What if the "Balloon Goes Up"

What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

So here it is - early a.m. and my meds are keeping me awake and the question pops into my mind again. What would you do if the "Balloon Goes Up" for real? (those with military service will know what I mean). Head for the hills like most? Stay and if so - do you have a good supply of essentials stashed away? what about your family?
Man, what a question to ask so early in the morning.

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

The big question is, "do you really want to survive after the balloon goes up ?". And that probably depends on whether it's a small, survivable exchange or an all out scorched-earth scenario - the latter of which probably isn't worth surviving.

And for the most part if you haven't already prepared for it ahead of time, it will be far too late to do much about it after the fact.

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

I kinda hope that if that happens me and mine go painlessly and together.I live too close to ground zero.
Chris

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

I live and work within direct view of NORAD--I'll be flash fried before I even wonder why all the comotion a'goin on up there. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ohgeez.gif

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

Odds of a full out WW III these days are way slimmer than about 40 years ago. If that were to be the case though, as the poster used to say, when you see the brilliant flash, bend down, put your head between you legs,... and kiss yer butt goodbye.

More likely to see terrorist acts that will really mess up the day for those within a relatively small area, say a 30 to 100 mile radius (use your imagination). So, take care of yourself, so you can take care of your family, so that hopefully you all can take care of others. But do it in that order and feel guilty later or you will not be able to take care of anything. And the situation will then have taken care of you.

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

I have my supply of er, supplies at the ready for what I consider the most likely nuclear scenario: Terrorist set off one or a few devices that mess with the grid and possibly make water supplies unpleasant due to fallout for a while.

God help those in the directly affected areas and the heroes that aid them.

For the rest of the country I expect a full-on-don't-come-out-of-the-house police state for at least a week while the government gets up to nationwide crisis speed. That is what I'm prepared for, hunkering down for approx three to four weeks.

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

You talking about a nuclear event? They make both clean and dirty bombs, so it may just be an immediate area that is effected with little after effects. I dont think its the initial blast that is deadly, its the lingering radiation that takes 10s of thousands of years to break down, making that area worthless for anything.

A neutron bomb just wipes out life, allbuildings and what not would still be intact.

On coast to coast am they had a guy claiming we would have a ful lnuclear exchange with China and Russia from further break downs in relationships from trade, oil and other resources not to mention Tiawan(SP?) and N Korea. I understand the final pusing point is after we defend S Korea with a nuclear bomb once they (N Korea) launch one at the DMZ and China invades Tiawan and we defend them.

I wouldnt worry. USA is soo big, only the local area would be effected. If you were on a small desert island, then I would be concerned, but I mean the land is so vast, only a small area would be physically effected.

Regardless, Its my understanding a nuclear bomb set off about the USA would ruin all electronical devices, so those would be worthless. Like mentioned, MREs, guns and older technology that did not use elecronics would be a safe bet.

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

The "balloon going up" isn't nearly as worrisome for me now as it was when we had Soviet bomber drills in grade school. Those were significant emotional events that I will never forget.

If something was to happen now it would probably come from that psycho in North Korea. The worst case would be 3 or 4 nukes from him just prior to the total destruction of his country.

3 or 4 nuclear hits would suck on ice, but it beats the hell out of what we used to face.

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

Even if North Korea did initiate the conflict, and of course there would be a significant run up that would make it much more concievable than now, I wonder if we could retaliate without fear of a counter retaliation from China? [shudder]

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

The first most important thing is to have a plan and try to think it through for your specific situation.

Some suggestions for Southern California (in order of decreasing priority): store water, store food, store medical supplies, keep cars gas tanks near full, then misc (guns, flashlights, batteries, ammo, radios, whatever suits your vision of extended camping out with no police around).

Probably it would be useful to have a good hoard of cash around as credit cards and banks may be down for a while. The apocolyptic might want to prepare for all money suddently and permanently losing its value, in which case store as much gold and barter goods as you can afford to (and your spouse will let you).

It's like ethics, you do the best you can afford to do, assuming you care at all...

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

N Korea won't be able to initiate a nuke conflict for a while yet, unless they use a truck. IIRC their warheads weigh in excess of 1200 lbs at this time. They probably need to reduce that throw weight by 90% to get it to work on one of their ICBMs. A few more years...

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

Who needs ICBMs when you have container ships full of microwaves and cars? Even I could design a delivery system to throw a 1/2 ton projectile a mile or two. Accuracy does not really matter when you are looking to make a point.

Even a neutron bomb will leave all those buildings unusable for my lifetime.

I live near San Francisco, in the same valley as Lawrence Livermore Labs. A weapons depot is 30 miles north, Silicon Valley is 20 to the south. I don't think surviving a nuke is an option.

Surviving the societal breakdown that would happen if the nukes fell somewhere else is another matter. Lots of water, lots of food and lots of ammo so you can keep the supplies.

Daniel

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

I'm very slowly preparing for a catastrophe. Around here, like California, I believe a major earthquake is far more likely than nuclear attack. Aside from the fallout, I expect many of the problems will be the same.

I have to admit to being complacent though. I collect flashlights (duh), guns, camping gear and other necessities for survival but have no stores of food or water especially set aside yet.

Slowly but surely I'm trying to get there.

Edit:
BTW, there are plenty of preparation web sites out there. Here's one that the City of Seattle put's out. A nice feature is that it breaks it up into 12 steps, so that if you did one per month you could be ready in a year.
http://www.seattle.gov/emergency_mgt/popup/frameSdartPlan.htm
(Caution: somebody went web happy on this site and it has "advanced features" that make it very slow, but the info is good. Click on the list on the right for PDF files rather than the dart board.)

Anyone else have any web sites that they particularly recommend for preparing?

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

I am more concerned with tornados and a possible earthquake
But the food/water/ammo/batteries sounds like a game plan
Never understood the money or gold and silver to barter with
Thing. If we were in a worst case scenario and you had 200 pounds of gold
And I had 1 little can of tunafish I would let my wife and kid eat the tunafish
No need for gold or silver the way I see things. Water, food and ammo
I don't feel the need to hoard lots of guns but a few are a good idea to protect
Your water and food; to do that you need ammo so it goes on my list .
I hope we never get to the point where this is reality best it stays a "what if".

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

Ask Diesel Dave about having cash on hand after the hurricane hit his area. Everyone wanted cash for anything you needed and there was no power. I have since started keeping more cash on hand, it won't do me any good in the bank during a power outage.

I also keep fuel stored and rotate it every six months, dump it back in the cars and put fresh gas in the cans, yes it's a pain, but it has already helped me one summer when we lost power for 4 days.

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

[ QUOTE ]
gadget_lover said:

I live near San Francisco, in the same valley as Lawrence Livermore Labs. A weapons depot is 30 miles north, Silicon Valley is 20 to the south. I don't think surviving a nuke is an option.

Daniel

[/ QUOTE ]

Daniel,

That weapons station is closed. So it isn't anyones target anymore. You being in the Tri-Valley area probably don't have much to worry about from any nuclear detonation. But with the 580 canyon through the hills you would have to be able to shelter in place for a few days if SF got hit.

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

Hi Brock,I agree that in Dave's situation money on hand was indeed a good thing. I was speaking of "worst case" being down to the last can of tuna. Quite different to me. I should have made that clear,my bad.
Topper /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

[ QUOTE ]
gorn said:
[ QUOTE ]
gadget_lover said:

I live near San Francisco, in the same valley as Lawrence Livermore Labs. A weapons depot is 30 miles north, Silicon Valley is 20 to the south. I don't think surviving a nuke is an option.

Daniel

[/ QUOTE ]

Daniel,

That weapons station is closed. So it isn't anyones target anymore. You being in the Tri-Valley area probably don't have much to worry about from any nuclear detonation. But with the 580 canyon through the hills you would have to be able to shelter in place for a few days if SF got hit.

[/ QUOTE ]

I do hope you are correct. Concord is just now being closed, though it's not been active for several years. I don't know how empty the bunkers are. There used to be nukes stored there, based on the stories about the routes used to move them.

I would think that one of the targets would be research reactors. I know of two sites within 10 miles of my house.

With any luck, I'm 100% wrong /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Daniel

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

The gold and silver thing is that if we are in a mad max society, folks will use gold or silver or gasoline than money, since it would end up worthless. Depending on the conditions, food could be used as money or anything for that matter.

Ive never bought into the gold thing, but I do agree with the having money on hand. I think up north when we had that power failure, no atms worked.

My concern would be defense of your stuff. When my power failed for a few days for the luck hurricane that makes it up here, I lay low. Day 2 when I opened a window, surprise, surprise, I got knocks on my door. I then closed my windows and went back to listening to my battery powered satellite radio and 12 volt fan.

Re: What if the \"Balloon Goes Up\"

cobb,

Along with everything else in the hurricane kits, we have a few rolls of 6 mil black plastic. It's really handy for many things in an emergency, but one of the uses is to black out the windows. It's quite opaque and hopefully will help us keep a lower profile if and when we need to.