For more information see this wikipedia article on radiation protection. Lead provides the thinnest wall while packed soil provides the most cost effective wall, albeit at 3-feet thick compared to 4 inches of lead. Each of the wall thicknesses below shield the same amount of radiation. Some materials shield against radiation better than others. This is simply because most of our homes are built from relatively lightweight materials. Below is an illustration I whipped up based on shielding design information available on Wikipedia. This is a good tactical strategy to know in an emergency but also a good visual teaching tool for understanding what is needed to shield yourself from radiation.Īs you can see from the illustration above, typical homes provide little protection against radiation. As you can see the deeper you are inside a building, surrounded by the mass of the building and/or ground outside, the safer you’ll be. Department of Homeland Security, shows the safest places to take shelter in buildings. This illustration, found in a recently published guide from The U.S. But I also suspect a whole new generation of civil defense meters will flood the market as companies work to meet the renewed demand. As soon as supplies become available it might be a worthwhile investment and there are some low-cost options like the NukAlert and the RADSticker. To make matters worse store shelves are currently bare as a result of the nuclear accident in Japan. Unfortunately very few people have access survey meters or dosimeters. Both are useful because the survey meter can alert you to the source and intensity of a danger while a dosimeter can tell you how much total radiation you’ve received. A dosimeter tells you how much exposure you’ve had over time. A survey meter (like a Geiger counter) detects the amount of radiation currently present. For civil defense purposes there are two primary types of meters, survey meters and dosimeters. Since we can’t detect nuclear radiation without special instruments we’re vulnerable. So while the amount of radiation currently coming across the Pacific is insignificant, over time it could be a bigger problem if the source is not contained. It’s also important to understand that the amount of time you’re exposed to radiation the more of an adverse affect it will have on your body. The farther you are away from any heat source, and the more stuff between you and the heat source, the less likely you are to be burned. A useful analogy for understanding the nature of radiation is to think of it as heat you can’t see, feel, hear, taste, or smell. The more mass and/or distance you put between you and radiation the better. I’m not an expert fallout shelter designer, but the basics are easy to understand. So now that we’ve all been reminded that radiation from nuclear fallout is all bad, lets move onto fallout shelters. This doesn’t mean we should allow the continued proliferation of nuclear reactors and weapons unless we want to eventually move underground, but while we are busy demanding the end of nukes, we should also be educating ourselves about the necessary tools and techniques for surviving nuclear accidents and blasts. Reactor waste (like fuel rods) takes thousands of years to decay but fallout from a nuclear blast can return to safe levels (for evacuation) in as little as three to five weeks. This mix up, and Hollywood, are probably the culprits for the spreading of the idea that nuclear fallout will destroy life for thousands of years – which is nonsense. Life would eventually return to a level of normalcy.Ī misunderstanding of half-life might also be contributing to the general confusion about radiation. After the initial incident those that stayed sheltered would be left to rebuild, just like those who survived the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The truth is that reactor accidents and blasts are survivable because radioactivity diminishes faster then we might think. Even well-intentioned documentaries like Countdown to Zero tend to leave the viewer with a total sense of dread and hopelessness. So most folks just gave up on the topic assuming there was nothing we could do. The Cold War seemed to create a general misconception – that a nuclear incidents are not survivable. I’d hate to see us succumb to fear mongering and instead educate ourselves, prepare for the possibility, and work toward eliminating nuclear power and weapons. My hope is that nuclear preparedness becomes a topic we’re more comfortable talking about again. But now that we’ve all been reminded that nuclear accidents can happen, nobody is laughing anymore. Nuclear fallout shelters have been stigmatized as the ultimate prep for the paranoid and the butt of many jokes.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |