36 Comments
User's avatar
Whitney Haller's avatar

I am fucking terrified. Yesterday, came in from the heat for cool drinks so we could sit back and figure out why the well pump wasn't doing what well pumps are supposed to do. Big mistake, as I glanced at my phone and saw some news notifications. Suddenly, I flashback to reading - On The Beach - in the back seat of my Mom's 1968 Firebird on the way from Burlington to Florida. My Mom never scrutinized what I read (yup, I also read Sybil) so, I spent many hours and days in my ten year old head trying to grasp what I had just read. We are so screwed by that orange asshole. My now long dead Mom would have added - at least an asshole is useful.

Expand full comment
/anne...'s avatar

I read On The Beach as a teenager - really eerie as I live in Melbourne!

Expand full comment
Cathy Merrigan's avatar

I'm not sure I'd want to survive a nuclear war, especially between the world super powers. Put me in the die instantly category, because anything left would be torture.

Expand full comment
Robot Bender's avatar

Yeah, that's pretty much my view. We live in a city that would likely be a second strike target due to being a major pipeline junction (fuel, oil, lubricants, natural gas, etc.). Add in a large Army helicopter maintenance base, and yeah. 💥 🍄

Expand full comment
Adam's avatar

I'm in Chicago

Expand full comment
Cathy Merrigan's avatar

Yeah, I'm near some major highway junctions, close to a lot of shipping ports on the river, and the area is saturated with teaching hospitals, universities, and hospitality. Transport of supplies, emergency housing, post- radiation medical recovery facilities would be destroyed.

Expand full comment
Jess's avatar

I am with you on this one.

Expand full comment
Mary Lilith Ruth's avatar

Im close enough to a New England Air Force base I am pretty sure I’d be in the die instantly range, thankfully.

Expand full comment
Bad Bunny's avatar

I grew up during the Cold War, learning to duck and cover under our desks when the attack sirens blew. They tested them every month in our city, so we got plenty of practice.

And lots of practice doing lightning mental date arithmetic -- is this the second Tuesday of the month? -- until a couple minutes passed and the "all clear" rang out, indicating another successful test.

The duck-and-cover drill is a touchstone for my generation. But if anything, what sticks more in my mind is the instruction from the big Civil Defense poster on the back wall of our classroom:

"𝙄𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙨𝙚𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙝 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙮𝙤𝙪'𝙧𝙚 𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙩, 𝙞𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙡𝙞𝙚 𝙙𝙤𝙬𝙣 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙜𝙪𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧."

Yeah. That'll work. (Matthew 24:15-21 describes a similar scenario rather vividly.)

Oh. I was supposed to be answering those questions. Well, since this is Sweary History, here goes.

No. And 𝙛𝙪𝙘𝙠 𝙣𝙤.

Expand full comment
Debbie's avatar

I live way down under on the South Island in New Zealand, further south than Australia. I’m hopeful that the Tradewinds would keep the fallout mostly north of the equator and that we would have time to figure out how to survive a nuclear winter. I’ve no doubt that we would revert to a primitive society where our time would be spent on basic survival - food, water, shelter. I’m 70 years old, so I would imagine that the first major illness or injury would take me out. antibiotics or surgical remedies would not be available. But my grandchildren might survive. It would be an extremely harsh world for them, but perhaps they and their offspring could adapt.

I don’t have much hope for the northern hemisphere. The jet stream will carry radiation into the areas that are not directly attacked. Radiation sickness will gradually take out those who survive the war.

Expand full comment
C Kruczynski's avatar

Haven’t the billionaires all built their underground bunkers down around Queenstown?

Expand full comment
KB in AZ's avatar

If you haven’t seen it, I recommend “Threads” - a 1984 British movie that depicts two families surviving a nuclear attack and its consequences. 😢🍄‍🟫 https://www.themirror.com/entertainment/scariest-film-ever-made-threads-745473

Expand full comment
Melanie Edgecombe's avatar

I saw that when it came out. I remember the fear it instilled in me to this day. HAUNTING!

Expand full comment
BAD HISTORY's avatar

At least Hegseth will give us all prior warning on Signal, so we’ll have just enough time to kiss our mothers goodbye and maybe have one last feel of a boob (probably easier if you combine the two).

Expand full comment
Catherine K's avatar

Considering I live in a U.S. state with a few different military bases, I'm pretty sure that I'd be wiped during the first boom.

Expand full comment
Ann Russell's avatar

I wouldn’t even try. I’d run to stand right under it.

Expand full comment
WombatWins's avatar

We’re in southern Australia. My 11 year old son has told me he’s scared of war which seriously pisses me off. I grew up in the 80’s, shit-scared we’d all die in a nuclear holocaust. Glasnost etc was supposed to stop that generational anxiety that we’d end up vaporized.

Isn’t there supposed to be a group of American high school students who accidentally become the heroes and save us all? Where’s Patrick Swayze when you need him…

Expand full comment
Bungalow Baby's avatar

I am thankful that I’ve had a pretty darn good life thus far. I’m 72, moved away from the cold climate when I was 27 to the Sunshine State (never dreaming it would turn into a red state), and am now retired for 11 years after a really interesting career in ophthalmology. Here I am, very comfortable in a cute little bungalow in the subtropics. I thought the threat of flooding or wind damage from a tropical event was my worst fear but this POS POTUS and the people that are implementing Project 2025 and the unfathomable possibility of the use of nuclear bombs has brought a fear that is heart seizing. I’m savoring every moment from now until…. because who knows what’s next?

Expand full comment
Tilman's avatar

It should be "fission-kaboom", not "fusion-kaboom".

Expand full comment
Kathlyn's avatar

So glad I’m not the only physics pedant to pick up on that

Expand full comment
Sue Heath's avatar

Why would I want to?

Expand full comment
Greg Garriss's avatar

After growing up with the Cold War and working as a researcher in the nuclear industry, I know enough about radiation poisoning that my preference is to be as close to ground zero as possible.

Expand full comment
James addison's avatar

No. I can barely survive getting out of bed in the morning.

Expand full comment
C Kruczynski's avatar

“Would you want to” is really the question. And no, I don’t think I would.

Expand full comment
Lee Neville's avatar

It has astounded me that a select few governments can make the decision to murder an entire planetary ecosystem. Who died and made them the boss?

Psychotic death obsessed sociopaths - all of them.

Everyone from the Bomb makers to the truck driver delivering toilet paper to the storage sites are equally culpable and special places await in the most miserable depths of hell for every last one involved.

If some depraved asshole sets off the immolation, I hope I’ve got enough time to set up a chair in the backyard to settle down for the flash - I’ll be wearing sunglasses and will have both middle fingers raised at the heavens in empty defiance - I want go to ash in a nanosecond.

Expand full comment