Surely if they stocked up on years worth of uncontaminated food, they could survive in the sub for a while. (Assuming they managed themselves psychologically)
I mean even if they couldn't outlast the lingering nuclear contamination on the surface, it's still preferable to popping the pill straight away.
Or maybe not preferable in the long run, but most people would chose a few more cramped months over instant death.
Radiation would always be a factor. Submarines have to come up for air eventually.
sharealso, how many people can they fit in there?
I hear that humans need a minimum of about 2000 survivors to have a large enough gene pool to start afresh.
The 200 odd people they can stick in the sub just won't be genetically diverse enough to repopulate the planet. Think of the inbreeding.
and don't think all 200 survivors will make it afterwards. Tilling radioactive fields is hard work and raising crops during nuclear winter will be a bitch.
The stillborn babies will also be a bit of a downer and suicide will be another reducer of numbers
Not necessarily so.
Being a nuclear attack submarine veteran, I can tell you the the limiting factor of how long a submarine can stay submerged is the crew (barring mechanical breakdowns.) With the nuclear powerplant, we didn't have to surface (or snorkel) unless we had to ventilate due to a fire or toxic gas emergency. Nuke subs have equipment to: produce oxygen; elimate carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen; provide heating and air conditioning; make water (for engineering needs, cooking, drinking, bathing, and watering the battery cells); navigation; and so on.
When we went on long deployments (away from ANY port for up to three months), we spent a lot of time storing food in every nook and cranny. Sometimes, we'd place canned food on the deck and covered them with wood. So the already short headroom (and I'm 6'-4"!!) got shorter. We'd eat that stuff first to get our space back.
Don't think I'm slamming you,james. I just wanted you to know what it's like out there on a nuke sub.
I haven't seen this movie, but I heard about it recently and would like to check it out. It sounds like a very sobering viewing.
BTW, for a good look into what it's like being stationed on a submarine, check out "Das Boot." Sure it takes place on diesel-electric German U-boat, but the way the crew was portrayed was very realistic. Oh, although modern subs are bigger, they are still cramped just not THAT cramped (and we didn't have to run forward for emergency dives!!!) :)
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Don't be so glum
Even if every single nuke on the planet is lit, some people will survive, even if it's just a small percentage
Humans are a little like cockroaches, not so easily to kill
The occupants will have a better chance of survivors than most because they will be less exposed to the initial fallout than landlubbers.
I'm sure they could have survived on the sub for an interim. I suppose it comes down to how long the radiation up-top would have remained at a dangerous level. And that, in turn, would have depended upon the kind of bombs being used, to say nothing of any other weapons of mass distruction - such as anthrax - which (let's face it) would almost certainly be used in all-out war.
Most of the areas contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster are now perfectly safe, and indeed the flora has regrown wonderfully.
Given that they had several months to prepare, I would have thought it worth the chance to set up a subterranean shelter. If we're only talking about a few years in hiding, it must have been an option, and certainly preferable to suicide. As total extinction was the singular alternaive, a national effort must have been possible within that time frame. There's nothing like the prospect of death for focussing the mind!
Actually, what neither of the `On The Beach' movies addressed was the likelihood that such facilities already exist, with their cryogenic zoos and gardens in the form of eggs and seeds ready to repopulate the sanitised world. One suspects that only politicians, military leaders and scientists (ie: those who started the war in the first place) would qualify for inclusion. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't.
Don't think I'd want to be either.
The real question is: "Would they want to survive in the sub?"
Live their lives and possibly raise their children in such environment.
What intrigued me is why haven't they build medium to large scale underground facilities. It would be more practical than hiding in a sub and as I understood from the movie, they had months to prepare.
"What intrigued me is why haven't they build medium to large scale underground facilities. It would be more practical than hiding in a sub and as I understood from the movie, they had months to prepare."
THANK YOU!!!
I read the book as a teenager and while I did find it poignant moving, I was amazed and disgusted that no one in Canberra(Australia's capital)came up with the idea of building an underground and/or underwater colony. As a matter of fact, it would have been feasible seeing as how Australia as well as New Zealand, South America and South Africa were industrial societies and could have pulled this off. It might not have saved everyone but at least somebody could have survived the five year decay process as outlined in the book.
While I admit that Nevil Shute's idea was a an anti nuclear war novel(No sin in that)I'm surprised a lot of Australians weren't disgusted by their portray in the book.
Just stocking up for a six-month long endurance run in something the size of a 688-class sub is pushing it in terms of running out of room in the corridors and living spaces (read Tom Clancy's factual book "Submarine" for more detail in stuff like that).
And even a nuclear-powered sub must burn diesel at times while the nuclear reactor comes down for maintenance and at other times - there is considerable diesel tankage on US military nuclear submarines because of that, and it has to be kept topped off.
The psychological aspect is probably the best handled of the potential problems because of the fact that the US armed services have been able to pick and choose from the most suitable crew candidates in a nation of three hundred million people for so long that the flakes are sent home when it first appears that they ARE flakes.
It's put a real hole in the market for all those service comedies where you have whole units made of misfits ("McHale's Navy," "Sergeant Bilko," etc.,) to have a real Armed Forces in which all of those guys would be back on the street after 90 days in indoc barracks showed they just couldn't be made into servicemen.
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