You Might Survive a Nuclear Blast—if You Have the Right Shelter (2024)

But let’s be honest: Most people, even in the moderate damage zone, won’t survive. Hardly anyone lives or works in nearly windowless reinforced-concrete buildings, nor in the vicinity of a concrete bunker. (Even people at a bank would have to get into the vault to be in the safest place; people in a subway would get the most benefit in a station that’s very deep underground.) Most people live in timber-frame or other less-armored buildings.

This shouldn’t be construed as a way to be safe in a nuclear explosion, says Dylan Spaulding, an earth scientist and nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Strong structures made of concrete with metal reinforcement and designed for seismic safety would survive the pressures the team modeled, he says, but those pressures would be enough to destroy most traditional, wood-framed houses and brick structures without reinforcement.

And he points out that the blast wave is only part of the story. While it is the main source of danger in a non-nuclear explosion—like the one thatrocked Beirut in 2020, which was caused by a large quantity of flammable ammonium nitrate stored at the city’s port—nuclear weapons also throw out ionizing radiation and heat, followed by radioactive fallout.

Radiation exposure through the skin or inhalation can havemany health effects, including skin burns, organ damage, andcancer. The range of radiation exposure could extend tens of miles from the epicenter, so people who survive the blast could later be felled by the radiation.

Drikakis’ example focused on what’s called a “strategic” nuke deployed on an ICBM, but there are also “tactical” nukes, which are dropped by a plane onto a battlefield and which can blow up on the ground. Such explosions play out differently but can be as deadly and destructive, potentially exposing more people to lethal radiation doses, Spaulding says.