" Mein Fuhrer!... I can _VALK_!"

wrote:
I may have seen a underground fallout shelter in Moscow as well... a
large grass-covered field surrounded by a fence, with multiple
ventilators projecting from the field and a raised bump at one edge with
a heavy door in it. I never got inside of this, so don't know the
details of its interior, or even if it definitely was a fallout shelter.

Since you've seen them, perhaps you can help with estimates of the
shelter area that might exist underground. I have come up with at
least 120 km of tunnel for the Moscow Subway (total system length is
292 km, but not all of this is underground tunnel). If it is a 4 track
tunnel similar to the NY Subway

It's been a long time, but I _think_ it is only two tracks.

then the tunnel width would be ~16 meters.

It's a lot smaller in diameter than that
Around ten meters tops, and probably not even that.
There must be a lot of info on it out on the web.
The Metro stations are really spectacular and very large in cubic metric
area though. The system seems nicely sized for passenger demand also, as
every time I rode it the cars were around 1/2 to 2/3rds full. Maybe they
fill up more in summer (I was their for Christmas/New Years).
The Leningrad system was virtually identical to the Moscow one as far as
design goes, as both were built at around the same time (1930's), by
Stalin's orders and using a huge work crew of young Komsomol members,
many of whom died from cave-ins and freezing in winter*.

16*120,000= 2,000,000 m^2. There are 10.5 million Moscovites

Long time back, Robert A. Heinlein visited Moscow and said he thought
the city's population was way overstated by the Soviets, based on the
amount of road, river, and rail access to the city versus what would be
needed to supply that many people with food.
Although the city is big in area, and the per-apartment population
averages around 5-7 as far as I could see (mom, dad, two kids, and at
least one grandparent) once you get outside of the center of the city,
it sure doesn't seem very crowded as far as people walking on the street
goes.
It reminded me of Minneapolis more than say, New York or Chicago.

so 5 people per square meter if evenly distributed, or half that if
there is in fact 240 km of tunnel (which I doubt). Even at 2.6 people
per square meter that is pretty tightly packed throughout the entire
system.

The Metro is such a cheap and officiant way of getting around (you
entered it via a 5 kopeck coin - oversized just for that use; it was
bigger than a US quarter, and the official exchange rate would have made
it worth around 8 cents - and could keep riding around in the Metro
system for as long as you wanted till you finally exited a station) that
it pretty much eliminated all other forms of transport other than quite
a few buses and a very few cars.


It would further more be necessary to fill up the entire system in the
20 minute flight time from the missile launch. The average distance
between stations is 1.6 km, so one would be looking at a ~2 km walk to
get to a station and then file deep into the tunnel.


Depends on where you were; although the distance between the stations
seems great when averaged in that way, the great growth of the city
after the Metro was built meant that new construction of housing tended
to cluster around the entrances to the Metro. I spent a whole afternoon
zipping around Leningrad via Metro and foot (including going 180 degrees
opposite of the direction I intended to on the way back to our hotel
because I can't read Cyrillic; this took me up near the naval yards, and
when I realized where I was I got out of there ASAP).

And each station
would have to get an average of 60,000 people through the doors
(assuming all 177 stations are suitable tunnel entrances).

The escalators can transport a very large number of people into and out
of the subterranean stations, and you are allowed to walk as you ascend
and descend them if you want to get up or down faster.
The problem would be the complete panic that would ensue if you had a
actual "Shelter On Warning" situation, as you state.


How many people could actually get to shelter before the nuclear flash
photography starts?

Crowds thronging the streets, streaming to the tunnels when the
warheads arrive would vanish down to the last man and woman.

One thing is for sure...if the Soviets ever ordered everyone to head for
the Metro ASAP in peacetime, it would mean that they thought WW III was
going to start inside of a few hours, either by their actions or someone
else's.


Then afterward the city, converted into kindling, would burn in the
largest mass fire the world has ever seen.

Actually, I don't how much would burn... Moscow is the biggest
collection of rock, metal, and cast concrete you ever laid eyes on**.
Anything made of wood after around 1945 is rare to see, and as far as
the apartment furnishings go, a lot of what we would make out of plastic
or wood, they made out of stamped or welded metal.
The presumed fallout shelter I saw stuck out like a sore thumb as it was
an area around a block in size that had _nothing built on it_, and in
Moscow, building space is always at a premium.
"Do we want to put a tree here, or add another apartment?"
"**** the tree. The tree is a social parasite on the city's water supply
and a invitation to hooliganism among our youth. Besides, there are
already over 100 trees in Moscow."

Even being sheltered in a tunnel might not save them (people perished
en masse in bomb shelters
in Hamburg and Dresden from carbon monoxide poisoning, before their
corpses cooked).


I got the feeling that the whole civil defense system was more a
Potemkin Village than a a workable system in time of nuclear war, just
put there to show the government actually had some concern for the populace.
Still... beats digging a hole in the yard and throwing a door over it,
as Reagan's advisers suggested.
I saw a fallout map from the 1980's of what was expected to happen up
here in North Dakota in WW III once.
You would be hiding under that dirt-covered door for around 250-300 days.
Hope you brought a few MREs.

*At the same time, the Hitler Youth were falling off mountains and
freezing to death building the Autobahn in Germany. Dictators...go figer.

** I will leave it to your imagination as to what 100 identical cast
concrete apartment buildings in a big clump look like...but that's not
the bad part...the bad part is when they tried to do something artistic.
Then you could see monumental concrete and
bronze-electroplated-cast-zinc examples of kitsch that are true horrors.
There was a thing over at the Kosmos Pavilion that still terrorizes
me...there was an evil there that did not sleep...a vast multi-ton Seal
Of The Soviet Union held in mid-air by giant woven steel cables, like a
hideous fly caught in Stalin's steel web.
A good example of Soviet monumental art was the case of the young drunk
who recently tried to climb up a metal statue of Lenin and hang from its
arm. Little did he know that the "metal" statue was made of plaster, and
the arm broke...dropping him and the arm he was hanging from to the
ground, crushing him:
http://publicartreview.com/man-kille...ue/2009/08/14/
Amazingly, that was the second death that occurred in exactly that way
in the last couple of years.
But the threat of the Lenin statues is being removed via high
explosives: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29990918
This can be officially called: "Tearing Communism A New Asshole." :-D

Pat

David Lesher wrote:

When the Navy made Great Lakes port calls as they did every few years,
all kinds of treaty work was needed first. When the USS Cod was brought
to Cleveland; the batteries were removed, the space filled with concrete,
and various other "demil" changes were made.

I know we made a lot of subs during WW II, but frankly, trying to name
them all after fish was a dumb move, because then you end up with things
like USS Cod.
I'll bet that made the Japanese shake in terror...you have battleships
named after the greatest Zen swordsman of all time and volcanoes, and
your opponent has a sub named after the fillet on the budget seafood
platter.
Still, it beats the British "Flower" class corvettes.
Can you imagine having to explain to your children your service aboard
the HMS Buttercup? :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_class_corvette
The Japanese sci-fi anime series "The Irresponsible Captain Tyler" had a
lot of fun with this...Japanese WWII destroyers were traditionally named
after violent winds...his space destroyer's name translates as "Gentle
Breeze". :-D

Pat

David Lesher wrote:

Nowadaze, any sub would soon fall victim to the zebra mussels..

Not if they electrify the hull to repel the mussels.
This works on big mollusks; it should work on small mollusks as well.
If that fails, it's time to surface at night during a storm and fight
them muscle-to-mussel with ball-peen hammers.

Nemo

Pat Flannery wrote:
wrote:
I may have seen a underground fallout shelter in Moscow as well... a
large grass-covered field surrounded by a fence, with multiple
ventilators projecting from the field and a raised bump at one edge with
a heavy door in it. I never got inside of this, so don't know the
details of its interior, or even if it definitely was a fallout shelter.

Since you've seen them, perhaps you can help with estimates of the
shelter area that might exist underground. I have come up with at
least 120 km of tunnel for the Moscow Subway (total system length is
292 km, but not all of this is underground tunnel). If it is a 4 track
tunnel similar to the NY Subway

It's been a long time, but I _think_ it is only two tracks.

then the tunnel width would be ~16 meters.

It's a lot smaller in diameter than that
Around ten meters tops, and probably not even that.
There must be a lot of info on it out on the web.
The Metro stations are really spectacular and very large in cubic metric
area though. The system seems nicely sized for passenger demand also, as
every time I rode it the cars were around 1/2 to 2/3rds full. Maybe they
fill up more in summer (I was their for Christmas/New Years).
The Leningrad system was virtually identical to the Moscow one as far as
design goes, as both were built at around the same time (1930's), by
Stalin's orders and using a huge work crew of young Komsomol members,
many of whom died from cave-ins and freezing in winter*.

16*120,000= 2,000,000 m^2. There are 10.5 million Moscovites

Long time back, Robert A. Heinlein visited Moscow and said he thought
the city's population was way overstated by the Soviets, based on the
amount of road, river, and rail access to the city versus what would be
needed to supply that many people with food.
Although the city is big in area, and the per-apartment population
averages around 5-7 as far as I could see (mom, dad, two kids, and at
least one grandparent) once you get outside of the center of the city,
it sure doesn't seem very crowded as far as people walking on the street
goes.
It reminded me of Minneapolis more than say, New York or Chicago.

so 5 people per square meter if evenly distributed, or half that if
there is in fact 240 km of tunnel (which I doubt). Even at 2.6 people
per square meter that is pretty tightly packed throughout the entire
system.

My analysis of the damage a boomer of two could do to Russia was a quick
and dirty way to get a first order assessment of the magnitude, and
generally gives the cities a favorable break by assuming a homogeneous
distribution across the official city area. Any more "clumpy"
distribution of urbanization increases the density to be targeted, and
in the subway shelter situation crams more people into less shelter.

The Metro is such a cheap and officiant way of getting around (you
entered it via a 5 kopeck coin - oversized just for that use; it was
bigger than a US quarter, and the official exchange rate would have made
it worth around 8 cents - and could keep riding around in the Metro
system for as long as you wanted till you finally exited a station) that
it pretty much eliminated all other forms of transport other than quite
a few buses and a very few cars.


It would further more be necessary to fill up the entire system in the
20 minute flight time from the missile launch. The average distance
between stations is 1.6 km, so one would be looking at a ~2 km walk to
get to a station and then file deep into the tunnel.


Depends on where you were; although the distance between the stations
seems great when averaged in that way, the great growth of the city
after the Metro was built meant that new construction of housing tended
to cluster around the entrances to the Metro. I spent a whole afternoon
zipping around Leningrad via Metro and foot (including going 180 degrees
opposite of the direction I intended to on the way back to our hotel
because I can't read Cyrillic; this took me up near the naval yards, and
when I realized where I was I got out of there ASAP).

And each station
would have to get an average of 60,000 people through the doors
(assuming all 177 stations are suitable tunnel entrances).

The escalators can transport a very large number of people into and out
of the subterranean stations, and you are allowed to walk as you ascend
and descend them if you want to get up or down faster.
The problem would be the complete panic that would ensue if you had a
actual "Shelter On Warning" situation, as you state.

If the tubes are only ~half the width of what I proposed and the
population substantially more concentrated, then it would seem
impossible to simply fit them all into the tunnels. The higher density
areas have shorter walks on average, but then the problems with packing
them in through the entrance stations become even more severe. As
capacious as the entrances and stations might be, getting a couple of
hundred thousand people inside within minutes seems unlikely.

I just looked up some stadium evacuation studies. One using University
of Pennsylvania‘s Franklin Field found that it took 16 minutes to
evacuate 19,000 people from the 52,600 person stadium. Another had it at
more than an hour to empty a stadium under disorderly conditions.
Getting centrally located people out of a single structure though the
multiple vomitoria is much easier than packing distributed people in
through one entrance. So I suspect getting a significant fraction of
people into the subways under a shelter-on-launch-warning scenario is
simply impossible. The effort would probably increase the exposure of
the population by having them queued up outside without any protection.

How many people could actually get to shelter before the nuclear flash
photography starts?

Crowds thronging the streets, streaming to the tunnels when the
warheads arrive would vanish down to the last man and woman.

One thing is for sure...if the Soviets ever ordered everyone to head for
the Metro ASAP in peacetime, it would mean that they thought WW III was
going to start inside of a few hours, either by their actions or someone
else's.

Well, the scenario under consideration started with the Soviets/Russians
launching a disarming strike on the U.S. so WW III is already in
progress. The necessity of having to use shelter-on-warning is due to
the fact that the time of retaliation is at the discretion of the
submarine and can be launched many days after the initial attack.

Then afterward the city, converted into kindling, would burn in the
largest mass fire the world has ever seen.

Actually, I don't how much would burn... Moscow is the biggest
collection of rock, metal, and cast concrete you ever laid eyes on**.
Anything made of wood after around 1945 is rare to see, and as far as
the apartment furnishings go, a lot of what we would make out of plastic
or wood, they made out of stamped or welded metal.

Cities in general are more combustible than you would probably think -
the interior of buildings are quite combustible (no wood furniture or
fabrics?, paper?), fuel is stored in many locations, and wood framing is
more widely used than is evident. The firestorm area in Hamburg was
built of brick.

The presumed fallout shelter I saw stuck out like a sore thumb as it was
an area around a block in size that had _nothing built on it_, and in
Moscow, building space is always at a premium.
"Do we want to put a tree here, or add another apartment?"
"**** the tree. The tree is a social parasite on the city's water supply
and a invitation to hooliganism among our youth. Besides, there are
already over 100 trees in Moscow."

Even being sheltered in a tunnel might not save them (people perished
en masse in bomb shelters
in Hamburg and Dresden from carbon monoxide poisoning, before their
corpses cooked).


I got the feeling that the whole civil defense system was more a
Potemkin Village than a a workable system in time of nuclear war, just
put there to show the government actually had some concern for the
populace.

Right. I got that from Russian emigres as well, who felt it was a joke.

Still... beats digging a hole in the yard and throwing a door over it,
as Reagan's advisers suggested.

There was an extreme disconnect between what would really be necessary
to shelter a population during a nuclear war, and claims of "cheap and
easy" from CD proponents. There was some basis of some of the claims,
e.g. being anywhere below ground is better than anywhere above ground,
simple expedient shielding can protect effectively against thermal and
ionizing radiation, etc., but blast protection is really hard and
costly, the difficulty of actually implementing expedients in real
crisis situations for the whole population is formidable, and the whole
scheme suffers from the weakest link problem: one can forestall
disaster, but in the end disaster catches up anyway since all of the
catastrophic problems of nuclear war must be dealt with, not just some
of them.

In sci.space.history Pat Flannery wrote:
I know we made a lot of subs during WW II, but frankly, trying to
name them all after fish was a dumb move, because then you end up
with things like USS Cod.

I'll bet that made the Japanese shake in terror...you have
battleships named after the greatest Zen swordsman of all time and
volcanoes, and your opponent has a sub named after the fillet on the
budget seafood platter.

Now you've done it - The Incredible Mr. Limpet is going to come and
beat the tar out of you

rick jones

frighteningly enough, there are indications on the web of a remake of
the same starring Johnny Depp...

--
No need to believe in either side, or any side. There is no cause.
There's only yourself. The belief is in your own precision. - Joubert
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway...
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...

Carey wrote:

Cities in general are more combustible than you would probably think -
the interior of buildings are quite combustible (no wood furniture or
fabrics?, paper?),

Paper and rugs.

fuel is stored in many locations, and wood framing is
more widely used than is evident. The firestorm area in Hamburg was
built of brick.

I don't know about the wood framing or if the apartments are built of
concrete and metal.
The paucity of wood is odd, as Russia certainly doesn't lack wood by any
means with the huge coniferous forests of Siberia sitting out there.



I got the feeling that the whole civil defense system was more a
Potemkin Village than a a workable system in time of nuclear war, just
put there to show the government actually had some concern for the
populace.

Right. I got that from Russian emigres as well, who felt it was a joke.

Still... beats digging a hole in the yard and throwing a door over it,
as Reagan's advisers suggested.

There was an extreme disconnect between what would really be necessary
to shelter a population during a nuclear war, and claims of "cheap and
easy" from CD proponents. There was some basis of some of the claims,
e.g. being anywhere below ground is better than anywhere above ground,
simple expedient shielding can protect effectively against thermal and
ionizing radiation, etc., but blast protection is really hard and
costly, the difficulty of actually implementing expedients in real
crisis situations for the whole population is formidable, and the whole
scheme suffers from the weakest link problem: one can forestall
disaster, but in the end disaster catches up anyway since all of the
catastrophic problems of nuclear war must be dealt with, not just some
of them.

My uncle used to be civil defense chief for our town, and had a full
fallout shelter in his house basement; there were a few other ones
located in the town as well, but nowhere near enough to shelter the
population of 15,000, particularly due to the fact that our latitude of
around 45 degrees north meant that we were sitting under a worldwide
fallout belt because of all the military targets that are in that latitude.
One oddity is the new court house/jail that was built here in the 1980s.
They had a tour of it when it opened, and I noticed that the basement
was way overbuilt for the weight of the building, and all the plumbing
in it had accordion joints on it.
The reason is that the whole basement is a fallout/blast shelter, and it
was the intention to move the whole North Dakota government into it in
time of nuclear war, as it had something like 90 days worth of food and
water stored in it, as well as diesel generators to provide power for it.
Why you would go to all that trouble and then publicly announce that use
for it is beyond me, as all they accomplished was making it, and our
town, another potential target for nuclear attack.

Pat

Rick Jones wrote:
Now you've done it - The Incredible Mr. Limpet is going to come and
beat the tar out of you

rick jones

frighteningly enough, there are indications on the web of a remake of
the same starring Johnny Depp...


Yesterday's mediocrity is today's inspired new idea.
I do have to admit that they turned Battlestar Galactica into something
pretty good, but Limpet is asking a lot.
Still, you wouldn't think you could make a mermaid movie half as good as
"Splash" either.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:


Apparently they never did get the one on the Snark to work correctly,
and the whole guidance system was a maintenance nightma
http://www.geocities.com/usaf463/SNARK.html

Pat, I'll have more on the B-58 later - Right now, I hope that you're aware
that Geocities will be Gone for Good on Oct 26, 2009.
So - reference what you can, when you can.
--
Pete Stickney
The better the Four Wheel Drive, the further out you get stuck.

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
dakotatelephone...
Nifty little find by Scott Lowther:
http://www.wired.com/politics/securi...?currentPage=1

Pat

We'll meet again, don't know when, don't know where....