Radiation - war

[GillyBee]

Iodine protects your thyroid gland from absorbing radioactive iodine if that has been let into the air as a result of a blast of accident. It needs to be taken as very close to the time of the incident and is of most benefit to the young. It will not protect you from any other sort of radiation so is most likely to be useful to help calm down panicking people than anything else unless the radiation released is all radioactive iodine.

[jennyjj01]

Iodine protects your thyroid gland from absorbing radioactive iodine if that has been let into the air as a result of a blast of accident. It needs to be taken as very close to the time of the incident and is of most benefit to the young. It will not protect you from any other sort of radiation so is most likely to be useful to help calm down panicking people than anything else unless the radiation released is all radioactive iodine.

A placebo, then. GRrrreat! It gives some protection to children from thyroid cancer. Adults, far less. Dosage has to be controlled, because iodine itself could be harmful in the wrong dosage.
We only feed our thyroids Iodine from FOOD that contains it. Any iodine gas that is released from an incident is gaseous and not absorbed by us. Radioactive iodine has a half life of 14 days and won't get into our stockpiled rations. Yayyy.
We are far more at risk from Strontium, Cesium, Plutonium and god help us, Cobalt if that gets used, and a host of other long half life contaminants that would settle on our farmland. Also, of course, no tablet will prevent us getting melted or shredded in a detonation, or frozen in a nuclear winter.

[Frnc]

I would have thought a nuclear winter would kill most vegetation, so there won't be much food. But I've not researched this. As far as I'm concerned, if there's a nuclear war, we're all gone.

[jennyjj01]

I would have thought a nuclear winter would kill most vegetation, so there won't be much food. But I've not researched this. As far as I'm concerned, if there's a nuclear war, we're all gone.

Agreed.the lucky ones will be those at ground zero

[Frnc]

I would have thought a nuclear winter would kill most vegetation, so there won't be much food. But I've not researched this. As far as I'm concerned, if there's a nuclear war, we're all gone.

Agreed.the lucky ones will be those at ground zero

People who live in London could go in the Underground. However you might not have time, and some nukes can penetrate deeper. You probably wouldn't survive a direct hit.

I live in a major city but it has no underground. Presumably major cities are targets. You might have to bug out! Off the top of my head, nuclear blasts have a radiation radius of 153km2, a fireball radius of roughly 197km2, an air blast radius ranging from 321km2 to 1,420km2 and a thermal radiation radius of 12,960km2. I'm not sure I could pedal fast enough.

Safest places to be are

Cornwall
Weymouth
Folkestone
Dover
Margate
Clacton-on-Sea
Felixstowe
Brixworth
Bideford
Aberystwyth
Skegness
Isle of Anglesey
Barrow in Furness
Lancaster
Whitby
Carlisle
Dumfries
Berwick-upon-Tweed
Inverness

Of course fallout could still blow their way.

Nuclear winter might be 1° colder global average for 2 or 3 years. But if the war was big enough, summer temperatures could drop 20° in agricultural regions, wiping out food production. And it would be even worse in Russia, with a 35° drop. Think on, Vladimir!
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/R ... 008235.pdf

[jennyjj01]

As far as I'm concerned, if there's a nuclear war, we're all gone.

Agreed.the lucky ones will be those at ground zero

I live in a major city but it has no underground. Presumably major cities are targets.

Nuclear winter might be 1° colder global average for 2 or 3 years. But if the war was big enough, summer temperatures could drop 20° in agricultural regions, wiping out food production. And it would be even worse in Russia, with a 35° drop. Think on, Vladimir!
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/R ... 008235.pdf

I live within two miles of a significant legitimate target

I doubt Putin gives a tinker's cuss about his own people's fate.

[Kiwififer]

Agreed.the lucky ones will be those at ground zero

I live in a major city but it has no underground. Presumably major cities are targets.

Nuclear winter might be 1° colder global average for 2 or 3 years. But if the war was big enough, summer temperatures could drop 20° in agricultural regions, wiping out food production. And it would be even worse in Russia, with a 35° drop. Think on, Vladimir!
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/R ... 008235.pdf

I live within two miles of a significant legitimate target

I doubt Putin gives a tinker's cuss about his own people's fate.

Yup, I am the same. I can see Edinburgh Castle from my bedroom window, it’s the natural aiming point for the city which would be an obvious target so I reckon I would crack open my special whisky and watch the missile head in.

[Bijela]

I would have thought a nuclear winter would kill most vegetation, so there won't be much food. But I've not researched this. As far as I'm concerned, if there's a nuclear war, we're all gone.

Agreed.the lucky ones will be those at ground zero

People who live in London could go in the Underground. However you might not have time, and some nukes can penetrate deeper. You probably wouldn't survive a direct hit.

I live in a major city but it has no underground. Presumably major cities are targets. You might have to bug out! Off the top of my head, nuclear blasts have a radiation radius of 153km2, a fireball radius of roughly 197km2, an air blast radius ranging from 321km2 to 1,420km2 and a thermal radiation radius of 12,960km2. I'm not sure I could pedal fast enough.

Safest places to be are

Cornwall
Weymouth
Folkestone
Dover
Margate
Clacton-on-Sea
Felixstowe
Brixworth
Bideford
Aberystwyth
Skegness
Isle of Anglesey
Barrow in Furness
Lancaster
Whitby
Carlisle
Dumfries
Berwick-upon-Tweed
Inverness

I disagree with a lot of the places being the safest. Felixstowe is the largest container port in the UK. If you knock out Felixstowe and Dover it would cause a serious limit on capacity to import. A nuclear device that is let off near Southend for instance would most likely make Dover, Eurotunnel, docklands, Felixstowe, Harwich, Ipswich and Lowestoft unusable. It would also likely make access to Sizewell A,B and when it gets make C possibly an issue.

[Frnc]

I forget where the list came from.