An expert survival strategy in the event of a global apocalypse

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Experts assure that the planet is once again in a situation where the likelihood of a global war is greater than ever. And if it happens, then we will need only one plan for the future - a plan of survival! Welcome to the post-apocalyptic world!

How to bring the apocalypse closer

The escalation of military and political tensions and the huge amount of accumulated weapons cause justified concern for the fate of mankind. The tenth conference of the International Luxembourg Forum on the Prevention of Nuclear Catastrophe, held in October 2017, began with a statement of the fact: soon we may all become witnesses of an unprecedented military confrontation, which has every chance of being the last in the history of mankind.

A global war will lead to mass deaths of civilians, destruction of civilian infrastructure that has been created for centuries, and will cause colossal damage to the environment. Some of her scenarios predict the complete death of mankind and the destruction of all living things, others - the death of only a part of the world's population, which will end up in a world full of unbearable disasters, chaos and violence.

In what form will the global war, often called the Third World War, leave our planet to us? Usually such a war is associated with the large-scale use of nuclear weapons, and when they talk about the results of such a war, they mean the effect of a nuclear winter. It was first described in detail by a group of scientists led by Carl Sagan. The work was published in the journal Science in 1983.

According to the calculations of scientists, as a result of the explosions of nuclear warheads around their epicenters, extensive fires will occur. A huge amount of ash and soot will enter the stratosphere, which will remain there for a long time. The Earth will receive less solar heat, and the temperature on the planet will drop. There are several theoretical options for a nuclear winter, calculated depending on the intensity of the war and the total power of the nuclear warheads used.

According to the most favorable (if I may say so) scenario, the temperature will drop by only one degree and only for one year, which in itself will not have a significant impact on humanity. According to the most severe - the Earth will face an irreversible global cooling, in which it is probably not necessary to count on the revival of our civilization. If the development of events goes according to the worst scenario, then the Earth will not be inhabited until it can recover from the damage inflicted on it. In this case, the remaining microorganisms, if any, will have a chance to go through all the stages of evolution again.

However, one cannot but say that the concept of a nuclear winter has many critics. One of them is the American physicist Fred Singer, who believes that the danger of nuclear weapons is exaggerated. In one of the interviews, he said that he always considered the nuclear winter a scientifically unconfirmed deception, which he also spoke about to Carl Sagan, one of the authors of the concept.

Singer's point is based on data from the oil fires in Kuwait during the 1990-1991 Gulf War. When the Iraqi military set fire to oil fields, the plume of fires stretched for 1,600 km. But the smoke did not reach the stratosphere. According to Singer, nuclear explosions could create a strong greenhouse effect and cause warming, but by no means a cold snap.

At the same time, critics of the concept of nuclear winter do not take into account the fact that if the opposing sides have decided to use nuclear weapons, then other types of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are also likely to be used. A nuclear strike on the enemy is the crossing of the "red line", after which no conventions prohibiting the use of other lethal types of weapons will be taken into account.

Today, weapons of mass destruction include nuclear weapons, chemical and biological. According to expert estimates, the nine countries with nuclear forces have about 16,350 warheads, both ready for immediate use and stored in warehouses. The USA and Russia account for 15,300 warheads of the total, that is, about 93%. Radiological and geophysical weapons are considered promising types of weapons of mass destruction, in particular, its varieties - tectonic, climatic and ecological. Genetic weapons are also referred to as hypothetical weapons of mass destruction. The use of these types of weapons will have no less serious, and somewhere even more significant consequences.

There are many scenarios in which the opposing sides, having not achieved victory with conventional weapons, cross the "red line" and use nuclear weapons. The first targets of such strikes are likely to be military infrastructure. But it would be naive to believe that they will not affect the civilian population.

The death of civilians will untie the hands of opponents. And then, justifying their actions by the mass death of their citizens, the parties will strike at civilian infrastructure: large cities, important industrial centers and transport hubs. And soon nuclear power plants, dams, chemical plants, bacteriological laboratories will appear among the targets of strikes. A peaceful atom escaping from reactors will do no less harm than a military one. Man-made disasters will make huge territories around their centers uninhabitable.

And even if an enemy missile does not reach any nuclear power plant, then one day the personnel of the nuclear power plant who died as a result of the use of other weapons may not take over on duty. If a nuclear power plant is left to itself, sooner or later it will get out of the control of automation. An uncontrolled reaction will begin, and nuclear fuel from the reactor will be released into the atmosphere.

Missile strikes against natural objects are also not excluded. For example, on the large volcanoes of the planet, and primarily the Yellowstone supervolcano in the United States. Located in the northwestern United States, it is within range of Chinese missiles. According to experts, three quarters of nearly a hundred ICBMs in service with China can reach the continental United States.

An eruption provoked by a missile strike could lead the United States out of the war, but at the same time cause a global catastrophe, the consequences of which will be felt by the whole world. In addition to a nuclear winter, the planet will receive a volcanic winter. In addition, scientists do not exclude that the Yellowstone giant will provoke the eruption of several hundred ordinary volcanoes around the world. The activity of oceanic volcanoes, in turn, will generate many tsunamis that will inundate coasts and island states.

Thousands of cubic kilometers of volcanic ash ejected into the atmosphere will block the sunlight and the world will plunge into darkness. What nuclear weapons cannot do directly will be done by volcanoes. In addition to everything, we should expect a general planetary increase in seismic activity. Earthquakes in different regions of the planet will destroy what the war will not have time to destroy.

The strikes will be delivered in order to incapacitate the enemy's armed forces and demoralize him. The parties will not hesitate to use any weapon that will allow, if not to win, then at least turn the tide of the war. They use all types of weapons of mass destruction - both those currently available in the armies, both promising and hypothetical, the development of which is likely to begin on the eve of the conflict. There will be no hesitation in the choice of goals.

The phase of the use of weapons of mass destruction during the conduct of hostilities is likely to be short-lived. For example, the US military announced this, for example, in 2017 at the annual conference of the US Army Association in Washington. According to the generals of the American army, the future war against Russia and China will be swift and lead to many casualties.

Probably, events will begin to occur so rapidly that the decisions made will simply not have time to be critically assessed. Ordinary people will no longer be able to influence what is happening. It will be impossible to stop the untwisted flywheel of war.

After the use of nuclear weapons, each subsequent retaliatory strike will be stronger than the previous one. Until, finally, the "dead hand" comes into play - a system that guarantees a retaliatory nuclear strike against the enemy, even if there is no one to make a decision about this strike. According to some reports, the Perimeter system, an automatic control complex for a massive retaliatory nuclear strike, created in the USSR at the height of the Cold War, is endowed with such an opportunity.

As you know, 38 states with a population of over 1.5 billion people took part in the First World War. Then for the first time they used tanks, chemical weapons, anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, flamethrowers. Airplanes, machine guns, mortars, submarines and torpedo boats have become widespread. 62 states out of 73 that existed at that time took part in the Second World War. This is 80% of the world's population. The war was accompanied by colossal destruction, destruction of tens of thousands of cities and villages, innumerable calamities of tens of millions of people. This is the only conflict in history in which nuclear weapons were used.

The third world war is likely to cover most of the territory occupied by humans today. The theater of military operations will be located on every continent and in every ocean, in the troposphere and stratosphere, in near-earth space. Wherever there are people and man-made objects created by them. If the war drags on and proceeds according to the most terrible scenario, then all that will be left of us is research vehicles on Mars and the Moon and probes sent to the far corners of the solar system.

Albert Einstein once said: "I don't know what kind of weapon will be used in the Third World War, but the Fourth World War will be fought with sticks and stones." As you can see, the result of the Third World War can only be a new stone age.

Oh, eerie new world!

In the insane global war of the future, with a high probability, there will be no winners. The war will end when there is simply no one to give orders, or there is no one to carry them out. Anyone who survives in it will be able to consider himself a winner. There will be no states and governments, borders will turn out to be a formality, and all social ties will be violated.

No police, no medicine, no retail chains with daily food deliveries, no clean water in the plumbing. No pensions and benefits, let alone salaries. Laws and rules, conventions and obligations, bank accounts and rights will remain only as memories of the past world. Forget that you owned something, if you cannot protect it by force, it is no longer yours. However, you will no longer need many things from the past. Those who survived will be torn out of their usual way of life. Even where the war does not destroy the infrastructure, going to work, offices and factories will be pointless. The majority of goods and services will not be needed at once. Office and industrial buildings that survived the war will become empty and begin to decay rapidly. Each person will be left to himself. Everyone will survive as best they can.

In connection with the destruction of the telecommunications infrastructure, the transport network, the death of millions of people - participants in social ties - all social and production chains will be disrupted. Modern production facilities have hundreds and thousands of suppliers scattered around the world. The absence of only a part of them will no longer allow the production of cars or calculators. However, they will no longer be needed.

Do not think that in the corners of the planet untouched by war, you can preserve the remnants of the old way. The modern world is too global. There are numerous trade links between the countries. The planet's economy is based on the international division of labor. The war will destroy transport communications. Trade routes, sea and land, will cease to function. The demise of the population in the developed countries, which are most likely to suffer the most in the Third World War, will lead to the disappearance of a huge number of consumers of goods produced in the developing countries. International trade will simply stop.

At the same time, a global ecological catastrophe will lead to a drop in yields and to an unacceptable deterioration in the quality of products due to radioactive contamination of large areas. We all remember that after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the wind carried radioactive chemical elements over many hundreds and thousands of kilometers. Of course, radioactive contamination primarily affected the territories of Ukraine and Belarus, but an increase in radiation was noted in Russia, Sweden, Norway, Great Britain and other countries, where in the first days after the disaster the wind carried radioactive clouds. Now there will be incomparably more such centers of radiation. The consequences of the use of nuclear weapons will be added to the consequences of accidents at nuclear power plants. And that's if we don't talk about the use of cobalt weapons - a modification of nuclear weapons, the purpose of which is the deliberate super-strong radioactive contamination of the area even with a relatively weak nuclear explosion.

Contamination of the territory due to the fallout of radioactive fallout will reduce the number of areas suitable for agriculture. Even if something grows in the zones of radioactive contamination, a person simply will not be able to work in such fields without putting his health at risk, and even more so he will not be able to eat food grown in such fields.

The mass death of living beings directly as a result of the use of various types of weapons of mass destruction will lead to the rupture of food chains and the death of more and more new species of animals at the next stage. At the same time, some species, left without natural predators, can over-breed like locusts and add new troubles to the survivors. In addition to all this, the life cycle of natural inhabitants takes place in huge areas. Migratory birds, not finding the usual conditions in nesting and wintering places, will die. Due to pollution of spawning grounds, the reproduction of fish resources in the ocean will stop. Fisheries will suffer irreparable damage. The decline in marine bioresources will be a blow to the economies of the island states.

The governments of those countries whose populations manage to avoid death in the war will face new threats no less terrible than a global war. It's hunger and chaos. The authorities will not be able to provide their citizens with either acceptable employment or food. The countries that survived the war expect a social explosion and a rapid plunge into chaos. What the war could not do will complete its direct consequences. Perhaps it is here that it is appropriate to say that the living will envy the dead.

The international organization "Physicians of the World for the Prevention of Nuclear War" was founded at the height of the Cold War - in 1980. Its activities aimed at preventing nuclear conflict and promoting nuclear disarmament are still relevant. Last year, the organization published a report on the aftermath of a nuclear conflict between only two states, India and Pakistan, with relatively small nuclear arsenals. The exchange of nuclear strikes between them will lead to a catastrophic reduction in the volume of growing crops. As a result, according to the most conservative estimates, 2 billion people will be left without food. Famine will be accompanied by large-scale epidemics that will endanger the lives of several hundred million more people, according to the report. The calculations are made on the assumption that Pakistan's arsenal has 100-130 nuclear warheads versus India's 90-110 warheads. What, then, can we say about the consequences of the military conflict between the leading nuclear powers?

The planet will enter the new Stone Age with a reduced population and habitable territory. Nature can hardly feed even a sharply reduced humanity. The use of agricultural machinery, fertilizers, plant protection products, most likely, can be forgotten, because all these are the attributes of the modern world. Agriculture will be reduced to rather primitive forms. The ecological capacity of the territories will decrease, it will become impossible to live in cities, and it makes no sense to restore them. It will only make sense to go there occasionally to unearth pre-war items or scrap metal suitable for reforging into new products under the ruins.

But this will still be our Earth. It will not become a desolate Mars or a Venus covered in sulphate clouds. The safety margin of our planet is large enough. The earth will probably still be able to support human existence. Even if he needs to hide in the most inaccessible places, on remote islands, underground, in the depths of water bodies - wherever radiation and the consequences of a man-made global catastrophe will leave at least a little acceptable living conditions.

In the best case, in some territories it will be possible to stay on the surface and breathe breathable air, in the worst case, it will be possible to live only underground, going out in protective suits and with a dosimeter in hand.

Survive by any means

A person will be alone with the world, not adapted for life. Everything created over the past few centuries will be destroyed or will not be able to be used for its intended purpose. Houses without heating, electricity, water and sewerage, with inoperative elevators and garbage chutes will no longer provide a person with a normal life. Cities that have not even been hit will fall into decay. Packs of stray dogs will feel better both in the stone jungle of ruins and in the rural wasteland. However, only as long as they can find the remnants of food and surviving small animals that can be eaten. And then they will start hunting people. It will be necessary to urgently find shelter and stray into groups for self-defense.

In the early years, the world's population will steadily decline. Survivors in hostilities and man-made disasters will face conditions of existence unbearable for a civilized person. Hunger, cold, epidemics and limited resources will be the main causes of population decline. Radioactive fallout falling on a vast surface and getting into the water will become a serious threat to those who cannot protect themselves from radiation.

Only the strongest will be able to adapt to the new conditions. Strong in spirit, body and mind. They will be Homo postapocalyptic. People who have experienced an incredible shock from the loss of their familiar world and have found new goals in life, which will now seem meaningless to many.

Some advantage after a global catastrophe will be given to those who prepared for the consequences of the war in advance. Prepared a shelter and the necessary supply of food, water and basic necessities. And, importantly, he was able to protect all this from less prudent fellow tribesmen.

An important factor will be the availability of the necessary survival skills. People who know how to handle weapons, who know how to survive in harsh conditions and provide first aid, who are able to make difficult decisions, often contrary to the usual pre-war morality, will have an advantage in the new conditions. People with leadership qualities.

They will become the leaders of a new post-apocalyptic world. Other survivors will gather around them. To begin with, those who can complement their skills, who in a past life knew how to heal people. Especially those of them who are able to continue to do this in the changed conditions, without the necessary diagnostic devices and drugs.

And with agriculture again becoming the main creative occupation, people with the skills to do it will be welcome members of new communities. Also appreciated will be techies who can "revive" found items from a bygone pre-war world and make them work.

Loners in this post-apocalyptic world cannot survive. Back in 1980, Bruce Clayton, a radiological protection and shelter building specialist and author of several books on disaster survival, noted in an article that no loner is as powerful as a group. There are enough people in the group to be on 24/7 watch or to form a resupply convoy. Besides, someone will manage to save their families. Ensuring the safety of their lives will become the goal of existence for many. Keeping a family in a group is easier. If the head of the family is injured or lost on a hike, the family's chances of survival plummet. In a large group, this support will not be lost.

So, the main purpose of existence will be survival. Namely, the search for places most favorable for life, the search for food and its production, self-defense against other human groups. The more difficult the conditions for survival are, the more difficult it will be to get into a group that has found a suitable place to live: unpolluted land, clean water, shelter from bad weather and enemies. Not every survivor will be accepted into the group. Not everyone will share with such a difficultly obtained or grown food. Clayton himself writes that an additional prepared and equipped loner who has joined the group goes to its asset, while not ready for anything is a real liability.

Expulsion from the group for breaking its rules will be the most severe punishment after murder. However, in some cases it will actually be the same. People and their groups will be fragmented, and the less habitable land remains, the more danger they will pose to each other. Some will find places suitable for habitation, others will gather in groups and begin to roam in search of such places or communities ready to accept them, or will attempt to take territory and drive out a weaker group.

The effects of radiation do not always cause rapid death. But, probably, a painful and terrible end will overtake anyone who, inadvertently or involuntarily, puts his life at risk. This will happen in a few weeks, months or even years. But it will definitely happen. Many years will pass, and over time the survivors, and possibly their descendants, will come to practically primitive forms of the division of labor. Some will obtain food by farming, others by nomadic cattle breeding. Where conditions for the existence of wild animals remain, people will hunt. There will also be those who will get everything they need by robbery and robbery.

Particularly dangerous will be the remnants of armed formations, private armies like Blackwater, survivors of the war, criminal and terrorist groups. Due to the absence of the state and law enforcement agencies capable of holding accountable for violations of the law, people who professionally own weapons will acquire a new status. Now they are the "law". In fact, the leaders of these armed groups will become the new princes, and their units - squads. And in the Middle Ages, as we remember, the princes with their squads were engaged in collecting tribute. Some of the survivors will obey them. And someone, not wanting to come to terms with the rules of the new Middle Ages, will fight for their free life and try to create communities based on democratic rules.

Combining into groups will help protect the results of your labor, or rather, the main result - food. But by the time a new crop appears, you will need to eat something else. Contrary to popular belief, for most food produced before the war, radiation will not be harmful unless radioactive dust remains on the surface of the food or gets inside. It must be remembered that radioactive radiation only harms the living. Radiation can kill bacteria inside the tin can, but by doing so it will only contribute to the extension of the shelf life. By the way, radiation canning is a fairly well-known technology mastered by the food industry.

But the crop grown after the war can pose a significant danger to human health. Fruits grown on contaminated soil will contain radioactive isotopes of chemical elements. For example, iodine-131 is a radioactive isotope, a kind of vital chemical element iodine. It is one of the most abundant isotopes in the fission chains of uranium and plutonium. Once in the body with food, it replaces natural iodine (stable iodine-127) and accumulates in the thyroid gland, gradually killing a person. Iodine-131 decays with the emission of β-particles (beta radiation) and γ-quanta (gamma radiation).

As you know, people live in the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Therefore, it is possible that people will remain in the contaminated areas too, unable to find the strength to go in search of safe habitats. First of all, they will think about how to survive here and now, already worrying little about their future.

It will be worse if even a short stay on the surface becomes impossible. Radiation, chemical contamination, pathogenic microorganisms and viruses will "lock" a person in underground shelters for a long time. People will have to go underground, spend a long time there without going outside, and try to grow their own food. It's just a mistake to believe that in structures located underground - civil defense shelters, metro stations, underground parking lots - you can always find an opportunity to hide for a long time and at the same time protect yourself from the harmful effects of radiation. With the exception of civil defense shelters, stations and metro lines, basements and similar facilities are not designed to be rescued from a radiation threat. For this, at a minimum, anti-radiation filters are needed to purify the incoming air. And the entire life support system requires maintenance, which means going to the surface.

The food and water supplies taken with you to the bunker will quickly run out. Unless, of course, you have built your own shelter ahead of time and equipped it with everything you need.

But mushrooms and plants can be grown underground. But for the organization of artificial lighting, it is necessary to have an autonomous source of electricity. A diesel generator will require constant replenishment of fuel. And solar panels and wind turbines located on the surface will need constant maintenance and periodic repairs. Leaving the shelter is essential. Someone will still have to be sent "up".

Humanity 2.0

Some scientists explain the absence of visible traces of the activities of alien civilizations by the so-called "Great Filter". This assumption states that at some point in time, life on the planet collides with an event that interrupts the evolutionary process or completely destroys civilization. And if in one case such a filter is a manifestation of external forces, then in the other - internal forces, indicating the absence of a reasonable approach to the management of resources capable of destroying all living things. This is a kind of intelligence test of civilization. Is it capable, having mastered such destructive forces as weapons of mass destruction, to prevent their use? If humanity does not pass such a test, then it will perish in a fire that will ignite itself.

Perhaps the Third World War will become such a great filter for us, and intelligent life will not appear on the planet for a very long time. Perhaps a person will get a second chance, and the survivors of the global fire will be able to recreate civilization, taking into account the bitter experience of the past millennia. To repopulate the planet will require a human population of several hundred people, with 70 women of childbearing age among them. These figures are given by Lewis Dartnell, author of the book "Civilization from scratch", based on the results of genetic research. Probably, such groups will appear in different places of our planet. In the future, they will become the embryos of new peoples and races that will populate the Earth in the future.

But to recreate a civilization, one genetic code, passed down through generations, is not enough. The survivors, who will still remember the world buried under the radioactive ash, will need to collect all the material carriers of information that can be found: books, blueprints, computer hard drives. It doesn't matter what era they belong to - video and audio cassettes of the second half of the 20th century or medieval maps that have survived in the museum's storerooms. Any information about the lost world will be important. Everything that contains the history of mankind, facts from his life, technology and knowledge. And then, when children are born who will not know the other world, pass on all this to them so that they can pass them on from generation to generation. When favorable conditions are created, this knowledge will come in handy. Which, however, may happen even not in hundreds, but in thousands of years.

Over time, the descendants of the survivors - Humanity 2.0 - will return to the point at which the path of Humanity 1.0 ended. New peoples and states will divide the world, and it remains to be hoped that the memory of the past war will not be erased. But before we can hope for this, we must do everything to prevent a world war now.