"NUCLEAR WAR SURVIVAL" (1980)
The original old school landmark text by Duncan Long on surviving The Bomb.
This book is deceptively named similar to the classic Cresson Kearny book but they are actually quite different.
This book by survivalist community legend Duncan Long is a thunderous 64 pages of tight, useful information on everything from planning your shelter, understanding the physics of nuclear weapons and all the critical details of surviving the attack and the aftermath. This was sort of the watermark in hardcore books back in the 80’s and it talked about particulars nobody could find in government civil defense manuals.
It is a good size to print double-sided and you will find the information is just as relevant today as it was when it was printed.
I judged this version to be in the public domain because it was reissued in another edition without renewing the copyright on this one, making it freely distributable as abandonware.
This is a real slice of the Kurt Saxon/Loompanics publishing wave that inspired a lot of other books to go blunt on normally taboo subject matter. I think including it as a baseline book to cover the essentials of nuclear war and surviving it is a good addition to the Memex.
It is not captured as text so it can’t be cut and pasted but the printed version is quite legible.
(Added to the Memex)
Regards, Tex
Hey Texas,
Duncan got ill and passed away some time ago. I am sure he wouldn't mind his older works being passed around.
Strange that I never saw this before but his diagram on page 4 of the pressure then suction duality I had never seen before. Knew about the blast/pressure issue but never noticed the suction aspect. Very important to know. The blast putting out 120mph winds at 10 miles is a big deal. Wish he had given a timing statement, like the suction arrives Xseconds/minutes after the blast/pressure portion.
I did some quick Internet searching and found a document that details this effect. https://atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/effects/glasstone-dolan/chapter2.html
The blast wave is supersonic and moves about 4 sec/mile. So, if you see a blast 10 miles away you have a little over 40 seconds to find shelter from the blast. There is an additional problem of the overpressure/Mach effect which is approximately 2x blast pressure.
Contrary to his diagram they state the suction phase is relatively weak compared to the blast pressure. "During this negative (or suction) phase, the pressure in the shock wave is less than the ambient atmospheric pressure. However, as seen in § 3.05, the underpressure is never very large."
Thought I would pass that on.