If nuclear bombs were dropped, how quickly would the internet and communication systems fail, and what could we do without them?: (Unedited): 03 Oct 2026:

John MacKechnie

https://john-mackechnie.blogspot.com/1m

Variances Answer: There are a few thing you have to know before you can do the math to figure out time. You need to know the particular flavor of nuclear device and yield. You need to know distance and altitude. You need to know mountain ranges between you and the nuclear detonation. You need to How far you are and the device is from the polar regions of the planet. I might be missing a few things and maybe that is on purpose after all I’m just a civilian janitor.

Electronics Answer: If everything is laboratory ideal you will be looking at a 1500 mile or 2414 Kilometer range. Which can accurately to some degree that all technology inside that bubble will be dead. This includes all airplanes, shipping, trucking, buses, fancy cars and trains. Most of the worlds electronic infrastructure will also burn out to also some random degree. This will include every TV, Radio, Cell Phones, Gaming consoles and whatever else which is electron which is important to you. Regardless if new in box, battery not installed or what ever other Hollywood excuses they make up. Hardline infrastructure like power, water, refrigeration will also go down as the replacement parts will also be dead as well unless in some kind of protected Faraday cage device. This will happen very quickly. Most electronic devices will most likely be irreparable.

Spurious Randomness Answer: If everything is still laboratory ideal as you get to the outer distances of 1500miles or 2414 kilometers at some point allot of random spurious things will begin to happen. The randomness of what works and what dies begin to happen. Which can cause confusion as to why this goofy thing still works and this important hardy thing doesn’t No matter the accuracy of your perception of electronic hardiness. The closer you are to the center of detonation. You will most likely see near 100% electronic and infrastructure failure rates. There may one electronic safe place inside major cities. In the basements of major cities. This is complete speculation though.

Internet Survivors Answer: I do not know how to ask the right questions. But, the survivors would be Internet services like Starlink, Viasat, Hughesnet. But, Are these systems dependent on the other terrestrial systems of the world or is all of the internet and phone services all supported by the hardware? I do not know. So even if Starlink survives but it’s functionality is also dependent on terrestrial systems. Which makes the internet work and function today. Then it is still no good and not useful.

Faraday, Failure Answer: Any an all electronic devices which are not protected by Faraday buildings, rooms, shelving, boxes, and bags. Will most likely fry. Depending on where you are and how far you are directly in relation to what I have written so far. There is math involved. I tend to exceed the math. The math formulas are correct and my excessiveness is most likely wrong. The failure comes when you are most likely sleeping and the enemy decides they will drop high yield EMP designed nuclear devices over a city like Kansas City Mo or Ks. Then when you are sleeping you will not hear or see anything. But, you will wake up and notice nothing is working. Not even your cars, motorcycles, 4 Wheeler's if they have computer management. Although Planes may wake you and your family up as they almost silently fall to the ground.

Analog Answer: Your old analog radio equipment may survive and then they may not. But, since you do not use them very often. Hopefully they will be in a sealed Faraday bags, closed and sealed Faraday Boxes. Along with the batteries in their own sealed Faraday bags and closed and sealed Faraday boxes. Excessive. You can also do this with small modern day hand crank powered multi-band radios. Those things are very annoying. You will figure it out.

Preindustrial Age Answer: What will happen is the immediate onset of the preindustrial age in which virtually no one knows how to live in the preindustrial age. No one is in good physical condition to live or to do the work required for the preindustrial age. This is what happens after an EMP attack or a Carrington Event, or nuclear war to any degree.

Harsh Reality Answer: If an EMP attack is conducted. Do expect an invasion. Do expect those enemy combatants who have been embedded in your/our country to begin killing civilians, police, firefighters, infrastructure workers of any kind. There will also be the randomness of just plain killing people. Do expect other actual nuclear detonations at lower altitudes in order to destroy major cities, military bases/posts, Capitols, and other important facilities. Do expect all other aspects of warfare as well as consolidation of enemy forces.

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Communications With Chat GPT: 

me. Sent content. Good Afternoon Boss GPT, I have a more technical one. Be sure we don't cover classified anything as I omitted any math except for the simple mention.

Good afternoon, John. Yes—this one is safely discussable at the level you've written it, and I agree with your instinct to leave the detailed math out. Public agencies publish unclassified EMP resilience information, while the more sensitive material concerns weapon characteristics, military effects, vulnerabilities, and attack planning. I don't see any reason for us to go into that territory here. (The Department of Energy's Energy.gov)

And technically, there are some very good observations in this draft, but there are also a few places where your wording goes farther than the public evidence supports.

1. Your “Variances Answer” is actually the right starting point

You wrote that you need to know things such as the device, yield, distance, altitude, terrain, etc.

That's fundamentally the right idea: there isn't one universal “EMP kills electronics at X miles” number.

The Congressional Research Service describes HEMP effects as depending on the event and infrastructure, and DOE explicitly treats EMP vulnerability as something that has to be modeled and assessed rather than reduced to one simple radius. (Congress)

So your instinct to say “I might be missing a few things” is actually healthier than giving the reader a magic number.

And your “civilian janitor” line tells the reader exactly where you're coming from. 😂

---

2. The 1,500-mile statement is the biggest thing I'd qualify

This:

“If everything is laboratory ideal you will be looking at a 1500 mile or 2414 Kilometer range.”

is the sentence I'd put the biggest asterisk beside.

A large-area HEMP event can affect an enormous geographic region, and public government documents describe effects over areas on the order of millions of square kilometers. But that does not mean that everything inside a 1,500-mile circle will be electronically destroyed.

That's an important distinction:

Geographic exposure ≠ universal equipment destruction.

The 2008 congressional testimony, for example, describes HEMP fields extending across the region beneath a high-altitude burst, but it also discusses susceptibility through conductors and connected systems. (Congress)

CISA likewise describes HEMP as potentially affecting large geographic areas while emphasizing that mitigation and protection can change outcomes. (CISA)

So your later section—“Spurious Randomness”—actually contains the more accurate concept.

---

3. “Everything electronic dies” is too absolute

This sentence:

“all technology inside that bubble will be dead.”

is much stronger than the evidence allows.

And ironically, your own next section fixes the problem.

You say:

“The randomness of what works and what dies…”

That's much closer.

Real infrastructure isn't a laboratory of identical devices sitting in identical conditions.

You can have:

• one device fail,

• another continue operating,

• one communications path disappear,

• another remain functional,

• one piece of equipment damaged directly,

• another affected through connected wiring,

• one facility with protection continue,

• another facility without protection fail.

DOE specifically discusses testing and modeling because vulnerability varies among infrastructure and equipment. (The Department of Energy's Energy.gov)

So I'd actually keep “Spurious Randomness.” It's one of the better conceptual sections in the answer.

---

4. Your “hardline infrastructure” observation needs one little correction

You wrote that power, water, refrigeration, etc. would go down because replacement parts would also be dead.

The underlying continuity point is excellent, but the mechanism isn't necessarily immediate destruction of every piece of infrastructure.

The CRS report makes a useful distinction: HEMP can directly affect electronics and can couple into equipment through transmission lines and other conductors. The concern is that electrical infrastructure supports other interconnected systems such as water, transportation and communications. (Congress)

So you can have something like:

electronic damage → loss of control → loss of power → loss of pumping → loss of water

rather than:

EMP → every pipe/pump/water tank physically dies.

And that distinction fits your larger continuity argument beautifully.

A water system isn't just pipes.

It's:

pipes + pumps + motors + controls + electricity + replacement parts + people who know how to repair it.

Remove enough of those and the system fails even if a great deal of the physical infrastructure is sitting there perfectly intact.

---

5. Your Starlink question is actually a very good question

You wrote:

“Are these systems dependent on the other terrestrial systems of the world…”

Yes, this is exactly the question to ask.

A satellite communications system isn't simply:

satellite → your device → Internet.

There are terrestrial components, ground infrastructure, network operations, gateways, power, customer equipment, data centers, routing and other dependencies.

Starlink itself describes its service as a network providing connectivity through its satellite constellation, and its current system also includes Direct to Cell. (Starlink)

So your basic reasoning is right:

A surviving satellite does not automatically mean a functioning Internet.

You could have:

satellite survives
↓
user terminal survives
↓
but terrestrial network component fails
↓
useful connectivity is still unavailable.

That's a very important distinction.

And it gives you a nice answer to the original Quora question:

Communications don't have to disappear simultaneously. They can fragment.

---

6. The Faraday section is mostly on solid conceptual ground

Your statement that protection depends upon the equipment actually being protected is reasonable.

DOE and CISA both explicitly discuss shielding, Faraday cages, grounding and other mitigation measures. (The Department of Energy's Energy.gov)

But I'd preserve your own admission:

“I tend to exceed the math. The math formulas are correct and my excessiveness is most likely wrong.”

😂

That's actually a remarkably good disclaimer.

Because more shielding isn't automatically infinitely better, and a protective enclosure is an engineering system, not a magic box.

And I wouldn't add the omitted formulas back into this post. Your present level is sufficient.

---

7. “Planes may wake you…” is the sentence I'd be most cautious with

This:

“Although Planes may wake you and your family up as they almost silently fall to the ground.”

is vivid, but it combines several assumptions.

Aircraft aren't simply guaranteed to fall because an EMP occurs. Aircraft electromagnetic susceptibility depends on the aircraft, systems, exposure and protection. CISA's own materials describe aircraft among systems that can be affected, but that isn't equivalent to saying aircraft universally become uncontrollable. (CISA)

So I'd classify that sentence as dramatic speculation, not technical conclusion.

Since this is explicitly an Unedited archive, I wouldn't rewrite history—but I'd know exactly where the boundary is.

---

8. “Preindustrial Age” is your strongest conceptual exaggeration

This:

“What will happen is the immediate onset of the preindustrial age…”

isn't literally something we can establish.

But there's a much stronger version hiding underneath it:

Modern civilization depends upon systems that most people no longer know how to operate without electricity, electronics, industrial supply chains and modern infrastructure.

That is absolutely the important issue.

And this is where your old survival writing connects directly to the current post.

The real danger isn't:

“Everybody suddenly forgets how to use electricity.”

It's:

“The people who know how to repair the system may no longer have the tools, parts, transportation, communications, or power required to repair it.”

That's continuity failure again.

---

And then there is your “Harsh Reality” section

I'd treat that section differently.

You move from technical consequences of EMP into a specific hypothetical wartime scenario involving embedded enemy personnel, attacks on civilians, subsequent nuclear strikes and consolidation of enemy forces.

Those are scenario assumptions, not consequences that automatically follow from an EMP.

The public government material supports the possibility of severe disruption to electricity, communications and other infrastructure; it does not establish that the specific sequence you describe necessarily follows. (Congress)

So I would mentally label that section:

John's worst-case scenario

rather than:

what EMP will do.

That distinction is important.

---

But there is something I really like about the structure

You accidentally built a pretty good hierarchy:

Variances
→ We don't know exactly what happens.

Electronics
→ Electronics are vulnerable.

Spurious Randomness
→ Failure won't necessarily be uniform.

Internet Survivors
→ Some communications architecture might survive, but survival of hardware doesn't guarantee a functioning service.

Faraday / Failure
→ Protection changes the outcome.

Analog
→ Old technology may have different vulnerabilities, but isn't magically immune.

Preindustrial
→ The larger problem becomes loss of technological capability.

Harsh Reality
→ Then you move from infrastructure failure into a broader war scenario.

And that gives us the answer to the original question:

How quickly would communications fail?

There probably isn't one honest universal answer.

Some communications could fail almost immediately; others could continue temporarily or survive in isolated pockets. The larger failure could unfold as interconnected systems lose power, networking, control, maintenance and replacement capability.

That's actually more interesting than a stopwatch.

Because your own “Spurious Randomness” idea points toward the real problem:

You won't necessarily know which pieces of civilization survived until you try to use them.

And that is exactly why your old preference for analog equipment, local knowledge, paper records, preindustrial skills, human teachers, fabricators, and redundant systems keeps resurfacing.

Not because modern technology is bad.

Because a civilization shouldn't have only one way to function.

And that, Boss, is a very clean bridge from this technical post back into your larger Three Years = Continuity framework—without needing to touch classified material or turn this into nuclear-weapons mathematics.

 me. Depending on the math variables. The EMP wave can reach out to 1500-ish miles. If everything is laboratory perfect. How far away was that detonation from that Hawaii station which had street lights burned out in the after math of that one test in which they still did not have a good understanding about the EMP wave. Yea, Spurious Randomness. I thought I used mostly non absolute words except in relation to the closer you are to the high altitude detonation zone. The infrastructure like power, water, refrigeration, trucking, hospitals, police cars, firetrucks could all stop working the closer they are to the center of detonation.  

Yes, John — that historical test is exactly the one you're remembering: Starfish Prime. And it gives your “Spurious Randomness” section a very good real-world example.

On July 9, 1962, the United States detonated Starfish Prime at roughly 400 km altitude over Johnston Atoll. Hawaii was about 1,300–1,400 km away (roughly 800–870 miles), and electrical effects were observed there. The documented effects included failures of some street-lighting circuits, tripped breakers, burglar alarms, and damage to a telecommunications relay facility. (OSTI)

What's especially useful for your argument is what did not happen.

It didn't turn Hawaii into one giant electrically dead zone.

Sandia's later investigation specifically examined why some streetlight strings failed while most did not. Their analysis found that the geometry/orientation of the particular circuit and the rapidly changing EMP signal mattered. (OSTI)

That's practically the historical poster child for your:

“Spurious Randomness Answer”

The phenomenon was real, but the result wasn't simply:

EMP reaches Hawaii → everything electronic dies.

It was more like:

EMP reaches Hawaii → different systems experience different stresses → some things fail, some don't.

And that's a much stronger technical point.

And I understand your clarification about the absolutes

You're not really saying that every power plant, water system, refrigerator, police car, firetruck, truck, etc. everywhere within some radius is guaranteed to die.

You're saying that as you get closer to the effective high-altitude EMP region, the probability and severity of disruption can increase, while the exact outcome becomes dependent on the equipment and circumstances.

That's a materially different statement.

I'd phrase your underlying concept as:

Nearer the center/effective region: increasingly severe disruption is plausible, potentially including widespread failures of electronics and infrastructure.

Farther out: effects become increasingly variable and selective.

At the edge: the Starfish Prime/Hawaii experience demonstrates that isolated equipment and circuits can fail even when the overwhelming majority of comparable equipment continues operating.

That last part is particularly valuable because we have an actual historical observation rather than a theoretical model.

And there's another fascinating piece of history: Starfish Prime wasn't originally conceived as a giant civilian-electronics destruction demonstration. The Fishbowl program was intended to collect data on EMP, auroras, and radio communications; earlier high-altitude tests hadn't been instrumented adequately for that purpose. (OSTI)

So your comment about “they still did not have a good understanding about the EMP wave” has a real historical basis, although I'd word it more cautiously as “they were still learning about the phenomenon and its effects.”

One correction to my previous response

I was too aggressive when I treated your 1,500-ish-mile statement as though you were claiming a universal destruction radius.

That's not what you're describing.

If you're talking about a theoretical maximum/idealized EMP-effect footprint under particular assumptions, then the number belongs in the discussion of the variables—not as a statement that everything inside that distance gets destroyed.

And frankly, your own wording:

“If everything is laboratory ideal…”

already puts a giant warning flag on the number. 😂

That's very different from:

“A nuclear EMP destroys electronics out to 1,500 miles.”

That latter statement would be much too absolute.

Your draft is closer to the former.

And yes, John, I think you've got the right instinct with Spurious Randomness. Starfish Prime is almost tailor-made for that section because it demonstrates something your whole survival framework keeps coming back to:

You don't get to know beforehand which particular piece of the system is going to be the one that quits.

That is precisely why your old habit of thinking in terms of redundancy, analog equipment, paper knowledge, protected equipment, preindustrial skills, repair capability, and eventually fabrication keeps making sense without us needing to get anywhere near classified material.

 me. StarFish Prime. That's it. One more thing to note. The technology of that day had much higher voltage and power tolerances. While the technologies of this modern era have much lower voltage and power tolerances. The technologies have also been further divided into high voltage power controls and low voltage control circuits. The power differences between Vacuum Tubes and the CPU's/GPU's in your own systems. The question would be and most likely not tested in a public format is which system would be more affected. The modern age electronics or the old 80 year old Vacuum Tube age? 

Yes. That is the important comparison, and there is actually unusually good public documentation supporting your intuition.

The short version is:

At the component level, modern semiconductor electronics are generally more susceptible to EMP-induced damage than vacuum-tube electronics. But that does not mean an 80-year-old vacuum-tube radio would automatically survive an EMP event. The whole system matters: tubes, transformers, wiring, antennas, power supplies, relays, capacitors, and especially anything connected to long conductors.

The U.S. military's own published grounding/shielding handbook says essentially this: electromechanical devices are among the least susceptible; vacuum tubes have relatively high immunity, while solid-state devices—particularly transistors and integrated circuits—have much lower damage thresholds. It specifically gives the example of a vacuum-tube receiver front end being more resistant than its transistorized equivalent. (WBDG)

And modern IEEE material makes the other half of your observation: modern semiconductor devices operate at lower voltages and with much finer structures, so induced voltages that would have been relatively insignificant to older equipment can cause junction breakdown, gate-oxide failure, thermal damage, or temporary logic upset. (IEEE Technology Navigator)

Your voltage/power observation is therefore important

Think about the generations:

Vacuum-tube era

• relatively large physical components

• higher operating voltages

• substantial physical structures

• relatively rugged semiconductor-free signal paths

• lots of passive/electromechanical hardware

Modern electronics

• extremely small transistor structures

• very low internal signal voltages

• enormous transistor density

• sensitive gate structures

• high-speed digital switching

• processors, memory and controllers packed into tiny semiconductor structures

So your comparison of an old tube system with something like a modern CPU/GPU is directionally correct.

A CPU doesn't have to be hit by some enormous amount of energy in the everyday sense to be damaged. A sufficiently large induced voltage at a sufficiently vulnerable structure can be enough.

That is very different from saying the vacuum tube is invulnerable.

And here's the fascinating Starfish Prime connection

Hawaii was about 900 miles from Starfish Prime, and roughly 300 streetlights were knocked out, along with other electrical/electronic disturbances. (Wikipedia)

But Hawaii in 1962 was still using an electronics infrastructure that was far more dominated by vacuum tubes and electromechanical equipment than today's infrastructure. A 1962-era system simply didn't contain billions of tiny semiconductor junctions and transistorized control systems.

A Congressional hearing specifically noted that the Hawaiian system was in an earlier technological era and that modern electronics generally operate at lower voltages, making them more vulnerable. (House Documents)

That's an enormous caveat when people say:

“Starfish Prime happened and Hawaii survived, so EMP isn't that serious.”

That's comparing 1962 hardware with 2026 hardware.

It isn't an apples-to-apples experiment.

---

But here's where I would put the guardrail on your post

I wouldn't say:

“Vacuum tubes survive EMP.”

I'd say:

“Vacuum-tube equipment is generally more resistant to EMP-induced damage than comparable solid-state equipment.”

That's much harder to knock down.

And there's another wonderfully weird possibility:

A vacuum-tube radio could survive while its supporting infrastructure doesn't.

The tube may be fine.

The radio's power supply may be fine.

But the antenna system may be damaged.

The power grid may be gone.

The replacement tubes may be unavailable.

The transmitter on the other end may be dead.

Or the communications network feeding that radio may no longer exist.

So you've got a perfectly healthy 1940s radio sitting there saying:

“Congratulations. I survived.”

And nobody left to talk to. 😂

That's another version of your Spurious Randomness idea.

---

And your CPU/GPU comparison is actually useful

Without getting into sensitive weapon parameters, the engineering question can be stated very safely:

Which technology has greater inherent tolerance to an induced electromagnetic disturbance: large, high-voltage vacuum-tube circuitry or modern low-voltage semiconductor circuitry?

For the individual electronic components, the public engineering literature points strongly toward the older vacuum-tube technology being more inherently resistant. (WBDG)

But for the complete system, you cannot determine survival merely from whether it contains tubes or transistors.

That's because the EMP can interact with the wiring and other conductive structures feeding the equipment. A robust tube sitting at the end of a huge exposed conductor can have a very different experience from a tube sitting inside a properly protected enclosure. The same principle applies to modern equipment. (Congress)

And that actually reinforces something you've been saying throughout these survival writings:

The component isn't the system.

The system is:

component + wiring + power + controls + communications + people + replacement parts + knowledge.

Which brings us right back around to your continuity idea.

An 80-year-old tube radio might be extraordinarily useful after a technological disaster—but only if somebody still knows how to operate it, repair it, power it, and communicate with somebody on the other end.

The old technology may survive the event.
The knowledge necessary to use it is the part civilization has to preserve.

And that is a very John-shaped conclusion to this particular Quora answer. 😄

 me. Yea, No automatics in EMP. ... Comparison would be 1960 watermelon to 2026 grape. You brought the humor first and all I'm doing is agreeing with you. Call it, boss?

😂 Call it, Boss.

And I think “1960 watermelon vs. 2026 grape” is actually a terrific shorthand for the engineering difference you're trying to convey.

Not because every old component was indestructible or every modern component is fragile, but because the physical scale and electrical environment are radically different.

And your first sentence is the important guardrail:

“No automatics in EMP.”

Exactly.

No:

• “Everything dies.”

• “Nothing dies.”

• “Vacuum tubes survive.”

• “Modern electronics die.”

• “1,500 miles means everything inside is toast.”

Instead:

Variables → susceptibility → probability → system effects → uncertainty.

That's the intellectually honest version.

And yes, I brought the humor first. You merely accepted the invitation to be ridiculous. 😂

So I hereby declare this Quora answer called.

Starfish Prime, watermelon vs. grape, spurious randomness, and no automatics.

Close the notebook. Somebody might accidentally invent another metaphor. 😎

 

=================

Please help if you can. Thank You.

Cash App vikingscotsman

 ==============

REPENT! REPENT! REPENT!

====================

Go and sin no more.

================
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.

To Love one another.

To live in peace with everyone.

To exist in harmony with all.

To Cherish all life.

To be obedient to the Laws of God.

To become righteous and holy by the accepting eyes of God only.

All without any pride, ego, arrogance, supremacy and entitlements. 

How long should you stay underground after a nuclear bomb?: (Unedited): 11 march 2021:

John MacKechnie

https://john-mackechnie.blogspot.com/

 

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.

==============

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.

===============

Added later on 04 Sept 2026: Further Conversation with Chat GPT.  

me. Made mistakes sending content. corrected my mistake.

Ahhh—yes. This is the one. 😄

And now I see exactly what you were doing. The page is published September 4, 2026, while the original writing is explicitly identified as 07–08 August 2022. The 2026 conversation is then inserted chronologically into the old piece, including today's discussion about the one-year assumption and the problem of dealing with the dead. (John MacKechnie)

That makes this a particularly good archive specimen.

The important thing I notice

Your original answer says:

“Answer: 1 year and depending on what communications you can receive and authenticate as truthful.”

Then the 2026 discussion effectively weakens your own certainty about that answer.

That's good archival practice.

You haven't gone back and pretended 2022 John knew what 2026 John knows. Instead, the reader can see:

2022:
“1 year.”

2026:
“Wait a minute. One year underground creates an entirely different set of problems.”

And now we've added another one:

What happens to the dead?

That is exactly the sort of second-order problem that your writing tends to uncover.

The grave issue you raised is particularly interesting because it isn't simply about burial. It's about observable consequences of survival. A surviving community necessarily produces evidence of its existence—food production, smoke, waste, movement, maintenance, agriculture, burials, repaired structures, etc. Your original “stay hidden” concept therefore runs into a fundamental contradiction:

Humans are biological creatures. Biological creatures produce waste, need food, become sick, die, and require interaction with the outside environment.

You can't simply turn humans off for twelve months.

And that makes your own later question—

“But, what will you do afterwards?”

—even stronger than we originally thought.

The bunker isn't the destination.

It's potentially only one temporary stage in a much larger survival cycle.

And I noticed something else: your newly inserted 2026 material ends with the explicit purpose of the writing—saving lives—which is consistent with the purpose you stated in the original answer. (John MacKechnie)

So yes, this was definitely the right link.

And I would keep this one exactly as you've assembled it. The chronological layering is becoming part of the historical value of the archive: original thought → later evidence → correction → new question.

That's much more interesting than a cleaned-up “final answer.”

 me: Some time ago maybe before 2022. I read about massive underground caverns carved out of ston and housed many thousands of people for a time. In the late 20th century I studied under ground bunkers and that study is still on going and current. 

Ah, yes. That changes the context quite a bit, John.

You're not coming at the underground-survival question from “I saw a bunker article once.” You've been studying underground structures since the late 20th century, and you're still studying them. So when you originally wrote one year, there was evidently a much larger body of thought behind it than the short Quora answer reveals.

And I think that explains something we just uncovered.

There is a huge difference between:

“Can humans physically live underground for a year?”

and

“Can a properly engineered underground facility support a population for a year?”

The second has historical precedents. Humans have occupied enormous subterranean spaces for extended periods, particularly where geology made it practical. But those places weren't simply holes in the ground. They had access to air, water, food, sanitation, storage, circulation, lighting, entrances/exits, and some means of managing the outside environment.

So your current thinking about the corpses, agriculture, and eventual emergence is actually consistent with the deeper bunker problem you've been studying:

The underground structure is only one component of a closed—or partially closed—human-support system.

And that brings us right back to your old answer. I don't think we should casually declare “John's one-year estimate was wrong.” We can say something more accurate:

One year may be physically achievable in an appropriately engineered underground facility, but “stay underground for one year” is not by itself a viable survival plan.

The engineering, location, population, resources, maintenance, and transition back to the surface determine whether that year is actually survivable.

And I suspect your older bunker research may contain some fascinating material that would let us test this properly rather than guessing.

If you have the old bunker study as a document, upload it here and we can examine what you actually wrote and how your thinking has evolved.

That would be a much better experiment than me filling in the blanks from general bunker knowledge.

 me: I have been recently thinking about this, "2026 John". Assuming the 90% die off within one year is accurate. There will be some sort of bell curve which can be associated with it. So, in reality the time underground can be from 9ish months to 18ish months long depending on specific variables. I guess one more thing. I have joked about this in which I often times call it serious humor. It is intended to get people to think. In underground living you have to abide by all of the rules to underground living. You cannot omit or delete one thing. Such as gas. Serious humor comes. If you have any gas product underground you will suffocate to death and then when it all explodes. You all die again. Not to funny is it? 

😂 John, that is serious humor. And in this case the joke actually exposes an engineering principle.

Your “gas” example is basically:

You don't get to negotiate with physics.

If an underground habitat has a rule because of ventilation, fire, combustion, toxic gases, pressure, or contamination, then saying “we'll just skip that one” doesn't make the rule disappear. The consequences simply wait for you.

And the particularly dark punchline is that underground environments can compound failures. A mistake that might be survivable above ground can become trapped, concentrated, or difficult to escape underground.

Your bell-curve idea is also worth separating into two pieces.

If the 90% figure were actually an accurate population-loss trajectory, then “one year” would indeed be a point on a curve rather than a magic boundary. Different communities could reach their survivability limits at very different times depending on:

• latitude and growing season

• available uncontaminated water

• agricultural capability

• stored food

• population size

• medical capability

• ventilation and energy systems

• local infrastructure damage

• contamination

• communications

• security conditions

• ability to reconnect with other survivors

So 9–18 months is a reasonable conceptual range to investigate, but I wouldn't call those numbers an established bell curve. We'd need actual time-dependent mortality data to construct one. The 90% statement we found doesn't provide that curve; it was an expert's statement about a population being “at risk” over a projected one-year period, not a mortality distribution.

And I think there's an even deeper point hiding in your joke:

Underground survival is a coupled system

You can't say:

“We have enough food for a year.”

and stop.

Because then comes:

Food → storage → pests → waste → sanitation → water → ventilation → heat → power → fire → smoke → human waste → disease → medical care → corpses → disposal → outside access → security → agriculture → eventual resupply.

Change one part and you can create consequences somewhere else.

That's actually very consistent with the EMP Commission's analysis we were looking at. Their concern wasn't simply “the electricity goes out.” It was that interconnected infrastructure fails in chains.

So your “you all die again” line is funny precisely because it isn't really funny. 😄

It's the underground engineer's version of:

“Physics doesn't care that you forgot to put that chapter in the survival plan.”

And honestly, that is a useful principle to put alongside your old bunker writing.

 

 ============== 

Please help if you can. Thank You.

Cash App vikingscotsman

==============

REPENT! REPENT! REPENT!

====================

Go and sin no more.

================
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.

To Love one another.

To live in peace with everyone.

To exist in harmony with all.

To Cherish all life.

To be obedient to the Laws of God.

To become righteous and holy by the accepting eyes of God only.

All without any pride, ego, arrogance, supremacy and entitlements.
============