Preparing for war
From the Guardian, the French government prepares the population for war.
A 20 page brochure giving handy advice such as make sure to close the windows in the event of nuclear war.
No information as to whether sitting under the table also offers good protection.
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1500124311
France has a nuclear umbrella. Could its European allies fit under it?
see also https://www.bbc.co.uk/taster/pilots/how-to-survive-a-nuclear-bomb
“It will be divided into three parts with advice on how to protect “yourself and those around you”, what to do if a threat is imminent – with a list of emergency numbers, radio channels and a reminder to close doors and windows if the threat is nuclear – and details of how to get involved in defending your community, including signing up for reserve units or firefighting groups.
It will also suggest putting together a “survival kit” consisting of at least six litres of water, a dozen tins of food, batteries and a torch, as well as basic medical supplies including paracetamol, compresses and saline solution, according to Europe 1 radio, which reported the story.”
CLOSE YOUR WINDOWS- “looks like it might be a nuclear bomb coming- I’ve heard they"‘re as hot as the surface of the sun- lucky we got that doubleglazing done.And put up that nuclear umbrella- that should stop the worst of it.”
6 LITRES OF WATER
maybe a bit more than 6 litres of water…
Hiroshima- “a military base”
see also
https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-weapons
Destructive radii of 100-kiloton, 1-megaton, and 10-megaton weapons superimposed on a map of the New York City area. The destructive radius is defined as the distance within which blast overpressure exceeds 5 pounds per square inch, and it measures 2 miles, 4.4 miles, and 9.4 miles for the weapon yields shown. These values assume air-burst explosions at optimum altitudes over Central Park. (U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, The Effects of Nuclear War
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/devastating-effects-of-nuclear-weapons-war/
We see that the United States rapidly developed much more powerful warheads in the 1950s. The Soviet Union increased the destructiveness of its weapons more slowly but ultimately reached similar levels.
The destructive potential of first-strike warheads peaked at more than 15,000 Mt in the early 1980s. This amounts to more than a million Hiroshima bombs. At this peak, first-strike weapons could destroy more than 40% of the total urban land worldwide.
However, the destructiveness of first strikes has been steadily declining for decades, for both the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia.
Yet, it has still been more than 2,500 Mt, with the potential to directly destroy almost 7% of the total urban land worldwide.
September 1, 1939
1907 –
1973
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,”
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
From Another Time by W. H. Auden, published by Random House.
see https://thegenealogyofstyle.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/what-nijinsky-wrote-about-diaghilev/