re: Have any of you thought about what to do if Russia starts WW3?

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How do you get from Houston to West Texas post apocalypse?

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Hopefully I’m already there but thats the most precarious part of my apocalypse journey.

Decades ago my dad was on the radio every summer day doing fishing reports from the middle of the Great Lakes to stations around the Midwest. The captain of the charter boat was a retired nuclear sub captain from the 60s until the mid 80s. I've always been interested in history. He was a pretty quiet guy so most of what he did say about his time as captain of the sub was always filed away in the back of my head.

He was vague enough not to be breaking any laws but gave enough that you could fill in the gaps...I basically got a full picture a decade later when a lot of the gaps ended up on what were the internet's original academic/public message boards. He said that his sub would set off from Hawaii and then sit at the bottom of the Asian continental shelf (that was as specific as he got). Back then a full Nuclear War would have already been set in motion before citizens knew it. The timing of the drills they ran as subs sitting off the coasts mcafee it clear that their launch was only limited by how long it took for the President to make the decision to unleash hell. (Even before satellites they had early detection of missle launches...again something he was vague about.) By the time the sirens here went off, the Soviets would have already been launching at their second wave of targets after our subs had unloaded on our first strike targets. The whole idea of personal bomb shelters was more about everyday mental health than actual survival after the missiles started flying.

I was driving the boat one day and brought up The Hunt For Red October and Crimson Tide as the 3 of us were headed back in. He wouldn't discuss THFRO at all. Over this past Christmas we were watching the movie and I finally was told about them having discussions. (Apparently they had discussed it many times and it was quite plausible but even fewer people would've known what was going on.) OTOH Rick looked at me and laughed about the whole plot of CT. They got most of the launch mechanisms right but the rest was a convoluted Hollywood mess to cash in on THFRO/Jack Ryan movies popularity at the time.

I bring that up because it has informed my thoughts over the past year. I have one very basic rule and that is energy will be key for those final moments. We have battery backups all over the house and after one is brought back having been used, it gets plugged in immediately. I've lived through hurricanes so I know the crapshoot of getting a call to go through and value of keeping that line going. With 4 phone lines under our roof they'd be hooked up to batteries and ideally would have my parents each on 1, my in-laws on 1, and the 4th would be left open to receive any civil emergency messages. If the Russians have updated their strike maps since the 70s we're in an area that we would survive. At least until the radiation from the blown up bases with newly empty silos hit the jet stream and brought it here. If we had time to get to a gas station we'd fill up all of our vehicles and every gas can we have. Park the vehicles in front of our doors and quickly gather all guns/ammo/other weapons into a centralized spot of our house.

If it happened when we were visiting my dad we'd be screwed. He lives in the inner circle around a nuclear power plant. The estimate on the map I saw a few weeks ago had something like a 70% instant mortality rate.

On 9/11 I was 45 minutes from one of the government's chemical weapons depots. I had a muslim TA who I emailed and told I wouldn't be coming in for the computer lab session. He came back with a condescending email and said I should attend. I think he either didn't have a clue or didn't care. I wonder how many professors we have today who would do the same thing. Or worse yet start arguing that we brought it on ourselves.