Would you have lasted in 1983?

I wasn't born yet, but my Grandfather, Grandmother, & Mother were at RAF Fairford. (Grandfather was still in the US Air Force at the time.)

So it would probably be quite a bad time for them, to put it mildly.
 
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We lived about 15 miles from Buffalo, NY, so probably wouldn't get hit by any bombs dropped there or at Niagara Falls, but the fallout might get us.
We also lived about 15 miles from Buffalo, on the Canadian side. I don’t think we would’ve had significant blast or heat damage from Buffalo or the airbase and hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls. (The power plants, since they’re in a gorge, would likely receive ground bursts, perhaps from a relatively high-yield and low-CEP warhead, although a mission kill could’ve been achieved by destroying the transformers and power lines outside the gorge.) I was 3, and my chances of survival would’ve depended on the wind conditions and the amount of fallout from Ohio and New York. We would have likely been better prepared than average, as some of my relatives had stockpiles of food and several were resourceful enough to improvise some kind of protection against fallout.

We had a cottage on the shore of Lake Erie, with a large water tank, so perhaps we would’ve gone there, although it wouldn’t have been as safe as a cottage on one of the many lakes well to the north of Toronto. Many Ontarians have some kind of cottage/summer home, and I suspect many people would have gone “up north” in a crisis.

I hadn’t thought of it before just now, but my younger brother was born less than a month after Able Archer 83. In the aftermath of a nuclear war, his life might have been mercifully brief.
 

bguy

Donor
I was living in Russellville, Arkansas, a little town of about 15,000 people in 1983, and looking at the FEMA map it does appear that Russellville was on the Soviet target list (presumably because there were two nuclear power plants located there in 1983). Only a single warhead assigned to Russellville though so what was the expected mechanical reliability rate for Soviet missiles at that time?
 
I lived within 10 miles of the Johnson Space Center, in an area with major oil refineries within 30 miles (Houston / Texas City / Baytown)

Depending on warning time, my father and I actually had an escape plan. One plan involved taking the sail boat to Belize, another, the desperate one, involved stealing a small light plane from a local airport (heading due south to get past the Corpus Christi refinery complexes) but if neither were possible, driving to Baytown to it would be over quick (the site of the worlds largest oil refinery). I was in college at the time, and was literally taking a course called "Nuclear War and Society", which had as a final exam question "What are the likely Soviet targets in the Houston area and the likely weapons used against them"

Texas City refinery, Baytown Refinery, Laporte refinery, Deerpark (refineries) and the Ship Channel turning basin

(we were so screwed)

It should be noted that JSC is close enough to La Porte to be knocked out from the blast and for most of it to catch fire, so it doesn't need a direct attack (and isn't critical anyway)
 
I lived in western coast of Finland so me and my family should be safe altough fallout might cause problems. It is possible that we are evacuated to Sweden if things are going very badly.
 
The village my parents lived is far enough from Joensuu airport and Kontioranta garrison area to avoid being blazed outright, and due their profession and my age my mother and I might have a spot at the municipal shelter (assuming an early warning). The level of fallout from elsewhere would depend on prevaling winds. The locals were still keeping cattle and stockpiling jams, juice and potatoes for winter. So I might actually live to see my first birthday.
 
I lived in Edmonton Canada, about a half hour stroll from a major refinery. You always heard rumours that Edmonton was a major target(in fact, No. 1 in North America supposedly) for potential Soviet nuclear attack, because of the refineries and other connections to oil, but I mostly assumed that was just local hyperbole. Guess I'll go check out the FEMA maps.
 
My family would have been fine and well in Brazil, alltough my dad probably would be angry at the new arrival of european immigrants...
 
Yeah I'm pretty sure my dad would have been atomized and I would never have been born since he was stationed at a Strategic Air Command base in 1983.
 
I would have been sitting inside a Chieftain tank with the hatches shut and the NBC filters working overtime. Theoretically we could survive for 7 days before the NBC filters, fuel, food and water ran out.

My family would have been ash they lived 7 miles from a shipyard that built nuke submarines, 6 miles from a major port, 16 miles from a factory making jet fighters, 20 miles from a uranium processing facility and 25 miles from a nuclear research laboratory.

Also 30 miles away a collection of radio towers and domes that were "just BBC transmitters honest" the triple fences, dogs, cameras and nasty looking guards in Landrovers were just there in case the IRA wanted to interrupt Radio One during the Top 40 countdown.
 

Tovarich

Banned
I lived about 30 miles to the East of London and near a major oil refinery, if that wasn't targetted by a nuke and that didn't get us, then the radiation would have killed the 3 year old me and my family.

Canvey?

When I lived in Barking, on a clear night you could see the excess gas flame from the roof of my block, and rumour had it that if that was ever extinguished then the explosion would shatter windows right up to LBBD.

Now this could be bullshit (rumours often are) but if the refinery were really constantly running at that level of near-breaking point, couldn't one Spetznaz saboteur team or a conventional munition strike achieve a result much easier than using a nuke?
 
Speak for yourself, son: I was 31 in 1983. Do the math. ;)

Small world. I was also born in 1952.

I would have been sitting inside a Chieftain tank with the hatches shut and the NBC filters working overtime. Theoretically we could survive for 7 days before the NBC filters, fuel, food and water ran out.

And I would have been commanding a Leopard tank, with the overpressure system working big time.
We once did a 3 day NBC exercise, closed down. Four men inside a tank, eating, sleeping, pissing and shitting. It wasn't the happiest three days of my life......
 
In 1983 my mum was living in Windsor and my Dad in Toronto. Toronto is going to get hit so hard it glows at night, so I'm in all likelihood never born.
 
My parents and older siblings were living on a kibbutz in central Israel at the time, so it seems likely that they're not going to have a fun time.
 
I was born in 1983, in Los Angeles. Santa Monica, to be precise. LA would have glowed in the dark.
 
Looking back I wonder exactly how sane we would have been after 7 days.

Well, we found out that three days was about our mental limit. Tempers were on an extremely short fuse, with the slightest thing setting some of my crew off. I learned a hell of a lot as a commander about crew control and man management in those few days.

I also learned how amazingly hard it was to map read and do proper tactics all closed down and short on sleep.
 
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