Nuclear war: survival plans that would save no one

Surviving a nuclear war: the plans that would save no one

The scenario is as old as the bomb itself: if Russia invades Ukraine and NATO enters the conflict, conventional fighting in Europe could escalate into a massive nuclear exchange. Hunger, pain, misery. Europe's major cities, priority targets. The question that opens the debate is not rhetorical: how do you survive that?

The short answer, the one that dominates the analysis, is that you don't. The blast wave, the heat of the explosion and the radioactive fallout do the dirty work in the first hours. And anyone lucky enough to live in a remote area faces a nuclear winter lasting several years, in which most plants and, therefore, animals disappear. The shelter with three years' worth of supplies emerges as the only serious option, and even then there are no guarantees.

The shelter that isn't enough: three years of food and a hostile world outside

The most repeated proposal is the bunker: a nuclear shelter and three years of food and water. It sounds like a plan. It isn't. Even if air filtering and a closed system allow you to survive the first strike, the aftermath is a wasteland of disease, plagues and looting. The docufilm Threads, broadcast in the eighties, depicts that transition with a rawness that still holds up: first warnings, attack, weeks of disconnection and antiestéticar, the sick, theft of supplies and abuse of authority. Then a time jump and life years later, among ruins and epidemics.

The problem is not so much surviving the confrontation as surviving the world that comes after. Whoever has the weapons, rules. That is the message drawn from fiction like Dark, and also from the classic literature of the genre: On the Beach, the adaptation of Nevil Shute's novel, Alas, Babylon, The Swan Song or A Canticle for Leibowitz. In all of them, radiation and hunger kill more than the bombs.

How many bombs would fall, and where? The map nobody wants to look at

The technical distinction that circulates is between strategic and destructive attacks. The former would target military bases: Rota, Morón, Torrejón and Zaragoza. Controlled yields, below one megaton. The latter would aim to prevent the enemy's recovery and would fall on major cities to cause the greatest possible damage. In Spain, the list would be short: Madrid, as the capital, and little else.

That said, some argue that today's arsenals are no longer those of the eighties. Demilitarization removed the biggest bombs, leaving only those that wipe out a single city and nothing more. Radioactive fallout would remain a problem, but there would not be such a brutal nuclear winter. A simulation cited in the discussion suggests that Spain gets off lightly, like almost the entire southern hemisphere, with one or two hundred million dead. Within four days, the argument goes, we would be back to the same old overpopulation problem.

Deterrence works until it stops working

The broad consensus is that nuclear weapons remain deterrents and that no one will use them. Russia can invade Ukraine, NATO can impose sanctions and position itself to defend its members, and there it ends. Ukraine is not in NATO. If the conflict became direct, the script being considered is that of a warning: launching something into the sea, a mini-nuke against a squadron of ships or a barracks. If the adversary doesn't take the hint, then yes, cities and the end of the world.

The problem with that reasoning is that it requires madmen never to come to power. And there have been quite a few in the last century. The most common objection is that elites don't want to live in an underground bunker for years, nor on other planets, as some billionaires suggest. They want to keep living it up. That, and not goodness, is what holds back the button.

Chernobyl, the Sahara and the atoll: radiation that doesn't kill that much

Against the catastrophist narrative there is a current that simply denies it. Chernobyl is so dangerous, the argument goes, that retirees live their lives in the zone and the Ukrainian government keeps guards there more for control than anything else. The Sahara was France's nuclear test site, and every spring the winds carry nutrient-rich sand to the Amazon. No one has died from radiation. There is cancer, but it is attributed to tobacco, asbestos and other causes.

The counterargument is that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were toys compared to the most powerful ones in existence today. And that the comparison with Chernobyl doesn't hold: an accident is not an exchange of hundreds of warheads. The debate, in any case, remains open.

The option of dying quickly and the uncomfortable question

There is a position that gives up in advance: better to die in the first strike than to live five years in a hole only to come out and die two months later. The only request is not to be at the center of the blast. And from that comes the question nobody wants to answer: would you commit absolute evil knowing you were going to die within days or weeks? Some answer yes, that they would go out with a bang.

The closing thought, if there is one, is that individual survival depends on factors beyond your control: where it catches you, what time it is, whether the wind blows east or west. Shelters, supplies and air filters serve for the first month. After that, the world to come resembles nothing we have ever known.