Unfortunately your information is outdated. There is absolutely no way to survive modern nuclear blast, specifically the ones from Russia, because they are coated with Cobalt 59 which on explosion turns to cobalt 60 and has a half life of 100 years. One bomb with I think 500lb of this stuff could theoretically wipe out all life on earth. Russian wouldn't even need to do this. A direct hit on single Tesla battery pack would do the same thing. Imagine two, or a parking garage/charging station full Tesla's. Or a battery factory.
Ok.. Well that was some interesting research.. an hour of reading and two phone calls.. Whew. You had me worried there.
A cobalt bomb is possible, but not practical. While it would be possible to put one on a plane or a boat, it would not be currently possible to put an effective cobalt bomb on the top of an ICBM. Even if Russia did lace all their warheads with cobalt, the weight limitations of the ICBM payload delivery system would limit it to such a small amount as to be ineffective. (this is mostly true, but not completely accurate see Exception 1) It would leave some long lived radioactive trace elements spread around, but it would not be a tactically or strategically effective weapon. In layman's terms, the result would be orange road cones pot marking the landscape where cobalt particles are detected. Simply stay away from them and your exposure is insignificant.
Exception 1) An ICBM could be made to carry a larger amount of cobalt, but they would have to remove the other warheads and shorten its effective target range.. and even under these conditions, the effected area would be either small (like a zip code) with intense radiation, or large (like an entire city) but with only pot-marked areas of low level radiation.
The fact is, you can't neatly disperse the cobalt atom for atom.. Not all the cobalt is going to convert, and what does convert isn't all going to spread out evenly.
This would also limit the number of nuclear warheads they could deliver since each ICBM has only one and ICBM's are stupidly expensive.
Fallout from such a weapon would not be evenly distributed.. there would simply be strips of land area we'd have to stay away from.. Kind of a slap in the face after being shot with a gun.. its just going to piss off the enemy even more than what is needed.
You could load an effective cobalt bomb onto a boat, or carry it in a plane.. But boats are limited to the coastal areas (still kind of nasty), and no plane would ever make it to the USA as it would be shot down long before it got close.
Russia is known for leaking propaganda. Facebook and youtube are filled with fake Russian weapons, CGI altered videos, etc etc.
Their military budget is only about 1/10th what ours is.. not that such things matter in the face of an all out nuclear exchange, but if we believed all their propaganda, one would have to conclude they have made unrealistic significant technological advances.. all the while the science from those advances have not percolated down to civilian markets or products for profit.. That's not realistic.
And judging from their current pitiful performance in Ukraine, I'm going suggest its all horse crap.
One other thought.. I have serious doubts their military would allow Putin to start a nuclear war unless we crossed their boarders.. I don't think some educated commander is going to start WW3 just because his leader can't have his piece of cake.
And for your further consideration, not sure how this really applies but I'm going to throw it out. I was in Ukraine and Moscow a few times.. the people are really nice. During the cold war in the 70's and 80's, the Russians were more scared of us than we were of them. Americans were the crazy unstable violent society as viewed by their population. We were the sneaky SOB's likely to strike first.
I don't know how much of that was government propaganda or how their leaders really viewed us, but that is how a lot of their population viewed us or were told to view us. That is no longer the case obviously.. I was there at a time when the internet was still running on 56k modems and AOL and Prodigy were the big providers. The Russians and Ukrainians went out of their way to be nice to me once they knew I was an American. They were enjoying their new found freedoms and I doubt they're very happy with what Putin is doing right now. Ukrainian-Russian cultural relationships aren't like America and Mexico, its more like Ohio and Michigan. Its all the same people.. Putin is, in effect, telling family members to shoot at other family members..
Just something to think about..
