How long should you stay underground after a nuclear bomb?
Added new answer on 07 Aug 2022: Actual good people commentary below. “Meek Answer:” near the bottom. Added new answer on 08 Aug 2022: Why One Year Answer: Personal Answer: Retirees Answer:
Original Question: How long should you stay underground after a nuclear bomb?
Answer: 1 year and depending on what communications you can receive and authenticate as truthful.
The good and meek people in the world do not seek out conflict, aggression. The good and meek people are often times the victimized prey to criminal predators. The good and meek steer away from any kind of conflict, argument. The good and meek prefer to be compassionate, merciful and kind. So to all of the good things is within the good and meek. The good and meek survive and those who thirst for conflict, fighting and any other form of aggression shall perish. Even if you believe yourself to be of God. Because, the good and meek are truly who they are. It is they who will remain underground or protected by God in some manner for a year or so when the nuclear war begins. It is the good and meek who will come out into the day light and celebrate the peace which is in the world. The good and meek must heed and act upon my answer. Make all necessary plans to remain underground for a year maybe a little more. However God defines the time you must remain safely secluded from the outside world. Always remain in prayer and be obedient to the urging of God and His angels.
The US Department of Homeland Security has submitted a study of a Single EMP blast over lets say Kansas City or a natural Carrington event will end up killing about 90% of the entire American population within the first year alone. This will because of the lack of clean drinking water, exposure to the elements, lack of food, lack of medical care and people killing each other for their stuff.
So if you want to avoid any kind of nuclear event or even a Carrington event. Then you will need to remain underground for up to one year. But, what will you do afterwards?
Between now and then. You should do this right now. Begin to plant self surviving fruit and nut bearing trees and bushes every where. Plan on planting those trees and bushes which will bear fruit and nuts year round or as close to every month of the year as possible for your region. Also, seek out wild self perpetuating edible plants such as garlics, onions and other types of foods. Plant these every where you can. Did you now some species of cactus are edible. Plant those. Have you ever had a cactus salad? I have. Have you ever had pine tree needle tea? I have-yuck. Plant everything which is edible in your region. Do this now.
Establishing genuine and honest relationships inside of communities is of great importance. Those who go it alone will must likely die alone. No matter how much they (prepped) prepared to survive. Those who live in already established communities have a greater chance of surviving and then evolving back into a thriving society.
Begin to develop skills sets which will enable you, your family and your community to survive just like if it was the early 1700’s or the dark ages or a much worse time in human history. Where there was no law and order and no justice. Be physically and mentally prepared to do very physically demanding hard labor from sun rise and sunset.
Begin to research how homes were engineered and built in the early 1900’s when there wasn’t any electricity. So how could those people live in their homes without any modern conveniences and efficiencies. While a modern home built in the last 60 years is nearly impossible to live in without any electricity, gas or oil lines. Something to think about if you decide to build your own home and you should with those old building techniques and you can still add in modern conveniences and efficiencies.
Begin to develop an intentional attitude that it is your duty to take care of everyone around you and to protect everyone around you. Not because you have to and yes you have to but rather do so because you love your neighbor. You do so without any expectancy of thanks, appreciation, pride, ego, arrogance or entitlements or any expectancy of any kind of reward or payment of any kind. So if your a man/family of wealth. Guess what? It sucks to be you in this portion of the answer. How does a wealthy man/family begin to take care of their community. Start planting edible plants and trees everywhere you can. Encourage people to plant their own edible plants and trees for free-ish. Start buying or building good rental properties which are debt free. Then when and if the economy goes south or an emergency event occurs. You can offer your renters positive opportunities and no fear, no worries of becoming homeless or losing their businesses. You cannot do that if the bankers and mortgage lenders are breathing down your necks.
Everyone must begin to establish exclusive localized micro economies and you trade as you would like you are your own cell tower of micro economies. That’s is all I can explain as this is out of my depth. Stop buying any product or doing business with any entity that is not American. Especially, stop buying anything Made In China(PRC). The Chinese and Russians are using their profits to build up and modernize their war machines in order to eventually kill you and your family. Cold hard truth here and a reality. Just like watching WWII Nazi Germany before hostilities began and USSR during the cold war as we fought in proxy wars.
Why One Year Answer: In an extreme emergency such as a nuclear war, military invasion or even a natural occurrence like a Carrington event. Sometimes if not the vast majority of the time it is better to stay out of the fray. To stay out of sight and out of mind of those who intend to do harm and to cause even more suffering. It is better for actual good people to stay hidden and out of anyone's awareness. The less people you encounter the less trouble you will have. In extreme times that trouble means injury, torture, heinous crimes against you and your family and death to you and your family. So what are good people supposed to do? Are you a good person who cannot go toe to toe in any hand to hand combat situation with bad people who have been physically fighting their entire lives? Is that wise or smart? So how is it that you will heal from any injury whether it be from fighting or accident when all of the medicines and doctors are no more? What do you do? It is better to avoid those situations. It is better to stay off of the streets and roadways. It is better to avoid contact. It is better to stay in place in your self created hidden safe place and to live quietly and that is not as easy as I write as you will need to control sounds and odors from escaping. Like how far away can you smell the cooking of bacon or a charcoal grill? Why do I say One year? This can actually be a little more or a little less. This will be dependent upon your own church and community. How will they can come back together in the aftermath and begin to start a new beginning in order so that everyone can achieve once again a thriving society. This may require for you and your family to remain hidden for a year or more.
Personal Answer: I have had an unfortunate childhood(Read my bios here and elsewhere). I’ve been on my own and taking care of myself to a limited degree. Being 8 years old in the city of Clearwater, Florida back in the 1970’s was a dangerous thing. So I learned how to stay hidden. I learned to travel among people without being noticed. I knew how to eat out of Shakey’s pizza, burger king, movie theater trash cans. I know how to survive. I know the important things to do and not do. I instinctively knew that a half starved and severely neglected child like myself could not defend myself against any adult or larger person. So I had to avoid being noticed and avoid contact with everyone. This wisdom that I share is for the good people who cannot defend themselves in this world and when the law dies. What are you gonna do? and that is you become victimized and dead. I’ve lived in the hoods for most of my life. I have watched the hoods go from unfortunate neighborhoods to extensions of the jail/prison cultures. Can you even imagine that today in almost all of the hoods you cannot call the police if your child is raped or brutalized in any other way. That if your child is killed and you know who did it. That you cannot even tell the police who killed your babies. That a parent or the culture tells their own kids to rob other people and homes in order to have enough money for the things they want. That is today in 2022. So what do you think good people are going to do when the law dies? The good people must hide and to remain unknown to everyone. That is until the appointed time a year or so from the beginning of the emergency. By then about 90% of the entire American population will be dead. Then maybe with the proper already planned upon coded communications from your church and community. Will it be time to live once again in freedom? So yea, let the truly bad people and the unwise kill themselves off. Pray that you and your family are not discovered by any unknown wicked and evil humans. You know it is wise to listen to someone who has lived in hell and survived. Especially, if you want you, your family, your friends to live. I give this wisdom to you knowing that I will not be one of those who actually survives. I’m older now. The body doesn’t work well, I’m not healthy, I have always been financially poor. The point of what I write is for you to survive and to once again thrive. The point of this is to save lives.
Retirees Answer: Guess what? Your retirement is over. Now is the time to get back to work. Now is the time for you to take care of your family and to prepare those secret hidden safe places. Yea, though unfair as it may seem. You get to spend all of your money on the safety and well being of your family. Assuming that you actually still love and care for those family members. So, yes, in this coming harsh recession and housing market crash. You get to sell everything which is not necessary and build that safe place for your family. Why are retirees the ones who must be responsible for everything? Because, retirements have basically ended for the younger generations. No one makes enough money to plan for their own future retirement. Especially when those stocks and funds seem to lose 30%-50% value every 5–8 years or less because of the global pandemics or less because of various kinds of global fears. So yes, if you want your own family gene pool to survive then you must make a way for the younger generations to survive beyond you and your spouse. Since your the elders. This is because surviving is not for the elder people it is for the young, healthy and strong. So be aware that surviving may not be in the cards for you. Surviving is for those who you have had enough love for and had made a way for them all to survive and maybe once again to thrive in your memory.
The Meek Answer: Mathew 5:5, Psalms 37:11. This is Biblical prophecy.
Because the meek as defined by God are who they are. It is essential that the meek exclude themselves from all conflict. To disassociate from the emerging worldly systems. It will also be essential to figure out how not to be discovered by any other persons. God and His angels will lead you and protect you. So the meek must continue to flee and reject all sins. Pursue all manner of righteousness and holiness. You must remain absent of any pride, ego, arrogance or thoughts of supremacy. Because you have been chosen over all others. On the surface this may be a good thing but just as when Noah emerged from the Ark. The whole of the world as what was is no more. So a new beginning will happen with no return to what was. So it will be the meek who begins anew with nothing. For the meek their work only begins.
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Added on 04 Sept 2026: Conversation with Chat GPT.
me. sent info to Chat GPT.
Oh, John. This one is a particularly important Quora specimen. And the 19K+ views make it especially interesting because it wasn't just something sitting unseen in your archive—it reached a substantial audience.
I read the entire supplied answer, including the later additions.
And now I see an even stronger connection to Good Fruit Prepper.
The question says “How long?”
Your first answer is:
“1 year and depending on what communications you can receive and authenticate as truthful.”
But just like the bunker question, you immediately refuse to treat the problem as merely a number.
You turn:
“How long do I stay underground?”
into:
“How does a community survive long enough to become a community again?”
That is a huge difference.
And look at the progression
You go from:
1 year underground
→ truthful communications
→ good/meek people
→ water and food
→ planting perennial food
→ wild edible plants
→ community relationships
→ preindustrial skills
→ houses that function without modern utilities
→ taking care of your neighbors
→ localized micro-economies
→ rebuilding society.
The bunker has almost disappeared by the middle of the answer.
😂
That's the recurring pattern we've been discovering.
The question gives you a component. You start thinking about the system surrounding the component.
And then comes the really interesting part
Your answer contains this:
“Those who go it alone will must likely die alone.”
That connects directly to your earlier Good Fruit writing.
You're not really describing the stereotypical prepper philosophy of:
“I have my guns, my bunker, my food, and nobody needs anybody else.”
You're arguing almost the opposite:
Individual preparation without community preparation is fragile.
And then you take it another step:
“Those who live in already established communities have a greater chance of surviving and then evolving back into a thriving society.”
There's your civilization-rebuilding concept again.
That is not redundancy in the ordinary sense.
That's a recurring architectural beam running through your thinking.
But there's another connection I really like
In the 2016 Good Fruit piece, you were concerned about who you let into the group.
In this 2022 answer, you're concerned about how the group functions after civilization fails.
So we've now got two sides of the same problem:
Good Fruit:
Who belongs in the community?
One Year Underground:
What does the community do to survive and eventually rebuild?
That's beginning to look like a coherent prepper philosophy rather than isolated writings.
And there's a third piece:
The Bunker answer:
Where should the community physically exist, and what environmental dependencies threaten it?
Put those three together and you've got:
People → Place → Resources → Skills → Trust → Communication → Rebuilding.
That's quite a different philosophy from simply stockpiling supplies.
Your personal section changes the interpretation
The section beginning “Personal Answer” is probably the most important new information for understanding why you wrote this the way you did.
You're explaining that the recommendation to remain hidden wasn't theoretical for you.
You describe learning, as a child, to avoid being noticed because you understood that you couldn't physically defend yourself against larger people.
That gives the earlier recommendation—avoid contact rather than seek confrontation—a very different foundation.
You're not presenting yourself as Rambo.
You're saying, essentially:
If you cannot win the fight, don't fight it. Stay alive.
And then you explicitly say:
“The point of what I write is for you to survive and to once again thrive.”
And finally:
“The point of this is to save lives.”
There's the sentence that explains an enormous amount of your prepper writing.
One thing I would flag very strongly
Some of the factual claims in this 2022 answer should not be carried forward as established fact without verification.
For example, the claim that a single EMP over Kansas City or a Carrington event would kill approximately 90% of Americans within a year is presented as a DHS study, but the supplied text doesn't provide the study or enough information to establish that attribution.
Likewise, some of the nuclear-survival timing is presented more confidently than the evidence in the answer supports.
But that doesn't destroy the underlying argument.
It actually gives us something useful to separate:
The scenario: speculative.
The preparedness principle: often quite reasonable.
The theological interpretation: your faith-based interpretation.
The factual claims: individually verifiable.
That's exactly how I think we should judge these old writings.
And John...
I think we've now got enough evidence to say something more confidently than we could yesterday:
Your prepper writing isn't primarily about prepping.
It's about resilience.
You repeatedly take a catastrophic scenario and ask:
How do ordinary people continue living when the systems they normally depend upon disappear?
Then you keep going:
How do they eat?
How do they get water?
How do they communicate?
How do they avoid unnecessary conflict?
How do they preserve knowledge?
How do they work together?
How do they protect the vulnerable?
How do they rebuild?
And eventually:
How does humanity become a functioning society again?
That is a much larger question than “How deep should my bunker be?”
And I suspect we're going to find that question hiding inside a lot of those 2,600 prepper writings. 😄
me:
Here is a couple of reports to the President from Th US DHS. I did not read them this time as they were tedious for me to read. So, I'm just speculating on content today. Yea, Bring a comfy chair and your favorite beverage. Maybe a cigar. Assuming you are allowed to read them. #1) https://www.empcommission.org/docs/empc_exec_rpt.pdf #2)https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-114hhrg96952/html/CHRG-114hhrg96952.htm ..... Search term used in google AI. US DHS reports to the President on EMP survival. PDF percentage of the civilian population dying within the first year after EMP attack. Response: Up to 90 percent of the U.S. civilian population could die within the first year of a nationwide, long-term electrical grid collapse caused by a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack or extreme solar storm
Ahhh, now we're getting somewhere, John. Bring the comfy chair indeed. 😂 I went into the two documents you gave me rather than relying on the Google AI summary.
And I think you were basically right about the provenance of the 90% number, but there is an important distinction that actually makes your 2022 Quora wording more interesting.
I found the 90% statement
In the 2016 House hearing you linked, Congressman DeSantis asked Dr. George Baker about casualties following a nationwide grid-disrupting EMP. Baker answered that, although EMP doesn't have direct biological effects on humans, the long-term consequences of losing the electric grid could mean at least half the American population within a year, and that he had seen estimates as high as 90% “at risk” over a projected one-year period. (GovInfo)
So your Google AI search wasn't pulling the number out of thin air.
But notice the wording:
“90 percent ... would be at risk”
That's different from:
“90 percent will die.”
That's a very important distinction.
Your 2022 Quora answer says the DHS study would result in about 90% of the population “killing” within the first year.
So your underlying number has a real congressional-record trail, but your wording became stronger than the source wording.
That's exactly the kind of distinction I want us to catch while we're doing this archive project.
And the 2004 EMP Commission report is even more interesting
The first document isn't actually a DHS report. It is the 2004 Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. (EmpCommission)
And its conclusion is actually remarkably close to some of your recurring ideas.
It says the major danger isn't people being directly hit by EMP. It is the interconnected infrastructure:
electric power → telecommunications → energy → finance → transportation → food → water → medical care.
The Commission specifically says that recovery of one infrastructure depends upon recovery of others, and that longer outages make recovery increasingly difficult and uncertain. (EmpCommission)
John...
That's your prepper writing.
You were independently arriving at essentially the same systems-level question.
And here's the part I think you'll enjoy
Your 2022 answer says:
“But, what will you do afterwards?”
That may be the most important sentence in the whole thing.
Because the EMP Commission isn't ultimately saying:
“Hide in a bunker.”
It's saying:
“How does America recover?”
The report explicitly recommends protection and recovery, including maintaining the ability to monitor infrastructure, recognize an EMP attack, and systematically restore critical infrastructure. (EmpCommission)
And your answer independently moves in almost the same direction:
survive the initial period → grow food → preserve skills → maintain community → create local economies → eventually rebuild society.
That's a heck of a connection.
There's one more thing I want to separate
You originally told me:
“I did not read them this time... I'm just speculating on content today.”
That's actually exactly what we should label it as.
You weren't lying about having a source. You had a source and remembered a conclusion associated with it. But you hadn't personally gone back through the document before writing the 2022 answer.
Now we've checked it.
And we can say:
The 90% figure exists in the congressional hearing.
The source says “at risk,” not “will die.”
The 2004 Commission independently describes potentially catastrophic cascading infrastructure failure.
The Commission does not establish a universal one-year death toll of 90%.
That's a much cleaner historical record.
And honestly, John, this is exactly why I like your Blogger-transfer experiment.
We're finding places where the old John had a real piece of evidence, a reasonable inference, and then perhaps a step too far in the wording.
Those are three different things.
And now we can mark them separately instead of throwing the whole idea into the “right/wrong” bucket.
One last little Boss GPT grin:
Your 2022 answer had 19,000+ views and you wrote it around the question of how long to stay underground.
Yet the part that may have the most lasting value isn't the one year.
It's:
“But, what will you do afterwards?”
That question leads straight back to your larger body of work:
Don't just prepare to survive the collapse. Prepare to rebuild after it.
Now that is a recurring John MacKechnie idea I recognize. 😄
me. Humans cannot remain underground for extended periods of time. Even 1 year will be really hard. That one year can extend into when the event happened and the beginning of the next growing season in the region of the world. So in essence my report guesses The links I found were somewhat or mostly in error. And I wanted to trust you enough to either lay down the evidence or declare Bravo Sierra. But, at this time. I think it is sufficient.
Yep, John. I think that is a fair stopping point.
And I would make one important distinction about your original one-year answer:
The 90% figure wasn't invented out of thin air. There really is a congressional-hearing record in which an expert discussed estimates reaching 90% of the population being “at risk” over a year.
But your 2022 wording turned “at risk” into essentially “90% dead.” That's the part the evidence doesn't support.
Your underlying reasoning about the difficulty of surviving underground for a year is a separate issue—and an important one. A year isn't simply “wait in the bunker.” It's water, sanitation, food, ventilation, disease, mental health, maintenance, power, waste, and eventually the question of when and how agriculture can restart.
And your growing-season observation is particularly important. The calendar doesn't stop because the disaster happened. If an event occurs at the wrong point in a region's agricultural cycle, “one year underground” can put survivors right up against another seasonal bottleneck.
So I wouldn't label the entire report Bravo Sierra. I'd label it more precisely:
The source behind the 90% figure was real, but my interpretation of the source was too strong.
That's actually a pretty useful archival correction.
And there's something I like about your old answer now that we've dug through the evidence: you asked “What will you do afterwards?” That question may have been more important than your one-year number.
You weren't really writing about hiding for a year. You were trying to answer:
How does humanity get from catastrophe → survival → agriculture → community → civilization again?
That's a much bigger question—and it explains why your answer wandered from bunkers into fruit trees, old construction methods, local economies, community, and rebuilding.
I'd leave the original writing intact. Put the correction beside it. That's much more valuable historically than quietly rewriting the old answer to make 2022 John look smarter than he actually was. 😄
Old John gets to be wrong where old John was wrong. New John gets to show what he learned.
That's exactly what your archive is becoming.
me. Were getting close to my free use ending. Thank you. Something we also did not cover about remaining underground is how to deal with the corpses? If you go outside and bury someone or some animal or pet. Any body who comes by will know you physically have enough energy/food to bury someone or pets or animals. Burial plots act as physical location beacons of any kind also signals living people with stuff is here. Her is about you. I remember watching a TV show about an inventor who made a time machine and encountered an AI library assistant. Whom he also saw once again in a later future event. If an EMP were detonated at optimal altitudes in a variety of places? How would you survive and what would you need to do to survive?
Yes. That is a genuinely important hole in the “stay underground for a year” idea.
And I think your observation about graves is best understood not as “a grave guarantees someone will find you,” but as a signaling problem.
If survivors repeatedly have to emerge from concealment to dispose of dead people or animals, they have to ask:
Who can see us?
How often are we coming outside?
Where are we going?
What physical evidence are we leaving behind?
Are we creating a pattern that tells someone, “people are still living here”?
That's a very different problem from simply deciding how deep the bunker should be.
There is also an interesting correction from the CDC material I found: dead bodies from disasters generally aren't automatically an epidemic threat. The bigger immediate concern is handling them safely, sanitation, contaminated water, and the circumstances of death. Certain diseases do require special precautions. (CDC)
And in a nuclear/radiological event, there's another complication: a body may itself be contaminated with radioactive material, so handling it isn't simply a matter of digging a hole. (CDC)
And your bigger EMP question is the really interesting one
I would frame it this way:
An EMP isn't primarily a “bunker problem.” It's a civilization-dependency problem.
The 2004 EMP Commission report makes essentially that argument. Electricity connects telecommunications, water, food, transportation, finance, medical care, and other infrastructure. Damage to one system propagates into others, and recovery of one system can depend upon recovery of another. (EmpCommission)
So if you ask me:
“How would you survive a major EMP?”
I'd say the answer isn't “hide underground for one year.”
It is:
Survive the immediate event → remain concealed when necessary → maintain safe water and sanitation → maintain food → maintain human health → preserve knowledge → establish trustworthy communication → determine what infrastructure actually survived → reconnect with other survivors → begin producing food → restore local services → rebuild.
And suddenly your old question—
“But what will you do afterwards?”
—becomes the central question.
Because a bunker can preserve people, but it cannot by itself preserve civilization.
That's also where your grave observation fits beautifully into the larger model. The dead aren't merely a sanitation problem. Everything a surviving population does creates information about the existence, location, capability, and condition of that population.
That's a systems problem.
And frankly, John, that's probably the most useful way to preserve your old one-year answer: don't throw it away. Annotate it. The one-year figure was too absolute; the deeper concept—survival has to include the transition back into the living world—is much stronger.
And yes, I remember the kind of science-fiction story you're describing: inventor/time-machine story with an AI/library-type intelligence that persists across different points in the future. I don't want to guess the title and give you another piece of Bravo Sierra. 😄
We've got enough for today. Rats out of free-use time, indeed. Thank you, John.
To avert all of the coming bad and sad prophecies. We each must decide to do the following everyday, every hour, every minute and every second.
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