How would you protect your animals from nuclear fallout?

[WallyG74]

I live a couple miles from a Navy Base, so I’ll never feel a thing. I can go on in and live in eternity with my Heavenly Father! All the chickens will be burnt to a crisp and I won’t care.

 

[azurbanclucker]

I live a couple miles from a Navy Base, so I’ll never feel a thing. I can go on in and live in eternity with my Heavenly Father! All the chickens will be burnt to a crisp and I won’t care.

So you're saying they'd be extra crispy?

 

[MarGyver7]

What are these pills you're referencing?

I live in the next county over from a nuclear power plant, likely <30 miles. Realistically, if the rods can't stay cool, I'm probably toast and not worried about my chickens or other critters.

Potassium Iodide (KI) ...most common brand names are IO-SAT and Thyro-safe....if an event happens (and you only take them IF an event happens) they flood your thyroid with iodine so that the radioactive iodine from an event will have no room to enter into the thyroid and thus cause cancer. Taking fruit pectin (I have apple pectin supplements in capsule form) will bind to any radioactive isotopes in your system that has been ingested by food and water, and then is flushed out in waste.

Almost all of the NATO countries have already distributed KI to their citizens (except for US )

 

[WallyG74]

So you're saying they'd be extra crispy?

Yes, Colonel, yes indeed.

 

[WallyG74]

Speaking of my friend

Potassium Iodide (KI) ...most common brand names are IO-SAT and Thyro-safe....if an event happens (and you only take them IF an event happens) they flood your thyroid with iodine so that the radioactive iodine from an event will have no room to enter into the thyroid and thus cause cancer. Taking fruit pectin (I have apple pectin supplements in capsule form) will bind to any radioactive isotopes in your system that has been ingested by food and water, and then is flushed out in waste.

Almost all of the NATO countries have already distributed KI to their citizens (except for US )

Even Canada?

 

[Kanekoded]

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!

Oddly, I was just thinking about this the other day... and the best thing I could think to do is shrink-wrap my chicken coop and secure the zippered plastic entry-way of my portable popup greenhouse to the chicken coop door with heavy-duty tape. My coop is about the size of a small barn.... Frankly, I find it disturbing that we even have to think about these kinds of things.

 

[pertnear09]

Looks like Abilene Texas is sitting directly under a red blotch. Lol. Dyess AFB

 

[PicoFarm]

I am aware of the 1/2 life of cesium-137 and Iodine-131, as well as some other radionucleotides (but there are so many more), and I did consider the density of the drafty log barn/coops vs the air tightness of the greenhouse plastic.... my thought process was, if food that is tightly sealed up is supposedly safe to eat for humans after it's packaging has been cleaned of exterior contamination, then perhaps the animals may be better protected under the tight seal of the greenhouse plastic....? ..... as apposed to denser, yet leaky walls? What do you think?

Paper is a sufficient barrier to protect from for alpha particles. Beta doesn't take that much either (aluminum siding, or maybe even some fabrics).

You have to assume there will be gamma radiation with most nuclear explosions and meltdowns. That's the one where you'll want lead (inches thick) or thick concrete walls (feet thick).

The man issue is what are you going to do for water long term, once your bunker stores are used up. Reverse osmosis can run without electricity, but someone is going to have to go outside and dip buckets in the river and carry it to your filtration system (assuming your electric pump is out of commission). In that case, you might need a mule-powered water wagon.

 

[PicoFarm]

Yeah, this thread contains keywords...so you know we are already being "monitored" by big brother. I say it jokingly, but really, it's true.

No doubt.

 

[microchick]

Solar cycle 25 is stronger than predictions so far and we're approaching solar maximum. NASA has published the usual cautions about risks from space weather with some "elevated risk" language as a result, and it's been sensationalized by news outlets and blown up to mean all heck's gonna break loose. Truth is, there is still no possible way to predict flares, CME"s or other space weather. So we have no basis in fact that there will be any kind of geomagnetic storm at all in 2025, let alone one as massive as the Carrington event. It's all fearmongering for clicks.

Curious, when we have significant geomagnetic storms now, does it mess with your gear? Do HAM's use any kind of shielding or does it have any impact on things like signal skipping? Something I've wondered about for a while but I don't know any amateur radio ops to ask.

What we notice is that propagation in general goes down on certain frequencies or disappears completely. Skips aren't as good or are 'weird' meaning short skips will disappear and longer skips may get stronger in areas where we generally don't see them. We have also seen short skips appear where they didn't exist before. My husband has made contact to operators in Australia using just 5 watts of power, which would be an example of a long skip.

During active sun spot activity the bands are burning up with activity. Propagation is at it's best.

We subscribe to space weather through weather.org and if we get a geomagnetic storm alert we make sure our equipment is unplugged and disconnected from our antennas. Our whole home is a Faraday Cage of sorts. Amish built, it is sided with metal and even our ceilings and roof are metal. Equipment is expensive though so better safe than sorry.

Most HAMS we know do have a hand held radio or 2 meter rig that they keep in a metal ammo can in the event of a large scale X or higher rated CME storm. It isn't unusual for a HAM to have a Go Kit that they can grab and take with them in the event of an emergency.

What HAMS are starting to notice though is that propagation also drops before an earthquake. There is evidently some sort of electromagnetic energy being released by the earth prior to a quake.

We are just going into the early part of the solar maximum. We've never experienced the maximum so it should be interesting.