Lucky you. I'm sure that was an experience you'll never forget. BTW, if anyone's interested there's a great writeup with comparison photos from 1956/2006 by a former Nike missle base crewmember from the LA-88 Oat Mt. location on Nike Historical Society webpage . Didn't realize LA alone had 16 Nike sites, with about half of those later upgraded to the nuke-laden Hercules interceptor. Someday I'm hoping to visit the decommissioned Nike museum in San Franciso, apparently the only one left in the US. Anyone here ever been there?

Nike Historical Society main page

I have a feeling this is the default thinking for many folks, and will almost certainly contribute to a lot of the panic, chaos and FUD if it happens; few make preparations when they want and expect the worst to hit directly. I'm not questioning you personally ki4buc (hey, you visit here - so I assume you're better off than most!), but what happens if such a person weren't a target, but close enough to feel the aftereffects of either a man made or natural disasters?

There's a whole lot bad that can be said about those forgone days, but I do wish that all communities kept up at least a semblance of preparedness when it comes to facilities, food and water, etc. instead of just medical (which rarely is driven by the community itself).

The real problem during catastrophic failure of civilization is not the initial devastation, but the throngs of survivors with little to no preparation after the fact. This, in turn, leads to a usurpation, or at least the attempt, of the supplies and facilities of the prepared via mob violence, theft, or even martial law. It's relatively cheap to setup and maintain supplies and encourage individuals to do the same. But that's not sexy and it's hard to sell that on the news like a pandemic, eh?

We don't have to look far for examples in our own back yard. At least we seem to have improved our medical emergency responsiveness, but many on the inside will tell you of the fragility of the system. And really, outside of the red cross, we have FEMA - a laughing stock to most and a horrible scourge to many. ;-) If they are going to spend my tax money, I just wish they would do it effectively.

I was flabbergasted when I recently heard the medical professionals on TV stating that one of the best things people can do to help with the swine flu is to be prepared... have day-care lined up, have food and medical supplies stocked up in case you need to bunker down for a week or two. I would love to see more of that clear-headed thinking on TV. Who's for PSAs encouraging people to store months worth of food and water, visit sites such as this and the government run ones for lists and recommendations?

My response was the "avoid living near a target". I'd rather live near one, close enough to get zapped. Then again, what if I'm on vacation and not at home? A lot of people (including myself) fail to adequately prepare for things while on vacation. You cannot really conceivably take everything, but you can prepare somewhat.

For the current pandemic, I've been encouraging people that live in NYC (or anywhere really) to have 2 to 4 weeks of dry food (beans and rice, some nice preservative loaded processed snacks that are shelf stable for multiple lifetimes. ) if it got really bad. Things might be closed, or you won't want to go out. At least one person who thought my idea was B.S. 6 months ago to have 72 hour kit suddenly thinks it's not such a bad idea to be prepared. Especially when I said "what if they close stores either to a) prevent spread or b) all of the staff is sick?".

Just prepare for interruptions in obtaining goods and services. That means, keep stocked up, visit the doctor or dentist as soon as you can to take care of issues, etc. Carpe Diem!

I just saw an episode of the show, Cities of the Underworld, on the History Channel about the museum. Interesting episode. Amazing that it's all preserved and still working. On the show, they even opened the blast doors, raised the missile racks and tilted them up to launch position. Scary to think of what even just one of those nuclear tipped missiles could do.