to need water eventually anyway. So if you, while you’re taking shelter, if you just start filling these totes up with water in your little fort, I mean this is, this is not the primary way, but if you can use those totes full of water, those will, 24 inches of water will shield just as well as 10 inches of sand.

And you know, it becomes, you know, equivalent amount of mass. How much, how many protons and neutrons your gamma ray passes by before it interacts with something. Yeah, it’s essentially just getting as much mass in between you and the outside as, as possible. I think another friend of the channel who the adjunct author of the Nuclear War survival skills book, talked about building a shelter out of like water bottles or you know, like water Jugs and stuff like that or 55 gallon drums. So that’s definitely a possibility. So people might have some questions then about is the water safe to drink thereafter? Is the food.

If you use bags of rice in your fort to protect against radiation, can you explain a little bit how that works? Sure. I’m going to use some analogies. They’re not perfect, but you know, just like you throw food into a microwave and you microwave it, you don’t want to put your cat in the microwave, it’ll kill it. But that food is still safe to eat. Microwaves are not ionizing radiation. Gamma rays are ionizing radiation, which means it can bump an electron out of orbit. So it can change the chemistry slightly. But changing something chemically is not making something radioactive.

You the typical energy of a fallout gamma is somewhere between 1.5 and 2 mega electron volts. To make something radioactive, you would need at least 7, 10 to 15 million electron volts to change the nucleus. You need to change the nucleus to make something radioactive. And fallout simply doesn’t have the energy to change something. It’s called a photonuclear effect. It’s not enough energy to change the nucleus. It is enough to break chemical bonds, but if you eat that food afterwards, your stomach is going to break those chemical bonds anyway. So food, if it’s sealed, if none of the fallout’s gotten in there, perfectly edible.

Same with water. I’ve heard people say not to use municipal water because all the radiation is going to penetrate the water tower and all the water becomes radioactive if it’s sealed. That doesn’t happen. Water, the reason they use water and nuclear reactors, it’s a. It’s incredibly hard to make and maintain it being radioactive. It always decays right back to its original form. So let’s say a nuclear bomb drops nearby and you emerge from your shelter. Within a few days or a week after the bomb, the fallout has mostly dissipated. And you go to get a drink.

Can you drink out of a stream? Can you drink out of the lake? I know some of the particles probably fall to the bottom of the creek and the lake and I guess what is the half life there? Because you’re going to have direct contact with the beta alpha beta particles in the water. Can you maybe explain a little bit about what a person should do if they find themselves in this situation? It’s unfortunate situation. Most of the radioactive material is going to, like you said, drop to the bottom of the lake. The second most common thing is it’s going to float.

So if possible you Want to take from the middle of the stream. And I would be highly concerned about bacterial. I’m probably more concerned about bacteria at this point than I am the fallout. Because if it was a heavily hit radiation area, there may be dead animals. You know, if the stream has dead raccoons, whatever, that’s probably more of a threat to you. And the radioactivity. I would double filter that with a charcoal filter to get rid of the radioactive parts of it. And then I would filter it again through those camping filters. The. The micro.

I don’t know what the term is. Yeah, like a microfiber type. What do they call it? Fiber. Yeah, that’s a fiber. A fiber filter to get rid of the bacteria and the germs and so the virus. Charcoal will get rid of the radiation, then that the radioactive particles will be filtered out. If it’s activated charcoal, it’s going to get rid of enough of radioactive. A lot of it’s going to be mechanical capture, just, you know, it’s a filter. It’s going to mechanically stop it from getting through. And then there will be some ion exchange, so it will grab some of the material chemically.

So a charcoal filter, and then I guess it’s one of those perky filters. Those are pretty useful. I would not drink groundwater after a nuclear accident unless I was about to die without filtering. Okay, can you explain that a bit? So when you say groundwater, are you talking about the average well? Because there’s a lot of wells that, you know, they go pretty deep. But when you say groundwater, maybe elaborate on that a bit. Streams, puddles, rivers. I’m more concerned you’re not talking about subsurface water. No, no, no. I call that a well. So I’m talking about water running on the surface of the land.

Okay. I would not touch that unless, obviously, if you’re going to die of dehydration, roll the dice. But as far as wells, there shouldn’t be any effect whatsoever to any well ever if it’s reasonably deep and is not being contaminated under normal circumstances, there’s no reason to think that there’s going to be any material, amount of radioactive material. So if you have a well, and in my book, I list a lot of the. If you’re buying a home, a lot of the things that you want is, you know, a shallower, the better well. So, you know, push comes to shove, you can crack the top off the well and drop something down there to retrieve water manually.

You want a septic tank. Septic tanks work without power. So wells are wells are definitely the way to go. Is there any other misconceptions about nuclear war? I mean, your book goes into immense amounts of detail, but is there anything else that we haven’t really discussed today that is that you feel is very important for people to understand? You know, kind of what drove me nuts writing the book was we’ve built up this 50 to 75 years of mythology of nuclear weapons. We’ve created this almost dark magic that this magic is going to kill you. And, and, and it’s hard to, it’s hard to prepare for an evil magic when it’s, you know, physics and mathematics that you have to go down and understand the problem.

You can’t solve the problem if you don’t understand the problem. So the first step, and that’s what I’m trying to do in the book, there’s different approaches at different areas. If you’re in Washington D.C. that’s a whole different answer than if you’re in Eugene, Oregon and Eugene, Oregon, even the EMP there is probably going to be very muted. So everyone moved to Eugene, Oregon. Yeah, there, there are isolated. You know, I live near Washington D.C. the one major, not major, but a decent sized city that’s near Washington D.C. is Roanoke, Virginia. My projections is maybe they do get more of an EMP there than Eugene.

But as far as being close to Washington D.C. and being a decent sized city where they would be able to organize people to, you know, do the things that need to be done in that world. You’ve got national forest for, you know, wood. You’re going to want heating in the, in the summer. The Shenandoah Valley is excellent for growing crops. There’s already farm there farmland there. There’s already, just so people know where you’re talking about. That is I presume to the west of Washington or. Yeah, yeah. It’s about 150, 200 miles west of Washington D.C. and that entire area, say conservatively you want to be at least 25 miles, preferably 50 miles from D.C.

to the west. And that area starts getting into North Carolina like Roanoke’s closer to North Carolina than it is to Washington D.C. but that whole area is largely unscathed other than EMP. I would suspect above average GMP in that area due to being close to Washington D.C. but as far as, if you don’t mind 1950s technology, you can grow food, there is plenty of timber to be harvested there, lots of natural resources, lots of water coming from springs. So you are in Washington D.C. before, before the attack occurs. You should relocate your Preps, if you live in D.C.

unless you work for the federal government, are probably not going to amount to much. So the recommendation in that worst case scenario is to relocate before the war. If you’re in Eugene, Oregon, you probably want to stock up some food and seeds because every other effect is probably not going to change your life other than the rest of the country is going to be in a much worse situation. So vastly different. And I, in the book, I try to go through and describe the different areas and what actions different areas should take. If you go back to the appendix, I give an example of D.C.

and I give an example of Indianapolis and they’re, they’re just different, different actions, different levels of things. So in D.C. you are worried about fallout, you are worried about ground burst. Indianapolis in my scenario is three ground bursts on the city with very, very little radiological concerns. So the survivors, their primary concern is water, food and treating the injured. You go to some place like Roanoke or Eugene, Oregon, you’re talking about, you know, rebuilding and helping the rest of the country, you know, get your food and water situation under control and start helping, you know, expanding out to like rebuild.

What do you think the likelihood is of this scenario playing out right now? Hopefully low. But you know, I, I certainly don’t want anything I’ve said here today to miss be misconstrued that I am in favor of nuclear war or some kind of fantasy. I spent a couple of months reading about Hiroshima and the after effects of Hiroshima and I do not want anyone to go through that. I do, I do use polymarket to kind of track the levels of escalation that go on out there. It’s just kind of a impartial. There is a market out there that says detonation of a nuclear weapon anywhere in the world for any reason.

The odds are, I think last time I checked was 6% somewhere between now and then. And this for people who don’t know, this is a website where you can go and bet on what the outcome of a potential event might be. And there is the logic of the wisdom of the crowd that, that this is some kind of insight into the likelihood of certain events unfolding. Although, you know, it is just a bunch of people betting on it. But there’s a wisdom to the crowd, I suppose one could say. I, I would probably favor informed opinion over that.

But there’s definitely something, I mean Poly Market has proven correct in, in many cases, including the 2024 election, I should add. Yeah, yeah. And I’m not saying this is your only but if you want to figure out if there’s a heightened status of rhetoric today, you can go to Polymark in 15 seconds and see what’s going on. And you don’t have to listen to the talking heads get the press to get you all worked up. It’s just one of any. The other site that I look at is back to gq, who makes the radiation meters. They have a site called GMC map.com it’s a free site.

And for people who connect their Geiger counters to the Internet, which is possible throughout the world, you have a real time radiation map. It, you know, there are certain areas, I mean, not even though these are made in China. There’s no, there’s no readings in China. But I look at that every day in Ukraine just to, you know, if there’s a, if there’s a nuclear event in Ukraine, you know, you can’t look at just one meter. If someone’s playing with their meter and rubbing a source on it just to see how it reacts, that’s going to show up on this map.

So individual meters don’t matter. But if there’s 500 meters, say in eastern Poland suddenly going off the chart, you may, you may want to like look into that. So again, no Affiliation here, just GMC map map.com it’s not sophisticated. They certainly didn’t put a lot of money into it. But it’s, you want to see what radiation levels are at different places around the world instantaneously. That’s a good place to look. So, you know, all this stuff, the government obviously has scientists who know what you’re talking about. And it seems as though Europe right now is preparing for a conventional war, conventional war with the Russians.

And they think that this, you know, this is going to happen in the next few years. It’s interesting to me though that the prevailing narrative is that everyone’s going to die in a nuclear war and it’s an impossibility, whereas at the same time you’re saying that it’s incredibly survivable. So the question becomes, well, why aren’t they advising people to I guess, prepare just as a contingency for this outcome? They’re probably concerned about, you know, spooking the population. Is it better to just keep people in the dark about this? But the problem is, is if it happens, then of course, you know, there’s going to be a lot of people who will die who perhaps didn’t have to die if they would have just listened to yours and other people’s advice.

Sure. My explanation to see how this goes. I call it the guardians of the narrative. There’s this narrative that you’re going to die, and that is for some reason and unassailable narrative. Trust me. I’ve written a book that says you’re probably not going to die. Imagine going up to one of your friends and saying, hey, I got good news. You’re probably not going to die based on where you live and they get angry at you. There’s this whole tier that I came up with of protectors of the narrative from the. The Karens are the defender of the narrative online trolls are the eradicator of falsehoods.

You’ve got all these different people they’re not worried about. They’re so focused on maintaining this story that that’s what matters. I mean, I’m in far. You know, I’m in favor of arms control. I want to see less arms. I want to see smaller warheads. I want to eliminate the uranium tamper on warheads, which would reduce the radioactivity by another 50%. This is an easy fix. I want to change how the presidential command structure works. I want to eliminate ground burst. I’m in favor of penetrating warheads. So if the warhead can go underground and go off underground, there’s no release of radioactive or very little release of radioactive material.

So all these things, I would like to focus on reducing the threat to the population, specifically of radiation. But do you think. Do you think any arms control groups are going to come to me and say, these are great ideas. We want to hire you as a consultant to help us, like, you know, push this through, or are they there to protect the narrative? And the other thing, like, what amazed me, and this is what pushed me kind of into the narrative during the early escalations when Biden was in the White House and Russia kept saying, we’re going to use nukes, we’re going to use nukes.

The, the arms control groups that are out there, you know, there’s a whole bunch of NGOs out there that are pushing arms control, nuclear arms control. They almost unanimously said, oh, we don’t think they’re going to do it. So this was their moment to go see, nuclear weapons are bad. We don’t. We, you know, they need to be eliminated. They should have been doing a big PR campaign, but since their allies were in control of the situation, it wasn’t a big deal. And I found that just incredibly unfathomable that an arms control group would downplay the potential use of nuclear weapons.

And it’s interesting because the people who are selling the books are the ones who are saying everybody’s going to die. And what you’re trying to say is not a very popular. Because I guess people like a horror story more than they do a drama. You know, you’re painting a scenario that’s more plausible, it’s more realistic, as opposed to the nightmarish scenario that’s depicted in Annie Jacobson’s book, which if I read that book, I would immediately turn my brain off and not think that this was even worth preparing for. But the unfortunate reality is the picture that you’ve painted today shows that it is very survivable.

And the odds are you will survive and you will have to endure in this, this world thereafter if it happens. And so it’s better to understand these things, to understand how it works, to have some modicum of preparedness in order to see you through if the worst of the worst unfolds. Right. And, and like I said, I mean, I was a little of a surprise when I talked to my more left leaning friends. They were mad at me for suggesting that they would live. And then my right leaning friends were mad that they didn’t need a million dollar bunker to live.

Right? Yeah. So they’re mad. So they’re mad at you because you were saying, hey, we don’t need to be fatalistic here, there’s a possibility of survival, but they wanted to go out with a bang. You don’t have to think about it, right? If I, if it’s just a cut and dry, I’m gonna die. Well, you don’t have to think about, I don’t have to prepare. I can, I can keep chugging down, you know, six dollar coffees and I don’t have to spend 200 on a three month supply of food. The other end of the spectrum, people are holding on to the cold bore scenarios.

I need this. I need this. I need this. I am building a bunker. And if you’re in Eugene, Oregon, if you’re a billionaire in Eugene, Oregon, you might want to hire me to come and look at your nuclear war plans because I might be able to save you 10, 20 million bucks. So it’s. And again, what I eventually came to is I’m not challenging nuclear war, its outcome, I’m challenging the narrative. And you know, that is even more dangerous. I mean, Annie’s book, I’ve read it twice now. I did wait until I finished my book before I read her book because I, I didn’t want any influence on what I was Writing.

I thought it was the way it was framed up before I read it. It was this massive technical write up and it’s. And it’s not. I can give you the scenario really quick. Nukes are there, someone’s going to use them, we’re all dead. And she goes through several times in the book where like, you know, not to be a spoiler, but Washington D.C. gets hit by a nuke and everyone dies. Two billion people die and that’s just not even plausible. So her overall scenario, I think she’s a great writer. It was. If you read it as a piece of fiction with some historical facts, it’s a good book.

But if you are analytical in your thinking, like is it plausible? Maybe. I can say maybe. Is it realistic? No, not, not even, you know, it’s an entire video just on that book. You know, what’s, what is implausible. And she’s a great writer, but she’s, she is a weaver of the reality is the level I gave her in my list of maintaining the, the narrative. The narrative is there, you’re all going to die and there’s nothing you can do about it. And so what vested interests, I mean, asides NGOs, how could we possibly have an interest in advising our population something which is going to make problematic the implementation of continuity of government? Because all these people who think they’re going to die and don’t prepare and aren’t going to die are going to be a burden on the system thereafter when they’re walking around as refugees looking for food and water.

So isn’t it in a nation’s best interest then, like they do in China, like they do in Moscow, to run these drills to, you know, build out subway stations that can accommodate the better part of the Muscovite population to have planning in place and have a realistic appraisal. Why is it that our governments are so stuck on this narrative? It’s baffling to me. You know, we used to have a pretty substantial civil defense program in the United States and it was eventually cut over cost. But you know, let’s get back to the arms control narrative. People are willing to sacrifice your well being to advance their political agenda.

And that is just the heart of all of this. If you go to any one of the nuclear disarmament websites, you will never find a simple link to the Red Cross and they have a web page that like, hey, in case of a nuclear attack, these are the basic things that you need to, to do. You know, so an honest discussion was like nuclear weapons are bad. We want to eliminate them. We can debate that. But nowhere do they give any sound advice of what the average person should do in a realistic situation where they could use their platform to potentially save tens of thousands of lives.

There’s just basic steps. Food, water, radiation meter. After that step, you know, we can continue back. You know, people who watch your channel, you know, there’s, there’s layers. And all I’m saying in my book is many places just need food, water, and a Geiger counter. You know, if you can get three months of supplies, that would be ideal. Could it be something to do with trying to minimize panic? Because of course, they’re in the process of waging a war. NATO is at war with Russia effectively, and perhaps they don’t want to disrupt whatever is going on there.

And to call attention to the nuclear risk would potentially cause some protests from people. Do you think that might be part of the reason? No, I do not. I. No, unfortunately, I just don’t think a certain part of the population can work through consequences. Let’s escalate with the world’s largest nuclear armed country, and there’s no consequences to that. Let’s, you know, start a war there. I mean, I, you know, I reread Annie’s book and she listed all these people. The biggest danger to nuclear weapons is she had a lot of government officials in her book that believe the narrative.

So when you have a part of your ruling class in charge of these weapons that don’t understand how they work or what the consequences are, that is what is dangerous. So because, I mean, nuclear weapons, the Cold War had its heyday probably before a lot of the current people who are in the reigns of power long before they, you know, started their careers. I think a lot of this, this Cold War thinking was passe. So could it just be that this generation is so far removed from these original insights into what the war would look like that they take certain things for granted and they don’t question it, they think uncritically about it? You know, I’m old enough that when I was a child, I remember multiple times that China was conducting nuclear tests and the United States would get contaminated.

I distinctly remember watching on the news like iodine was the big issue. Iodine was raining down on all the fields in the United States, and they were dumping milk from all the cows because it wasn’t safe to drink. So, you know, there are consequences to all this stuff. And unfortunately, we’re so far removed. You know, we can’t drive out to the Nevada desert and watch a bunch of nukes go off on the weekend. We’re starting to lose our memory of how horrible these weapons are. People are not familiar as they once were with Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the consequences and the suffering that occurred because of these weapons.

And we’re looking at 500 Hiroshimas in a day. So I did a rough calculation. Basically global, global nuclear war, Russia, Europe, whatever, in one day, there’ll be more pain and suffering on the human population than any time in history or the 10 years of World War I and World War II all condensed into one day. And that is something to be aware of. Yeah. And as. As devastating as it is, as you make out, it is still survivable. And this is why people need to prepare for it. Now, one thing we haven’t talked about is nuclear power plants.

So what do you think the outcome of that is going to be? Is that a. A threat that needs demystifying, or is it probably even a bigger threat in some places? Again, comes to location, there is not an official agreement, but there is an informal agreement between America and China that we don’t target nukes. You know, if you drop the nuclear warhead on a nuclear power plant, that definitely increases the radiological problems. And Russia has a lot of nuclear power plants. This has been discussed at high levels before. We’ll call the gentleman’s Agreement if you want to accept it or you don’t.

I assume in my book that we don’t target nukes or nuclear power plants. My concern in the book, and this varies a lot by location, is what happens to a nuclear power plant that is in a heavy fallout zone. The plant is fine, it’s shielded. The shielding works in both directions. The staff that’s there is able to run that plant. But most nuclear power plants only have two weeks of diesel. They can run very well. I used to maintain part of the diesel system, the emergency backup systems at the power plant I worked at. So there’s a lot of redundancy.

And you can operate the. They’ve got multiple diesel generators. If one diesel is running, you have enough power to do what you need to do. And that was one of the things I worked on. But if it’s. If the fuel trucks can’t get there after two weeks, if the staff can’t be rotated. Some of the things I point out is at least the power plant I worked at, they didn’t have food there, at least I wasn’t aware of. So you’ve got to worry about feeding a bunch of workers to keep that Plant, all the, all the bad stuff on the inside and some of my scenarios DC the.

I think it’s the Surrey nuclear power plant. I call out like that, potentially in a heavy fallout zone. So someone needs to think about how you’re going to resupply that plant. I look at Indianapolis, there’s a lot of nuclear power plants up near Chicago. I looked at the wind patterns. There are some nuclear power plants up there that are in some heavy fallout zones. I don’t think it’s a threat to Indianapolis under most circumstances, but it’s a possibility. There’s a nuclear power plant I used to work at west of D.C. called North Anna Power Station, Nuclear Power Station.

And I determined just by what I expected to get hit like that plant was not a threat like the, the local population, there would be sufficient manpower available and there I projected no fallout on that plant. So that plant should be fine. So it’s, you know, I encourage people in the book that’s one of my steps, is to go look at the nuclear power plants that you’re downwind of. And if that plant has the potential being covered in a heavy fallout area, I’m sure the plant personnel will do everything they can to mitigate any problems. But it’s an issue.

If you could advise somebody on strategic relocation. Where do you think is the optimal place to be if you’re in North America? It depends on your region. Obviously not down downwind of any major nuclear targets. But Eugene, Oregon, Roanoke, I call out Columbia, Missouri in the book. So you just need to. If you’re north of Augusta, Maine, I do think Canada gets attacked. You know, you don’t want to be in Vancouver or Toronto or any of the major cities. But I do believe you’re being attacked by cruise missiles and not ICBMs. There’s nothing time critical and so cruise missiles in Canada, but it’s pretty.

Some kind of. Right. But wouldn’t that. So that would be like from a submarine or from an airplane or. Bombers. Bombers. Bombers. So the logic, my logic is the bombers really don’t want to fly into Canada if they don’t have to because the closer to they get to the United States, the more resistance they’re going to meet from the American and the Canadian Air Force. I mean, you guys keep a couple of jets on hot standby just for this event. There’s very few targets in Canada that are time sensitive other than the bases, the early warning radars, those will get probably hit first.

And those would be ICBMs. But most of the economic Targets and the refineries and the hydroelectric plants that will want to be target taken out, those will likely come from cruise missiles from the bombers. So the bombers are going to take off. They’re slow. The cruise missiles are slow, but it’s not a time sensitive strike. Those bombers don’t have to fly as far north to get to their targets. The cruise missiles can be relaunched earlier. So the logic is to use cruise missiles against Canadian targets. Which gives you, if you say you’re in Vancouver and I use this logic again for Indianapolis, I suggest that Indianapolis also gets hit by cruise missiles and not ICBMs.

If you’re in Vancouver and you’re not nuked in the first hour, you may want to take that time between hour one and hour eight to get as far away from the city as you can. And you can get pretty far even if you had to walk. I mean a bicycle would be nice. But just we’ve all been on, you know, the, an international flight. You’re flying from basically Moscow to Vancouver. The nuke travels at the same subsonic speeds as a jetliner. Basically the bombers are a jetliner delivering, you know, they’re going to get up to the Pole somewhere over the the Arctic, they’re going to release their weapons, the cruise missile is going to fly the rest of the way.

And I would expect Vancouver to get hit two or three times by two or three small nukes. Same for Alberta, same for Winnipeg, I believe has a NORAD operations center there. Well, it’s a geographic center of Canada also. So it serves a lot of functions as a primary corridor and linking different parts of the country, even the United States. So that’s interesting. Very interesting. So there’s a lot of places that you could ride this out is what you’re saying. And you really have to look at some of the maps that are provided in the book to kind of determine.

And I think the takeaway that I’m getting here is that pretty much most places are survivable. There might be radiation in some spots, but that that’s a threat that can be mitigated. Yeah, I did a rough calculation and I want to say something like 85% of the country, United States, lower 48 is reasonably radiation free to you can deal with it like it’s not the primary concern. 85% of the land location, your primary concern is food, water, medicine and electrolytes. Okay, and the last question I have, we don’t have much time left but emp, what are your thoughts on this? Do you think it has Been hyped up as well? Or do you think it actually is going to be something which causes long term effects and is going to be a force to be reckoned with? I am an electrical engineer and I did spend a couple of two to three months looking at this.

I mean obviously reading the EMP report, my feelings are mixed. The EMP report I took as kind of a positive, like not all cars are going to die, things like that. But there’s other people out there that are claiming Russia and North Korea has the ability to build super EMPs. So your standard EMP is only 50,000 volts per meter, which will damage most. Well, not damage, but cause issues with a lot of electronics. There’s some theory out there that Russia and specifically North Korea have developed weapons that could be 200,000 volts per meter. So four times stronger.

My book, I take the assumption that basically nothing works, but you should shield everything and then if anything does work, well, that’s a bonus. So I do not expect 100%. Everything is totally crispy, so it’s not going to be total darkness everywhere. Right, right. And that’s one of the reasons we get back to Canada and getting nuked. The hydroelectric plants. You guys have a lot of hydro up there and it’s all concentrated in one location. If you could topple a few of those hydro plants, there’s. That’s a huge energy source to be taken out with a very cheap nuclear tip cruise missile.

You know, this is incredible because again the depictions in Hollywood has put in people’s minds that it’s going to be a total blackout. Most the population is going to be dead. And what you’re saying is really the complete opposite, that there’s going to be blackouts in certain spots due to EMP effects potentially. There’s going to be a lot of casualties, but a lot of people are going to survive. And this is a totally different world, arguably even more difficult to navigate than Mad Max. Because what you’re painting is not, not really Mad Max. It’s more of a.

Yeah, you know, it’s probably going to be more of like a military police state or something that, that unfolds thereafter as a result of rationing and you know, whatever sort of dystopian, you know, pick your dystopian sci fi film Judge Dread maybe. You know, something like that. I mean really, it’s going to be more like reconstruction Europe after World War II. I mean there weren’t people running around in monster trucks with flaming guitars after the World War II. Damn. I was looking forward to the monster trucks. I mean, there are very few cases, even under the harshest conditions where society doesn’t function to some degree.

It’s again, there’s, you know, my scenario of people get nuke, people live, people rebuild. You know, Hiroshima rebuilt and the exact, you know, it wasn’t abandoned. Some of the video links that I have in my book show people walking around next to ground zero after Hiroshima, a few weeks after detonation because it was an airburst. They had cleared all the roads, the local population, people were building little shacks, people reconstruct. I mean, you should have a bunch of supplies to make this transition period easier. But it’s probably not going to be any worse than what Europe experienced after the world, the end of World War II.

And that was a lot of cities were totally devastated. You know, what you’re saying is paradoxical because again, and I come back to the original point I made, that this is good to know that we can survive it. But if you know this, then the people in charge know this. And then they’re probably thinking to themselves, well, and I know you might not believe they do. I think that there’s probably somebody within the intelligentsia who is informing them that, hey, you know, this is, this is the reality here. And if that’s the case, then they might be more willing to roll the dice and straddle that, that nuclear brinkmanship line than if they thought that it was, if it would lead to mutually assured destruction.

If they think it’s survivable, that’s almost a bigger risk because then they’re more willing to play that high stakes game. If they’re in the government, they are themselves. You know, they’re going to be in one of these bunkers and those punkers and one of these military government targets. The, the decapitation strike is certainly going to come. And you know, I, I kind of like my frozen pizzas. I, I don’t wish this post apocalyptic world on anyone. And I would argue with this person that it is survivable but very, very, very undesirable. There is a big difference.

Do you think places like Cheyenne Mountain and Raven Rock, are they actually survivable from a blast? The single blast? Yeah, two or three blasts probably. You know, you, you have to let the debris clear. So you can’t nuke a target that’s just been nuked because there’s debris up in the air. So you got to wait about a half an hour for that stuff to drift off or settle out. Then you can nuke it again. Wait another half hour, nuke it again. So if someone’s determined with enough nukes, they’re eventually going to reach you. Wow. Is it easy? No, no, it’s not easy, especially with smaller warheads.

But that’s the Cold war strategy for the, the missile silos. Because it hit once early, the, the missiles can’t launch through all that clutter. So it’s a two week, two way streak. They can’t launch if there’s a hundred thousand tons of dirt over the silo. So that is a suppressive measure. But a warhead coming in at Mach 20 will not survive going through that field either. So. Interesting. So it might take an afternoon to get down to where they want to go. Who, who wants to live through that? I mean you’re gonna feel the ground shocks.

There’s, there’s, I don’t care how deep you are, every, every warhead’s gonna be a mini earthquake. This has been a fascinating conversation, Mark, and it’s just a wealth of information. I would strongly encourage people do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of this book. I’ll post a link to Amazon in the description below and we could probably talk a lot more about and go in a lot more detail. But I think we’ve already been going for a couple hours here so we’re gonna have to wrap it up. But I want to thank you for coming out today and maybe we’ll have you back if you’re willing to come on and if there’s, we’ll ask people to put questions in the comment section below and then we’ll do a follow up video.

How does that sound? That sounds good. And I plan to. After you post the video, I will spend two or three days in the comments answering respectful questions. If there’s legitimate, you know, questions. And I can’t condense three years of research into a two hour video, you know, so some of the things I have to simplify. So I will answer questions. Excellent. Okay guys, well go and get the book and put your questions in the comment section below. Mark, thanks a lot for coming out. Greatly appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Take care. The best way to support this channel is to support yourself by gearing up@canadianpreparedness.com where you’ll find high quality survival gear at the best prices.

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