Saintman2884
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I think it is time. I've encountered an unusual concentration of shrillness on Twitter, and the news today.
It's time to talk about nuclear fallout. I have the advantage of long experience. I've had a heck of lot of dirty bomb dust dumped on me. I also grew up where the radiation background count of the open environment rivals Iran for having the highest level of background radiation in the world.
I also hold a bachelor degree in Physics. Worked for a time in physics labs, and the instrument shop making instruments for physics experiments.
When I was there I found the plans for an accurate fallout meter one could make in a half hour from a shoe box, a square of cellophane plastic, some aluminum foil, a bit fine monofilament fishing line like what are the leaders in a fish hook pack. Need some glue, tape, need to make a measurement scale about an inch long on a strip of paper. Ect.
Anyway I wanted to test it so I made one and took it to the radiation lab. I found I could get very accurate readings if I used rigorous careful lab methods. Benjamin Franklin, came awfully close to making one of these meters in a glass jar that day he flew his kite in a thunderstorm. He charged a Leyden Jar using the static electricity he collected from a kite during a thunderstorm, that was almost all he needed. He needed a jar without a bottom.
Had that jar not had a bottom he would have been measuring the ionizing radiation in the jar as well as the moisture in the air in that bottle that day. The trick is to make that box and fill part of it with some desiccant, remove the moisture so that only the ionizing radiation is left in the box. I baked a pound of flower in the oven for an hour at 200 degrees, that was my desiccant. I put it in a cloth bag and set that bag in the bottom of that shoebox.
(His kite didn't actually get struck by lightning, he probably tried to avoid that. A long wet string suspended in a windstorm will build up nastic static charge, in the million volt range.)
Here's my theory after a lifetime of living. Radiation is scary as hell because it is invisible, tasteless, sentless, there is no way to tell if one is being poisoned in it.
The thing is radiation is very easy to measure with electronic cheap simple instruments, and one can accurately measure it even when the quantity is so low it isn't important. When the news gives a reading of what the measurements are, it is numbers which tend to be in the one millionth fraction.
So you got a number, a big little exponential number floating around in the news reports and a reporter who is determined to make the story as scary as he can make it be. The shrill factor for these nuclear scary stories is awful.
My shoebox instrument I made could measure when I set a wrist watch in it with illuminated hands. That watch would spill the electric charge off the Leyden foil elements very fast. The spilling of that electric charge over time is measured, and then with calculations a number for the ionizing radiation can be calculated. One needs a calculator and a watch with second hands in their fallout shelter, add them to the other items.
You also need lots of plastic sheeting, enough to cover the walls in one room in your house. Big garbage bags can be cut and then taped together. One also needs lots of rolls of duct tape to tape it together and to the walls with. One needs to do the ceiling and floor as well as walls and windows, and then place cardboard squares on the floor over the plastic to walk on.
One needs about 12 rolls of toilet paper to make air filters with and more cardboard boxes of lots of sizes to use along with duct tape to make an air pump for breathing air.
This isn't where I found the plans for the shoe box meter but Dean Ing produced a copy and explained it well in this book, he also explains those other plastic and filter ideas. I haven't tested his air filter or pump but I think they would work if one was very careful in how they used them. It's also a good time to mention don't entirely depend on duct tape. Go half and half. It's perfect for a lot of it but one also need package packing tape, several rolls of that tape as well. Duct tape won't stick that well to either cardboard or plastic, it's made to stick to metal.
The section in the center of the book has the plans and detailed instructions. The novel which surrounds that section in the center is OK, funny thing he set it in a canyon near the bay area that I drove through all the time when I read his book. I tried to pick out the house but decided that part was in the novel.
One can be ready for Nuclear War if they spend a hundred dollars, (oh maybe two hundred), at the hardware store one afternoon, and they can haul it all home in a car.
I have everything except enough tape. I don't buy tape ahead, it spoils so in the heat we here around here. I have half enough tape. And if I can't get more tape I have a staple gun and lots of staples.
We will shelter in an upstairs bathroom with out a window that is large enough to sleep four as long as we are touching each other as we sleep. Like the Croads sleep, in a family heap.
It might be prudent for me to point out that Franklin didnt actually get his hands dirty and risk electrocution by flying his kite into a thunderstorm, no he convinced one of his cognitively under-developed, "simple-minded" sons to do it for him while he safely watched peaking behind a nearby barn to "observe" the results. Franklin was a genius inventor, philosopher, businessman, diplomat and statesman but he was also incredibly arrogant, egotistical and a hedonistic libertine that many other Founding Fathers disliked him and found him insufferable.
