How to survive a Nuclear Explosion and Fallout

A Nuclear Attack is more of a threat today than ever before. It is important to know what to do in the event of a nuclear strike.

When I was young in the 1960's, my family had a crawlspace in the basement back behind the water heater. There were no windows. This was our bomb shelter in the basement, and it was stocked with a 2 week supply of food and water. We were a family of 6.

We all knew that in the event of a disaster, we were all supposed to get home and into that crawlspace and stay there. We ran the drill several times. My dad had built a door for the crawlspace to keep us safe inside.

Here are the tips from my family that were to help us survive in the event of a nuclear attack.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• underground shelter
• clean water for at least 2 weeks )1 gal per day per person)
• canned food for at least 2 weeks
• flashlights, batteries OR kerosene lamps, kerosene, matches
• radio with batteries, or with hand crank
• household bleach
• tool kit
• fresh clothing for all

1. FIND UNDERGROUND SHELTER - Your underground shelter should be covered by at least 1 meter or more of earth for the best protection from radiation fallout. Ideally, you should have a place scoped out for the family to congregate in the event of a disaster. Have your shelter stocked with books, games, cards - anything to keep you occupied as you will be in this place for a couple of weeks at the minimum.
   
   Second best structures are: caves or tunnels covered by more than 1 meter of earth; storm or storage cellars; basements; abandoned buildings made of stone.

2. WATER - Keep 3 days supply of bottled water on hand at all times (1 gallon per person per day). Other sources of water in your house are: water in the drainpipes: hot water heater. Also water from underground springs and wells that already undergo a natural filtration system. Snow that you collect from at least a meter below the surface is also a safe source of water.
   
   To purify water, filter it through a coffee filter, cheese cloth or paper towel. This will remove any particles. Then you can boil it, or use household bleach (16 drops from an eyedropper per gallon of water) to sterilize it. After adding bleach, let the water stand at least 30 minutes before drinking.

3. FOOD - Anything in your fridge will be useless after 3-4 hours. Fruits and veggies can last for a few days. After that, you will have to have on hand a supply of canned, packaged, dried foods with a long shelf life.
   
   Remember that you will be in this shelter for at least 2 weeks, so you should be prepared with enough food to go around. There are a lot of places to buy food with a long shelf life for disasters such as this.
   
   All eggs are safe to eat, even if they are laid during a period of fallout, so maybe having a chicken or two is a good thing.

4. REMOVING CONTAMINATION IF EXPOSED TO FALLOUT - Immediately remove contaminated clothes and wash your body with soap and water - even if the water is contaminated. If no water is available, at least wipe off all your exposed skin with either a clean cloth or uncontaminated dirt ) from at least a meter below the surface). Put on fresh clothes and DON'T bring the contaminated clothes into the shelter with you.

Tips & Warnings

• Supposing you survive the nuclear explosion itself, you will need to get into some kind of underground shelter and stay there for at least a week, but as long as you can.
• Limit your outdoor exposure to no more than 30 minutes per day, but only if this is really necessary. The less surface exposure the better.
• Do not catch and eat wild animals. Even if they appear to be free of radiation poisoning, this might not be the case. If you are absolutely starving, and you catch a wild rabbit, don't eat the meat next to the bones. The bones and skeleton will contain 90% of the absorbed radiation.

[dangercide]

on 2/5/2009 Very nice article