I have a question

I suggest you stock up on the canned sliced peaches... they have a very long shelf life.
Just keep them in an ammo case as a shelf won't be the best place to store food.

CS

..after all it is the be all and end all for so many.

Functional and dysfunctional

Oh I would add applesauce to the list. I have several cans of that too squirreled away. Wish I could find a way of preserving whipped cream. That too will be missed.
Amazing how many of the missed items will be foods that will be 1,000 years before being seen again,if ever.

Wondering if multiple sizes of underwear, dungarees and Sorel boots and sneakers would be good trade goods. Of course the bunker would have to be very large to hold a 10 year trading supply and decent shovels and crowbars might be a better investment. Bags of charcoal, 5 gallon buckets and clean sand for water filtering too of course. Already have a few 'how does it work' or ;how to fix things' books for trade. They will go first of course because I doubt much effort will be spent teaching subsequent generations how to read, much less write (to who? LoL).

Ken, what even makes you think the Keys held on flash drives, tucked away in secure safes, will even work anymore? If I was a Military Grade Hacker, the first thing i would do is disable the firing system of my enemy first.
Keys need to match a very, very specific lock. Anything not accepted would and must nullify the entire firing order.
On the flippo side. I'm aiming to be immediately beneath one when it turns supa nova, Just to make sure I'm dead rather than drawn out suffering and just slowly and painfully dying.

Too dark? You might not know it but I do have a lighter side. But it is more like a shadow reversed than true light. W.

Ken, how might you fair if the three stage in situ countdown started with Au in 8.5 hours, UK, 19 hours after that, and ended with The Americas around 32.5 hours from now?
Sorry to put you Johnny on the spot. And seeing as how an entire Nuclear War would be over less than one hour after it is started, what how might you fair if it was that way New Years Day? W.
Ps. Sorry, just testing my keystrokes, dabbling my pinky, poking the rod at low level horror story telling.

Those who wish to die during a nuclear war would probably be doing everyone else a favor by exiting earlier.

When you speak of encrypted keys and nuclear devicees I am assuming you are speaking of PAL codes. If this is wrong please advise. Here is the reality. The West (US, the UK (which uses nukes loaned to it by the US), and France) have those locks on their devices. After the fall of the USSR serious negotiation attempts were made by the West to convince Russia, India and Pakistan to adopt a similar safety system for their nuclear devices. All of them flatly refused (possibly for the reason you speak of). China (for the same weird reason they were never invited to the SALT or SALT II talks) was both nnt asked to, and later on (about 6 years ago when someone mentioned it, said they didn't need to as their weapons are securely stored.

Naby of the current Russian nuclear warheads are identical to the designs used in the days of the USSR. Some may actually be the same ones as Russian warhead maintenance was found to be sorely lacking when the US began taking some of them apart under the disarmament treaty. Can we say popcorn and bunkers so over crowded with warheads that the room temperature was over 350F? Anyway the 350Kt warhead on a Topol M is the same as the ones the Soviets had in the older Topol SS25 model. No safety interlock to hack. Add the Neutron trigger and launch it. It will go off.

The safety (there was a totally attempt by rogue KGB to use a hijacked Soviet sub to attack Hawaii a few decades ago) found on R-29RMU2 and RSM-56 MIRVS is more like a hand cuff key than anything electrical. Given the state of Russian computer chip development and manufacture I would expect something equially childish and tinker proof simple on the MIRVs carried by an RS 28 Sarmat. Yes Russia has other missile and warhead types, but we already know they aren't into PAL systems, much less one based on USB devices.

Nty point is Russian nuclear and thermonuclear warheads will probably work quite well upon arrival. I can tell you that there is a lot about US PAL devices that can be found on open source Internet and not all of it is wrong. I personally would want to be at least 500 miles away from someone trying to mess with one of those devices. We do do our maintenance, pull them apart and test things on fairly regularly. I am personally pretty confident, given how many there are and how widely spaced they are in deployment you would need thousands of hackers at hundreds of locations to effect even a few of them. So ours will work too.

About NK, I have no idea. I envision them putting those in a pick up truck and driving South then at a border checkpoint, or other travel bottleneck, like a Japanese soldier trying to destroy an M3 tank during WW2 a volunteer will smack it on the nose with a big hammer. The Japanese got quite a few tanks that way. 2 or 3 such trucks spaced 20 minutes apart should get the NKoreans to Seoul or anyplace else they wish to go.

Thinking of NK, I wouldn't be too shcked to learn they were getting drones from Iran and trying to fit them with tactical nukes to be dropped whenever Supreme Leader directs/

Sounds to me Ken, This Entire Planet went to War and are letting us poor saps 'not in' on their little, but totally obvious, secret.
Or are we all just on the state of Ready! ? W.

my glasses.
230V
fuel.
meat.
wheat.
several vegetables.

In about 7 years i assume clothes will be deteriorating, but i see myself adapting.

Sorry, I just wanted to add some thing and this was the only way i could think of to do that.

I thought of what you opened with. Interesting concept, life and living at any cost, any fight and beyond. Sounds military thinking / Survivalist speaking concept.
Personally, good for you. Someone has to take the bullet right?
I'm 63, with health issues. No meds means I am dead in 12 months, maybe less, even if where I live has been unilaterally assigned a Detonation free zone in order to have a measurable comparison. You do realize the Military has already run models and Computer analytics in conjunction with Atmospheric real time data.
More so, do you know vast underground complexes have been built so that those who start any war can live in comfort while those left to rot on the surface will be little more than laboratory specimens to determine mutation rates according to fallout level A. AAA. (Bomb free zone) B. And so forth determinate on radiation levels etc.
They probably have a whole battery of tests and observations short term and long term that their medical teams can't wait to get their hot little hands on.
Sounds to me like you have a full handle on the weaponry and political dancing.
This site doesn't need two experts on the same subject, so I just thought I might offer the way things is, from this perspective.
Unfortunately for you, I see three distinct targets, which hasn't changed in maybe 60 years. If you live where I think you live, you are situated within one of these three. W.

ProjectEuler and Coursera.org

on a lighter side...

I wanna model airplane Santa,
And some toy soldiers,
maybe a tank if you can fit it into my stocking,
if not just leave it parked outside.

Most of all, ... I had it a few minutes ago, I do not know why but I am feeling pressured. It was something to do with AI. Any plan would include Government approved "Nanny Sat" or associated program; you know to run the Power Stations Remotely, to prevent them from being cut off while power is and will be available.
What if you weren't just a d*ck but a full Prick? What might you do?
Sorry trick question, you don't get a vote. This might be DoBaT but this was set in motion the instant AI went online. I, like you, am simply along for the ride. W.

Trying to answer several here.
Electricity is no further away than a magnet, some wire and a shaft. How fast you spin it, how much wire, that's all in Maxwell and ohm's papers. Some slept through those classes in school, others didn't and built radios and microwave emitters and other cool stuff using those works. There would be plenty of scrap stuff everywhere you look. I figure getting some electric up after it is safe to wander around will take about a week. There is a decent video or two on YT about converting a car alternator into a wind driven generator. There is a good starting point. I have been saving up for one of the new Lithium solar powered battery power packs. There are some nice ones in the 10K Watt range and light enough to be somewhat portable, especially if you transport the components separately. My thought is keep it charged in the shelter, unfold the solar plates (or buy a 2nd set for use after things quiet down) and I will have electric for a long, long time. Maybe long enough for a grid to be repaired.
Agreed nuclear plants will melt down if the operators are all dead. Even if they SCRAM (shut down) them, they still need constant cooling of the rods. Don't live downwind of one. Keep some Potassium Iodide around anyway.
If someone EMPs things, that will raise the troposphere (and also screw up radio). Friction with the raised atmosphere will bring many satellites down. Also the space station. Then again someone may decide it is an artillery observation post and target it directly. Oh well.
Some people believe too much nonsense on the Internet. There are no you can't nuke here places. Physically impossible. The weapons tend to veer off course. Look at Russia shooting at Ukraine next door and hitting Poland and Romania instead. Look at boomeranging S300s, LoL. Solid fuel rockets stored so long some of the fuel on one booster or another has degraded and burns a little faster than the other vent does. Here we go loop the loop. Less than 15 degrees off course Russia allows it with no self destruct. In war the US will probably do the same. Where those things land is anyone's guess.
Yes, I am within 15 miles of a ground zero. It will probably be several 20 meg ground bursts. That kind of oomph even the shelter floor needs to be reinforced as the Nevada and French and Soviet tests have shown. Those shockwaves liquify the soil for 10 seconds or so. Each cubic yard of soil weighs about 1.5 tons. Sometimes more depending on moisture. All of it suddenly moving like surf during a Hurricane. A simple fallout shelter is inadequate for that. You want to be deep in something that won't suddenly collapse and crush you. Deep enough so the shock wves don't touch you. Pointless if you are ground zero. A 20 meg ground blast leaves a crater 400 feet deep and about 3/4 mile long/wide. Project Plowshare. Best to be a few miles away. Can't go too far down though. Internal heat of the Earth the deeper you go, the hotter.
Secret shelters for the rich and powerful. LoL. No better than what you can build. I have been in several of those underground exclusive places. Did you know they flood with ground water a lot? Is okay while the pumps are working and maintenance keeps repainting. Without either, not so good.. Look up the 1865 fire at the Searcy, AK missile base. Having a way out of a deep place is important. Not easy with fallout falling and radioactivity everywhere.
WW3 began in 2014. Most slept through tts beginning. In Feb 2022 Putin stirred the pot and now 80 nations are involved one way or another. Red Sea, Gaza, Ukraine, Hungary, Mexico it is all linked. One conflict. East vs West. Dictatorship vs Democracy and transgender rights. LoL Both sides have plans for 2024. It should start simmering in 2024. Find a deep cave and stock it well. 2025 is a maybe.
I am sadly, pushing 70, but I intend to still be here at 90. Those who wish to check out now may do so.

correction: 1965 fire

Bring the pillows into the shelter with you. It is allowed.