Nuclear scenario - is this suicide?

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Imagine that the air raid sirens are going off in my city. It is a target. It will be hit by a nuclear bomb.

I cannot escape the city, all the roads out are clogged with traffic with panicked residents. I will be in the city regardless.

There is a school and a Catholic Church nearby. The school has a fallout shelter, while the Church does not. I also have the option of hiding in a sewer deep underground, which MAY offer me a chance of saving myself if the fallout shelter is full.

For the last moments the city exists, I want to be in front of Jesus asking for mercy, or trying to get my last confession in. I don’t want to go to the fallout shelter or the sewer. I am likely to be toast, so be it.

Morally speaking, am I committing the sin of suicide? Am I morally required to do everything I can to save my life? I’m conflicted. On the one hand, I’m doing the better thing (being at the feet of Jesus instead of worrying about temporal things) but on the other hand I’m not doing everything I can to preserve my life.

Can you tell I’ve been watching a nuclear bomb movie? Dang those things are scary!
 
I would say that if you’re forced between trying to save your body or save your soul, go with the latter.

To deliberately take your life would be suicide. In this case, you’re not trying to do that, but save your soul.

OTOH, I’m not a moral theologian, either.
 
Nothing wrong with going to the church.

The bomb probably isn’t targeted at the chuch.
You don’t know if it will be an air burst or a ground burst.
You don’t know exactly where it is targeted. You might survive by doing nothing, by going to the church, or by walking out in the open field to see if you can see an incoming RV. Or not.
 
Well, my question is:

Given the situation, do I have a positive obligation to try to save my life by going to the bomb shelter (or hiding in a sewer)?

I’m thinking that either which way I’m screwed. Either I’ll die right away or die a horrendous death slowly afterwards.
 
Unless you are the active agent in causing your death, you cannot commit suicide. At worst, you could be guilty of negligence (which can also be a grave sin) if you grossly and deliberately fail to save your own life once threatened by an external agent. Your moral obligation in circumstances where an external agent threatens your life is to take reasonable and prudent measures to preserve that life, if such measures are available, likely to work, and don’t impose an undue burden.

In these circumstances, you are well within the dictates of prudence to judge that you’re toast either way and report to church for some last-minute prayin’. Not even the ghost of a sin is suggested here, and, indeed, you’ll probably see me in the next pew over. 😉

Love a good nuke movie. Bring 'em on!

Disclaimer: I’m not a moral theologian, either. But I’m fairly confident in my answer.
 
Hey Bob,

Maybe it might reassure you that if your city is a target of a real nuclear attack, one such that satellites and ground stations can detect either nuclear payload from a ballistic missel or a particular plane known to carry a nuclear weapon, you won’t have to worry about where you can hide or go. The modern thermonuclear weapons are quite potent at making sure you and every cell in your body unable to know when the bomb actually landed. It’s hits hard and hits fast. Here are some public accessible materials.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman
According to wikipedia, the only land based ICBM left in the States. I guess it would currently carry a three-stage thermonuclear weapon.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Mike
This is a 2 stage weapon test from about 50 years ago.

Since the links does not tell how long it takes to see the giant mushroom form these big bombs, we can use the weaker detonation tests around bikini atoll as an estimation. These bombs were around 25 ktons, so the current ones are about 500 to 1000 times stronger. The main explosion, then pressure wave, then mushroom all occurred within 4 milliseconds.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads#Sequence_of_blast_events

So if you get adequate warning from the sirens, rush to church and get the general absolution first from a priest. Then you can worry about the details of individual sins.
 
I would hightail it to the Church, myself.

I don’t believe you would be morally obligated to go to the fallout shelter. It’s not quite the same situation, but in the Catechism, it talks about discontinuing treatment of a dying person that is extraordinary or disproportionate to the expected outcome, so it seems like death would be imminent if you were getting nuked, and the fallout shelter probably wouldn’t do much good anyway.
 
Ok, a couple of thoughts here.

The first is that a fallout shelter is not designed to protect you from an atomic blast. It is designed to protect you from the after effects of the blast should the location of the fall out shelter not be subject to a blast close enough to destroy you.

Going underground might save you, assuming it was an air burst, but it might also just get you buried underground.

In any case, this is mostly a hypothetical exercise. Generally, at best (or worst, depending on how you look at it), the United States would only know 30 minutes or so before the bombs started hitting that it was under attack (The amount of time it would take land based missles to reach US soil). Even assuming a rapid response from Civil authorities, the actual amount of warning the public would get is probably no more than about 10 minutes. Assuming the attack was sub launched, I wouldn’t expect any warning at all. Most likely these days of course, the attack would be a terrorist bomb with no warning to either the public or civil authorities (But also thankfully a much smaller yield of the 50 KT to 1 megaton weapons that are common in nuclear arsenals of the worlds nuclear powers).

In any case, assuming you have time, going to church to get to confession would, it seems to me, be a good use of your remaining time.

–
Bill
 
BobCatholic said:
Imagine that the air raid sirens are going off in my city. It is a target. It will be hit by a nuclear bomb.

I cannot escape the city, all the roads out are clogged with traffic with panicked residents. I will be in the city regardless.

There is a school and a Catholic Church nearby. The school has a fallout shelter, while the Church does not. I also have the option of hiding in a sewer deep underground, which MAY offer me a chance of saving myself if the fallout shelter is full.

For the last moments the city exists, I want to be in front of Jesus asking for mercy, or trying to get my last confession in. I don’t want to go to the fallout shelter or the sewer. I am likely to be toast, so be it.

Morally speaking, am I committing the sin of suicide? Am I morally required to do everything I can to save my life? I’m conflicted. On the one hand, I’m doing the better thing (being at the feet of Jesus instead of worrying about temporal things) but on the other hand I’m not doing everything I can to preserve my life.

Can you tell I’ve been watching a nuclear bomb movie? Dang those things are scary!
Click to expand...
There is an account of seven Priests surviving the atomic blast at Hiroshima while saying the rosary. Everyone around them for a full square mile perished. It is never a bad thing to be with the Lord…never.
 
In your hypothetical question, I think there are just too many variables to say that you can reasonably be sure that the fallout shelter or sewers would save your life. When it comes to nuclear attack, distance and shielding are your greatest assets. The heat and blast effects are dependent on the yield of the bomb, but can be highly lethal within a mile radius of ground zero for most bombs. Radiation effects from alpha and beta radiation can be mitigated by a wall, but the gamma radiation would require a lot of concrete or lead or earth to be effective (which not all shelters have). Wind direction would also play a big part in blowing the lethal fallout that cause secondary deaths and lethal injury due to radiation poisoning after the blast effects have dissipated.

This is also ignoring the fact that modern day ICBMs have MIRV capability (multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles) that can result in over half a dozen nukes plastering the metropolitan region from one missile. You don’t know where these nukes will hit, and six 100 kiloton mini-nukes are a lot more lethal and devastating than an old multi-megaton single nuke.

I can’t even imagine what you would do in the aftermath (regarding food, water, security and the need to stay sheltered for days on end to let the radiation dissipate). To survive a nuclear attack, I think you would need a pre-planned and pre-stocked shelter made well in advance. Even then there are no guarantees. People desperate for rations or glowing post-apocalyptic zombies could make short work of you. 😉 (ok, kidding about that last part).

In these circumstances, I think heading to your local church (if it was possible) and making peace with God would not be an immoral or imprudent choice at all.
 
BobCatholic said:
Imagine that the air raid sirens are going off in my city. It is a target. It will be hit by a nuclear bomb.

I cannot escape the city, all the roads out are clogged with traffic with panicked residents. I will be in the city regardless.

There is a school and a Catholic Church nearby. The school has a fallout shelter, while the Church does not. I also have the option of hiding in a sewer deep underground, which MAY offer me a chance of saving myself if the fallout shelter is full.

For the last moments the city exists, I want to be in front of Jesus asking for mercy, or trying to get my last confession in. I don’t want to go to the fallout shelter or the sewer. I am likely to be toast, so be it.

Morally speaking, am I committing the sin of suicide? Am I morally required to do everything I can to save my life? I’m conflicted. On the one hand, I’m doing the better thing (being at the feet of Jesus instead of worrying about temporal things) but on the other hand I’m not doing everything I can to preserve my life.

Can you tell I’ve been watching a nuclear bomb movie? Dang those things are scary!
Click to expand...
Given as you say, that you have enough warning to be able to decide to go to Church or swim in the sewer, the bomb will likely be intercepted before it even hits.
 
lobster said:
Given as you say, that you have enough warning to be able to decide to go to Church or swim in the sewer, the bomb will likely be intercepted before it even hits.
Click to expand...
I’ve always been under the impression that interceptors are aim poor at best.

Remember for general absolution, where the priest can do a mass forgiveness of sins, you have to have full contrition as best as you can. So that I think having practice is good for that =).
 
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