Just reposting this good resource for people on places potentially hit in the US. The one I linked is his version for a full countervalue attack with 2000 warheads but he has scenarios for counterforce/mixed etc too.
I don't think anything similar exists for China yet but in the meantime a good assumption is just cities ordered by descending population. So, possibly similar to the linked one but with fewer smaller cities hit for now, until China has reached a similar quantity of warheads as Russia later this decade.
ETA: An interesting thing I found on US target lists, from a NYT article. Relevant for people who've claimed the US doesn't target civilians in nuclear policy.
Once the radiation has died down (FEMA recommends waiting 24 hours) you should evacuate.
This recommendation assumes the explosion was caused by a terrorist group, not Russia. If Russia decides to attack the US, it will probably aim to do as much damage as possible: i.e., it will attack with thousands of nukes. In contrast, once a terrorist group obtains one nuke, it will probably choose to use it rather than try to obtain a second nuke. after a massive nuclear attack, if you were lucky or prepared enough to end up with water, some protection from fallout and some reason to hope that your position will not become overcrowded with desperate refugees lacking one of those 2 things, it is almost certainly a mistake to travel. Food of course is also very nice to have and ventilation (to remove heat and CO2) can become the critical factor when you are underground and the electrical grid is down.
The priority in the first 3 weeks after the attack is to avoid getting a fatal dose of radiation from the fallout, which basically means staying underground or in the center of a massive building. Fallout will coat every horizontal outdoor surface. (Well, more precisely, only about half of the area of the US will be coated with fallout, but it will be impossible to predict the distribution pattern.) You do not want to be out walking around or riding in a vehicle.
A nuclear explosion can be heard for many hundreds of miles. Here is what one sounds like from about 25 miles away.. If you hear more than one nuclear explosion, then sadly you are probably being attacked by Russia, not a terrorist group.
Also, nowhere in Kearny's book Nuclear War Survival Skills does it mention masks as a way to protect against radiation or fallout. In fact, he explicitly says that the dust in the outdoor air is not a danger because although it will enter your underground shelter, it will remain suspended in the air till it leaves your shelter. It will not accumulate in the shelter, and the dust suspended in the air does not have enough collective mass to hurt you. Yes, some of the fallout consists of dust that stays in the air for days, but the vast majority of the fallout's mass (at least near the ground) is in the form of particles between the size of grains of sand and the size of marbles. Ventilation is important while underground, and the only time it is desirable to stop ventilating your shelter according to the book is while the fallout is actively falling out of the sky (like hail). I don't want to look it up right now, but ISTR that the book says that that will persist for only a few hours at the most.
One thing I realized is that it'll likely be near impossible to travel long distances by car in the post-attack aftermath as everyone with a gun who runs out of gas would be setting up roadblocks to rob travellers of the gas in their cars + other supplies. Interstates would probably thus quickly become unusable. So you probably shouldn't expect to reach some cross-country rendezvous after the fact if you didn't get there beforehand.
Also x-posting my more lengthy comment on this post from EAF.
And if you travel for hours by car during the first 2 or 3 weeks after a massive attack, you'll get a fatal dose of radiation.
I don't know that that's true everywhere. Airbursts (detonation mode for cities) generally don't produce much fallout. Probably good advice if you're downwind of hardened targets like the 3 clusters of Minuteman silos in the Midwest though which will produce a fuckton of fallout as they're all hit with surface detonations. But the Russians/Chinese may not hit them at all if they know all those silos have been fired already.
Huh, I thought the fallout from airbursts would (eventually) kill more unprepared people than the immediate effects of the bursts would. Here is why I believe that.
The book Nuclear War Survival Skills says repeatedly and forcefully that everyone in the continental US should have fallout protection during the 2 or 3 weeks after an attack (and that for most American families, making your own shelter by digging in the dirt is their best bet). A large fraction of the book explains how to build and operate such a shelter.
Nothing has changed since the publication of that book in 1987 that I know of that would make ground bursts more likely. I always thought that ground bursts make sense (and made sense in the 1980s) only when attacking targets that the defender has tried to make proof against nuclear attack. I doubt there are more of those now than then. Since 1987 the Air Force headquarters that used to be in Cheyenne mountain (a hardened target) for example is now in a non-hardened building in nearby Colorado Springs.
Author: Finan Adamson
Last Updated 03/2022
Overview
This doc is to help you prepare for the tail risk of nuclear war. Estimates vary, but an EA Forum survey put the annual probability of US-Russia nuclear war at 0.24%. This doc will go into some detail on threat models of nuclear war and then go over preparations you could make to survive being near a nuclear event.
Threat Models
Nuclear Bombs
To get a sense of how a nuclear bomb damages an area, the distance of radioactive fallout, etc. you can check out NukeMap. The damage caused by a nuclear bomb or missile being detonated is going to depend on many factors including bomb size, detonated on ground or in air, weather, etc. This chart includes some distances and effects for different yields and detonation heights. Yield can vary a lot and is difficult to estimate because yields are often secret and can be changed in similar sizes of missiles because the nuclear material is not a heavy part of the missile. Historically, ICBMs in the Russian Arsenal include a range from ~40 kilotons to ~6 megatons. The largest bomb ever tested was Tsar Bomba, which had a yield of about 50 megatons.
States generally keep modern yields secret, but common yields of ICBMs in the US and Russian arsenal would almost certainly include warheads with yields in the 100-500 kiloton range and might include weapons of 1 to 6 megatons. I’m basing this guess off of Wikipedia’s list of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear War
Estimates vary, but an EA Forum survey put the annual probability of US-Russia nuclear war at 0.24%. Living in the US, Russia, Canada, and Northern Europe this is the most concerning nuclear threat. 9 countries possess nuclear weapons.
Nuclear Winter
Nuclear winter is a controversial risk. During the cold war the security community and the scientific community disagreed about how bad a nuclear winter would be or even if it was possible. The cooling effect depends on a lot of things. How much smoke is created, how much of it is black carbon, how high is that lofted in the atmosphere, what is the weather, were there firestorms, what materials were burned, etc. Looking through the scientific literature, there’s a lot of uncertainty, but in an all out nuclear war between Russia and the US, a nuclear winter lasting months to years seems plausible. If there were a nuclear war between, say, India/Pakistan (about 100 nukes each) there would likely be global climate effects, but probably not nuclear winter. If you were prepping for nuclear winter you’d want months of stored food and water in a place away from potential targets. In the case of nuclear winter, you’d likely want to evacuate to somewhere in the southern hemisphere.
EMP
The probability of large scale damage from EMP could be higher than other kinds of damage from nuclear weapons because it takes fewer weapons to affect a large area. A single nuclear weapon detonated high enough in the atmosphere could affect an area about the size of the US. What we know about EMP comes from tests done by the US and Russia during the cold war. The US test took out all known satellites at the time and the russian test irreparably damaged several miles of power lines. The major concern from EMP is damaging the electrical grid. The US electric grid depends on Large Power Transformers. If the large power transformers were damaged it could take a long time to replace them. They depend on a lot of custom parts and rare materials. Large Power transformer production takes 1 to 2 years. Perhaps that would be sped up in an emergency or it could take longer if critical resources or supply chains are damaged. I could also imagine transitioning to more localized grids in that situation, but that would still result in unreliable electricity for long amounts of time.
Nuclear Power Plant Meltdown
Nuclear power plants could melt down or be the target of terrorist or state action. The radiation from a power plant meltdown is much worse than from a nuclear bomb because a nuclear bomb contains far less radioactive material. If there is a meltdown in your area you should evacuate or shelter in place depending on what emergency authorities say, what level of radiation is currently in your area, and how adequate your shelter is. The WHO estimates 4,000 direct deaths from the Chernobyl Disaster, but that number is fairly controversial. Contaminated food sources could also be concerning. Contamination occurred from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, but this article suggests the risk from that contamination was fairly low.
Radiation
Here’s a handy visual on radiation dosage. Risk of harm from radiation depends on both the dose and the dose rate. 1,000 microsieverts over an hour is much more damaging than 1,000 microsieverts over a year.
Prepare Before
Sign up for Emergency Alerts
The government may send out emergency alerts via text. In order to receive these, the alerts will need to be turned on in your phone. In theory these alerts should only be about disasters in your geographic region or imminent threats to your safety. Amber alerts are different and you can choose to turn those on or off separately.
Sign up for Ben Landau Taylor’s Evacuation Email
Consider Evacuation Triggers
Plan an Evacuation Route
For leaving before a nuclear event
For Missiles Inbound
Store Nuclear Specific Items
Prepare for a world without electricity
In addition to the things in Preparing for Power Outages in Disasters, you’d need to shield your personal electronics to be sure they’d survive an EMP. You can do this cheaply by wrapping electronics in plastic wrap(or a ziploc), then 5 layers of tin foil.
Store Water
As with other disasters you’ll want to store water for sheltering and evacuating. In a nuclear emergency, avoid tap water as it could have picked up radioactive particulate.
Water Preparedness for Disasters
Store Food
As with other disasters you’ll want to store food for sheltering and evacuating.
Food Preparedness for Disasters
Make a Bugout Bag
You’ll want to be able to evacuate elsewhere. In a nuclear emergency be sure to bring your geiger counter and masks as well (masks can help filter out radioactive particulate).
Bugout Bags for Disasters
Survive During
What if a missile is inbound?
Take Shelter
You’ll need a place as close by as possible with as many layers of material between you and the outside world as possible. If you’re in the blast radius you're probably just dead, so this is for if you’re outside the blast radius and preparing to avoid radiation.
Decontaminate
If you think you’ve been through an area with radioactive particles on your way to shelter, you should decontaminate.
Seal off your shelter
Take Iodine Tablets
FDA instructions on taking iodine tablets
Directions for Making the Potassium Iodide (“KI”) Solution:
Step 1. Soften the KI tablet:
Step 2. Crush the softened KI tablet:
Step 3. Add a drink to the KI and water mixture:
Step 4. Give the right amount of the final KI solution, using the chart below.
How Much of the Final Potassium Iodide (“KI”) Solution to Give Each Day
Age
Once Daily Dose of KI Solution
8 teaspoons
8 teaspoons
4 teaspoons
4 teaspoons
2 teaspoons
1 teaspoon
What do I do after the explosion?
Some of this will be redundant with what to do if a missile is inbound. Feel free to ignore the advice you’ve already taken.
Take Shelter
Something you can get to as quickly as possible that will be as safe as possible. To find the nearest open shelter in your area, text SHELTER + your ZIP code to 43362 (4FEMA), example: shelter 12345.
Take Iodine Tablets
Evacuate the area if safe
What Direction should I evacuate?
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
How long should I wait inside?
If you have a geiger counter or dosimeter, you might use that to determine when to leave your shelter to evacuate the area. The threshold is up to you, there’s not official recommendations about what geiger reading you should evacuate at. Finan would consider the current radioactivity inside the shelter, the radioactivity outside the shelter, and how long to get to a safer place if evacuating.
If the radiation inside was 400,000 microsieverts and outside it was 1,000,000 microsieverts. Finan would evacuate immediately if he thought it was 2 hours to safety, but not if he thought it was 10 hours.
How will I evacuate if cars aren’t working?
You may think cars would be shut down making it difficult to evacuate, but mostly cars are fine after EMP, especially if they’re turned off.
Seek Medical Attention
If you’ve been near a nuclear explosion or accident you could have radiation sickness. Seek medical attention if available.
What if a nuclear power plant melts down?
In the case of a nuclear power plant meltdown almost all of the advice above applies.
The differences . . .
Additional Resources