There’s a question of how quickly I want to get out of town if a nuke is deployed in Ukraine.
My estimate is that, for every hour I delay leaving the Bay, I spend about 6 micromorts. If I have 40 years of life left, that means each hour costs me 2 more hours of life in expectation. (Spreadsheet here.)
For instance, I think this means if it’s the middle of the night when I find out it happened, it’s worth me waking up and going, and not waiting until the next morning (e.g. sleeping 4 hours costs me 12 hours, which is not typically worth it to me). I also think it’s okay (i.e. not catastrophic) for me to spend 1-3 hours to pack and make sure my immediate friends/family are getting out. That seems likely to be worth 3-9 hours to me.
My guess is there’s a little bit of prep worth doing, primarily in terms of picking a place to go to that’s out of the reach of a Tsar bomb for your nearest city (use this map, check the option for the 50 mt bomb), and checking in with the people you wouldn’t want to leave behind, to make sure they’re prepared to go if the news comes. Some other prep seems good, I won’t list it all here.
To be clear, I assign <10% to a nuke being used in Ukraine.
Russia’s nuclear arsenal is more confusing but sources seem to all agree that their biggest weapons in active use are in the 745 kT to 1.2 MT range. Some examples are the R-39 which apparently currently uses 750 kT warheads or the [Topol M] with a 1 MT warhead.
A lot of ICBM’s are capable of launching >10 MT warheads, but my understanding is that the US and Russia don’t actually use such large warheads because it’s more useful to launch 6-10 much smaller warheads instead.
That’s interesting. My sense is the Sarmat sure was built with the goal of launching massive nuclear warheads, so I would be surprised if Russia isn’t going to load it with an appropriate warhead.
There’s a question of how quickly I want to get out of town if a nuke is deployed in Ukraine.
My estimate is that, for every hour I delay leaving the Bay, I spend about 6 micromorts. If I have 40 years of life left, that means each hour costs me 2 more hours of life in expectation. (Spreadsheet here.)
For instance, I think this means if it’s the middle of the night when I find out it happened, it’s worth me waking up and going, and not waiting until the next morning (e.g. sleeping 4 hours costs me 12 hours, which is not typically worth it to me). I also think it’s okay (i.e. not catastrophic) for me to spend 1-3 hours to pack and make sure my immediate friends/family are getting out. That seems likely to be worth 3-9 hours to me.
My guess is there’s a little bit of prep worth doing, primarily in terms of picking a place to go to that’s out of the reach of a Tsar bomb for your nearest city (use this map, check the option for the 50 mt bomb), and checking in with the people you wouldn’t want to leave behind, to make sure they’re prepared to go if the news comes. Some other prep seems good, I won’t list it all here.
To be clear, I assign <10% to a nuke being used in Ukraine.
Why are you planning for an experimental 50 MT weapon when the biggest one in Russia’s actual arsenal is 1 MT (and most are smaller)?
Because in the ~5 mins I spent googling, I couldn’t find any reliable source of info on this question, so I just picked the most conservative option.
Interested in any knowledge you have on this. Why do you believe what you believe?
It had read something previously about how huge nuclear weapons aren’t very useful so non-test weapons tend to be MT or less range.
Wikipedia says the highest yield weapon in the US arsenal is the B83 bomb at 1.2 MT.
Russia’s nuclear arsenal is more confusing but sources seem to all agree that their biggest weapons in active use are in the 745 kT to 1.2 MT range. Some examples are the R-39 which apparently currently uses 750 kT warheads or the [Topol M] with a 1 MT warhead.
I don’t know what the current state of the RS-28 Sarmat is, but it’s listed in various random news articles at being capable of launching 50 megaton warheads and was scheduled to become ready in 2022 (I don’t know the current state).
A lot of ICBM’s are capable of launching >10 MT warheads, but my understanding is that the US and Russia don’t actually use such large warheads because it’s more useful to launch 6-10 much smaller warheads instead.
That’s interesting. My sense is the Sarmat sure was built with the goal of launching massive nuclear warheads, so I would be surprised if Russia isn’t going to load it with an appropriate warhead.