Interesting, when I worked at a known primary target (Minuteman ICBM site) abandoning my duty or duty station post strike never crossed my mind.
Well a couple of assumptions were in my comment about leaving the Center...
- Massive destruction, not localized. As in MAD type scenarios.
- Whatever we call SCATANA today had been implemented. Nothing's flying anyway except your buddies in uniforms. You guys have AWACS and similar assets, you probably don't need the Center kids hanging around and they probably wouldn't last long anyway.
- Controllers say at, ZDV, take a gander from the parking lot and see the horizon glowing to the south (DEN) and north (CYS / FE Warren) and decide there's really no point in hanging around waiting for a nice northerly or southerly wind shift, and the only way "out" might be up US 287 toward Laramie, if they feel like surviving.
- If they feel like not surviving, a drive north up I-25 a ways toward FE Warren should take care of that in a relatively painful and gross week or so of vomiting and losing hair, skin, and other lovely maladies.
You guys down in the holes may have had it a little better than folks in a "blast certified" blockhouse on the surface... at least for a while. And assuming the yield assumptions were correct about how far down y'all needed to be.
I always got a kick out of knowing before the Bell System breakup that numerous COs for both local and AT&T were "hardened", including some of the microwave sites feeding the kids down at NORAD. I have the engineering drawings of the outhouse used at those sites, and I'll be the first to say it'd be stripped off the mountain and gone... it wasn't rated... so if you hung out inside and survived the attack at one of the microwave sites, indoors, you could come outside to enjoy the effects of the air burst that wiped the tower off the face of the earth... yay! Let's go outside! LOL... but it was fun to see the "Fallout Shelter" signs at telecom sites and radio sites in the 90s, all left there long after AT&T sold the place. Always had nice big generator diesel tanks at those sites...
But hey, we've gotten better at this emergency management stuff. Remember our latest one where they told us duct tape would save us? ROFLMAO...
Us above-ground-pounder civvies on the surface never had much of a good option, back in those days. And here I say that like "it's over", but of course, it really isn't. We just don't get the weekly "Alert" drills from the city sirens anymore, and nobody believes "Duck and Cover" crap like they might have back then. Glad y'all would stay in the hole, but my assumption above was that you'd already launched...
Unlimited nuclear war is a total **** sandwich no matter how or where you are.