How would you protect your animals from nuclear fallout?

[MarGyver7]

With all that is happening on the world stage, I have been researching and devising a plan to better protect my animals from nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons....why you ask? Well if you haven't been following news you may be asking "why?"....but I do have military intel contacts that have been telling me increasingly more and more (especially for the past year) to be prepared for a nuclear war, as well as chemical, biological, conventional warfare, famine, social unrest, natural disasters, etc.....I am a minister, and student of eschatology, so I have been preparing for all sorts of disasters most of my adult life as I've seen where things have been headed ,so now I have a remote off-grid homestead with some livestock (ducks, chickens, turkeys, pigs, goats, cats and dogs) and I am focusing on protecting them better as well....I do this not out of fear, (being a woman of faith) but because I have been led to, and very blessed to be able to do so.... and the better prepared my family and animals are, the better prepared I am to serve and help others in times of crisis....but lets just talk about protecting the animals during a nuke event from here on out.

We are pretty far from any predicted nuclear strike targets (military bases, major cities, large infrastructure, etc) so the main concern for our animals is irradiated fallout, which could reach us as quickly as 30 minutes after a blast (but likely longer in our area) depend on the wind direction.

We have a small concrete fallout shelter for us, and if need be, plan to take with us a young rooster and 2-3 young hens, but we don't have enough room to accommodate more animals on top of those few birds with their cages and a couple weeks worth of feed.

Our dogs and cats would stay inside of our home with several pre-prepared 5 gallon buckets of food and water which we would open before leaving for our shelter, and we currently have them trained to relieve themselves in a back room with a large section of floor that is covered with kitty litter in the case that we aren't here to let them outside .....It's not ideal but it's the best we can do for them, , and at this point they would be better off than our poultry and livestock who just live in their (not so air tight) coops and log-slab barn.....so it is on those animals that I am now focusing being able to better protect!

Here is my idea..... we have a large greenhouse that is pretty tight and at this moment it is mostly harvested, aside from some cole crops growing along the east side wall. Last year I protected that side by building a mini greenhouse area over those cold tolerant plants and my poultry lived in the rest of the greenhouse over the winter. I wasn't planning on doing that again this year since a ton of weeds came up from them scratching in their feed everywhere, but now I'm thinking that may be the best place for them to spend a week or two in case of a fallout event.....pre-prepared with lots of food and water and a portion sectioned off with cattle panels to put my two goats (so they don't trample the birds). Unfortunately, I don't think I could get my 2 pigs across the property and into the greenhouse quickly enough, and I'd be concerned about them getting at the birds.

During my research I didn't find very much info on this subject but I did locate an archive of a downloadable USDA brochure from the cold war era, titled
"Your livestock can survive fallout from nuclear attack"

Here is the link https://ia902704.us.archive.org/29/items/CAT31305039/CAT31305039.pdf
I hope this helps!
Please post if you have any other info or ideas or think their are faults or missing pieces to my plan.... or just say whatever is on your mind....I'd love to hear from you!

 

[raingarden]

When they drop a nuclear bomb near me the chickens are going to be pretty low on the list of priorities

 

[azurbanclucker]

I've played all the Fallout games. I'm prepared.

 

[Liz Birdlover]

Wow, IF it happens, or when, I hope my place is just snuffed in the blink of an eye. I've already lived through chemo at the brink of death 3x & have cared for several loved ones that passed from cancer. Basically, 1999 to 2018 life...no not life, existence is the right word, Existence revolving around cancer. I don't think I have the oomph left in me to tangle with nuclear fallout, nor the emotional resources to see more loved ones suffer & wither away. Nope, just take me & my flock out, here one second, over the Rainbow Bridge the next.

 

[azurbanclucker]

I’ve seen about the solar flares, and how supposedly a huge one is gonna hit us in 2025, but I hadn’t heard about the mars and Venus life (if it existed) getting wiped out by it

Let's set come context here. (grab a drink, this is going to be many words.)

Mars' atmosphere was most likely stripped away by the solar wind and intense cosmic radiation from the early sun, which was more violent and had a much greater impact on the early solar system than it does today. It has settled down over time, and WE are not under the same kind of threat from it regardless. Earth is lager and has a more robust magnetic field than mars that helps absorb and deflect the solar wind. (thanks semisolid nickel iron core!).

To date, there is no conclusive evidence that life ever existed on Mars. Many tantalizing indicators, but nothing definitive yet. It would be headline news worldwide and you'd KNOW without a doubt the second it was announced.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-maven-reveals-most-of-mars-atmosphere-was-lost-to-space

Venus Is another creature entirely. It HAS an atmosphere, composed mainly of CO2. It COULD have sustained life a couple billion years ago, but approximately 700 million years ago something happened (we don't know what) that reshaped the surface and released massive amounts of CO2, which would have eliminated life as we know it if it existed there. We don't have enough evidence to say it was related to solar activity, we simply do not know due to limited missions to Venus and a lack of data.

https://www.space.com/planet-venus-could-have-supported-life.html


Unlike the solar wind, which is a constant stream of particles and radiation steaming from the sun, solar flares are caused by localized surface activity on the sun ejecting intense x-ray and UV radiation into space. they travel at the speed of light and hit the earth in about 8 minutes (if they're emitting from the side of the sun we can see). They are classified based on their intensity and the potential disruption to satellites and other equipment increases as you increase the intensity. M and X class flares generally are capable of causing disruptions, while A, B, and C class flares don't. We see on average 10 x class flares a year averaged out over the solar activity cycle (11 years).

The Carrington even was a different but closely related creature, a geomagnetic storm. GMS' can be cause by solar flares, and also by Coronal Mass Ejections (CME's). These bursts of highly charged particles move much slower and typically take 1-3 days to hit the earth after they erupt on the sun's surface. They're what causes the auroras to fire up and high powered GMS' can overwhelm the magnetospahere and flood the earth with particles over a period that can last several hours depending on the strength of the storm. Very rarely do we get storms that strong. Kinda recently, in 1989, a geomagnetic storm caused a 9 hour power outage in Quebec. Since then, federal governments have developed regulations that utilities have to follow specifically to mitigate another Carrington event from crippling the power grids.

The internet buzz about a mega flare in 2025 is speculative fiction based on the fact that we will be at solar maximum late 2024 to early 2026. That's when the sun's at it's 11 year peak for sunspot activity and the potential for large CME and geomagnetic storms is the highest for this cycle. There is absolutely no evidence or data to say that "yes, we're going to have a massive Carrington event equivalent Geomagnetic storm in 2025".

You can reliably predict when we're going to have particularly strong geomagnetic storms because the news media will report on the northern or southern lights being active far outside their normal boundaries. There's a direct correlation between them. NOAA/NASA's Space weather prediction center also tracks this activity more precisely and provides updates for inclement space weather. You can find that info here:

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

Generally speaking Solar flare/GMS activity is a bigger problem for orbital and high altitude equipment and not for humans. We get pretty auroras on the ground, spacex loses starlink clusters, and occasionally some older power grid equipment gets smoked from solar radiation. It's a problem, sure, but not for humanity at large. A large event like the Carrington event would be very problematic, and cause much more wide-ranging issues, but it would not be life-ending . It would likely really annoy the power grid but as I mentioned, FERC/NERC/NRC regulations are in place to mitigate that today. We could see localized disruptive activity related to that from utilities not in compliance, but again, not catastrophic.

Cosmic radiation from Gamma Ray bursts is another monster entirely. There is absolutely nothing we as a species can do to protect ourselves from a large GRB today. Sorry. Fortunately, they're incredibly rare to begin with and we'd have to be in the direct path of a sufficient intensity for it to have any impact on the planet. The likelihood of that is extremely low.

https://phys.org/news/2015-01-gamma-ray-dangerous.html

There's a lot of speculative and frankly insane conspiracy vlogs on the internet. I strongly recommend taking them with a grain of salt and finding peer reviewed academic research with actual facts in it to get the real answers. Science doesn't have an opinion, it's just a presentation of the data you can draw your own conclusions from. If someone's steering you toward their opinion, pump the brakes, go learn for yourself and THEN decide if they're legit or full of it.

This concludes my Ted talk. Thanks, you've been a great audience. Please tip your servers.

 

[azurbanclucker]

I think the odds are a LOT higher than many people realize. It is very informative to study what happened at Chernobyl. Most (at least many) people were so ill prepared that they went outside and watched the glow for hours. And still most of them survived (although with much higher rates of cancer years later).

If a big enough bomb hits close enough, then, yes, you would need a bunker to survive or that might not be enough. But even then, just a little further away and just a little preparation makes an immense difference.

I wrote up a long nerdy answer to this, but I will respectfully disagree. The Chernobyl accident and an atomic weapons attack are sufficiently different as to not be really solid basis for comparison in this case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compa...leases#Chernobyl_compared_with_an_atomic_bomb

"The radioactivity released at Chernobyl tended to be more long-lived than that released by a bomb detonation hence it is not possible to draw a simple comparison between the two events. Also, a dose of radiation spread over many years (as is the case with Chernobyl) is much less harmful than the same dose received over a short period"

Long story short, it's complicated. There's a lot of research out there on this topic. We as humans are fascinated by the creative ways we can off ourselves as a species, I guess?

 

[microchick]

I try not to think about it too much. Been living almost 70 years now and still no mushroom clouds on the horizon. The possibility of a nuclear war has been hanging over my head ever since old Doc Weimer slapped me on my butt and proclaimed 'it's a girl!' So far hasn't happened can only hope that I can live out the rest of my life without it happening as it hasn't happened yet.

Does that make sense?

But seriously, we live in the shadow of Whiteman AFB where the B2 bombers are stabled and east of Kansas where there are as many missile silos as there are wheat fields and cows so it's pretty much put your head between your knees and kiss your you know what goodbye should there be a war.

Frankly, I will be amazed if one does happen. Russian leaders are not stupid. Idiots maybe but intelligent ones. They know that anything they lob towards the west is going to come back at them in retaliatory strikes plus the prevailing winds are going to blow any fall out into their own back yards. It's a no win scenario for everyone.

While I consider my chicken flock to be a living food bank if necessary, if it does happen I'll have more to worry about than keeping them alive.

Like keeping my husband and myself along with out house pets safe. Probably the ultimate decision if there was a strike would be to butcher them all and put them in a smoker to preserve their meat. I love my feather babies but when all is said and done it's about survival.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

that’s why dog walkers are so prevalent in big cities.

no chance i’m devoting a whole room to a doggie bathroom.

Then... don't? They don't use it every day every time, it sounds like they use it more so when there isn't another option

 

[tripletfeb]

Great points tripletfeb!

True, if a SATAN 2 hypersonic missile was fired at us from across the pond, most people would only have ~ 4 minute heads up through the Emergency Broadcast System warning that would flash across cell phones and tv, but I've been assured by my friend at the D0D that the US has non-publicly disclosed (but not classified) automated technology that would take out missiles before touching down, which is reassuring to know for the targeted areas, but it will not prevent fallout and missile debris from coming down, nor the affects of the EMP, so I already have faraday cans packed with backup electronics.

The 30 mins to fallout touchdown is the bare minimum time (and 2 weeks is the maximum needed to take cover)....the further away from the blast area, the longer you have to reach shelter, plus we have hazmat suits/respirators to protect us and a geiger counter to let us know when radiation starts to increase. These will also protect us and let us know if it's safe if we want to check on and feed the animals after a couple of days. The bird coop is right next to the greenhouse, and since they lived in it last winter, (and they know it's full of greens and veggies), they always run to the door wanting to get in when I let them out to forage (but I keep it closed now to protect the crops) so it will be an easy task to get them in there swiftly.
Perhaps I could do drills to see how fast we can suit up and get the animals to safety lol, but I think with everything set up ahead of time, we could manage it in under 30 minutes.

The green house and home has large vestibule areas to use as clean rooms so we can decontaminate before entering the area where the animals are. In my first post I mentioned I would install NBC (Nuclear-Biological-Chemical) filters in the green house since I still have a bunch left on the roll of filter fabric after I made the filtration system for our shelter. This filter fabric is what they use on the space shuttles and ISS so I am confident it will keep their intake air clean while allowing ammonia fumes from waste to escape.

As far as food and water goes for the pigs, goats, and birds, I plan to leave more than enough grains, plus many bails of hay, so even if the pigs and goats engorge themselves on the grains all at once, they will have more than enough hay and oat bails to last.

Another concern is not being able to milk my girly goat for days...she will be very uncomfortable but that's better than suffering radiation sickness!

And another question I have is....instead of giving them potassium iodide (that's what people take for max 2 weeks following a nuke event....but have no idea idea if it is safe for animals), I have kelp iodine supplements and apple pectin supplements (pectin binds to radioactive isotopes that are ingested through food and water) and I'm wondering if I should add some to their emergency water stores, and if so, how much per gallon?

You seem pretty dead set on these plans, which is totally fine, you do you. However, like others have mentioned, I think shelf stable foods and things would be more realistic to have. Any eggs or meat from the animals, I don't think I would be comfortable consuming. And I have no idea how you would treat the animals with the iodine, or if they would even need it. Have some pills for yourself, I think everyone should to be honest. I have two nuclear power plants within a few counties of me so I have pills. But those pills are just to prevent thyroid cancer from the fallout

 

[azurbanclucker]

I've played all the Fallout games. I'm prepared.

This is kind of facetious, I know. but the reality is that the western US is so spread out that unless you have a bunker in your yard, the odds of survival in an urban area are low. You'd have to know where to go, have access to it, and be in close enough proximity that you could get there before the booms. That infrastructure just doesn't exist out west. In a lot of places in the West, houses don't even have basements people could shelter in. Casualties would be high, close to 100% in most urban areas where fission devices were deployed.

In my case, if we were able to survive what would be likely multiple direct hits (Nuclear power plant, major international airport, active military base, and converted but still active national guard base all within 30 miles of the house, and multiple other governmental agencies with high target value within 100), and I could get us out of town, we'd be able to survive as long as we could find uncontaminated food and water. I"m just very pessimistic we'd survive.