So over on io9, a discussion of Crystal Skulls* became a long comment thread about the pros and cons of the Indiana Jones movies**, and as of right now, this is the last post:
"Youtube old nuclear testing PSAs from the 50s. Yes, those weapons were destructive on a scale beyond conventional weapons but they were not unsurvivable. Those PSAs give some pretty detailed instructions on what to do to survive and what kinds of shelter would be adequate, and some of the suggestions are no less improvised than Indy's fridge dive. Hell, they even recommended, if nothing else was available, to lie flat in a ditch and let the blast wave pass over you. It wasn't guaranteed, and a hardened structure was much better, but it gave you a chance.
In the Japanese bombings, there were many survivors, some with no shelter at all. The radiation aftereffects were often worse than the initial blast, fallout's a bitch. Evacuation from the radiation zone and scrubbing like Indy got would have saved a lot of lives.
There was a reason they once preached "duck and cover" and sold basement bomb shelters. Against 50s era atomic weapons, they would work. Once modern megaton-range thermonuclear warheads were invented, that stopped. Because nothing would save you. Not even if your name was Indiana Jones. "
Because I live in a world where I might, it's possible, get nuked***, I'm sort of always collecting bits of info about what could happen in that event. I saw some of those videos once, and the drills they were offering were almost identical to the ones we were given in Okinawa for earthquakes and in Florida for tornadoes. I suppose that all big disasters have similar personnel issues--keeping everyone calm (and knowing what to do helps that), knowing where to look for survivors, etc--but I always have to wonder: how much of what they tell us to do is just so they can identify the bodies? How much is just giving us something to do so we're comforted, like on TV when they tell husbands to go boil water while their wives are delivering babies?
Maybe I'm just jaded or cynical****, but it seems like in even a small blast, or an earthquake, or whatever else, that if the thing is bad enough that you have to really worry about these things, it's probably bad enough to kill you anyway, even if you do duck and cover. This isn't to say I'm not going to duck and cover given the chance, but I have this skittery feeling that it's all just to keep me calm and put me somewhere where they can know who the red smear belongs to.
Cheerful, right?
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* They say it's better than Temple of Doom; commentary is pretty much evenly divided. I think the skulls themselves are neat, mostly hoaxes, and not related to the Mayan calendar that isn't telling us the world is ending anyway, but make great story-starters because they're weird. Also, I agree that the fridge thing was WAY overblown. Literally.
** I like 1 and 3. I'm scared to see what they'll do to 5.
*** And because I'm a writer. And because I reached social consciousness just at the end of the Eastern Bloc and all that proliferation and all that losing of nukes. And because I've seen Terminator 2's opening dream sequence too many times and periodically I'll have dreams where everything is fine, and then there's a flash and the sky goes the wrong color, then a mushroom cloud, then I die, and I don't like that.
**** I probably am jaded and cynical to some extent. I'm also a writer, as I said, and it sort of makes you think through all the options and possibilities, even when they squick you out.
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