Your Chance To Make A Difference With A World Leader

This is a personalized form letter about fracking for oil and gas in the USA and then selling it to other countries. If you read my posts about fracking you already know that fracking is very hazardous for the people who live in the area. It causes swarms of earthquakes and pollutes ground water as well as waterways and causes many other equally horrible problems that ruin land forever.

Doing fracking for our own energy needs is bad enough, but doing just to get a small amount of money that doesn't begin to make up for the harm it does is much worse.

Since I know how bad fracking is, I had to sign this form computer letter and add my bit as well. They want to do fracking in a pure and beautiful wildlife reserve in Alaska. 

This fracking is even worse than usual because it also risks starting WWIII by provoking Russia. I already posted about that. We escaped that problem last year because of continuous equipment failures on the part of Shell Oil. They will try fracking in our wildlife reserve again this summer. 

I believe anyone who wants a chance to stay alive should also write President Obama. He will probably even think about it a little if people from other countries write to him about this. I hope when you read this, you will also go to this link or type it in your browser and then write to Obama also. Here is a link:
http://action.sierraclub.org/site/R?i=6GIPXitcfE-Nj2ZHEcM3jA 

The text of the form letter and the part I added at the beginning follow:

Hi yet again. I think I should get frequent flier miles for writing you. 

Anyway. This time it is about natural gas. The chuckleheads in charge of AKI resources forgot to even think about Alaskas own gas needs in their rush to get Chinese money. They are in line for having trouble running the power plant in our largest city, Anchorage because of selling gas to China. We need to think of ourselves first. China is doing just fine, thank you. We don't need to wreck our country forever to make a few fast bucks for a very few greedy people. 

Fight the forces of evil greed. Your name will go down in history either way. It lasts longer than anything you could get paid for selling out.

This industry-friendly group only concludes that LNG export is good economics because it focuses on all the money that would flow out of our pockets, going to the natural gas industry and the wealthiest people in our country. The report completely ignores or unfairly dismisses the real costs to hard-working Americans and their communities -- increased costs to heat our homes and businesses; the loss of jobs in industries most affected by LNG exports, including domestic manufacturing; and projected costs associated with environmental destruction due to fracking and healthcare costs for those affected by polluted air and water.

The DOE has a responsibility to conduct a complete environmental and economic assessment of LNG exports to truly determine if it is truly to the benefit of the American public. A full environmental impact statement for LNG exports must be conducted, including the impacts in fracked communities. I deserve to know what my real costs will be to us when sending natural gas overseas. Additionally, rules must be put in place to protect our interests before DOE authorizes any exports.

That was the end of the form letter. I hope you will either write your own letter or use that one to tell President Obama that you would like for him to stop fracking. The more people that tell him, the better chance we have of changing his mind and giving ourselves a chance for a future at all, and maybe even a chance for a better future.

Nuclear Energy Debate Pros And Cons

If you read my blog much you already know that I am not a big fan of nukes, either bombs or nuclear energy. I grew up right next to where they started up a nuclear power plant. I attended the last biology class that had a field trip near the nuclear power plant before they fired up the plant.

The area had a lot of sea life that was unique in all the world. Much of it was only found within a few miles of the nuclear plant. All of the rare sea life is gone now.

Recently I spoke to a man who had a lot of scientific education and who had used some of this in his work careers. He insisted that nuclear power is now safe and that it is the salvation of the human race from the effects of climate change.

I know a lot more about science than the average person, but that isn't necessarily saying much. :-) I am not exactly a rocket scientist. It is possible for me to understand concepts of nuclear physics if the math is left out, however. The nuke fan man razzle dazzled me with physics talk and rattled my convictions that nukes are bad for the survival of the human race. That encouraged me to check out what he had to say. 

I have already given my readers links to TED talks. This is an organization of people who wish to collaborate to help out the progress of the human race by various means. It is just mind candy if you like to learn good new stuff. They tend to stay right out there on the cutting edge of things, too.

Since I first began looking at TED talks, that is where I like to begin learning about things that are new to me or harder for me to understand. That includes physics. Naturally, that is where I went to find out whether nuke fan man was BSing me or not. I don't just take the TED talks as gospel, but they can be a good place to start.

They have this nifty debate that is about the pros and cons of nuclear energy. I found it especially edifying and I expect readers will as well.

Here is the link to this debate:
http://www.ted.com/talks/debate_does_the_world_need_nuclear_energy.html

The guy in the debate who is against nuclear energy is the director of a facility in the UK that does research on nuclear fusion. That is entirely different than the nuclear energy that we are used to.

Nuclear fusion is still a dream for the future. It is the exact opposite process than the nuclear energy that we are used to. Instead of getting energy from breaking apart atoms like current nuclear power plants, or fission, fusion puts atoms together to get nuclear power. 

Nuclear fission, the nuclear power we use now, is very dirty. It makes lots of radioactive waste that can kill people for thousands of years after it makes power for a few years.

Nuclear fusion is not dirty and does not make a lot of waste. The problem with fusion is that people do not know how to do it yet. They don't think we will know enough about it to use it until 2030.

If you watched the debate video, you will notice that the audience was not in agreement about the results. There were a lot more people who changed their minds against nuclear energy after the debate. I believe that means the against side won because of better arguments.

Knowing the guy who was against nuclear power is a rocket scientist, who is working on fusion power, is an extra plus in my mind for the side against nuclear power. I still dislike nuclear power (fission) and think it is harmful to all of us.

Spook Work

Writing this post is optimistic, since I don't have the automatic post thingy on this site working and have to do it manually. Not to mention that my time will be up by the time this should be posted, according to my probable death threat. But I'm pretty optimistic for a pessimist. :-p 

I wrote this before my "time limit" passed. That doesn't necessarily let me off the hook. Writing stuff like this probably isn't helpful in that department either. 

The government people who admitted that the US agreed to kill me and others like me when we were children, said that if I talked about this stuff they would kill me. They will have to get in line, I guess.

Anyway. I am going to talk about some more stuff I am not supposed to talk about. When I worked for the government they had me convinced that I would be helping humanity and doing good things for everybody. I guess you know that even if you are supposed to be smart, you can still act stupid. I did that.

I believed those lying S*Bs. I swallowed a lot. I was so convinced, that I didn't even take any pay for the work I did for them. 

I was already working for the Post Office by the time all of this started. The people that started all the weird stuff were various kinds of spies. The way that I fed myself and paid the rent while I was doing volunteer work for the government was that they let the Post Office keep paying me a regular salary while I did work for the spies.

You are probably wondering what I did for the spies. I still don't entirely know. Part of what I do know, was a kind of spying on people in other countries. It is called remote viewing. I wasn't the only one doing remote viewing, but I was pretty good at it. I think others were usually better, though.

Another thing the spies, (I ended up calling all of them, "spooks"), wanted me to do was think for them. They wanted all sorts of thinking. At that time computers were not as versatile as they are now, so they wanted me to do things a computer could probably do now. 

They said that they needed me to think about things that were difficult to quantify for a computer. They often gave me scenarios and asked me what else would happen. They loaned me out to all sorts of government agencies and corporations that were part of the military industrial complex. 

I was often told about problems somebody was working on. Most of the time I just asked them questions about the problem and the situation. They usually seemed to find this helpful and acted excited about it. I didn't think I was really doing anything.

The spooks were always wanting to use me to kill people or blow things up. I was unenthusiastic about this. I already mentioned one of these times. That was the one about using animals. I will repeat it for the benefit of those who haven't read the other post.

Once the spooks found out that I could "talk" to animals, they wanted to use this ability, to blow things up. They wanted to put bombs on animals and then have me tell the animal to go somewhere so that they could blow something up. 

They did not intend me to let the animals know what was going to happen to them. I was very angry with them for that idea. That idea of the spooks was one of the things that made me decide that I didn't want to work for them any more.

Another big reason for not wanting to work for the spooks any more was because of nuclear weapons. They were taking it for granted that they were going to use nuclear weapons. They were not a deterrent, as was often claimed in public by government people.

I saw a map of North America on a table one time. It had that reddish purple ink that government things are stamped with a lot. The stamps on the map were all over Alaska and Canada. The stamps said, "unoccupied". I knew even then, that people lived right under some of those stamp marks on the map, and all around them.

I did not like the look of that. I was not supposed to see it. Somebody told me later that some of them wanted to kill me because I saw that map. They knew those stamped areas were occupied. 

The reason why all of this mattered is because they were going to use those "unoccupied" areas to blow up incoming missiles. Anybody there would get really nuked.

That's enough for now. 

Cheap Faraday Cage Continued or More About Protecting Your Electronics From EMPs

This post is a continuation of how to make your own Faraday Cage to protect your electronic devices against EMPs. Electro Magnetic Pulses is the long way to say EMPs. 


I posted on this yesterday and did other posts earlier to explain what EMPs are and why they are a problem. The short version of why they are a problem is they will destroy electronics from cell phones to cars and power plants.


I like the idea of using metal cans with metal lids stuffed with shredded paper around the electronic device inside it. It was suggested that one file the top of the  inside of the metal can to make sure it is in firm contact with the metal top of the metal can. There is disagreement among experts as to how important this is.


If I am going to try to keep an electronic device safe from an EMP and some experts think filing the top of a metal can will work better, I'm filing.


It is suggested by some experts that a double layer of both metal and insulation is more effective protection.


A few experts said that none of the above will work unless the electronic device and its Faraday Cage, are under three feet or more, of dirt. 


There is at least one company that sells envelopes of various sizes, that they say are effective Faraday Cages. They demonstrate this effectiveness by placing electronic devices inside microwave ovens, with and without their product surrounding the electronic device. They have videos on youtube to let you see this demonstration.


The company admits that nobody knows if protection from microwaves means protection from EMPs. The electronic devices do seem to be protected from microwaves by the company's products. 


The envelopes are silver, metallic material that the company claims is not mylar and is superior to mylar for Faraday Cage sort of protection of electronics. The envelopes range in size from cell phone size up to very large computer or television size.


I am not certain that the above product will either work, or be worth the money, so I am not giving their name on here. You can do a search for it if you want to know more about them.


One of the major problems with using a Faraday Cage is that they will not work when you are using most things you want in Faraday Cages. You must have a spare electronic device to keep in the Faraday Cage to protect it, or take your chances when you are using it.


The reason a Faraday Cage will not work when you are using it is mostly because an EMP can travel along electrical lines from the outside. Even if you are underground, if you get electricity from above ground, the EMPs can still destroy your electronics. It will get wireless too. If it can get a signal it can pick up an EMP.


Apparently, even if you use a generator that is also underground, the grid in your underground shelter may act as a receiver and zap your electronics by an EMP. If you have plans along these lines, be sure to find a way to vent the generator so you don't asphyxiate yourself from the gases given off by it.


I plan to make my own Faraday Cage. I hope to build an underground home and keep it under three feet or more of dirt, eventually. Meanwhile, I am making a two layer Faraday Cage myself. At the moment it will only contain an emergency radio. The next occupant will probably be a spare cell phone.

Cheap Way To Make Your Own Faraday Cage

EMPs were the subject of previous posts. They were mostly to explain what EMPs are and why they are a problem for you. I will repeat the basic information in this post as well for those who have not read the previous ones.


Electro Magnetic Pulses, or EMPs for short, are one of the side effects of nuclear bombs. They can also be caused by the sun when it does a large solar mass ejection. The latter has wiped out electrical grids in small areas of the earth.


Electronic devices are affected by EMPs. That includes such items as cell phones, televisions, microwaves and cars less than 30 years old. Most electrical grids are so dependent on electronics that areas affected by EMPs will lose their electricity. 


Most experts seem to believe that it will take years to even get electricity going again in affected areas. Many experts think widespread EMPs will knock civilization back to the stone age permanently. 


If you think the last is unlikely, remember that factories run on electricity and the power plants need electronics to make electricity.


Most people can not do much about general EMP problems. We can, however, do things to protect some of our own most important electronic devices. A Faraday Cage is the way for us normal people to do this. There are some very fancy versions of Faraday Cages. I am going to tell you how to make a simple Faraday Cage. 


I can not guarantee you that the Faraday Cage I will tell you about will work. That is partly because nobody really knows what will happen with a really bad, widespread occurrence of EMPs. I will give you the best simple information that I could find.


The basic idea of a Faraday Cage is to surround your electronic device that you want to protect, by both insulation and metal. The electronic device needs insulation from contact with the metal. The metal needs to completely surround the electronic device.


Shredded paper, styrofoam and cardboard are some of the types of insulation that I have seen mentioned. I do not like styrofoam myself because I used to rub balloons on it to make them stick to things and that builds up static electricity. Some of the fancy Faraday Cages have elaborate devices to prevent static electricity.


One of the simplest ways to make a Faraday Cage is to put your electronic device in a cardboard box and cover the outside of the box with aluminum foil. It seems to be fairly important to make sure there are no gaps in either the foil or the insulation.


This post is getting too long, so I will continue this post.

Everyday People's Nuclear Disaster Risk Reduction

According to many authorities that I have read during my research for posts for this blog, I have found a lot that say that say that nuclear war is survivable if you prepare for it.


I have also read a lot that makes me wonder whether I would want to survive a nuclear disaster. This, of course, also makes me wonder whether other people would feel the same way.


Since disaster risk reduction is a very good idea to avoid deaths and damage or  make them less, I think we need to do disaster risk reduction with nuclear war and with nuclear power use as well.


The simplest way to do this with nuclear war is not to have one. How we might achieve this goal is harder. 


Russia and the USA have many more nuclear weapons than any other countries. 

If we leave the decisions about these weapons to our politicians of these countries, we will end up nuking each other in the near future. I do not like this idea, nor do a lot of Americans. I believe the numbers of Americans who do not like this are the vast majority. 


According to some statistics I have read, over half of Russians do not like this either. 


I am not sure what is happening in Russia about this matter, but a lot of Americans are very discouraged about nuclear weapons to the point of being fatalistic about it. Many young Americans have a resigned attitude about it and think they will die before their time.


I think Americans and Russians as well as other nuclear weapons nations like China, France, the UK, India, Pakistan, Israel, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Turkey, and North Korea, should find a way to do disaster risk reduction with nuclear weapons.


I think I can help a little by giving people some information to use for thinking about nuclear disaster risk reduction. Not that many people read my blog now, but the number is going up fast. All I can do is try, so I will.


I do not think nuclear power is a great idea either, so I will provide information for those who agree on this or are willing to think about it.


Below I have included a map of nuclear power in countries of the world. It also includes countries that have nuclear power plants in the planning and building stages.


This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons.

The link below is a world map of uranium deposits.


http://www.wise-uranium.org/img/uresw.gif

I found it interesting that Canada has very large uranium deposits, yet does not  use any nuclear power. They have a great abundance of hydroelectric power, and a small population, so they do not have a need for nuclear power. 


New Zealand got into financial difficulty  with paying for a nuclear power plant that did not do what they intended it to do. I heard a lot about that when I was there and think it deserves a post. The Kiwis handled the matter in a way that I found very impressive.

How You Can Prevent Nuclear War

I am going to tell you how you can stop a nuclear war in this post. It won't be easy, but dying of radiation sickness is probably worse. 


My research for this blog takes me to interesting places on the internet at times. One of those is the F.A.S., Or the Federation of American Scientists. Here is a link to their site.
http://www.fas.org/pubs/tar.html

Here is what they say about themselves:


"The founding mission was to prevent nuclear war. While nuclear security remains a major objective of FAS today, the organization has expanded its critical work at the intersection of applied science and security to include the issues of bio-security, building technologies, conventional arms sales monitoring, energy security, government secrecy, international science partnerships, learning technologies, and terrorism analysis."



I like their ideas, because I would like for life on earth to survive and maybe even human life and some kind of decent civilization. Out of control nuclear proliferation and the use of nuclear weapons, as a tool for countries to maintain or improve their status in the world, are not good ways to do this.


I have not begun to read all of their extensive site, but I am getting the impression that they have missed a big contribution to the likelihood of nuclear war. That is the contribution of the average citizen of countries that have nuclear weapons, and even the average citizen of countries that do not have nuclear weapons. The things that you and I do every day in the process of living our lives can affect whether we have a nuclear war.


One of the reasons that our leaders have nuclear weapons is to keep their jobs. Even fairly dictatorial leaders, like those in the USA, Russia, and the UK, (:-) know that they will not keep their jobs if the people of their country get too dissatisfied with them. We are all used to a certain standard of living that is much better than the rest of the world and we want to keep it. 


One of the things that keeps that standard of living so high is the use of large quantities of fuel. The amount of fuel used in your country goes down, so does your standard of living. I got a good look at that during the Middle East oil crisis. 


Rationing was done by even or odd numbers on license plates. Long lines formed at the pumps all the time. Fights broke out in line if someone cut in. People stole and switched license plates. Our politicians got an earful from the voters. 


Our leaders know they will be out if they don't keep the fuel flowing to us. 


Even if we don't have our own private swimming pool and palatial mansion, we use much more fuel than the rest of the world does. Some of that is pretty scandalous waste, if you consider that it may cause a nuclear war to start. It is time for us to take a look at how we live and how we use resources. 


Are you willing to die for the "right" to drive around in a heavy multiple passenger car every day by yourself? How many lives is it worth to keep the thermostat on your heater up a few degrees? These are only the beginning of the decisions we need to reconsider. 

What You Need To Know About Nuclear Terrorism

 There are many things you can do to help you survive a nuclear terrorist attack. No doubt about it. Nukes are a very discouraging subject, but they should not be.

This is one of those things where what you don't know will harm you. Knowledge on the subject of a nuclear or dirty bomb terrorist attack can save your life. Ignorance will kill you. 


First I have to tell you that you need to be worried enough, to do what you need to do to stay alive, through a dirty bomb or nuke attack. Do not be discouraged, keep reading to the part where it tells you what to do about it.


Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and former Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Clinton, said that he is surprised that we have not already been hit with a dirty bomb by terrorists. He said it is even more surprising that Israel has not experienced one. He went on to express the opinion that this sort of attack pales into insignificance compared to the prospect of a terrorist attack using a nuclear weapon. 


Allison said that the equivalent of a 15 kiloton nuclear bomb would fit inside the van that Timothy McVeigh used in Oklahoma City. He said that a nuke instead of planes in the World Trade Center would have taken out the whole Southern tip of Manhattan. 


Okay. I hate all this myself, but as awful as this all sounds, Allison still thinks we need to know how to prepare for nuclear terrorist attacks because there are effective things we can do about it.


Homeland Security has a succinct 10 page guide on what to do if a nuclear disaster is imminent. They say in the guide that they expect most people to begin reading at the last minute. I certainly hope that my readers are not going to do this. You should know a lot more than the 10 page guide in order to survive and stay healthy, but it is better than nothing. It does give you a better chance.


Here is a link to the PDF of it, I hope you print it out immediately and even read it and get the supplies ready that are suggested. I am posting this stuff every day because I do not want people, including, you, dear reader, to die when you don't need to. Read it. Act on it. Stay alive and healthy.

http://www.ki4u.com/guide.pdf

If you happen to be one of those sensible types that don't want to click links, that is a short enough internet address that you can type it into your browser. Please do so.

Really Basic Nuclear Survival Stuff You Need To Know

Most people would only need two or three days of staying in a radiation fallout shelter before they could come out to get to a safer location, according to some of my research material. If you have to improvise a cramped, crowded shelter, spending 2-3 days there would not be pleasant. The alternative of slow death by radiation poisoning would be considerably less pleasant.


Knowing basic nuclear survival information can save your life and the lives of your loved ones. This is information you are likely to need in the near future. 


The two biggest nuclear powers, Russia and the USA are back to playing chicken with nukes again. Both countries as well as others, all want to strip the North Pole for their own benefit, and are willing to fight over it.


If, by some chance, nobody actually launches nukes in a war or terrorism, we have the power plants. The operators of world power plants are not exactly on top of things, as we recently saw in Japan. It is only a fluke that any other nuclear plant has not blown up by now. That could happen to any of them, at any time.


Now is your chance to get ready for these impending disasters. I have been trying to tell readers for the last several posts that you can survive a nuclear disaster, either an accident, through carelessness of operators or others, or an act of war. All you have to do is learn what to do, like "duck and cover", or how to build a shelter. 




Here is a quote from one of the nuclear preparedness sites: 


"The public, and especially our children, urgently need to be instructed in Civil Defense basics again. Like how most can save themselves by employing the old 'Duck & Cover' tactic, rather than just impulsively rushing to the nearest window to see what that 'big flash' was across town just-in-time to be shredded by the glass imploding inwards from the delayed blast wave. Even in the open, just laying flat, reduces by eight-fold the chances of being hit by debris from that brief, three second, tornado strength blast that, like lightning & thunder, could be delayed arriving anywhere from a fraction of a second to 20 seconds or more after that initial flash.


They need to also know if in the path far downwind of fallout coming, that evacuating perpendicular to that downwind drift of the fallout would be their best strategy. They must also be taught, if they can't evacuate in time, how to shelter-in-place while the radioactive fallout loses 90% of it's lethal intensity in the first seven hours and 99% of it in two days. For those requiring sheltering from fallout, the majority would only need two or three days of full-time hunkering down, not weeks on end, before safely joining the evacuation." 


Simply reading this and other blog posts about nuclear disaster survival, you have greatly improved your chances of surviving a nuclear disaster. If you share this information with your loved ones, you have allowed them to have the same improvement. 


I intend to share more details of nuclear disaster preparedness before I cover tornadoes again. I have been reading about the suffering caused by more than 100 of them hitting one small area of the USA. I feel very sad about that and hope that the people there will do Disaster Risk Reduction so the next round of tornadoes will not hit them as hard as this one did.

Basic Nuclear Shelter Preparedness

An ordinary basement is not a great protection against radiation exposure. The book that has the radiation dose counter that you can make at home tells you to move it around if a basement is your only available shelter after a nuclear blast. It said that corners are usually safer from radiation than the open areas. You should find the safest corner. You can then further fortify that spot into a smaller and safer shelter. 


It suggests that you dig into the floor of the basement and use the dirt from it to make your safe corner even safer. Failing that option, you can pile things, the denser, the better. The object is to make a safer space under the pile of things to block more radiation for those inside it.


It would be a lot better if you prepare a better shelter in your basement ahead of time, however. I hope that you will do this.


One principle that you need to be aware of when making a shelter is that of "halving". By building up layers of radiation blocking materials, you can halve the radiation dose received by those protected by the layers. There is a chart in the book that shows you how this works. I believe 18 inches of densely packed earth provides halving of radiation down to 32. If you are receiving a lot of radiation in your shelter area that is still not acceptable and it would be better to have a much thicker protection around you. You can look at the charts and figure out what you want to do.


More dense than earth materials such as concrete provide radiation halving with a smaller thickness than packed earth does. You can plan your shelter with that and your finances and materials in mind.


The blast of a nuclear explosion causes an impact on everything in its path, including the human body. One source said that winds exceeding 800 miles per hour (1287.5 Km./hr.) come after a nuclear blast from a large bomb. I do not yet know what this is from a nuclear power plant accident, but since I plan to post on that as well, I soon will. Sigh.) 


If you are very close to a nuclear bomb detonation, the concussion from the blast and winds can be enough to kill you. If you are not that close to a nuclear bomb detonation, you can plan to be in a shelter, in a hammock, which will bounce and swing and lessen the impact. The book I gave a link to the day before yesterday had how to plan a hammock that you can use in your shelter. The hammock can be converted to a chair during the day. 


Terrorist nuclear bombs are considered to be quite different than military type ones. Preparedness for them needs to be different because of this. I intend to post about these and about nuclear power plant disaster preparedness. 


I have already posted on many subjects such as basic food and evacuation kits, or "go bags", or "bug out bags". If you are new to my blog, please take the time to learn about such matters. It will do little to keep you alive if you make a shelter to keep you safe from radiation and starve to death.

Nuclear Bomb Explosion Effects With Diagram

If you live very close to a likely nuclear bomb target you do not have much chance of surviving. You can think about it a little and know what a lot of these sort of targets would be. Fortunately, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out. Some examples of must-shoot-targets would be important military bases, like where I grew up during part of my childhood. That was Vandenberg Air Force Base. 


If you live near one of these places, I suggest you either move, or get a bug out location far away and spend as much of your time there as possible. You can hope the nuke hits while you are at your bug out location. If you can not manage a bug out location and you are stuck in a nukeable location, I recommend gallows humor. 


My siblings and I found this very helpful. During the Cuban missile crisis we lived a lot less than a hundred miles from Vandenberg Air Force Base. We were acutely aware that we were toast if missiles started flying. We used to joke about whether we would be parboiled or incinerated if the water evaporated when a missile struck while we were in the bathtub. This struck us as hilarious to the consternation of our, possibly more sane, mother. 


I have found some sites with cute little calculators on them, so you can calculate whether you will be baked, broiled or fried, or should go ahead and build a fallout shelter. I would build one as long as I lived at least 12-15 miles from a nukeable location. I live in Alaska, but am too close to a military base to survive a hit now. Gallows humor it is. I also am making plans to move.


There is even a site that has a round slide rule that you can print out on paper and slide transparencies.  It amounts to a small nuke damage computer. It will help you rapidly calculate all kinds of nuclear effects. You probably know that radiation is the damage that lasts longest and goes the farthest. If you are far enough from a nukeable site, your fallout shelter's main job would be to protect you from radiation. You should make the radiation exposure device that I posted about yesterday and keep one in your shelter and in your bug out bag.


If you live closer to a nukeable location you will need to prepare a shelter that will protect you from other sorts of nuclear blast damages.


Here is a diagram that I drew to give you an idea of what would happen to you and the buildings around you at close distance to ground zero of a nuclear blast.

My apologies for the mess. This was extraordinarily difficult to research because bomb blast effects were described using different sized bombs and air blasts versus ground ones, etc. All of the information is a very rough estimate anyway. The wind direction and weather can even make a big difference in what happens, especially to people.


Bigger bombs will cause more damage, but not the same kind of damage. I gather that thermal damage and the EMP damage are the factors most increased by larger bombs. The rest of the damages are not changed that much.


Here is the link to the little round paper and clear plastic computer you can make to help you calculate your local damages from a nuke blast.


http://www.fourmilab.ch/bombcalc/instructions.html


It is considered an historical document now, so I am not certain that it will work for bigger modern bombs. It is not so far in the past that it will not work at all, however.


The book site I linked to yesterday has instructions to help you build a safe nuclear shelter. There are lots of other sites on the subject as well. I think it is a good idea to look at several before you decide what you want to build. The shelters vary quite a lot. 

You Can Survive A Nuclear Blast

The type and severity of damage from a nuclear disaster depends on how close you are to it and how big the blast is. Other factors matter as well, such as weather, wind direction and type of bomb. Whether the bomb explodes at or near the ground will also greatly affect radiation exposure. The only way to know how much radiation you have received is to have a device that will measure the amount of radiation you have been dosed with. I have included a links to a site where you can download a book that tells you how to make your own simple device to let you know how much radiation you have gotten. 


This information will allow you to make good choices to be able to survive a nuclear disaster. 


FEMA's site says that People will get very sick at 90 Rs. They also say that you will receive that dose when you are 250 miles away from a nuclear strike. (That is assuming a strike by a 1 megaton bomb.)


Other US nuclear preparedness sites say that if you are in even a very basic shelter, you can survive a much closer nuclear strike. 


Below is information about the book that includes how to make your own device (a KLM,) to measure the dose of radiation that you have received.



"Untrained families, guided only by these written instructions and using only low cost materials and tools found in most homes, have been able to make a KFM by working 3 or 4 hours. By studying the operating sections of these instructions for about IV2 hours, average untrained families have been able to success fully use this fallout meter to measure dose rates and to calculate radiation doses received, permissible times of exposure, etc.




The KFM (Kearny Fallout Meter) was developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It is understandable, easily repairable, and as accurate as most civil defense fallout meters. In the United States in 1986 the least expensive commercially available dose-rate meter that is accurate and dependable and that measures high enough dose rates for wartime use is a British instrument that retails for $375. Comparable American instruments retail for over $1000.





A KFM is a simple electroscope-ionization chamber fallout meter with which fallout radiation can be measured accurately.


The long term penalty which would result from a dose of 100 R received within a few weeks is much less than many Americans fear. If 100 average persons received an external dose of 100R during and shortly after a nuclear attack, the studies of the Japanese A-bomb survivors indicate that no more than one of them is likely to die during the following 30 years as a result of this 100R radiation dose. These delayed radiation deaths would be due to leukemia and other cancers. In the desperate crisis period following a major nuclear attack, such a relatively small shortening of life expectancy during the following 30 years should not keep people from starting recovery work to save themselves and their fellow citizens from death due to lack of food and other essentials."

Here is the link to the whole book on preparing for and dealing with nuclear disasters. It includes instructions for making your own radiation meter. It is in PDF and another format. You can download the whole book on condition that you always keep the copyright information on it.
http://www.homelandcivildefense.org/nwss/nwss.pdf

There are 317 pages in this book. I think everyone in the world who is capable of it should read it. We have too many trigger-happy world leaders, and terrorists, with too many bombs to ignore this information safely.


The book has how to build your own shelter along with blast doors and air filters that you can make. If you read this book and use it, you will have a good chance of surviving a nuclear disaster in good health.

What Happens Near A Nuclear Blast?

You probably already know that the area closer to a nuclear bomb when it blows up, the worse the damage will be. Experts have made diagrams and charts telling us things like how far away you need to be to avoid having your eardrums blown out, for example. You have to be very close for that to happen, you may be relieved to know.


The furthest out immediate result is a burn that is equivalent to a bad sunburn. At maximum range for these burns, it will occur only on exposed skin. Something as simple as duck and cover is enough to protect you from this and other hazards. You have only seconds to duck and cover to protect yourself between the flash of the explosion and the other more dangerous effects reaching you. If you realize what the flash is and react immediately, you can avoid a lot of the potential damage to your body.


If nuclear alert sirens are activated while nuclear missiles are still in the air, you will have more time to take good shelter before detonation.


One of the effects of a nuclear weapons detonation in the air is called an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP for short. I have already posted on EMPs earlier. I will explain it again here, with the short version. What you need to know about an EMP is that it will destroy electronics. That includes all vehicles less than 30 years old, most household items that include electronics, and commercial, industrial, and military electronics. That will include most, if not all power plants in the USA.


The USA is not very well prepared for EMPs. Some effort has been made to prepare for them, but those efforts are based on EMPs that are much smaller than modern nuclear weapons will generate. That means the things protected against smaller EMPs, than the one that hits them, will be wiped out anyway.


Areas that are not hit by the EMPs will still have working electronics. That means if you have a radio that is protected from EMPs, you can take it out after the EMP hits your area, and listen to broadcasts from outside your area. After a nuclear disaster, information could be especially crucial to your survival. Having a radio that is protected from EMPs might save your life some day.


The size of the nuclear explosion changes the size of the area affected and how far away you need to be from it to avoid various kinds of injuries. If you wish to have or prepare a shelter for nuclear disaster preparedness the size and closeness to the blast will affect what materials you want in your shelter and how thick it needs to be to protect you.


There are handy charts on the internet that say how thick your shelter walls need to be depending on what kind of damage you wish to shield against and  how close you are to the blast.


We can make educated guesses about the most attractive targets for an enemy nuclear weapon or multiple nuclear weapons for the most attractive targets. 


If you live in a country that has nuclear weapons and is prepared to use them, you probably have enemies of your country that have nuclear weapons also. Most likely the other country or countries that have nuclear weapons to use against your country will pick certain types of targets over others. Examples of these attractive targets are government centers, military and weapons centers, and manufacturing and financial centers. 


If your residence is near one of these type of centers, you can either move, or make yourself a shelter. You could also do my personal favorite, move and make yourself a shelter. 


I intend to post about the damage done at various distances from a nuclear disaster. I plan to provide both diagrams and charts and will give both miles and kilometers. I expect to do an entire post on terrorist detonation of a nuclear weapon. They are different than most other nuclear disasters.

Nuclear Disaster Preparedness

The average citizen of any country can feel powerless about preventing a nuclear disaster. We often forget that there are a lot more of us than there are "important" people with access to a button to launch those nukes and a nice safe shelter. The Occupy people told us that enough. They did not seem to accomplish a lot else, but the idea that we are the 99% of the population is a good thing for us to keep in mind.


The Occupy people did not agree on much except general dissatisfaction. I believe staying alive is something a lot of people can agree on.


The best way to survive a nuclear disaster is to not have one in the first place.  If we start nuclear weapons flying back and forth, most of us will die. Maybe we won't die right away, but nuclear radiation is one of those "gifts" that keeps on giving. They are finding radioactive fish due to the Japanese nuclear accident still. We can expect this to continue.


According to materials I read to research this post, a family in Nagasaki were in a large shelter when the US nuclear bomb detonated there. They were less than two miles from ground zero. They did not even have closed doors on the shelter they were in, but they survived the nuclear blast.


Ordinarily, people who are in normal buildings so close to ground zero are killed immediately. This tells us that nuclear bomb detonations are survivable. I have found a great number of sites about nuclear bomb detonations and accidents. Many of them have information to allow you to learn enough to survive. There is a great deal of information, including whole books about this.


I am working my way through it and plan to share it on this blog. It will require a great many posts to do this. I always hope that readers will be motivated to study the information that I post about on their own. This blog is not set up for in depth coverage of all the topics I post here. If you really want to be prepared thoroughly, you need to know more than I post.


I believe that most of my readers do not or can not do a lot of studying on my post topics, elsewhere. Because of that, I make attempts to cover especially important topics more in depth. I believe that preparedness for surviving a nuclear disaster is especially important. 


One of the reasons that I place so much importance on surviving a nuclear disaster, is that I think almost all, or all of the people in the world will have to deal with the consequences of nuclear disaster. 


We have already experienced Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernova, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima  Daiichi. We can expect more nuclear disasters. Future nuclear disasters will most likely be worse than the aforementioned ones.


I plan to post first about what happens at different distances from Ground Zero of a nuclear blast. This allows one to understand what the hazards are and how to prepare to survive them.

Plan To Survive A Nuclear Disaster

There were movies and teachers telling us what to do to be safe from a nuclear bomb when I lived on Vandenberg Air Force Base. I found one of the movies they showed us. It is here at this link:

http://archive.org/details/DuckandC1951

We used to have Civil Defense Wardens in every neighborhood. They were in charge of nuclear fallout shelters and were supposed to help people in their area get into the shelters in an orderly manner so that they would be safe.

One of my neighbors was a Civil Defense Warden. He had a special helmet, armband, and jacket as a sign of his office. He took his job very seriously and checked the stocks of supplies in his shelter regularly and made sure they were locked up safely for many years. He kept doing this for many years after the government had forgotten all about him, the shelter, and probably the whole program.

The government of the USA no longer does much about protecting citizens from nuclear fallout hazards. I gather the supplies in the old shelters were left to spoil or be stolen or vandalized. Even shelters are no longer maintained or built. They used to be clearly labelled. This is not done now.

The US government still makes nuclear shelters now, but they are not for everyone. They are only for "important" people. If you do not already know where one of these shelters is and have a place in it, then you are on your own to take care of yourself.

Some people do not want to prepare for nuclear attack because they do not consider it to be survivable. If that was the case, there would not be shelters for "important" people. 

I believe that everyone is important and deserves to survive a nuclear attack, or accident. I also believe it is possible for ordinary people to find ways to protect themselves from the effects of a nuclear attack. 

If you are feeling unsure about whether you should bother to work on being prepared for a nuclear disaster, I wish to help you to decide to bother.

If you prepare yourself for a nuclear disaster and you are vaporized and never get to use your preparations, you will have nothing on earth to worry about. Your preparations will not be helpful to you any more. They will not hurt you either.

If you do not prepare for a nuclear disaster and survive anyway, you are going to be in trouble and have an uncomfortable time trying to stay alive. 

I believe it is better to be prepared and not need it, because you are dead, than it is to not prepare and wish you had. I think that you have a choice to prepare for a nuclear disaster and be able to survive it. I hope that you will resolve to take this chance.

 

I intend to do more posts to give you ideas on what preparations that you can make to survive a nuclear disaster.

Is Nuclear War Preparedness Necessary?

My research on claims by various countries on the North Pole area turned up repeated references that mentioned the likelihood of war. It is known that the North Pole has oil and other valuable minerals and suspected that it is full of other valuable minerals that are not even known yet.


Many Americans have mentioned to me that they do not believe nuclear war is likely to happen. This is so far off from what the American government has said about nuclear war, that it is scary. Uninformed citizens are allowing their government to do as it wishes.


During the Bush administration, he announced worldwide that he was going to disregard the nuclear disarmament treaty that the USA had signed with Russia. He expressed the intention to not only stop dismantling nuclear weapons, but to return to making more of them. 


Later on, Bush announced that, "first strike was back on the table". This was in reference to nuclear weapons. First strike means to launch nuclear weapons before anyone else does. In other words he was saying he was willing to start a nuclear war.


President Obama has not taken a first strike off the table. This means he is willing to start a nuclear war.


It is highly unlikely that nobody will shoot back if the USA starts launching nuclear weapons. If any readers missed watching USA missiles being launched to shoot down incoming enemy missiles, they don't work that well. It is not a healthy choice to depend on no missiles landing in the USA.


Part of my childhood was spent on Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. This is one of the two top  missile bases in the USA. The other is Cape Canaveral/Kennedy. 


Many nights' sleep were interrupted by the bass rumble and shaking of missile launches. For quite a while after they began, everyone ran outside to watch. The sky was lit up with an eerie glow as the missile left the launching pad and you could see the arc of the exhaust as it soared into the air.


I believe I was 9 years old when this started. Even then, I wondered how much different it would look if the missile was coming toward us. I knew about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and wondered about what the people there saw.


My school had frequent nuclear drills since we were acknowledged to be a prime enemy target. When sirens went off every one was supposed to dive under their desk, crouch down, and put their hands over the backs of their necks. 


I had already read that Vandenberg was ground zero for enemy missiles. That included the whole base area. That included my school.


I had also read that within a certain radius of ground zero there were 100% fatalities. We were close enough to be vaporized by a nuclear strike. I refused to get under my desk. 


My teacher made the mistake of asking me in front of the class why I did not want to get under my desk. I answered what I had read. Something I had read said that the correct position to assume during a nuclear attack if you were at ground zero was to "bend over and kiss your *ss goodbye". My classmates thought my answer was hilarious because it had the *ss word in it. Most of them did not immediately understand what it meant to their safety.


I am not sure grown up Americans are much more informed on these matters. If we, as a group, do not become better informed, we can kiss our *sses goodbye. Our government is not looking out for our safety.


That means you will have to take care of yourself. I intend to post more about this and how you can take care of yourself. 

USA Nuclear Disaster Waiting To Happen

Disaster preparedness for government agencies and others is increasingly involving more actual disaster prevention. It falls under "mitigation", which in the past has mostly been picking up the pieces afterwards.


It sometimes involves things as simple as encouraging people not to rebuild their homes where they will be destroyed in predictably repeated disasters. One mitigation technique that I particularly liked was building reinforced safety platforms that allow people who can't run fast enough to avoid flooding to go there. They have more time to be gotten to safety by boats or helicopters once they reach the safety platforms.


It can involve getting uncooperative nuclear power plant operators to build in safety margins that are greater than ten feet higher than maximum historical flooding. This has not been done in some USA nuclear power plants yet. The ten foot safety margin is not going to cut it indefinitely, because climate change guarantees that we can expect more water in floods in areas of the country that contain nuclear power plants.


The Japanese have been making serious changes to protect themselves from more disasters. These changes involve all parts of their society working together. This has not been an easy process for them. Their bureaucracies and traditions have been more "set in concrete" than comparable ones in the USA. 


Containment pools in US nuclear power plants typically hold a lot more nuclear waste than the ones that caused the problems in Japan. That means that when we have a disaster with our power plants it will be much worse than the one in Japan.
I would hate for the USA to have a large nuclear disaster before it begins to take commonsense measures to protect itself.