At least one European country takes the risk of a nuclear war even more seriously: Switzerland may have fewer people than Sweden, but it has built about four times as many nuclear shelters —easily enough for the country’s entire population and then some.
As for US, we have bunkers too, they just aren’t for you and me. There are a number of very well to do companies that have a waiting list stretching around the block because they cannot build bunkers and nuclear fallout shelter for those in US that can afford it fast and big enough(google it) It isn’t a marginal fringe industry.
The United States of America contains many classified bunkers, particularly in relation to continuity of government (COG).In the event of a terrorist attack, nuclear strike, or other catastrophic occurrence, US government leaders congregate in top secret facilities, all of which are strong enough to withstand severe blasts and provide survival necessities for extended periods of time. These exclusive fortified shelters are some of America’s best-kept secrets and strongest lines of protection.
An all-out nuclear war between Russia and the United States, ( or, for that matter between any two or more members of the “nuclear club”), would be the worst catastrophe in history,a tragedy so huge it is difficult to comprehend. Even so, it would be far from the end of human life on earth. The dangers from nuclear weapons have been distorted and exaggerated, for varied reasons. These exaggerations have become demoralizing myths, believed by millions of Americans.
Those who hold exaggerated beliefs about the dangers from nuclear weapons must first be convinced that nuclear war would not inevitably be the end of them and everything worthwhile. Only after they have begun to question the truth of these myths do they become interested, under normal peacetime conditions, in acquiring nuclear war survival skills. Therefore, before giving detailed instructions for making and using survival equipment, I will examine the most harmful of the myths about nuclear war dangers, along with some of the grim facts.
Myth: Fallout radiation from a nuclear war would poison the air and all parts of the environment. It would kill everyone. (This is the demoralizing message of On the Beach and many similar pseudo scientific books and articles.)
° Facts: When a nuclear weapon explodes near enough to the ground for its fireball to touch the ground, it forms a crater.
An all-out nuclear war between Russia and the United States would be the worst catastrophe in history, a tragedy so huge it is difficult to comprehend. Even so, it would be far from the end of human life on earth. The dangers from nuclear weapons have been distorted and exaggerated, for varied reasons. These exaggerations have become demoralizing myths, believed by millions of Americans.
I have found that many people at first see no sense in talking aboutdetails of survival skills. Those who hold exaggerated beliefs about the dangers from nuclear weapons must first be convinced that nuclear war would not inevitably be the end of them and everything worthwhile. Only after they have begun to question the truth of these myths do they become interested, under normal peacetime conditions, in acquiring nuclear war survival skills.Therefore, before giving detailed instructions for making and using survival equipment, I will examine the most harmful of the myths about nuclear war dangers, along with some of the grim facts.
° Myth: Fallout radiation from a nuclear war would poison the air and all parts of the environment. It would kill everyone. (This is the demoralizing message of On the Beach and many similar pseudo-scientific books and articles.)
° Facts:When a nuclear weapon explodes near enough to the ground for its fireball to touch the ground, it forms a crater.
Many thousands of tons of earth from the crater of a large explosion are pulverized into trillions of particles. These particles are contaminated by radioactive atoms produced by the nuclear explosion.Thousands of tons of the particles are carried up into a mushroom-shaped cloud,miles above the earth. These radioactive particles then fall out of the mushroom cloud, or out of the dispersing cloud of particles blown by the winds thus becoming fallout.
Each contaminated particle continuously gives off invisible radiation, much like a tiny X-ray machine while in the mushroom cloud, while descending, and after having fallen to earth. The descending radioactive particles are carried by the winds like the sand and dust particles of a miles-thick sandstorm cloud except that they usually are blown at lower speeds and in many areas the particles are so far apart that no cloud is seen.The largest, heaviest fallout particles reach the ground first, in locations close to the explosion. Many smaller particles are carried by the winds for tens to thousands of miles before falling to earth. At any one place where fallout from a single explosion is being deposited on the ground in concentrations high enough to require the use of shelters, deposition will be completed within a few hours.
The smallest fallout particles those tiny enough to be inhaled into a person’s lungs are invisible to the naked eye. These tiny particles would fall so slowly from the four-mile or greater heights to which they would be injected by currently deployed Soviet warheads that most would remain airborne for weeks to years before reaching the ground. By that time their extremely wide dispersal and radioactive decay would make them much less dangerous. Only where such tiny particles are promptly brought to earth by rain- outs or snow-outs in scattered “hot spots,” and later dried and blown about by the winds, would these invisible particles constitute along-term and relatively minor post-attack danger.
The air in properly designed fallout shelters, even those without air filters, is free of radioactive particles and safe to breathe except in a few’ rare environments.
At a typical location where a given amount of fallout from an explosion is deposited later than 1 hour after the explosion, the highest dose rate and the total dose received at that location are less than at a location where the same amount of fallout is deposited 1 hour after the explosion. The longer fallout particles have been airborne before reaching the ground, the less dangerous is their radiation.
Within two weeks after an attack the occupants of most shelters could safely stop using them, or could work outside the shelters for an increasing number of hours each day. Exceptions would be in areas of extremely heavy fallout such as might occur downwind from important targets attacked with many weapons, especially missile sites and very large cities.
Myth: Fallout radiation penetrates everything; there is no escaping its deadly effects.
Facts: Some gamma radiation from fallout will penetrate the shielding materials of even an excellent shelter and reach its occupants. However, the radiation dose that the occupants of an excellent shelter would receive while inside this shelter can be reduced to a dose smaller than the average American receives during his lifetime from X rays and other radiation exposures normal in America today. The design features of such a shelter include the use of a sufficient thickness of earth or other heavy shielding material. Gamma rays are like X rays, but more penetrating. The following illustration shows how rapidly gamma rays are reduced in number (but not in their ability to penetrate) by layers of packed earth. Each of the layers shown is one halving-thickness of packed earth- about 3.6 inches. A halving- thickness is the thickness of a material which reduces by half the dose of radiation that passes through it.
The actual paths of gamma rays passing through shielding materials are much more complicated, due to scattering, etc.,but when averaged out, the effectiveness of a halving-thickness of any material is approximately as shown.The denser a substance, the better it serves for shielding material. Thus, a halving-thickness of concrete is only about 2.4 inches.
Myth: A heavy nuclear attack would set practically everything on fire, causing “firestorms” in cities that would exhaust the oxygen in the air. All shelter occupants would be killed by the intense heat.
Facts: On a clear day, thermal pulses (heat radiation that travels at the speed of light) from an air burst can set fire to easily ignitable materials (such as window curtains,upholstery, dry newspaper, and dry grass) over about as large an area as is damaged by the blast. It can cause second-degree skin burns to exposed people who are as far as ten miles from a one-megaton (1 MT) explosion. (A 1-MTnuclear explosion is one that produces the same amount of energy as does one million tons of TNT.) If the weather is very clear and dry, the area of fire danger could be considerably larger. On a cloudy or smoggy day, however,particles in the air would absorb and scatter much of the heat radiation, and the area endangered by heat radiation from the fireball would be less than the area of severe blast damage.
Myth: In the worst-hit parts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki where all buildings were demolished, everyone was killed by blast,radiation, or fire.
Facts: In Nagasaki,some people survived uninjured who were far inside tunnel shelters built for conventional air raids and located as close as one-third mile from ground zero(the point directly below the explosion). This was true even though these long,large shelters lacked blast doors and were deep inside the zone within which all buildings were destroyed. (People far inside long, large, open shelters are better protected than are those inside small, open shelters.)
Myth: Because some modern H-bombs are over 1000times as powerful as the A-bomb that destroyed most of Hiroshima, these H-bombs are 1000 times as deadly and destructive.
Facts: A nuclear weapon 1000 times as powerful as the one that blasted Hiroshima, if exploded under comparable conditions,produces equally serious blast damage to wood-frame houses over an area up to about 130 times as large, not 1000 times as large.
Myth: A Russian nuclear attack on the United States would completely destroy all American cities.
Facts: As long as Soviet leaders are rational they will continue to give first priority to knocking out our weapons and other military assets that can damage Russia and kill Russians. To explode enough nuclear weapons of any size to completely destroy American cities would be an irrational waste of warheads. The Soviets can make much better use of most of the warheads that would be required to completely destroy American cities; the majority of those warheads probably already are targeted to knock out our retaliatory missiles by being surface burst or near-surface burst on their hardened silos, located far from most cities and densely populated areas.
Unfortunately, many militarily significant targets – including naval vessels in port and port facilities, bombers and fighters on the ground,air base and airport facilities that can be used by bombers, Army installations, and key defense factories – are in or close to American cities.In the event of an all-out Soviet attack, most of these ‘”soft”targets would be destroyed by air bursts. Air bursting a given weapon subjects about twice as large an area to blast effects severe enough to destroy”soft” targets as does surface bursting the same weapon. Fortunately for Americans living outside blast and fire areas, air bursts produce only very tiny particles. Most of these extremely small radioactive particles remain airborne for so long that their radioactive decay and wide dispersal before reaching the ground make them much less life- endangering than the promptly deposited larger fallout particles from surface and near-surface bursts.However, if you are a survival minded American you should prepare to survive heavy fallout wherever you are. Unpredictable winds may bring fallout from unexpected directions. Or your area may be in a “hot spot” of life-endangering fallout caused by a rain-out or snow-out of both small and tiny particles from distant explosions. Or the enemy may use surface or near-surface bursts in your part of the country to crater long runways or otherwise disrupt U.S. retaliatory actions by producing heavy local fallout.
Today few if any of Russia’s largest intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are armed with a 20-megaton warhead. A huge Russian ICBM, theSS-18, typically carries 10 warheads each having a yield of 500 kilotons, each programmed to hit a separate target.
Myth: So much food and water will be poisoned by fallout that people will starve and die even in fallout areas where there is enough food and water.
Facts: If the fallout particles do not become mixed with the parts of food that are eaten, no harm is done. Food and water in dust-tight containers are not contaminated by fallout radiation. Peeling fruitsand vegetables removes essentially all fallout, as does removing the uppermost several inches of stored grain onto which fallout particles have fallen. Water from many sources — such as deep wells and covered reservoirs, tanks, and containers — would not be contaminated. Even water containing dissolved radioactive elements and compounds can be made safe for drinking by simply filtering it through earth, as described later in this blog series.
Myth: Most of the unborn children and grandchildren of people who have been exposed to radiation from nuclear explosions will be genetically damaged will be malformed, delayed victims of nuclear war.
Facts: The authoritative study by the National Academy of Sciences, A Thirty Year Study of the Survivors qf Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was published in 1977. It concludes that the incidence of abnormalities is no higher among children later conceived by parents who were exposed to radiation during the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki than is the incidence of abnormalities among Japanese children born to unexposed parents.
This is not to say that there would be no genetic damage, nor that some fetuses subjected to large radiation doses would not be damaged. But the overwhelming evidence does show that the exaggerated fears of radiation damage to future generations are not supported by scientific findings.
So, the facts show that unless you are unlucky enough to be at “ground zero” it is highly probable that you can and would survive a nuclear attack if you had proper knowledge and took proper precautions beforehand. It is important to realize that YOU are your own first-responder.
In the next few days I will be blogging the information you need, (assuming that we don’t experience Armageddon in the meantime). On the off-chance that you don’t wish to wait, I can recommend downloading the FEMA NuclearExplosion Information Sheet
