This is where you want to be if nuclear war breaks out

As the threat of nuclear war lingers in the air, experts have revealed the safest place you can be during ‘the apocalyse’.

Is anywhere safe anymore?

Is the Lucky Country lucky enough?

The face of Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg) is building a secret lair on a remote Hawaiian Island.

Mr X (Elon Musk) is assembling his harem and genetic legacy in an exclusive Texas commune.

And everybody’s PayPal (Peter Thiel) bought up a chunk of New Zealand with plans to build an underground mansion.

They’re the disrupters that rebooted history. And their brave new world is once again growing dark under a nuclear shadow.

An attempt by the United States to obliterate Iran’s plans to build nuclear warheads on behalf of Israel (which itself evaded international fallout over its own illicit arsenal) has reset the clock.

The End of history is over.

Once again, every corner of the globe is contemplating The End.

Once again, the Lucky Country and that other place where every cloud has a silver lining suddenly look even more appealing.

Australia and New Zealand are largely irrelevant in the global scheme of things. Though Pine Gap may be joined on a list of high-priority targets by Adelaide and Fremantle as the AUKUS nuclear submarine project gains steam.

Pine Gap is a joint Australian-United States satellite communications and signals intelligence surveillance base. Picture: Wikimedia

But will living in the middle of nowhere make any difference?

“We’ve examined the effects of single nuclear explosions,” Middlebury College nuclear analysts Professor Richard Wolfson and Dr Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress write in a new assessment. “But a nuclear war would involve hundreds to thousands of explosions, creating a situation for which we simply have no relevant experience.”

Fears of the long reach of radiation emerged in the 1950s. Subsequent attempts to understand it led to explosive growth in climate science. Now, with the fallout of global warming already blasting the world’s cities and agricultural centres, the threat of bombs is back.

Most nuclear fallout lingers for only a few days. But some will stay around for many millennia.

Most nuclear fallout lingers for only a few days. But some will stay around for many millennia.

Both, the Middlebury College analysts argue, mean nowhere is truly safe.

So, do Zuck, Musk and Thiel know something we don’t?

“At first blush, these tycoons might seem to be ‘prepping’ for a familiar 20th-century style apocalypse, as depicted in countless disaster movies,” argue University of Queensland academics Katherine Guinness, Grant Bollmer and Tom Goig.

“But they’re not.”

Is anywhere safe anymore? Picture: Brandon Bell/Getty Images/AFP

Fallout fantasies

The apocalypse is big business. From survivalists to couch potatoes, the idea of escapees emerging to a pre-industrial world swept clean of all ideological opponents reigns supreme. But there are always plenty of mutants to shoot among the dusty, tumbleweed-strewn ruins.

The reality, however, won’t be so romantic.

Forget the flash. Forget the fireball. Forget the blast.

Map illustrating the global atmospheric movement of radioactive particles following the “Mike” test of November 1, 1952, on Elugelab Island in the Enewatak Atoll of the Pacific Marshall Islands. Picture: French National Centre for Nuclear Research/Sebastian V. Grevsmühl

For now, just focus on the fallout. What happens is anyone’s guess.

“Extreme and cooperative efforts would be needed for long-term survival, but would the shocked and weakened survivors be up to those efforts?” the Middlebury academics ask.

“How would individuals react to watching their loved ones die of radiation sickness or untreated injuries?

“Would an “everyone for themselves” attitude prevail, preventing the co-operation necessary to rebuild society?

“How would residents of undamaged rural areas react to the streams of urban refugees flooding their communities?

“What governmental structures could function in the post-war climate?

“How could people know what was happening throughout the country? Would international organisations be able to cope?”

Climate models suggest Australia and New Zealand would be among those few areas least affected.

Society may survive for a while. At least until Canberra’s two-week fuel reserves run out.

Then it’s back to horses, ploughs and sealskin coveralls.

Estimated fallout fatalities for the United States in the year after a “limited” nuclear exchange. Picture: Scientific American / Princeton University/Sébastien Philippe

Or what you’ve managed to stash away in a bunker.

“What is emerging among billionaires is a belief that survival depends not (only) on hiding out in a reinforced concrete hole in the ground, but (also) on developing, and controlling, an ecosystem of one’s own,” the University of Queensland academics argue.

Oprah Winfrey is getting in on the act. She’s bought a 150-acre estate on the island of Maui.

Oracle supremo Larry Ellison’s personal 2000-acre ranch takes up most of the island of Lanai.

And billionaire Frank VanderSloot has a similar-sized property next door to Zuckerberg on Kauai.

Why Hawaii?

Its islands are small. And a long way from anywhere.

In an all-out nuclear war, remoteness equals survival. Even if the Pearl Harbor naval base is a prime target.

Musk’s Texas commune would be a start. But it’s in easy reach of refugees.

And Thiel has already fallen foul of one easily anticipated problem in New Zealand:

Hostile locals.

Musk’s Texas commune would be a start. Picture: John Moore/Getty Images

Revolting peasants

“Zuckerberg, Winfrey, Ellison and others are actually embarking on far more ambitious projects,” the University of Queensland academics assess.

“They are seeking to create entirely self-sustaining ecosystems, in which land, agriculture, the built environment and labour are all controlled and managed by a single person, who has more in common with a medieval-era feudal lord than a 21st-century capitalist.”

But feudal lords have to fight to keep what they have. Even before the apocalypse.

Thiel’s attempt to lord it over New Zealand’s South Island from a bunker on his 73,700 sqm estate fell foul of a mere district council. The local yokels didn’t like the idea of his sort moving in next door.

Zuckerberg’s Kauai lair may be more manageable. He’s bought up 5.5 million square meters of the island for a $A400 million retreat. This includes an “underground storage” bunker with hydroponic agriculture and water purification systems. It’s accessible via tunnels from several mansions and 11 “tree houses”.

Fallout intensity patterns following four days of winds following a “limited” nuclear strike on US missile silos. Picture: Scientific American / Princeton University/Sébastien Philippe

And it’s all protected by a two-meter high wall, quad-bike mounted security guards and served by hundreds of local labourers. “But precisely how many, and what they actually do, is concealed by a binding nondisclosure agreement,” the UQ academics report.

Zuckerberg’s survival is still questionable.

Will the security staff and servants be fed? Will they get precious medical treatment? Will money still buy their love?

What’s certain is their manual labour would be invaluable.

Evidence suggests the Toba supervolcano erupted 74,000 years ago. Only a few thousand humans appear to have clung on in South Africa to survive the subsequent fallout winter.

And they didn’t have to reckon with radiation.

“An all-out nuclear war between the United States and Russia, even with today’s reduced arsenals, could put over 150 million tons of smoke and soot into the upper atmosphere,” the Middlebury College researchers write.

“The result would be a drop in global temperature of some 8C (more than the difference between today’s temperature and the depths of the last ice age), and even after a decade, the temperature would have recovered only 4C.”

“In the world’s “breadbasket” agricultural regions, the temperature could remain below freezing for a year or more, and precipitation would drop by 90 per cent. The effect on the world’s food supply would be devastating.”

Destructive radii of 100-kiloton, 1-megaton, and 10-megaton weapons superimposed on a map of the New York City area. Picture: US Office of Technology Assessment, The Effects of Nuclear War

Envying the dead

A thermonuclear explosion produces a wide variety of nuclear materials. All have different rates of decay.

“The dominant lethal effects last from days to weeks, and contemporary civil defence recommendations are for survivors to stay inside for at least 48 hours while the radiation decreases,” the Middlebury academics write.

Everything depends on the type of warhead, its size – and where it explodes.

An atmospheric explosion maximises the reach of its shockwave: “This reduces local fallout but enhances global fallout.”

A ground-level explosion blasts a crater into the ground. The mushroom cloud “drops back to the ground in a relatively short time”.

An immediately dangerous fallout zone will easily reach beyond 30 kilometres of the blast.

“The exact distribution of fallout depends crucially on wind speed and direction,” the academics explain. “However, it’s important to recognise that the lethality of fallout quickly decreases as short-lived isotopes decay.”

But even a “limited” nuclear exchange will have global effects. Radioactive clouds rise high into the atmosphere. Particles will rain down on the ground over the following months and years.

Does Mark Zuckerberg know something we don’t? Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

The more explosions, the more radioactive dust.

The more radioactive dust, the greater the reach – and intensity – of fallout.

Princeton University global security researcher Sébastien Philippe has simulated the effects of the first 48 hours after a “limited” nuclear strike on the US. It would kill between 340,000 and 4.6 million (depending on prevailing winds).

“Acute radiation exposure alone would cause several million fatalities across the US – if people get advance warning and can shelter in place for at least four days,” he writes in the Scientific American. “Without appropriate shelter, that number could be twice as high.”

Then comes the new world order.

“Intense fallout from ground-burst explosions on missile silos in the Midwest would extend all the way to the Atlantic coast,” the Middlebury academics add.

“Fallout would also contaminate a significant fraction of US cropland for up to a year and would kill livestock.”

Global airstreams won’t be the only source of radioactive fallout.

The dust and pollutants would strip the Earth of its protective ozone layer, allowing harmful solar rays to strike humans, plants and animals from sunup to sundown for centuries to come.

And that’s the “limited exchange” scenario.

Dangerous fallout zone for a 10-kiloton detonation. Picture: US Office of Technology Assessment, The Effects of Nuclear War

So, are the world’s richest people buying up estates in remote locations and fitting them out with bunkers because they have access to some inside information?

“The truth is simpler, and more brutal, than that,” the University of Queensland academics conclude.

“Billionaires are building elaborate properties … because they can.

“For billionaires, putting money into such projects doesn’t mean they’re crazy, or paranoid, or in possession of some special secret knowledge about the future. It simply means they’ve amassed such colossal surpluses of wealth, they may as well use it for something.”