Survival
The most optimistic predictions of the effects of a major nuclear exchange predict millions of deaths within a short period of time. More pessimistic predictions argue that a full-scale nuclear war could potentially bring about the extinction of the human race. Nonetheless, a number of Cold War publications advocate preparations that can allegedly be taken in order to allow the majority of civilians to survive even a total nuclear war. Among the most famous of these is the aptly named Nuclear War Survival Skills.
Read more about this topic: Nuclear Warfare
Famous quotes containing the word survival:
“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamour to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“We hold on to hopes for next year every year in western Dakota: hoping that droughts will end; hoping that our crops won’t be hailed out in the few rainstorms that come; hoping that it won’t be too windy on the day we harvest, blowing away five bushels an acre; hoping ... that if we get a fair crop, we’ll be able to get a fair price for it. Sometimes survival is the only blessing that the terrifying angel of the Plains bestows.”
—Kathleen Norris (b. 1947)
“...I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigating pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk through the rain.”
—Audre Lorde (1934–1992)