No Stupid Questions

A weird thing I've found somewhat calming is to prepare for the worst. If you think that might calm you down, look up how to make a go-bag, so that if you were to find yourself in a situation where you'd have to evacuate, be it running to a bomb shelter for a few hours or permanently leaving your area, you'd have a bag with basic survival supplies (flashlight, first aid supplies, non-perishable food, drinking water, swiss army knife if you can get one, clothing) ready to grab. I find the thought that if the worst case scenario happens, I wouldn't be completely unprepared. Of course, this doesn't work for everyone.

Then there's the general things people do to cope with these feelings: talk to someone, preferably a professional, find something to give you hope. That something can be a game, a craft, a friend, good news, etc.

I suggest playing around with this.
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
it's a nuclear weapons detonation simulator.

You need to understand that it's profitable for the media to overly dramatize what nukes can do. Modern media profits from fear. In reality the destruction is very localized. Think of an area you are knowledgeable. Does the media portray anything you do correctly? As long as you are not in major target city or military base you will be fine. I had a 20 minute commute to the base I worked on. Turns out my house was outside the blast radius if the base was nuked. It wouldn't even break the windows.

FYI: I use to work for the army, I was on the peripheral of their prep for nuclear war. When you actually dig into the effects, it just a big boom. Meanwhile you have trucks and rail cars full of toxic material and poisonous gas driving through your town every day and for the most part nothing ever happens.

Touch some grass, go to therapy and stop watching the news.

Buy potassium iodide tablets. If it happens and it's too close, you won't even know. If it isn't too close, take the pills and become a wasteland raider.

Otherwise just live your life because nothing you do really matters concerning nuclear war. That's like worrying about an asteroid impact.

Move to Washington D.C. or Cheyenne Wyoming, if you're inside the blast radius then you won't have to live to see the world end.

You don't, you have no direct control over world events.

You have a choice, you can either join an activist group and maybe get some comfort that you're doing something or take a break and focus on getting the most out of life.

Step 0:

Take 3, intentional, deep breaths.

Inhale for 5 seconds, hold for 5 seconds, slowly exhale for 5 seconds.

Do three of em.

Step 1:

Accept that one day, maybe soon, maybe in the fairly distant future:

You Will Die.

No avoiding it. None of us make it out of here alive.

... really try to actually come to grips with that.

There's no reward or punishment at the end, its not a judged competition... it just stops, everything goes away, and you go away.

Game over.

Its not fair or unfair. It just is.

Step 2:

Understand that while you are amongst the realm of the living, some things are within your control and others are not, and precisely which things land in which of those categories could change a good deal depending on who exactly you are, what you do or don't have access to, where exactly you are, etc.

Maybe it makes sense for you to try and build up a bit of an emergency food and water supply, a method of generating power, staying warm or cool, etc, in case shit hits the fan.

Maybe it makes more sense to establish some kind of bug out plan and procedure.

Maybe, it just makes the most sense to just accept that if you're in a very important / very dense area....well, one day, you might just evaporate.

Unfortunately, withot knowing more about you and your situation, I can't really say which three of those is the framework of a better approach, or if something entirely different would make more sense.

But for any of those... don't kick yourself for ... things you didn't do or prepare for in the past, don't expect to be able to suddenly just 'solve' this 'problem.'

Beyond being terrible for your mental health and just aggrevating the panic spiral, trying to do those things is ineffective, not productive at even attempting to 'solve' the 'problem'.

Break it down into bite sized chunks that are manageable, that each, on their own, put you in a generally better position than not doing them.

Don't dive headfirst with crazy expensive shit, start with the basics, as if you were preparing for a 3 day emergency from like a tornado or flood or local/regional grid failure or earthquake or hurricane.

Yeah, nukes and war don't play by all the same rules as those, but a lot of the basics are the same.

Basic food and water supply, basic medkit, flashlight, hand crankable emergency radio, thermal/moon blanket, solid set of clothes, two sets of undies and socks, decent backpack, decent multipurpose knife, probably some all purpose gloves, solid shoes, solid all purpose coat that you can either open up and air out, or stuff more layers underneath to stay warm... some means of starting a fire...

... these days probably a battery bank/solar charger for a phone... if you're a lady or gonna be with one or some: tampons...

... make sure you've got important ids and documents somewhere secure and ready to go, if you need to go...

... definitely doesn't hurt to have a couple hundred in cash, smallest bills as you can, just in case some electronic payment system goes down and you need to pay for something.

Pretty much most of that shit can fit into a normal backpack, and if you can put that together, you're doing way better than being totally and completely unprepared.

Am I overreacting

Yes.

Totally understandable in the world with the dopamine fueled news cycles running on fear.

But, nuclear war is very unlikely, that's why Putin is threatening it every other week, he knows he won't do it, and other leaders know that too. It's meant to terrorise people.

Help Ukraine to grind down russia so that eventually we can denuclearise them (remove the Kremlin and let the russians have another try at democracy would be nice too) is IMO the closest any regular person can do today.

In the 80s, we had nuclear attack drills in school. In the 50s, suburbanites with a very guilty conscience built fallout shelters in their backyards.

I agree that things are looking bleak, but im still hopeful for the future.

Nuclear war is a possibility, but very unlikely.

I think basic preparedness in these troubled times is just sensible. Not "prepper" stuff, but enough water and caned foods for 3 days or something.

Other than that just build local, off-line relationships.

♫ Duck and cover! ♬

I got you read https://goodgoodgood.co/ 2 articles on Hope:

1. New study finds hope key to a meaningful life

2. Hopeful people live better lives (14 year study)

Hope that tomorrow will be better than today and to do today with action solo and with others via collaboration, coordination, logistics, and short-term & long-term thinking to get to that tomorrow.

Read up on the many many benefits for Hope and same for benefits of gratitude, chosen family, friends, & community. All 5 have massively helped my mental health. Overtime as you keep building them up it will help you too. Try to do the same for others when you are able to in near future once you have yourself setup for all those

Read books, videos, etc about each of those things and with each one pause whenever you feel like it and do whatever it says to make it part of your life. Dont chase any of it embrace all of it as now. You are hopeful and grateful right now. You have others no matter what from those and up to internationally with real allies of the people

Vote! Then find something else to think about, since apart from voting for sane politicians, there is not much directly you can do to prevent nuclear war.

You don’t control geopolitics but you do control your own outlook. If you can’t accept a someday threat but continue living today, then you are losing the battle before you even know if you have to fight. Yes, losing the ability to get through the day is overreacting, even in light of the threat potential. I could give you 6 other things to worry yourself into paralysis about if I wanted to. But you control your own outlook.

If this is in response to the capture of Maduro specifically, then yes, you are overreacting. Trump seems to only be interested in being a bully picking on those weaker than him, which excludes nuclear powers.

Well either you move to somewhere you're guaranteed a Nuke won't affect you, or you build a bunker. If you can't do either of those then you accept the fate that you will have no control over anything

The good thing is that I'm too old to go to war and my kids to young for that. Instead we'll be part of the smithereens that you see in the background behind an obviously disturbed reporter. I'll probably be a smudge in pinkish red color.

Acceptance of mortality. Acceptance that it could happen at any time. And knowing that there are many, many potential causes that are entirely out of one's control.

I don't run around in fear about brain aneurysms.

Most countries have some kind of "disaster preparedness" suggestions, be they for earthquakes, floods, tornados, WMDs, etc. A lot of these suggestions overlap: have a stock of food, know where important documents are, think about where you'd shelter, etc.

There will probably not be an extinction-level event. But at some point in your life you may experience an emergency where you need a stock of food, to know where your documents are, to have a place to shelter, etc. So maybe it'd help you out to make plans for what you'd do in case of a general emergency/disaster.

Here are a couple useful documents that were made in the US:

• https://www.ready.gov/sites/default/files/2021-11/are-you-ready-guide.pdf
• https://www.fema.gov/pdf/areyouready/basic_preparedness.pdf

Duck and Cover

Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability%E2%80%93instability_paradox

More countries having nukes makes nuclear war less likely

We lived through the Cold War in the '80s. It seemed like a very real threat and eventually even though nothing really changed until the wall came down, everyone kind of got used to it and went on as best we could.

Like we have more recently with Covid. That's still there and hasn't gone away. It's still as serious a threat as it was at the beginning. You know how you'd mostly forgotten about it but not really? Same deal.

If you can't form or find a community, find distractions.

And if you find out where the first bomb's going to hit, let me know because I want to be under it.

https://web.archive.org/web/20250425230122/http://thestoicsage.com/dichotomy-of-control/

Look on the bright side

https://youtu.be/frAEmhqdLFs

Come visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, At least you'll learn what happens...

I think @DesertCreosote@piefed.blahaj.zone gave you a great breakdown, and I’ll add a little more.

I’ve worked with military technologies before. Unfortunately, I can’t give away many details for relatively obvious reasons. However, I can tell you with absolute confidence that in the case of a ICBM with a nuclear warhead being launched, there is a close to 0 chance it will ever land on Earth. In fact, ICBMs are almost entirely useless technology nowadays.

A nuclear warhead may also be delivered via plane, a la WWII. This too, is largely a nonissue. The odds of a plane getting deep enough into a country while carrying a weapon like that while under the level of surveillance that is currently going on are again, close to 0.

There’s a reason nobody has dropped any Nukes yet. It’s not because anyone is afraid of the consequences. It’s because it’s so close to impossible for it be an actual threat.

Play fallout

Something that has helped me recently:

"The only thing that is guaranteed is that nothing will stay the same."

Yes you are overreacting. What country do you live in? Is there a military facility next door to you?