Today I forced myself to look beyond the actual nuclear exchange toward the kind of situation that would exist afterwards. I am beginning to realise the problem I was having trying to understand what can be done.

Unlike most other scenarios, like a hurricane, or tsunami, where there is a catastrophe which can be avoided by some actions, a nuclear explosion is utterly catastrophic within a small area. And, then relatively quickly going outside that area it is almost entirely benign. In neither circumstance is there anything much that can be done, and the zone between these two outcomes is very small relatively to the total area of a country. So statistically, almost none of the population are in any place where they can meaningfully change the outcomes, beyond a few small changes (like hitting the deck).

Then there is an area where there is radioactive fallout … which necessarily requires evacuation probably leaving all belongings behind.

We then get to a scenario, where except where people get totally obliterated, most people are almost unaffected in their locality, but the country as a unit, is barely functioning. The householder and their house is fine, but there isn’t a lot a householder can do, within their own means, to cope with the obliteration of all national infrastructure.

So, an individual, has to prepare, for an event over which they have no control. For a society, government, economy etc., that is broken, whilst they personally are pretty much as they always were, in the same house they have been living.

We also have masses of refugees or displaced people from areas of radioactive fallout. And, that fallout creates hard barriers splitting the very habitable areas into small zones, which have to be autonomous.

That is not what I thought I was trying to work out a plan to deal with. That is totally unlike any portrayal of nuclear war I have ever seen.

I can see why I have been struggling. We live at a time when government lies to us, where the people who lord it over us, increasingly totally disregard the people.

To survive, we need to affect what that layer of overzealous control freaks do and change their behaviour into behaviour that allows us to survive.

Covid showed that far from being a help, that layer of bureaucracy is deadly to the people who they manage to control. And, in order to improve the chances of survival, those idiots (if any are left) have to be removed in order to let pragmatic people in to start doing what is possible to bring back the infrastructure most people need to survive in a modern society.

Most people will die, not due to the nuclear exchange, but due to the mismanagement incompetence and downright nastiness of the covid-style authoritarians that control government.

Prepping

The reality of prepping for a nuclear war … owes more to forming and running and winning government for a new political party than it does to anything on any prepping site. It’s how to cope with anarchy, mostly created by the petty bureaucrats who will utterly fail to cope and make life all the worse for everyone else as they try to impose control when they are the LAST PEOPLE ON EARTH WHO SHOULD BE ALLOWED CONTROL in such a situation.

But, even then, the local area, will be isolated by swathes of nuclear fallout, and food supplies will be at starvation levels and petty bureaucrats will be blowing their tops unable to cope.

It is quite clear, that very quickly other groups will attempt to take over. Who they are, is hard to predict, but it is not hard to predict that people will be desperate to get rid of the appalling petty bureaucrats who will be totally out of their depth. They couldn’t cope with a minor flu called covid … you have got to be kidding me, if you imagine that they are capable of anything positive after a nuclear exchange.

Basically you can take every evil that government has ever committed from concentration camps to mass sterilisation to mass deliberate killing … and each and every crime will be committed by the petty bureaucrats in some form or other in the name of “coping”.

Or, it could be religious groups, or ethnic groups who decide to take over, and ensure that they get fed, at the expense of all others.

Basically, we are talking about a society which exists as a large number of small autonomous areas totally outside the reach and control of any central authority, where the say so, of whoever grabs power, is the only thing that decides between life and death.

There will be organised theft of any supplies anyone has. There will be organised crimes, because there will be no one to stop those who gain power. Some will be good, most will be bad.

Conclusion

When I started looking at “how to survive a nuclear war”, I assumed the hard part would be getting through the nuclear exchange. I’ve now realised, there isn’t a lot anyone can do at that stage.

I now see, that most people will remain unscathed, yet the infrastructure of national government will disappear, together with most other infrastructure. I had been ignoring the cessation of government, but I can’t do that now.

Now, I see that means local bureaucrats, totally unsuited to the task and totally culturally alien to the job at hand, will attempt to seize power. They will fail spectacularly, leading rapidly to other “groups” attempting to seize power. They will then attempt to take all resources they can and feed themselves. Leading to others attempting seize control.

In other words, as yet undefined groups will be fighting other as yet undefined groups, in an undefined social context, geographical region and … everything is undefined, except that starvation is upon everyone, and people will be fighting to grab supplies where ever they can.

It is a real nightmare. Most people will survive the nuclear exchange, but most people will then not have the food to survive, so, most people will face starvation or have to fight to take resources from others to survive.

The winners will not be individuals … but large violent groups.

The only sensible thing is to get out of the country. At least in other countries not subject to attack, a central authority should still exist, and that should prevent the mob rule mentality of a post nuclear society.

I need to do more research, but I’m rather shocked. I assumed that if government broke down, that would be the end of any larger social structure other than the family unit. I now see, that assumption is totally ungrounded. That is because nothing will change for most people except the absence of government. That means people will attempt to replace the one thing that is absent, and that in turn will precipitate mass groups all fighting.

If people are individually struggling to survive after a nuclear attack … they do not have time to form large groups. But, if there is a period where people are doing OK … the main action is to replace the former national government … which propels us into intergroup conflict of the worst kinds. And then, as food begins to run out, people start to struggle to survive … after the big groups have already formed. So, the big groups start to impose their will to allow those in the group to survive, and thus the way to survive is to join the groups.