LoTek
Inactive
Bruce Beach | 2006.03.15 said:[Arktwo] radiation lockdown
Yep, things have changed
since my daddy taught me
as a boy.
"You will never get off this planet alive",
"What goes up must come down",
"Scarce as chicken's teeth".
Now they are raising chickens with teeth!
http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/060222_chicken_teeth.html
The world keeps changing
and our viewpoints keep changing.
I get lots of emails
asking questions about radiation.
A common question is -
"At what point will you lockdown the shelter?"
Well, maybe never -
and the reason is that
radiation doesn't work
like most people thinks it works.
Let us examine some typical scenarios.
Suppose the outside radiation level was -
a. 5R
b. 10 R
c. 20 R
d. 40 R
e. 100 R
f. 500 R
g. 1000 R
h. 5000 R
Lets examine strategies
for each of these cases.
My goal is to make sure
no male in our shelter
over the age of 18
gets exposed to more than 200R.
I would prefer, even then,
that the cumulative exposure
was in smaller increments over several days.
Anyway,
this is one advantage
of a large group shelter
is that you have a number of personnel
to share the exposure.
So let us say that we send out a
guard / doorkeeper / triage team
to stand at the front door -
the property gate
or a barricade at the top of the
dead end road that leads to our property.
The question is -
what happens to them
and to the people that they greet
in each of the above cases?
Case A.
5R - The team can go out for twelve hours
and will get a dose of 60R.
We could use the same Team
three days in a row
and would only need two teams
for 24 hour coverage.
Over a period of two weeks
we would need ten teams -
maybe twenty people
and no one would get sick.
The people coming from the outside, however,
would theoretically be exposed to
120R per day -
and in five days
would reach the level of 100% fatality
A simple model like this -
of course has many problems.
It is assuming that the radiation is constant
where in actuality it decays -
(or increases with the arrival of new fallout)
and the refugees may be getting
some sheltering inside a building somewhere
that reduces the radiation by half -
or they may be sleeping on the ground
say in sleeping bags -
and that would greatly increase
their rate of exposure.
However, we will stick
with this simple model
because it demonstrates some principles.
Case B.
10R. In this instance
the radiation figure is double
and we would wish to perhaps cut
the guards exposure to 5 hours per time.
It is inconvenient to make
guards exposure time very short -
because each time you bring them back
into the shelter clean areas -
you have to decontaminate them.
At 10R or 240R per day
the people from outside the shelter
will of course get the 100% fatality dose
in less than three days.
Case C.
20R per hour.
Two or three hour exposures
for the guards
and less than two days for those from outside
to get the 100% fatality dose.
Maybe a week if they are in a house -
especially if they go
to the basement.
Case D.
40R per hour.
An hour or two safe outside for the guards -
but about a half a day
for those walking up from outside
to reach 50% fatality dose -
meaning that 50% of them would die
even if we took them into the shelter,
if they had only been exposed for 12 hours.
That is for healthy males.
Older frailer people and children -
go sooner.
Well - don't go sooner.
It can still take them days to die -
but it just means that
they were more assuredly done in -
at that time.
Case E.
100R.
Best to rotate the guards hourly.
If we are actually getting traffic.
Maybe staying down in the shelter
and just going up to answer the door.
(Sorry - we are full).
No need to tell people
that if they have been out there
for six hours -
there is a 100% probability
they are going to be dead in a couple of weeks -
whether we bring them into the shelter or not.
Even if we had room -
the reason we wouldn't want to bring them in -
is that while radiation is not contagious -
the rest of the diseases that it lets loose
in their bodies - are.
(Radiation kills the cells that fight disease).
Cases F and G -
500R to 1000R
may sound ridiculous -
but I sent you a few months ago
a US government estimate of
1200R in 'low' radiation areas
in case of a nuclear war.
Case H.
5000R.
Yep, it possible and higher.
The closer one is downwind to a nuke -
the higher the radiation will be.
The good news is -
that it decays very rapidly -
so a shelter will still protect you.
Further away -
say a day from where the explosion took place -
(that is to say it takes the fallout -
a day to arrive) -
well then -
it will take it a week to decay ten fold
from what it arrives at.
We call that the 7/10 rule.
In other words -
if it arrives a day later at 100R -
it will take it a week to get down to 10R.
Most radiation decays away -
a couple of weeks after the last nuke explodes -
and then we are into a different subject
of comparing areas of safety -
decontamination -
recovery response and so forth.
---------
My purpose here -
has been four-fold.
1. To show the importance of shelter.
2. To show that it is a pressing
short-term need.
3. To show that one can appear to be
very casual about being outside the shelter
for short time periods
at particular radiation levels.
4. But - even at relatively low
radiation levels - under 50R -
it is going to probably be
very quiet outside in a few weeks
as most of the people will have died off.
People will be almost as scarce as hen's teeth.
Well -
not really -
because I expect about 20% to survive -
but they may not be too healthy and happy.
-----------
Today, I was also going to discuss
DU (Depleted Uranium)
and while I have room -
I think that I will put it off
to another time -
because I feel that I am overloading you.
Some people like getting this sort of detail -
and others feel it just confuses them.
----------
The conventional wisdom -
among those who follow these things -
is that Israel will not attack Iran
until after the elections the end of this month.
Also -
it appears the Iranian Oil Bourse
is delayed.
Isn't going to happen March 20th.
Same thing happened last year.
Some knowledgeable people think
that it isn't that important anyway.
Personally I feel it is.
A sense of urgency
always propels me forward
to get more done.
Have hopefully made headway
on some projects here today -
but will need time to complete them.
One is never finished.
There is always more one can do to prepare.
With me it is a lifestyle -
but most people would rather ignore the threat
altogether.
There is surely a happy balance.
But that is different for everyone.
I just happen to be way out there on this -
but I do surely wish many times
that I had more people to assist me.
Anyway -
each of us are supposed to do
what we think is God's calling for us -
and perhaps it is His Will - (I hope)
that there be at least one far out old guy
to send you all this info.
Or not.
Peace and love,
Bruce
[b]DawnSayer(at)webpal(dot)org[/b]
webpal.org
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