GQ GMC Geiger-Muller counter.
GQElectronicsLLC.com
I'm a fan of low level GM tube based instruments, as they have their essential place in assuring the decontamination of both survivors and in later confirming the safety of food and water, etc..
However, we tell people if you can only afford one meter, or one meter at first, it always needs to be, instead, an high-range instrument, or they might tragically never get a chance to employ their low range GM based instrument later.
I say that because the low range GM based instruments usually have an upper level instrument range of detection well below anything immediately life threatening. Most are saturated out at, and then can't read, detect or display, anything higher than, something less than 1 R/hr (or nearly 0.01 Sieverts).
What this means in a practical sense during a nuclear crisis is that that low-range GM instrument can't tell you then if you just walked into an area of 2 R/hr exposure rate (that you could stay in or be moving through for 10 hours safely) or if it's 50 R/hr, the latter of which is getting up into the lethal dose range inside of 10 hours, if you didn't know to either not enter into, or the need to of exited out from, much sooner.
In the Nuclear War Survival Skills book, the author details;
"Instruments that measure only milliroentgen-range dose rates are sold for war use by some companies. Since most Americans have no idea what size of radiation doses would incapacitate or kill them, and do not even know that a milliroentgen is 1/1000 of a roentgen, some people buy instruments that are capable of measuring maximum dose rates of only one roentgen or less per hour. For example, an American company advertised and sold for $370.00 in 1986 its dose rate meter that has a maximum range of "0-1000 mR/hr." It is the only dose rate meter in that company's listing of "Radiation Detection Products for the General Public", described as.... , applicable for use in case of nuclear war." The highest dose rate that it can measure, one roentgen per hour, is far too low to be of much use in a nuclear war."
The NukAlert is a high-range instrument that will readily detect from 100 mR/hr to 50 R/hr,
in 10 calibrated ranges, assuring then you'd have the detection capability to have avoided the worst of the exposures present.
Panic Early, Beat the Rush!
- Shane
