Protecting Yourself from Radioactive Contamination
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I was drawing in my studio last night, listening to the audio recording of Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide, when the section on radioactive zombies (the only thing more dangerous than regular zombies!) got me chuckling, and then got me thinking. How would I protect myself from radioactive contamination (not from the walking dead, necessarily, but from more conventional sources)? In today’s world, this information could prove useful.
Lucky for me, author Mat Stein has already researched and written about surviving radioactive contamination in When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency. Now if only there was a section on surviving zombie attacks…
The following is an excerpt from When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency by Matthew Stein. It has been adapted for the Web.
The easiest and quickest way for radioactive contamination to lodge inside your body is by breathing it in through your lungs, ingesting contaminated food or water, or by absorption through your skin. If you have access to a common painter’s respirator with carbon air-filter canisters, or an army surplus gas mask, these will filter out most of the radioactive particles from the air you breath, and their continuous use is highly recommended during the critical first 48 hours after a nuclear disaster, or if you need to travel through a contaminated zone during your evacuation. Running water through a water filter with a carbon-block cartridge will similarly filter out most radioactive components from drinking water, since they will generally be stuck to larger particles that are removed by the filter. Beware of drinking from contaminated open waters. After the World War II bombing of Hiroshima, thousands of people sought refuge in the local rivers and ponds, unwittingly ingesting large amounts of radioactive material from the contaminated water.
If you can’t find shelter in a suitable basement room, I suggest you find a windowless room in the center of a building that has sheetrock or plaster on the walls (sheetrock is a dense material that is also sealed to block air flow). Try to seal off the door, and any windows, with duct tape and plastic sheeting to minimize air penetration. If you are lucky enough to have a scuba diver’s air tank on hand, you may crack this tank every so often to supply fresh air to the room and to provide “positive pressure,” which ensures that air primarily flows out from your room and prevents contaminated air from flowing in. If you must go outside, I suggest you shake your clothes often, change clothes at the door to your shelter, and leave your contaminated clothing in an entry area so as to minimize contamination of your shelter area. If you have a source for electric power, the use of a HEPA-type portable air filter will continuously sweep radioactive particles out of the air inside your shelter. The filter itself will become progressively more radioactive as it filters particles out of the air, so keep your distance from it.
If the nuclear disaster is from a breached reactor containment vessel, as was the case of the Chernobyl disaster, your best bet is to get out of the downwind contaminated area as soon as possible, since the radioactive contamination level will only increase with time, and radiation poisoning has a cumulative effect. The longer you are in the contaminated area, the more radiation you will receive and the more radioactive material you will ingest or absorb into your body. In the case of a terrorist’s “dirty bomb,” there will probably be little highly radioactive gamma-type radiation, so once the local winds have had a chance to clear out the smoke and dust particles from the detonation, your best bet is to get out of the downwind contaminated area as soon as possible to avoid picking up radioactive contamination that could make you sick in the short term and cause cancer in the long run. Filtering the air you breathe and the water you drink will improve your chances of avoiding ingestion of radioactive particles.
If the threat of a nuclear disaster is keeping you up at night, I suggest you pick up a copy of Cresson Kearny’s classic Nuclear War Survival Skills (see the following references) and Dare to Prepare by Holly Drennan Deyo (see Chapter 3 references). These books provide detailed information on radiation, fallout, shelter design, and preparations for surviving a nuclear disaster.
