How to Survive a Tactical Nuclear Bomb? Defense Experts Explain

The shock wave travels faster than the speed of sound (about 343 meters per second). So if you’re one kilometer away from the epicenter, you have less than three seconds to find cover. If you’re five kilometers away, you have less than 15 seconds.

You’ll need to shield yourself from the thermal and nuclear radiation, as you could die if exposed. However, you must find somewhere safe – you don’t want to be crushed in a building destroyed by the blast wave.

Get indoors, and preferably into a reinforced bunker or basement. If you’re in a brick or concrete house with no basement, find a strong part of the building. In Australia, this would be a small bathroom at ground level, or a laundry with brick walls.

The incoming shock wave will reflect off the internal walls, superimposing with the original to double the pressure. Avoid the explosion side of the building and make sure to lie down rather than stand.

If there is no reinforced room, you can lie under a sturdy table or next to (not under) a bed or sofa. You may be crushed under a bed or sofa if a concrete slab crashes down.

Keep away from doors, tall furniture and windows, as they will probably shatter. If the walls come down, you’ll have a chance of surviving in a pocket in the rubble.

If you’re in an apartment building, run to the fire staircase in the structural core of the building.

Avoid timber, fiber cement or prefabricated structures (which includes most modern housing in Australia) as these probably won’t survive. And open your jaw as the blast comes through, so your eardrums get the pressure wave on both sides.

Radioactive Fallout
The third stage is the fallout: a cloud of toxic radioactive particles from the bomb will be uplifted during the blast and deposited by the wind, contaminating everything in its path. This will continue for hours after the explosion, or possibly days.

In comparable British-Australian bomb tests at Maralinga, the fallout was clearly preserved in the desert along one kilometer-wide tracks, extending 5–25 kilometers out from ground zero.

You must protect yourself from the fallout or you’ll have a short life.

If you’re in a stable structure such as a basement or fire staircase, you can shelter in place for a few days, if necessary. If your building is destroyed, you’ll need to move to a nearby intact structure.

Block all the doors, windows and air gaps. You can drink water from intact pipes and eat from sealed cans.

For outdoor movement, any PPE available should be used – especially a P2 mask, or even a dust mask. While tactical nukes are designed to destroy personnel or infrastructure, they still allow troop movement under cover of the blast. The radiological hazard is significant, but should be survivable.

A radiological weapon, on the other hand, will deliberately increase the radiation dose to the point of it being lethal.

Once you’ve found shelter, you’ll need to decontaminate. This will require a thorough scrub of the skin, nails and hair, and a change into clean clothing. But any severe burns should be tended to first.

Hopefully by now the national authorities will have stepped in for rescue and medical treatment.

Robert K. Niven is Associate Professor, UNSW Canberra, UNSW Sydney. Chi-King Lee is Professor of Civil Engineering, UNSW Canberra, UNSW Sydney. Damith MohottiSenior Lecturer in Civil Engineering, UNSW Canberra, UNSW Sydney. Paul Hazell is Professor of Impact Dynamics (UNSW Canberra), UNSW Sydney. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.