Civil defense

How to prepare and survive a nuclear bombing

U.S. Intelligence believes that North Korea possesses as many as five dozen nuclear weapons, according to media reports. Furthermore, in November of 2017, the North tested a new kind of ballistic missile called a Hwasong-15 capable of hitting any city in the U.S.

Not only do nuclear bombs cause structural devastation where they explode, but those who survive are still likely to be contaminated by extreme and even lethal doses of radiation.

Dr. David Brenner, the director of Columbia University’s Center for Radiological Research, told Fox News that, depending on the size of the bomb, everyone within a half mile from the epicenter of the blast would die immediately.

The other major issue is the radiation fallout, he said — the residual radioactive material that gets released into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast. It looks like a massive mushroom cloud and, once the radiation begins to fall, the ground becomes full of dangerous radioactive material.

“The major source of radiation exposure is the radioactive material on the ground,” Brenner said.