I suspect that I would also not react if an alarm like that went off. I live in a decidedly third tier American city, but there is a large defense contractor presence here. So if nuclear war were to come, I am not sure I would want to survive the first blast only to die of second order effects in the weeks or months ahead. Since I am not in one of the first tier cities, who concieveably would be the more likely victims of more limited engagements, and therefore could concieveably be helped out by the remaining civil society, I just don't see the point.
And I do always leave the building when the fire alarm goes off, and I always evacuate for severe hurricanes. So it is not that I ignore all warnings. I just don't see much utility in reacting to a warning of a nuclear attack.
Two things. I grew up in the 60s and 70s a few miles from Whiteman AFB. We knew that the base and the silos scattered around the area weee all first-strike targets. Had the sirens gone off, I don't know that we would have done anything. What do you do when you expect megaton warheads to explode just outside of your small town?
I wonder what would happen now, as we are getting more and more use of AI to answer questions and summarize news, to people looking for information on the situation and how to respond? What role would hallucinating AIs take?
Thinking about my own experiences and how I might respond if I received such an alert (in general, I think I would do nothing), I feel like the authors of that study missed what seems to be an obvious link between age and inaction (or age and the decision to do nothing): lived experience.
Whether or not that experience is applicable, it seems to me that someone who's 70 and has never had to deal with an incoming nuclear weapon would be much less likely to do anything than someone who's, say, 30 because the 70-year-old has lived through 7 decades without a missile strike (and has also possibly lived through at least one period where there was a known risk higher than there seems to be now), so why would this one occasion be any different?
It also seems like that older folks would have more experience with other warnings; for example, in Indiana we have tornado sirens. Many areas have weekly or monthly tests to ensure the sirens are working, but most of us have also had the sirens go off for real, and we've seen areas where tornadoes hit and also some scenarios where taking shelter saved folks, so even if those experiences aren't ours, we can still draw on them the next time the sirens go off.
In contrast, I'm 56 and I don't think I've ever been anywhere that had a civil defense siren go off for any reason. On top of that, what little I know about potential nuclear attacks (much of which I got from reading your work!) seems to suggest to me that it is extremely unlikely that my city would be the sole target of a nuclear attack, and thus if I'm getting a real warning, it's probably because a large number of missiles are on the way, and not just to Indiana. (It seems very unlikely that some other country would manage to launch a single missile from outside the US and have it successfully reach somewhere a thousand miles inland, or that they'd get control of a single US missile and launch it at us instead of New York or Washington or wherever.)
Other things I thought about were things like what kind of shelter would be feasible for me to reach that would be significantly better than my house? I don't have a fallout shelter like my grandfather's house had (thick concrete walls with an offset entrance). If I could get to shelter, would there be enough room for me and my cats? Could I even round up the cats in time? What provisions would I need to bring? Once we were safely inside, how long would we need to stay there? What if we heard ominous sounds from outside and the person in charge decided that a missile had hit and that no one could leave? It feels to me that my odds of survival wouldn't markedly change if I sought better shelter, and potential consequences from anything less than an actual attack would be significantly greater if I did leave.
In general, even with zero false alarms and total trust in the system working to deliver a true threat alert, I’m not sure what people could do and most probably would do nothing. And doing nothing may be for the best. Assuming a missile was launched and detonation was imminent, people would have less than 45 minutes before impact: too little time to do anything significant. Even if you did get to a shelter and maybe survive the initial blast, anywhere within probably 20 miles of ground zero would be hellacious for months or years after the blast. Doing nothing may be the only real option.
Every month air raid sirens sound where I live. They are reportedly for tornadoes, but I like to think of them as war sirens. That is how they originated, and that is the imminent threat we face. Perhaps subconsciously that is why the sirens are sounding. They sound every month, even in the winter.
Every city will be destroyed soon, and not by a tornado. Putin is the incarnation of Shiva, god of destruction. And the people are sleepwalking. In the 1950s and 60s children practiced duck and cover drills. JFK pushed for fallout shelters for every American. There was widespread cultural awareness and vigilance regarding the threat of nuclear war. Today the Doomsday clock is closer to midnight than it's ever been, even in the 50s and 60s, and yet most people are complacent and oblivious.
'Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine, or plague.'
Jeremiah 21:9
This is what the Lord says: "The people who survive the sword will find favor in the wilderness"
1. “ you can’t tell thousands people that they might be dying soon and see what they do as a response”-only because you haven’t tried!
Sincerely
Phil Zimbardo
2. Lulz at the N differential between DC and everywhere else; genuinely in awe of a world where mail surveys get a >70% return rate. Fed workers had plenty of time to answer mail, I guess (as opposed to answer door knockers). Also deeply intrigued by the Chicagoans who knew a) it was an air raid signal and b) were excited. “At least we’re going out on top!”
3. Veteran status isn’t identified in the study or not, but given the time frame (there are age cohorts then where 70% of men would have been veterans), you can kind of make some guesses as to how it might have impacted things (compare page 22 for how many people left their office at the VA vs the Weather Bureau)
4. Re: your footnote Nr 4. Having read a lot of Lankov and Myers (and currently reading Henrich’s book about WEIRD thinking) and experience dealing with the issues of Monster’s Island, I have found that the fact that we are uniquely poorly informed about North Korean leadership (even who they are, much less what they think) such that there’s a major gap in our ability to understand how they thinking which end up just filling in by doing the very WEIRD thing of universalizing and assuming they are going to think just like us. Whereas (again ,from Lankov and Myers) one thing I took to heart was the that leadership of the DPRK definitely *does not think like WEIRD people* and in might in fact be the polar opposite. That’s not to say they are irrational, just that they have a very different thought process at work than what we are used to.
Alex writes, "Another factor that was significant was gender: women tended to take the warning signal more seriously than men, and to report a stronger emotional response to it, and they also were more apt to seek out more information about it."
Gender seems an under explored factor of the nuclear weapons threat. Even though the fate of the modern world hangs in the balance, we seem unprepared to ask questions like:
Would we even have a nuclear threat in a world without men?
Or, as a place to start, a world with far fewer men. A tiny number of men can impregnate huge numbers of women. Later, men will not be necessary for reproduction of the species.
For now, we could set aside trying to answer this question. We could just observe that even though the modern world could be destroyed at any moment, we're not willing to even consider discussing a question like this. The idea of a world without men will be dismissed with a lazy wave of the hand with the claim that it is "unrealistic and unreasonable". That's understandable. But then we might go on to ask this....
What's "realistic and reasonable" about a pattern of thinking and behavior that has CONSISTENTLY FAILED to remove the nuclear weapons threat for 75 years? Why is consistent, persistent, ongoing failure with no end in sight considered "realistic and reasonable"?
I suspect that I would also not react if an alarm like that went off. I live in a decidedly third tier American city, but there is a large defense contractor presence here. So if nuclear war were to come, I am not sure I would want to survive the first blast only to die of second order effects in the weeks or months ahead. Since I am not in one of the first tier cities, who concieveably would be the more likely victims of more limited engagements, and therefore could concieveably be helped out by the remaining civil society, I just don't see the point.
And I do always leave the building when the fire alarm goes off, and I always evacuate for severe hurricanes. So it is not that I ignore all warnings. I just don't see much utility in reacting to a warning of a nuclear attack.
Two things. I grew up in the 60s and 70s a few miles from Whiteman AFB. We knew that the base and the silos scattered around the area weee all first-strike targets. Had the sirens gone off, I don't know that we would have done anything. What do you do when you expect megaton warheads to explode just outside of your small town?
I wonder what would happen now, as we are getting more and more use of AI to answer questions and summarize news, to people looking for information on the situation and how to respond? What role would hallucinating AIs take?
Thinking about my own experiences and how I might respond if I received such an alert (in general, I think I would do nothing), I feel like the authors of that study missed what seems to be an obvious link between age and inaction (or age and the decision to do nothing): lived experience.
Whether or not that experience is applicable, it seems to me that someone who's 70 and has never had to deal with an incoming nuclear weapon would be much less likely to do anything than someone who's, say, 30 because the 70-year-old has lived through 7 decades without a missile strike (and has also possibly lived through at least one period where there was a known risk higher than there seems to be now), so why would this one occasion be any different?
It also seems like that older folks would have more experience with other warnings; for example, in Indiana we have tornado sirens. Many areas have weekly or monthly tests to ensure the sirens are working, but most of us have also had the sirens go off for real, and we've seen areas where tornadoes hit and also some scenarios where taking shelter saved folks, so even if those experiences aren't ours, we can still draw on them the next time the sirens go off.
In contrast, I'm 56 and I don't think I've ever been anywhere that had a civil defense siren go off for any reason. On top of that, what little I know about potential nuclear attacks (much of which I got from reading your work!) seems to suggest to me that it is extremely unlikely that my city would be the sole target of a nuclear attack, and thus if I'm getting a real warning, it's probably because a large number of missiles are on the way, and not just to Indiana. (It seems very unlikely that some other country would manage to launch a single missile from outside the US and have it successfully reach somewhere a thousand miles inland, or that they'd get control of a single US missile and launch it at us instead of New York or Washington or wherever.)
Other things I thought about were things like what kind of shelter would be feasible for me to reach that would be significantly better than my house? I don't have a fallout shelter like my grandfather's house had (thick concrete walls with an offset entrance). If I could get to shelter, would there be enough room for me and my cats? Could I even round up the cats in time? What provisions would I need to bring? Once we were safely inside, how long would we need to stay there? What if we heard ominous sounds from outside and the person in charge decided that a missile had hit and that no one could leave? It feels to me that my odds of survival wouldn't markedly change if I sought better shelter, and potential consequences from anything less than an actual attack would be significantly greater if I did leave.
This of course raises the question: what should we do in the event of a true alarm?
In general, even with zero false alarms and total trust in the system working to deliver a true threat alert, I’m not sure what people could do and most probably would do nothing. And doing nothing may be for the best. Assuming a missile was launched and detonation was imminent, people would have less than 45 minutes before impact: too little time to do anything significant. Even if you did get to a shelter and maybe survive the initial blast, anywhere within probably 20 miles of ground zero would be hellacious for months or years after the blast. Doing nothing may be the only real option.
Every month air raid sirens sound where I live. They are reportedly for tornadoes, but I like to think of them as war sirens. That is how they originated, and that is the imminent threat we face. Perhaps subconsciously that is why the sirens are sounding. They sound every month, even in the winter.
Every city will be destroyed soon, and not by a tornado. Putin is the incarnation of Shiva, god of destruction. And the people are sleepwalking. In the 1950s and 60s children practiced duck and cover drills. JFK pushed for fallout shelters for every American. There was widespread cultural awareness and vigilance regarding the threat of nuclear war. Today the Doomsday clock is closer to midnight than it's ever been, even in the 50s and 60s, and yet most people are complacent and oblivious.
'Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine, or plague.'
Jeremiah 21:9
This is what the Lord says: "The people who survive the sword will find favor in the wilderness"
Jeremiah 31:2
Escape the city [step 1] if you want to survive:
https://archive.is/WOqYS
A few thoughts.
1. “ you can’t tell thousands people that they might be dying soon and see what they do as a response”-only because you haven’t tried!
Sincerely
Phil Zimbardo
2. Lulz at the N differential between DC and everywhere else; genuinely in awe of a world where mail surveys get a >70% return rate. Fed workers had plenty of time to answer mail, I guess (as opposed to answer door knockers). Also deeply intrigued by the Chicagoans who knew a) it was an air raid signal and b) were excited. “At least we’re going out on top!”
3. Veteran status isn’t identified in the study or not, but given the time frame (there are age cohorts then where 70% of men would have been veterans), you can kind of make some guesses as to how it might have impacted things (compare page 22 for how many people left their office at the VA vs the Weather Bureau)
4. Re: your footnote Nr 4. Having read a lot of Lankov and Myers (and currently reading Henrich’s book about WEIRD thinking) and experience dealing with the issues of Monster’s Island, I have found that the fact that we are uniquely poorly informed about North Korean leadership (even who they are, much less what they think) such that there’s a major gap in our ability to understand how they thinking which end up just filling in by doing the very WEIRD thing of universalizing and assuming they are going to think just like us. Whereas (again ,from Lankov and Myers) one thing I took to heart was the that leadership of the DPRK definitely *does not think like WEIRD people* and in might in fact be the polar opposite. That’s not to say they are irrational, just that they have a very different thought process at work than what we are used to.
Alex writes, "Another factor that was significant was gender: women tended to take the warning signal more seriously than men, and to report a stronger emotional response to it, and they also were more apt to seek out more information about it."
Gender seems an under explored factor of the nuclear weapons threat. Even though the fate of the modern world hangs in the balance, we seem unprepared to ask questions like:
Would we even have a nuclear threat in a world without men?
Or, as a place to start, a world with far fewer men. A tiny number of men can impregnate huge numbers of women. Later, men will not be necessary for reproduction of the species.
For now, we could set aside trying to answer this question. We could just observe that even though the modern world could be destroyed at any moment, we're not willing to even consider discussing a question like this. The idea of a world without men will be dismissed with a lazy wave of the hand with the claim that it is "unrealistic and unreasonable". That's understandable. But then we might go on to ask this....
What's "realistic and reasonable" about a pattern of thinking and behavior that has CONSISTENTLY FAILED to remove the nuclear weapons threat for 75 years? Why is consistent, persistent, ongoing failure with no end in sight considered "realistic and reasonable"?