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Are You Prepared for a Post-Nuclear War World?

B Kean
5 min readJan 28, 2024

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Courtesy of CNN

Yesterday was the 80th year since the lifting of the siege of Leningrad. For 900 days, the German army had cut the city off from the world daily, raining bombs down upon the millions of inhabitants. By the time the siege ended, 1.5 million non-combatants were dead.

The leading cause of death was starvation and all of the diseases that crop up from being malnourished. During the long, dark winter days and nights, some city residents would vanish only to end up as food for others. While cannibalism was not the norm, it existed, and locals learned to stay away from anyone who looked “too healthy.” Fat, rosy cheeks meant that the person was either a regular customer at the “human meat market” or in the government, which could also prove dangerous because of quotas established to “weed out German spies.”

The story of Leningrad’s survival, however, does not center around the vile and weak sides of humans. Instead, it celebrates the human ability to adapt and overcome nightmarish situations. In the way that inmates somehow survived camps like Auschwitz, Dachau, and so many other camps, the residents of Leningrad, Warsaw, and other cities throughout the world demonstrated a remarkable capability for overcoming bad situations.

The residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki somehow overcame the horrors of those explosions.

Hiroshima before the dropping of the bomb on August 6th.

Courtesy of History

Hiroshima days after the dropping of the bomb.

Courtesy of History

The history of World War II, like all wars before and after, is filled with horrific stories of human suffering and remarkable stories of humans overcoming and surviving.

Am I ready?

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B Kean
B Kean

Written by B Kean

The past holds the answers to today’s problems. “Be curious, not judgmental,” at least until you have all the facts. Think and stop watching cable news.

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