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Really?
Press events are usually decadent affairs of food, drink, and well-dressed executives in up-market hotels. Not this one. A small number of journalists including your correspondent were dumped at dusk in a wet field in the Essex countryside, given blue boilersuits and a small knapsack containing bottle-tops and leaflets, and told to await developments. As most press events don’t ask for disclosure of any medical conditions, nor involve signing a waiver against accidents, those developments were unlikely to be pleasant.
But then, it’s rarely pleasant after a nuclear war. In honour of the launch of Fallout 4, set in the aftermath of virtual atomic conflict, we were about to be taken into an ex-government, ex-secret nuclear bunker and trained to survive the apocalypse. Not the zombie kind, which has of late spawned an entire industry of movies, games, and survival books, but the real thing, which hasn’t.
You probably haven’t thought nearly as much about atomic weapons as you have about zombies. That’s odd. Zombies don’t exist, while on the other hand there’s a nuke programmed with your postcode sitting in a bunker right now (see "Atomic Weapons: A Consumer’s Guide" later in this story for more details). The real apocalypse could be four minutes away from now. Really.
If a nuke lands near your house, rather than on top of it, we figured you'd like some tips on how to survive the apocalypse.
.
Consumer experience
Nuclear weapons produce a fireball, a radiation burst, a heat/light pulse, and a pressure wave. Ground detonations also produce fallout.
The popular half-megaton-yield warhead, as deployed in the current Trident missiles, would have the following effects: a fireball radius of 1km; an air blast radius at 20psi (100 percent fatalities and major building destruction) of 1.7km and 5psi (domestic building collapse) of 3.5km; a 90 percent lethal radiation pulse of 2.3km radius; and a third-degree burn/blindness thermal/light pulse radius of 8km.
If exploded over central London, immediate casualties and fatalities will be around 1.2 million. If a light south-westerly wind of 10km/hr is blowing at the time, it will push a 100 rads-per-hour fallout footprint around 120 kilometres (75 miles), or across East Anglia and out past Lowestoft. 1,000 rads total exposure is invariably fatal, so wrap up well and get into a bunker quickly.
If you see a mushroom cloud and are not crushed, blind, or on fire, you can work out whether you’ve already received a dangerous amount of radiation through a simple test. Close one eye and hold a thumb up at arm’s length. If it completely covers the cloud, you are probably in good shape and should evacuate immediately in the opposite direction. If you can still see the cloud around your thumb: good luck.
You can detonate nuclear weapons on your favourite location and observe the effects at Nukemap. If this story of death and woe and the end of humankind has piqued your interest, be sure to read our review of Fallout 4.
I have not pulled Fallout 4 trigger yet, may need to finish New Vegas first
Anyone else bought the game?
Press events are usually decadent affairs of food, drink, and well-dressed executives in up-market hotels. Not this one. A small number of journalists including your correspondent were dumped at dusk in a wet field in the Essex countryside, given blue boilersuits and a small knapsack containing bottle-tops and leaflets, and told to await developments. As most press events don’t ask for disclosure of any medical conditions, nor involve signing a waiver against accidents, those developments were unlikely to be pleasant.
But then, it’s rarely pleasant after a nuclear war. In honour of the launch of Fallout 4, set in the aftermath of virtual atomic conflict, we were about to be taken into an ex-government, ex-secret nuclear bunker and trained to survive the apocalypse. Not the zombie kind, which has of late spawned an entire industry of movies, games, and survival books, but the real thing, which hasn’t.
You probably haven’t thought nearly as much about atomic weapons as you have about zombies. That’s odd. Zombies don’t exist, while on the other hand there’s a nuke programmed with your postcode sitting in a bunker right now (see "Atomic Weapons: A Consumer’s Guide" later in this story for more details). The real apocalypse could be four minutes away from now. Really.
If a nuke lands near your house, rather than on top of it, we figured you'd like some tips on how to survive the apocalypse.
.
Consumer experience
Nuclear weapons produce a fireball, a radiation burst, a heat/light pulse, and a pressure wave. Ground detonations also produce fallout.
The popular half-megaton-yield warhead, as deployed in the current Trident missiles, would have the following effects: a fireball radius of 1km; an air blast radius at 20psi (100 percent fatalities and major building destruction) of 1.7km and 5psi (domestic building collapse) of 3.5km; a 90 percent lethal radiation pulse of 2.3km radius; and a third-degree burn/blindness thermal/light pulse radius of 8km.
If exploded over central London, immediate casualties and fatalities will be around 1.2 million. If a light south-westerly wind of 10km/hr is blowing at the time, it will push a 100 rads-per-hour fallout footprint around 120 kilometres (75 miles), or across East Anglia and out past Lowestoft. 1,000 rads total exposure is invariably fatal, so wrap up well and get into a bunker quickly.
If you see a mushroom cloud and are not crushed, blind, or on fire, you can work out whether you’ve already received a dangerous amount of radiation through a simple test. Close one eye and hold a thumb up at arm’s length. If it completely covers the cloud, you are probably in good shape and should evacuate immediately in the opposite direction. If you can still see the cloud around your thumb: good luck.
You can detonate nuclear weapons on your favourite location and observe the effects at Nukemap. If this story of death and woe and the end of humankind has piqued your interest, be sure to read our review of Fallout 4.
I have not pulled Fallout 4 trigger yet, may need to finish New Vegas first
Anyone else bought the game?
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