Since nuclear radiation appears to be the preparedness theme of the week, let’s take a look at what it means to survive a nuclear event. After the initial blast and fires, the biggest risk is radioactive fallout. All fallout is, is ash and other products of combustion that have had pieces of the bomb itself attached to them. These pieces are going to be radioactive isotopes, and this radiation is produced as unstable isotopes decay into more stable ones. This decay process gives off energy in the form of radiation. There are over 300 different fission products that may result from a fission reaction. Many of these are radioactive with widely differing half-lives. The half lives of some of these are measured in fractions of a second, while a few are long enough that the materials can be a hazard for months or years. Their principal mode of decay is by the emission of beta and gamma radiation.
We measure radiation in the form of RADs (Radiation Absorbed Dose). This relates to the amount of energy actually absorbed in some material, and is used for any type of radiation and any material. One rad is defined as the absorption of 100 ergs per gram of material. The unit rad can be used for any type of radiation, but it does not describe the biological effects of the different radiations. For that, we use REM (Roentgen Equivalent for Man). The metric version of the REM is a sievert (1 sievert = 100 REM).
A dose of approximately 100 REM will cause mild radiation sickness, and will increase your chances of premature death from cancer by about 6%. Severe illness occurs at 200 REM, and half of those who are exposed to 300 REM will die within days. A dose of 800 REM is fatal to everyone within hours, even with prompt medical care.
About 5% of the energy released in a nuclear detonation is transmitted in the form of initial neutron and gamma radiation. The neutrons result almost exclusively from the energy producing fission and fusion reactions, while the initial gamma radiation includes that arising from these reactions as well as that resulting from the decay of short-lived fission products.
The good news about fallout is that the isotopes that produce the most radiation also tend to decay the most quickly. The rule of thumb that is generally applied here is called the 7:10 rule. Let’s look at that:
If fallout of 1,000 REM per hour arrives at your location 1 hour after the blast, you have to be sheltered or you will receive a fatal dose in less than an hour. The 7:10 rule states that after seven hours, the rate will drop to one tenth, or 100 REM per hour. In another 7*7 hours (forty-nine hours) it will have decayed down to 10 REM per hour. Then 7*49 hours (~ 2 weeks), it will be down to 1 REM per hour. Once the rate drops to 0.5 REM per hour, you can leave your shelter, which would take about 25 days.
Shelter is where we are screwed here in Florida. At least in other areas of the country, there are basements. Shelter means being shielded from radiation, and that means a couple of things: mass, and not ingesting radioactive material by either breathing it or consuming it in food and water. More on shelter later.
6 Comments
EN2 SS · March 1, 2022 at 8:37 am
And yet, some posters on some sites, think a nuclear war with muslime radicals wanting the return of the 5th mahdi(the Antichrist) is better than an the invasion of a little island near china.
Don Shift · March 1, 2022 at 9:27 am
No basement? Inverse square law. You’re welcome.
They Voted For It · March 1, 2022 at 11:43 am
Kelp and red wine is your friend.
At least there are no mean tweets under the 7500 degree mushroom cloud.
“Elections matter. And when folks vote, they order what they want — and in this case they got what they asked for.
Kamala Harris, February 28, 2022.
It's just Boris · March 1, 2022 at 8:15 pm
Two small points.
One, fallout can be “bomb ash” (isotopes directly created from the bomb’s materials during the fission process) or it can be other stuff that gets activated (usually by neutron induced fission or neutron capture). That last most often happens in the stuff scooped up by the fireball, which is one reason ground bursts are generally going to be “dirtier” than airbursts in terms of fallout.
Two, stay in your basement, if you have one, but make sure you have at least some way of filtering incoming air. (Or, provide for a weeks-long supply of oxygen.) If you get radioactive contamination on you, you can wash it off. But if it gets *in* you (e.g. breathing in dust) it’s a much worse situation. Similar for drinking water or eating food that’s been contaminated.
Of course this is all very much simplified, so please, do additional research if you choose to start preparing effective measures.
Brutus · March 1, 2022 at 9:05 pm
Sodium alginate (an extract from kelp), pectin, and green tea would all be useful afterwards to help keep the longer lasting strontium-90 from getting incorporated into your bones.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC1935644/
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Vera-Hoellriegl/publication/228481529_Reduction_in_the_Absorption_of_Dietary_Strontium_in_Man_by_Nutritional_Factors/links/0c9605265235bb9735000000/Reduction-in-the-Absorption-of-Dietary-Strontium-in-Man-by-Nutritional-Factors.pdf
Tar · March 1, 2022 at 9:54 pm
If you don’t have basements, the middle floors of brick / concrete high rises can work. Pick the rooms closest to the center of the building three floors up above the surface, and away from rooftops of any kind.
Expedient shelters should be heavy frame and capable of supporting significant amounts of heavy material. Protection is rated in “Halving Thicknesses” – for one example, stacking 24″ minimum thickness of books and magazines around you would be PF 3, or 12.5% unprotected dose; adding a layer of bricks to it would make it PF 4, or 6.25% unprotected dose. PF 5 = 3.125%, etc. Build small, build thick.
A standard 1-story wood frame house (no basement) gives a starting shelter of about 50%; 2-story brick veneer, no basement = 33%; its basement, tho is 5% – same deal for the 3rd floor of a 5-story brick and concrete apartment (3rd story interior spaces on high rises might be 1% or better). Percentages are multiplicative with expedient shelters.
For expedient shelters, halving thicknesses of common materials are:
2.4” concrete
3.6” sand or packed dirt
7.2” water
11” wood
0.99”steel
8″ books or magazines (depends on the density)
3.4” red bricks
6” broken anthracite coal
More info can be found here:
https://civil-defence.ca/protection-factor-pf/
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