Fallout does not act as a jazzy halo around an explosion point. It is a moving and disorganized plume of wind and precipitation and the amount of the earth or water carried away with the rising cloud. The modeling repeatedly indicates that in the situation where even the situation about the strikes that are located at long distances away the coasts, the exposure can be moved to different areas.
The consequence is the opposite of the map: certain locations seem always less vulnerable to acute radiation dose, and others are in the line of the concentrated local fallout. There is a hard boundary condition of those patterns. Since, as John Erath, the Senior Policy Director of the Center of Arms Control and Non-Proliferation explained to Newsweek: no place is ever really safe when it comes to fallout and other effects such as food and water contamination and extended radiation exposure.
1. Maine
In inland missile field fallout simulations, Maine frequently appears in the lowest-exposure category. Location is critical: the state is located well to the west of the heavy concentration of silo locations in the inner West and the Great Plains which most models assume, and does not possess the sort of mega-hub infrastructure which would be targeted with high priority in simplified modeling.
In such maps, the cumulative dose in grays (Gy) during the initial few days, which is the time interval during which the steepest health hazard occurs in short-lived isotopes, is the relevant measure. One of the purported safer bands is running at approximately 0.001-0.5 Gy in the average-case mapping, which is way lower than the rates that are normally linked to acute death. Less population is a practical bonus: the bottlenecks are less in fact when people attempt to move into the building, as well as when supplies are moved and exposure to a minimum.
2. Rhode Island
The safety of Rhode Island during most of the simulations is not defensive but due to a lack of targets. The state has little strategic presence relative to areas rooted in silo complexes or major command-and-control assets and small geographic area can streamline emergency messaging and sheltering logistics.
At lower dose estimates can be very important, and wind is the primary influence: Massachusetts and coastal New England is often out of the strongest plume footprints, formed by inland surface bursts. That being said, the small size of Rhode Island is not an advantage in defense of secondary stressors, particularly contaminated supply chains and broken water treatment, since they spread nationally despite small local dose.
3. Michigan
Freshwater geography is the unique characteristic of Michigan. These geometries of the plume can be buffered by the Great Lakes region and in particular the larger portions of northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula are not near thick target clusters. Michigan is habitually clustered with states that have a relatively lower cumulative dose in maps highlighting the attack on interior silo fields.
Still encroaching on realities engineering. Fallout exposure is not external gamma radiation only, internal exposure may occur after inhalation or ingestion in case particulates are deposited on surfaces, crops and open water. The wide range of types of building in the state, including urban cores and rural housing stock, alter the meaning of shelter in practice as well, as protection relies heavily on the mass between people and the plume.
4. Kentucky
Kentucky has an upper hand in most of the modeled patterns of plumes due to its location: it tends to be out of the more-than-highest-dose corridors that are down wind of silo-belts on the Great Plains and Mountain West. Moreover, the water resources distributed in the state combined with agricultural capacity can provide continuity once the national logistics breaks.
The single early dose estimate is however not determinant of long-term risk. Fallout may be deposited on soil and vegetation and enter dairies and meat tracks. It is that mechanism that lies at the heart of the definition of residual radioisotope material that is falling out of a radioactive cloud and it is what causes food handling and water sourcing to become central after the first days.
5. Tennessee
The modeled benefit of Kentucky is frequently replicated in Tennessee: in silo-based situations, Tennessee is typically downrange of fewer concentrated plume of tracks, and it has terrain that facilitates dispersal outside major urban centers. The Appalachian part of the state is also capable of decreasing direct connectivity to major population corridors that is important during evacuation routes being clogged and emergency services becoming overwhelmed.
The variable of shelter time is not highly valued. The official instructions encourage people to remain indoors during the periods of greatest fallout; the American Red Cross reports that at least 24 hours of shelter can minimize the exposure, and that the most affected regions may need significantly more time to protect themselves. States enjoying a nontrivial advantage are those having more accessible indoor space and having fewer chokepoints.
6. Florida
Florida is featured on most lists of lower-dose not because Florida is insulated against the national impact, but because latitudes of the state, combined with its distance to silo fields located in the interior, can put the state out of range of the most significant modeled fallout plumes under some wind arrangements. That is, it may be marginal to the highest-intensity corridors generated by focused surface burst within the central United States.
The weakness of Florida changes to systems engineering: the restoration of power, fuel distribution, and drinkable water may become the key limitation even with relatively small amounts of radiation dose. Another compounding issue experienced by states on the coast is that ports can be interrupted and the resupply will be unpredictable at the time when the cities need it the most.
7. Neighbor States (New Hampshire and Vermont) of Maine
Simulation-based lower exposure zones repeatedly cluster around New Hampshire and Vermont due to an even more general New England trend. The fundamental cause is geometrical: such states are remote to the high-density fallout concentrations that initiate the heaviest localized fallout in many simplified cases, and winds prevailing during the period of the model do not always cause the maximum dose slurry to flow into northern New England.
What is really important is the methodological lesson. The wind field, burst height and precipitation of the day are very sensitive to the Fallout maps. Even a single storm system has the ability to scrub radioactivity off a moving cloud and form very narrow hot spots, way off a planned target corridor, often referred to as rainout.
In all these examples, safer does not imply safety; it simply indicates that the modeled dose of acute dose of a certain type of situations usually is less than that of the interior states of silo fields. Such a difference is important as the worst early-health outcomes follow the initial days of exposure. Yet the engineering problem of survival quickly becomes national: contaminated food and water pathways, grid instability, medical shortages, and long recovery timelines do not respect state lines. Geography can reduce immediate dose, but it cannot wall off the cascading systems that follow.
