In Part 1, covered the two levels of radiation safety - the current industrial/medical/peacetime levels and the wartime level (after the bomb). Don't let any radiation guru try to con you into following the peacetime numbers. If the balloon goes up or an islamist blows up Manhatten, the radiation levels will be off the peacetime scales. We aren't talking about a nuclear generating station leak, we are talking about the radiactive remains of buildings, people, cars, dogs, grass, dirt etc. blowing in the wind. I can guarantee you that nothing blowing in the wind is going to be less than 2mr in any one hour.
The trick is to get yourself in the less than 25R group at best or 100R group at the worst. Since all care units will be massively overloaded, you don't want a broken arm, the sniffles, or radiation sickness much more than the barf stage. There won't be anybody there to take care of you. At this point, I don't think you will be vary concerned with cancer or two-headed babies. Your one aim in life is to survive. And survive you can!
Fallout radiation is not quite like the industrial or powerplant radiation you are "used" to. Fallout radiation IS made up of vaporized people, dogs, cats, cars, buildings, trees, lakes sidewalks, and schools. The average tenth-life for fallout is about 7 hours. In plain English, it will DECADE every seven hours after the radiation peak. e.g. If the radiation has peaked by midnight, by 7:00am it is one tenth what it was. By 2:00pm it will be 1/100th what it was at midnight. By 9:00 that night it will be 1/1000 what it was at midnight. Further, if the radiation was 1000R at midnight, it will be about 1R at nine the following evening. You can last a lot longer at 1R than at 1000R. This is where TIME, DISTANCE AND SHIELDING come in. Can you dig a hole six feet deep. Can you cover it with a board and lay in it for one or two days? You can if you want to live. It isn't that hard.
Even if you can't dig a hole, you can at least get to the center most point of your house.That should be at least 12' - 16' beneath the roof and probably a minimum of 10' from any outside wall. Tape up all your windows and doors and place your most massive flueniture between yourself and the outside. One radiation safety trick is to use distance to reduce the radiation intensity. The radiation intensity varies inversely with the square of the distande from the source. That means if you can move 10 feet from a radiation wall or ceiling, you can reduce the intensity by 100. If I had a wooden floor house, I would cut a hole in the center and start digging. You can always repair the hole in the floor (unless you are dead).
Continued
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