What if there'd been a nuclear war while one of the Apollo missions was on the Moon?

[Baron Bizarre]

(I've done my best to search for this and haven't found anything about it, so my apologies in advance if there's a hundred threads about this already that I just managed to miss, somehow.)

Does anyone have any speculation as to what might have happened had there been a full-scale nuclear war while one of the Apollo missions was on the Moon? I'm a little sketchy as to how much those folks were dependent on Houston for direction. Could the Lunar Lander have linked up with the Orbiter without direction from Earth? Could the Orbiter have made it back to Earth on its own, with or without the Lander crew?

Possibly they wouldn't've bothered trying, depending on their individual temperaments. Maybe they would've just opened the door and let the air out.

 

[Astronomo2010]

well, with the hep of an ASB, they could land on the Moon and discover Raw materials to build a moonbase to acomodate at leats 10 000 people, and also computers and automated robots and nanomachines to buid A spaceship wich they could use to land on earth and rescue many peopl unafacted by radiation, and take them to the Moon. A timeline would be good.

 

[TofuTanker]

I tried to write a story once about an international mission to Mars where WW3 started after they had launched. Of course I got bored and quit.

I don't think that the astronauts would stand much of a chance if Mission Control got nuked.

 

[Polish Eagle]

Read a similar premise, by Stephen Baxter. Walter Schirra's Mercury mission launches, then the Cuban Missile Crisis goes hot. Unfortunately, rather than examine the result, Baxter ASB'd his way out by sending Schirra to a Permian-configuration (of continents) world where nothing has changed.

Now, as long as Johnson Space Center, and one of their big comms antennas, survives, the CSM can return to earth (bit hairy, lining up the Ascent Stage and CSM, but Apollo 11 can have an easier time of it, with Buzz Aldrin, who got a degree in orbital rendezvous, on board). They might have to prepare for the worst, though. If the Aircraft Carriers are unavailable, they might have to wait longer for pick up. If they've been destroyed, they should hope to meet some fishermen.

On another note, I heard from a Grumman engineer that Armstrong had a .38 caliber revolver when he went to the Moon. If they land on land, or close to an island, the crew could survive a few days on rations and that revolver (hunting).

 

[ComradeTovarich]

On another note, I heard from a Grumman engineer that Armstrong had a .38 caliber revolver when he went to the Moon. If they land on land, or close to an island, the crew could survive a few days on rations and that revolver (hunting).

Or in the event that a nuclear war happens, he could just use it to play Russian roulette with all chambers loaded.

 

[Georgepatton]

Or in the event that a nuclear war happens, he could just use it to play Russian roulette with all chambers loaded.

One of the astronauts, can't recall which, talked in a book about how people were always telling rumors about how they were issued with poison pills so they could commit suicide in case of catastrophic mission failure.

He absolutely denied any such thing, and even went on to talk about how the crews always figured it would be better to just let all the air out and die much faster.