New York Times
U.S. Rethinks Strategy for the Unthinkable
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: December 15, 2010
Suppose the unthinkable happened, and terrorists struck New York or another big city with an atom bomb. What should people there do? The government has a surprising new message: Do not flee. Get inside any stable building and don’t come out till officials say it’s safe.
Holy sleeping shit!!
Luckily, the article linked to this offical government publication:
It had real good advice:
Communicating about a high-stress, life-threatening emergency is always a difficult task; however, communicating about a nuclear detonation poses two unique challenges:
1. Many people do not believe that a nuclear detonation is survivable. The sense of futility, fatalism, and hopelessness severely impacts the public’s desire and even ability to absorb information and follow instructions.
2. A nuclear explosion will more than likely destroy or severely disable the communications infrastructure (any mechanism or system used to give or receive information) in the blast damage zones where people need to act quickly and appropriately to protect themselves. Residual power failures and overloaded systems could cause a cascade of communications failures into the surrounding area, including the dangerous fallout zone (DF zone) where fatal levels of fallout must be avoided to save lives.
To successfully address these challenges, a well-planned and prepared approach to both pre-incident preparedness and post-detonation messaging is essential.
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