Imo, evacuating to another country when a nuclear war looks literally imminent may not even be a good move because you’d have to enter a large city with an international airport with transcontinental flights, and the increased risk while you’re reentering the city & waiting for your flight is probably greater than the survival benefits from arriving at your SH destination, not to mention flights would probably be booked out if things really looked that dire. A better strategy would be to evacuate whenever the risk looked heightened, but then you’d run into a “no fire alarm” problem and it’d be very unclear when you should do so, and in any case you’d be doing it repeatedly. The biggest problem with this approach is it wouldn’t save you from sudden nuclear war. All it takes is an accident, the risk of which with China now joining Rus + US in adopting Launch on Warning has arguably risen at least 50%. Or something like Kim having a bad day/internal turmoil within the unstable NK regime which had no outwardly visible signs until after the fact, and the Bay Area is gone in a flash. (Looking at you, MIRI and like 3⁄4 of the entire alignment community based there...)
The best strategy imo is to relocate permanently to somewhere with a much lower risk of attack: e.g., a smaller non-US NATO city like Kitchener, or a very small US city. E.g. the Toronto area may be attacked, but it’s pretty unlikely Kitchener would because a marginal warhead would be better spent on another US city, even for Russia with 1500 deployed warheads. And your very small US city/suburban area of 10-20,000 people is quite unlikely to be attacked, because all cities with greater population would be attacked before it, unless it had some unique importance.
Doesn’t really make sense to consider yields or anything like that, whether your metropolitan area is annihilated by a single 25 megaton warhead from an R-36M or a bunch of MIRVs in the low hundred kiloton range makes no difference and is just down to which missiles are assigned which targets. No one knows exactly which places would be targeted, just that some places are of course likelier than others, and certain things about strategy (e.g. China has a pure countervalue strategy for now, targeting all warheads at cities only).
Lastly, recall one problem with the strategy of evacuating at the last possible moment when warheads look like they could be falling any minute, is that if many others have the same idea as you, the roads out of the city will be jammed to a standstill. In fact, governments may be attempting to evacuate the cities at that time too. This is another advantage of being in a smaller town/outlying area: you won’t be hindered whenever you decide to evacuate.
Yes, if imminent literally means missiles are inbound it is too late, but if you’ve decided there is a high probability of nuclear attack in the next couple of weeks to months evacuating could still be a good strategy. For Ben Landau Taylors signup list, he certainly means evacuating well before missiles are launched.
Certainly small towns are not at much risk of being hit directly. If you were concerned about an all out war between the US and Russia though, evacuating to somewhere in the southern hemisphere could make a lot of sense.
Yields of nuclear weapons can vary a lot. Like you said, no one knows exactly where would be targeted, but if your near a large city that might be hit, considering how to shelter and evacuate after an attack could still be quite useful. I agree attempting to evacuate a city as missiles were being launched would not result in good outcomes.
I’m curious about your thoughts on this: hypothetically, if I were to relocate now, do you see the duration of my stay in the lower risk area as being indefinitely long? It seems unclear to me what exact signals—other than pretty obvious ones like the war ending, which I’d guess are much less likely to happen soon—would be clear green lights to move back to my original location. I’m wondering because I’m trying to assess feasibility. For my situation, it feels like the longer I’m away, the higher the cost (not specifically monetary) of the relocation.
I personally don’t think the risk is currently high enough to justify evacuation if you live in the US (I’m not sure where you’re writing from). I think looking at escalations/de-escalations of conflict between nuclear powers as signals of risk makes sense. You could look at estimates like this one (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KRFXjCqqfGQAYirm5/samotsvety-nuclear-risk-forecasts-march-2022) or check relevant metaculus questions.
Imo, evacuating to another country when a nuclear war looks literally imminent may not even be a good move because you’d have to enter a large city with an international airport with transcontinental flights, and the increased risk while you’re reentering the city & waiting for your flight is probably greater than the survival benefits from arriving at your SH destination, not to mention flights would probably be booked out if things really looked that dire. A better strategy would be to evacuate whenever the risk looked heightened, but then you’d run into a “no fire alarm” problem and it’d be very unclear when you should do so, and in any case you’d be doing it repeatedly. The biggest problem with this approach is it wouldn’t save you from sudden nuclear war. All it takes is an accident, the risk of which with China now joining Rus + US in adopting Launch on Warning has arguably risen at least 50%. Or something like Kim having a bad day/internal turmoil within the unstable NK regime which had no outwardly visible signs until after the fact, and the Bay Area is gone in a flash. (Looking at you, MIRI and like 3⁄4 of the entire alignment community based there...)
The best strategy imo is to relocate permanently to somewhere with a much lower risk of attack: e.g., a smaller non-US NATO city like Kitchener, or a very small US city. E.g. the Toronto area may be attacked, but it’s pretty unlikely Kitchener would because a marginal warhead would be better spent on another US city, even for Russia with 1500 deployed warheads. And your very small US city/suburban area of 10-20,000 people is quite unlikely to be attacked, because all cities with greater population would be attacked before it, unless it had some unique importance.
Doesn’t really make sense to consider yields or anything like that, whether your metropolitan area is annihilated by a single 25 megaton warhead from an R-36M or a bunch of MIRVs in the low hundred kiloton range makes no difference and is just down to which missiles are assigned which targets. No one knows exactly which places would be targeted, just that some places are of course likelier than others, and certain things about strategy (e.g. China has a pure countervalue strategy for now, targeting all warheads at cities only).
Lastly, recall one problem with the strategy of evacuating at the last possible moment when warheads look like they could be falling any minute, is that if many others have the same idea as you, the roads out of the city will be jammed to a standstill. In fact, governments may be attempting to evacuate the cities at that time too. This is another advantage of being in a smaller town/outlying area: you won’t be hindered whenever you decide to evacuate.
Yes, if imminent literally means missiles are inbound it is too late, but if you’ve decided there is a high probability of nuclear attack in the next couple of weeks to months evacuating could still be a good strategy. For Ben Landau Taylors signup list, he certainly means evacuating well before missiles are launched.
Certainly small towns are not at much risk of being hit directly. If you were concerned about an all out war between the US and Russia though, evacuating to somewhere in the southern hemisphere could make a lot of sense.
Yields of nuclear weapons can vary a lot. Like you said, no one knows exactly where would be targeted, but if your near a large city that might be hit, considering how to shelter and evacuate after an attack could still be quite useful. I agree attempting to evacuate a city as missiles were being launched would not result in good outcomes.
I’m curious about your thoughts on this: hypothetically, if I were to relocate now, do you see the duration of my stay in the lower risk area as being indefinitely long? It seems unclear to me what exact signals—other than pretty obvious ones like the war ending, which I’d guess are much less likely to happen soon—would be clear green lights to move back to my original location. I’m wondering because I’m trying to assess feasibility. For my situation, it feels like the longer I’m away, the higher the cost (not specifically monetary) of the relocation.
I personally don’t think the risk is currently high enough to justify evacuation if you live in the US (I’m not sure where you’re writing from). I think looking at escalations/de-escalations of conflict between nuclear powers as signals of risk makes sense. You could look at estimates like this one (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KRFXjCqqfGQAYirm5/samotsvety-nuclear-risk-forecasts-march-2022) or check relevant metaculus questions.