The worst-case scenario finally happened. The bombs are in the air,
and in a matter of minutes the United States will be hit by a nuclear attack. Millions
are in danger - along with the entire future of the United States government.
What now?
This isn’t the first time the threat of nuclear annihilation was high on the government’s mind.
Ever since the United States beat the Nazis to the bomb and was followed by the Soviets
only years later, the government has been preparing for the worst-case scenario of
a nuclear strike on the homeland. Initially, the threat was the Soviet Union - the United States’
arch-nemesis - but now the threat of nuclear attack comes from China, Russia, North Korea,
Pakistan, rising powers like Iran, and even international terror groups. No one knows
whether any of these besides the first two even have the capability to hit the United States.
But the government is not looking to test their luck.
After the September 11th terror attacks,
the government quickly moved to plan for all eventualities and have a plan of action
in case of worst-case scenarios. There are multiple scenarios created by the Department
of Homeland Security - and a nuclear attack is National Response Scenario #1. Ominously,
the scenarios are ranked by how likely they are to occur - which means the government
thinks that a nuclear attack on the homeland is the most likely catastrophic scenario to occur.
And dealing with it will not be simple.
The government’s first step is to try to keep a lid on the nuclear threat,
and that is a lot more complicated than it used to be. In the Cold War, keeping the nukes from
being launched usually meant talking to one man - the Premiere of the Soviet Union. While other
countries had nuclear weapons, they were usually firmly aligned with one of the two sides. Now,
with India and Pakistan both having nukes and being in a low-boil state of war with each other,
plus the notoriously unstable Kim regime testing missiles all the time, there are
far more variables. And with the collapse of the Soviet Union and instability in other regimes
means it’s possible for nuclear weapons and dirty bombs to wind up on the black market.
Which means that nuclear weapons could hit the homeland in more ways than one.
The biggest threat is long-range nuclear missiles, which carry the biggest payload.
It’s believed that only Russia and China have the ability to hit the US this way - with
North Korea working hard to join the club. Other countries’ nuclear missiles are mostly designed
to deal with threats in their backyard. While this is the most predictable threat,
it’s also the most dangerous - these are the missiles that will carry the biggest
payload and could annihilate a whole metro area in a single hit. The United States,
Russia, and China each have enough of these to annihilate life on earth several times over.
Which is why an early warning system is key.
The United States, Canada, and Denmark developed a radar system during the Cold
War to warn of incoming Soviet missiles. Because the shortest route for a Soviet
missile was through the North Pole, they built the infrastructure throughout the Arctic. Those
systems were the building blocks for ballistic missile warning systems around the world,
and they’re still in play today - although they’re not foolproof. During the Cold War,
there were several false alarms of incoming missiles, and nuclear war was only averted by
cool-headed commanders who often defied protocol to hold off on launching a full scale response.
And even in the modern day, there were false alarms - in 2018, residents of Hawaii received
an emergency text about an incoming ballistic missile, sending most of the island into a panic.
Those were false alarms - but the real one could come at any minute.
In the event of an actual nuclear attack, the government has many plans to keep things
running. The first priority is to ensure the safety of the President and the key to the
United States’ defense - the nuclear football. Despite what the media wants you to think,
there is no briefcase with a big button to launch the nukes - which is probably a good thing,
given how some Presidents might have hit it because someone insulted them on Twitter.
Instead, to launch nuclear weapons, the president uses the briefcase to
communicate with the Pentagon from anywhere and give his instructions.
And his orders are absolute.
The President’s orders are authenticated through the Pentagon, but their only purpose is to confirm
that the President is the one giving the orders. Once the President gives the command to launch
nuclear weapons in retaliation of an attack - or as a first strike - the Pentagon has no authority
to deny the order. They confirm the President’s identity including the current nuclear codes,
and launch. Some have said this gives the President too much power,
with Major Harold Hering pointing out some of the flaws in the program during the Cold
War. He was promptly removed from the missile training program for asking too many questions.
But before the missiles launch, the President has to be kept alive.
Once it’s clear that the missiles are in the air, the President will immediately be spirited away
to an emergency bunker - whatever the closest one to his location is. This is likely to be
a short and easy trip, because the government has dozens of these bunkers around the country - each
equipped to be both a local command center for the President, and a place where the survivors can be
kept alive long-term. These bunkers are where the worst-case scenario plays out - if life on the
surface becomes impossible due to nuclear fallout, the US government can survive underground.
And some of these facilities are massive.
While most of these - and their locations - are kept secret, the largest are well-known. But that
doesn’t mean you can get in to take a tour. Raven Rock, located in southern Pennsylvania,
is a massive US military installation that serves as a command center for the Armed Forces. Each of
the four branches have a base here, along with Mount Weather in Virginia and Cheyenne Mountain
in Colorado. All three are built into mountains and are massive, looking more like a city than an
office building. The only people who have access to these centers are essential military personnel
who have high enough clearance to access the core of the government’s nuclear preparedness plan.
But what if the President can’t be saved?
No one knows where the first missile will hit, and it’s possible that the President,
the Vice President, and the leaders of Congress - the Speaker of the House and
the President Pro Tempore - will be at ground zero when a nuclear attack hits Washington.
This could throw the US government into chaos, with no clear leader - which is why the order of
succession is locked into the Constitution. If the first four leaders are wiped out,
the order of succession starts working its way down the Cabinet, starting with
the Secretary of State and moving down by when the Cabinet positions were created. That makes
the Secretary of Homeland Security last in line, since they hold the most recent seat.
And the government takes great care to ensure it’s never completely wiped out.
The entire line of succession is never in the same place at the same time, and this
most often comes into play with the State of the Union address. One cabinet official
is always chosen to stay behind and hold down the fort in a safe location in case an attack
wipes out Congress - the Designated Survivor. This is an orderly way of handling things,
but in the event of a nuclear attack, it’s more likely to come down to whoever happens
to be the luckiest. So the Military’s first task in the event of an unexpected attack might be to
track down the survivor who’s first in line - and let them know they’re now President.
Well, good, the President is secure - whoever it is. What about the rest of us?
Back when nuclear weapons were first developed, the plans to survive an attack were rudimentary
at best. People built bomb shelters, but it’s not clear if any of them actually
could have withstood a nuclear blast. As for the government, they knew that people would
likely only have minutes of warning before Soviet weapons hit - and very few places
to hide. So their advice was…to get under your desk. American schoolchildren during the 1950s
became very acquainted with the “duck and cover” drill, which joined the iconic fire
drill in regular routines. Was hiding under your desk going to make a difference in a
nuclear attack? Of course not! But it made people feel like they had more control over their fate,
so it might have done its job at the time. And hey, it was promoted by a cartoon turtle.
Photo Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_Cover_(film)#/media/File:Bert2.png
But in the event of an actual nuclear strike,
the government did have plans to try to preserve what it could.
Communication will be key in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear attack,
so who gets put in charge? Not the Department of Defense, surprisingly - the Environmental
Protection Agency. This is because the biggest threat after the initial blasts
will be the radiation in the air. Anyone who is caught in the immediate blast radius is
gone and those who did manage to get far enough from the blast will not last long
without the government’s help. But in the aftermath, knowing what to do might make
the difference between survival and dying of radiation sickness. So the
EPA has released a series of scripts designed to guide people through the aftermath of an attack.
Some of them are common-sense - and some may keep people from making fatal mistakes.
The scripts tell people how to get their hands on food and water, and warn them to get as far
away from the blast site. They also warn people to avoid public spaces, as the risk of making
your way to the hospital or fire station is too high to take unless you have a pressing medical
emergency. Surprisingly, they say that if you’re in your car when the bombs hit, that’s the safest
place to be - it may be tempting to abandon the car and seek a safer place, but the car actually
shields you quite well from outside radiation, so hunkering down in your car might be your best bet.
But advice can only go so far.
The government is prepared for all eventualities,
and even thought the risk of nuclear war has declined since the Cold War,
they’re staying stocked with medication that could alleviate sickness in the aftermath of a nuclear
attack. This is part of the Strategic National Stockpile, a cache of emergency medication stored
for a disaster. This stockpile is spread out among a network of warehouses around the United States,
and could be used to respond to a sudden disease outbreak or natural disaster,
but the most important part of the cache is its stock of medicine designed to help with
radiation sickness. Of course, this doesn’t help the people caught at ground zero,
or those who receive a fatal dose, but it could help to reduce casualties in the aftermath.
And who would be handling the distribution?
That would be the one organization everyone hopes is wasting taxpayer
money - because they’ll only have something to do in the aftermath of a massive disaster. The
Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise, or the tongue-twisting acronym PHEMCE,
is the government’s last-resort agency in the event of a nuclear disaster. This is
especially important because it’s possible some agencies might be wiped out by the attack and
others might be unable to communicate due to infrastructure being destroyed. So this
division will coordinate between around a dozen government agencies, including the
CDC and Defense department. The goal will be to get supplies and medication out to the people,
communicate safety measures, figure out where the attack came from - and decide on a response.
But there’s only so much the government can do.
The government does have bunkers around the country, with Raven Rock being the biggest
and most secure. No one is sure exactly how many there are or what their capacity is,
but it’s become clear that in the event of a large-scale nuclear disaster, it’ll be impossible
to save everyone. During the 1950s, the bombs were smaller and slower and we were more likely
to have advanced warning. No country had nearly as many nukes as they do today, and the population
of the United States was much smaller. Then the bombs kept growing and growing, and so did the
population. Weapons were developed that could wipe out whole cities in a matter of seconds.
And so the plan changed.
During the Reagan Administration, two influential men were brought in to meet with the President.
Their names? Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. While they would become famous - or infamous - a
few decades later, they were only trusted advisors now, and Reagan wanted them to develop a Cold War
strategy to ensure the survival of US leadership during a nuclear war. Tensions with the Soviet
Union were heating up again, and a nuclear war could break out at any time. So every year,
they would head off on a secret mission to plan an escape route for the line
of succession. While the plan is highly classified, it’s believed that it involved
the key officials being split up and flown to separate bunkers - with each team including a
Cabinet member and officials representing the Defense Department, State Department,
and the CIA. So no matter who survived, the infrastructure would be there to take command.
But what would life be like for those who survived?
The plan was for an extended stay underground in the bunkers, which would be well-stocked
with the basics of survival - and not much else. Life down there would be spartan,
with food likely being strictly rationed for long-term survival and designed to
be shelf-stable - because its job was to sit there until it was needed. During the 1950s,
the government initially urged people to keep a week’s supply of canned goods on hand in case
of a nuclear event - but more research showed this wouldn’t provide much beyond a stay of
execution. Much more would be needed if a family wanted to survive a nuclear attack.
So the Government began preparing emergency rations.
The solution? The All-Purpose Survival Cracker, a hard and mostly tasteless cracker made out
of bulgur wheat. It came in individual packets along with a tiny hard candy that was called a
carbohydrate supplement. They were designed to be shelf-stable, but they didn’t last forever - when
there was an attempt to use the crackers in the 1970s in disaster zones, it was clear they had
long since expired. They were designed for a time when nuclear war felt very real, almost expected,
but when the apocalypse didn’t happen, they fell out of use and production stopped. Today,
they’re really not needed - the selection of cheap, accessible canned foods that can last
years or more is so large that people can stock their apocalypse pantry with ease.
But the odds are the people in charge have much better provisions.
No one knows exactly what’s in buildings like Raven Rock, but the sheer size of the facilities
means they likely have room to supply a staff of hundreds or even thousands for years at a time. So
the President won’t be going hungry, and he might even be able to bring his personal chef along -
although he, like everyone else, would be limited to shelf-stable and long-lasting foods. But for
the rest of us, we’re back to the old advice of keeping a supply of canned goods to last us until
the outside was safe again. But the government isn’t really advising people to plan for a nuclear
disaster anymore - even if the odds of one are slightly higher than they were post-Cold War.
And even if the government isn’t planning for a war, that doesn’t mean they’re not ready for one.
What would happen if the United States was actually hit by a nuclear attack, killing millions
and wiping out much of the US government. It would be clear that a state of war existed - but what if
the government didn’t know exactly where the bombs came from at first? The mobile command
center’s first task would be to track the bombs to make sure that we were hitting the right
country in response. This is only applicable in the event of a missile attack, the most likely
method. If an unconventional nuclear attack was launched, such as a suitcase nuke or a dirty bomb,
the government’s initial efforts would be on relief and investigation. But when a culprit
was uncovered, whether it was a terrorist group or a rogue state, there would be hell to pay.
But what if it was a superpower?
The most likely threat to the US in the Cold War was the Soviets deciding to strike first
because it decided the time was now to vanquish its greatest enemy and put the entire world
under the Soviet boot. Was this a realistic outcome? No one’s sure, and most of the times
nuclear war nearly broke out were because of brinksmanship and mistaken intelligence. But
if the Soviet Union did hit the United States, the Defense department had a plan - and it was
a plan for maximum damage. It was called the Single Integrated Operational Plan, and it was
a doomsday agenda to unleash over 1700 nuclear devices across more than 700 targets - wiping
out all major Soviet and Chinese cities as well as targets in other communist nations like North
Korea. It’s not clear how this plan evolved over the years, but one thing that was shocking about
it was that it made no distinction whether a Communist country had attacked the US or not.
But would this plan work today?
In a word…no. When the plan was designed, the bombs being used were eighty kilotons - four times
the strength of the bomb that hit Nagasaki. Today, most nuclear missiles are much more
powerful than that, and an attack of this strength would likely not just annihilate the enemy,
but cause a level of nuclear fallout that would make life on the surface completely
inhospitable long-term. The clouds would carry the poison all around the world,
even far from the sites that were initially hit. In a best-case scenario, people would be
forced to live underground for years. In worse scenarios, it could mean the end of all life
on Earth. That means any response today would likely be much more targeted - but it’s highly
likely it would still involve a nuclear hit on the power structures of the enemy behind the attack.
Other elements of the response plan have thankfully been abandoned as well.
One of the most infamous parts of World War II was the arrest and internment of thousands
of Japanese-Americans solely based on their ethnicity by the United States,
with most being held for years until the war ended. And so naturally, during the Cold War
some people looked at this blatant civil rights violation and went “How can I make this work for
me?”. J. Edgar Hoover, the notoriously paranoid FBI chief, was known for keeping an enemy’s list,
and he advocated for the President using it as a base for detaining and arresting anyone deemed
to be a potential “subversive”. This would have likely involved any foreign aliens in the United
States, as well as potentially anyone of the nationality of the attackers. These plans were
never put into effect - but no one is sure what lists the government is still making.
But the biggest challenge for the government
in the aftermath of a nuclear attack may just be…the people.
The United States has a grand tradition of reacting with calm and solidarity in the event of
a disaster, and we have no doubt that…oh, who are we kidding? It’s only been a few years since 2020,
and we all remember fighting over that last rolls of toilet paper in the aisles of Target. When a
disaster happens, it often becomes much worse because people overreact and become paranoid
and hostile. In the aftermath of a nuclear attack, it’s likely that people would panic,
and that could make a bad situation worse. If people are running around willy-nilly,
it could lead to a higher death rate due to radiation poisoning. It could also lead to a
surge in crime at a time when the authorities are occupied with a much bigger problem.
So the Government decided to see how much it could predict before it happened.
The Department of Defense regularly runs simulations on their computer systems for
specific types of disasters, such as a nuclear attack going off right over
the White House. The system was created by a researcher at Virginia Tech, Chris Barrett,
who specializes in massive simulations that involve variables for thousands of people. Using
one of the most advanced computers in the world, it maps out which outcomes would cause the best
results - and which would cause the worst. These simulations were picked up by the government, and
they’re now a regular feature of the government planning for events they hope never come to pass.
So what are the best and worst case scenarios?
The best-case scenarios usually involve people acting responsibly, taking heed of advice,
and concentrating on their own safety. The worst-case scenarios become a reality when
people decide to head for ground zero to try to help people caught in the disaster
zone. Not only will there be few if any survivors after a nuclear blast,
these would-be heroes will often sentence themselves to death due to the fallout.
So what are the government’s plans now?
Many of the plans from the Cold War are still in effect to some degree, just updated to modern
technology that makes it easier to communicate and take action wherever the leadership may be. With
our communications infrastructure being stronger than ever before, the odds are good that the
government would be able to stay in contact with its citizens and keep them as calm as possible.
But as for what would come next, that’s highly classified - and hopefully will stay so forever.
Want to know more about this apocalyptic scenario? Check out “What If Russia
Launched A Nuclear Bomb (Minute By Minute), or watch “This Is How You
Actually Survive A Nuclear Attack” for what to do if the worst happens.