Mensch - Member - The Prepared

Reply to: “Reasonable” preparations for a nuclear conflict—picking a place to live… Posted March 3, 2022

This is a topic that has been on my mind as well lately (for obvious reasons), and after spending about half a day of searching, the most up-to-date “official” maps of potential nuclear attack targets I could find are from a 1990 FEMA publication. (I found more recent maps produced by individuals and organizations not affiliated with the U.S. government.) The FEMA publication is titled “FEMA Risks and Hazards: A State by State Guide (FEMA-196/September 1990)”. It’s challenging to find a PDF of this document, but you can find the maps for each state here: https://imgur.com/a/Q6o01 As others have already mentioned, there are a lot of unknowns when it comes to a nuclear attack (e.g., number of nukes launched, yield of the warheads, number of nukes intercepted en route, etc.), but based on what I’ve seen and read, if I were to pick a place to live based solely on maximizing my chances of (initially) surviving nuclear war, it would be somewhere along the southern half of the Oregon coast. There are no obvious targets there, and because of the prevailing winds (i.e., the fact that they generally go from west to east), exposure to fallout is likely to be much less of a concern. Of course, there are other concerns in Oregon (wildfires, tsunamis, etc.), and even if you survived the initial nuclear exchange, there is the issue of nuclear winter (in addition to societal collapse, at least in the targeted countries). A good, relatively brief (~15–20 min. read) reference on what to expect from a nuclear attack can be found here: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/devastating-effects-of-nuclear-weapons-war/ As for myself, I live between two potential targets (an Army ammunition plant and a research university that does research for DoD), and based on NUKEMAP, my house is within the 5 psi overpressure zone for a moderate-sized warhead that strikes either target, meaning it would likely be destroyed. I fervently hope that the current situation does not spiral into nuclear war, but I’ve accepted that there’s not much I can do to change my situation. (I still do prep for other scenarios though.) That said, I don’t have any children, so it’s probably easier for me to accept this than someone who is a parent. Regardless, best of luck with your preparations.

Reply to: Anyone have any experience with heated clothing? Posted September 4, 2021

The only heated clothing I’ve had experience with is heated glove liners. I have Raynaud’s syndrome (in short, my hands are very sensitive to the cold), and when I moved to Quebec from the southern U.S., I ordered these glove liners from Its Motion Electric. I no longer live in la belle province, but these glove liners still get plenty of use. I highly recommend them, and although I haven’t used the other heated clothing products from Its Motion Electric, they might be worth researching as well.

Reply to: What triggered you to prep? Posted May 28, 2021

Many of my hobbies (hiking, hunting, fishing, gardening) overlap with prepping, so making the transition to “prepping” was natural. It started off as a slow, piecemeal transition, but then after reading some of the work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb—who coined the term “Black Swan”—I began to take preparedness more seriously. (Also, having a degree in civil engineering and being aware of the shaky state of American infrastructure (see ASCE’s infrastructure report card here: https://infrastructurereportcard.org) certainly contributed to feeling the need to be ready.) Events in the last 18 months or so have only strengthened my motivation to be prepared.

Reply to: Should you regularly check the space weather forecast like you do the weather forecast? Posted May 28, 2021

Here’s a decent article on how to find the North Star (Polaris): https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/polaris-the-present-day-north-star/ If you can find the Big Dipper, you can find Polaris.

Reply to: Should you regularly check the space weather forecast like you do the weather forecast? Posted May 28, 2021

Awesome. Thanks for the link!

Reply to: Should you regularly check the space weather forecast like you do the weather forecast? Posted May 27, 2021

That makes sense. Do you have a particular service/website that you get your updates from?

Reply to: Should you regularly check the space weather forecast like you do the weather forecast? Posted May 27, 2021

Thanks for the link to SpaceWeather.com—I’ll have to check out their newsletter. And that makes sense being more aware of something relevant to prepping, like space weather, because of your hobby. (One of the reasons I got into prepping in the first place is because most of my pre-existing hobbies happened to be related to prepping.)

Should you regularly check the space weather forecast like you do the weather forecast?

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Posted May 24, 2021