Nuclear Fallout and Food Contamination

[308Mike]

IIRC, water does a really good job of insulating against radiation...

advice i remember from WAY back was that double walled containers with water in the middle of the walls would get rid of almost all penetrating radiation...

HOW MUCH water?

[mekender]

from wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_shelter

* Gaps in the shielding can be blocked using water cans, such as bottles of water. While water only has a density which is one tenth that of lead, it is still able to absorb gamma rays.

i never said it was ideal, but i have seen more than one reference to it working

[Aglifter]

At one time I knew how to answer that -- from what I recall, though, it would be much easier to put up a sufficient amount of lead in a house than water...

[Cybrludite]

Either the Radiac Calculator, ABC-M1A1 is very optimistic about nuclear fallout decay rates, or I was overly pessimistic about the chances of survival in that scenario. Assuming for the sake of simplicity the fallout was from a single detonation and arrived all at once one hour after the explosion, you'd be looking at 40 RADs at 12 hours, and less than 70 at the two week mark. (With a dose rate off the bottom of the chart inside your inner refuge.) In the basement itself, things would be more in line with my prediction with about 200 RADs at the 12 hour mark and close to 350 by two weeks. (The LD50 is currently held to be at 450 RADs.) Outside (assuming the planning factor of a .1 transmission rate into a basement is correct) the LD50 would be reached within 45 minutes, so my thoughts on making a break for it would have been a very, very bad idea indeed.

By the two week point, you're looking at about .95 RAD/Hr outside.