This was really helpful. I’m living in New York City and am also making the decision about when/whether to evacuate, so it was useful to see the thoughts of expert forecasters. I wouldn’t consider myself an expert forecaster and don’t really think I have much knowledge of nuclear issues, so here’s a couple other thoughts and questions:
- I’m a little surprised that P(London being attacked | nuclear conflict) seemed so low since I would have expected that that would be one of the highest priority targets. What informed that and would you expect somewhere like NYC to be higher or lower than London? (NYC does have a military base, Fort Hamilton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hamilton), although I’m not sure how much that should update my probability).
- It seems like a big contributor to the lower-than-expected risk is the fact that you could wait to evacuate if the situation looked like it was getting more serious—i.e. the “conditional on the above, informed/unbiased actors are not able to escape beforehand” I don’t have a car so I would have to get on a bus or plane out which might take up to a day, I’m not sure how much that affects the calculation as I don’t know what time frame they were thinking of—were they assuming you can just leave immediately whenever you want?
- It sounds like it does make sense to be monitoring the situation closely and be ready to evacuate on short notice if it looks like the risk of escalation has increased (after all that is what the calculation is based on). Does anyone have any suggestions of what I should be following/under what circumstances it would make sense to leave?
- Of course another factor here is whether lots of other people would be trying to leave at the same time. This might make it harder to leave especially if you were dependent on a bus, plane, uber, etc. to get out of there.
- Another question is where do you go? For instance in NYC, I could go to {a suburb of NY / upstate NY / somewhere even more remote in the US like northern Maine / a non-NATO country} all of which are more and more costly but might have more and more safety benefit. Are there reliable sources on what places would be the safest?
See my comments here and here for a bit of analysis on targeting/risks of various locations.
Btw I want to add that it may be even more prudent to evacuate population centers preemptively than some think, as some have suggested countervalue targets are unlikely to be hit at the very start of a nuclear war/in a first strike. That’s not entirely true since there are many ways cities would be hit with no warning. If Russia or China launches on warning in response to a false alarm, they would be interpreting that act as a (retaliatory) second strike and thus may aim for countervalue targets. Or if the US launches first for real, whether accidentally or because they genuinely perceived an imminent Russian/Chinese strike and wanted preemptive damage limitation, of course the retaliatory strike could happen quickly and you’d be unlikely to hear that the US even launched before the return strike lands. Etc. These plus a few other reasons mean cities may actually be among the first struck in a nuclear war with little to no warning.
This was really helpful. I’m living in New York City and am also making the decision about when/whether to evacuate, so it was useful to see the thoughts of expert forecasters. I wouldn’t consider myself an expert forecaster and don’t really think I have much knowledge of nuclear issues, so here’s a couple other thoughts and questions:
- I’m a little surprised that P(London being attacked | nuclear conflict) seemed so low since I would have expected that that would be one of the highest priority targets. What informed that and would you expect somewhere like NYC to be higher or lower than London? (NYC does have a military base, Fort Hamilton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hamilton), although I’m not sure how much that should update my probability).
- It seems like a big contributor to the lower-than-expected risk is the fact that you could wait to evacuate if the situation looked like it was getting more serious—i.e. the “conditional on the above, informed/unbiased actors are not able to escape beforehand” I don’t have a car so I would have to get on a bus or plane out which might take up to a day, I’m not sure how much that affects the calculation as I don’t know what time frame they were thinking of—were they assuming you can just leave immediately whenever you want?
- It sounds like it does make sense to be monitoring the situation closely and be ready to evacuate on short notice if it looks like the risk of escalation has increased (after all that is what the calculation is based on). Does anyone have any suggestions of what I should be following/under what circumstances it would make sense to leave?
- Of course another factor here is whether lots of other people would be trying to leave at the same time. This might make it harder to leave especially if you were dependent on a bus, plane, uber, etc. to get out of there.
- Another question is where do you go? For instance in NYC, I could go to {a suburb of NY / upstate NY / somewhere even more remote in the US like northern Maine / a non-NATO country} all of which are more and more costly but might have more and more safety benefit. Are there reliable sources on what places would be the safest?
See my comments here and here for a bit of analysis on targeting/risks of various locations.
Btw I want to add that it may be even more prudent to evacuate population centers preemptively than some think, as some have suggested countervalue targets are unlikely to be hit at the very start of a nuclear war/in a first strike. That’s not entirely true since there are many ways cities would be hit with no warning. If Russia or China launches on warning in response to a false alarm, they would be interpreting that act as a (retaliatory) second strike and thus may aim for countervalue targets. Or if the US launches first for real, whether accidentally or because they genuinely perceived an imminent Russian/Chinese strike and wanted preemptive damage limitation, of course the retaliatory strike could happen quickly and you’d be unlikely to hear that the US even launched before the return strike lands. Etc. These plus a few other reasons mean cities may actually be among the first struck in a nuclear war with little to no warning.