How would you protect your animals from nuclear fallout?

[DickMidnight]

I never said it was the whole room....but think of the alternative if you had to leave your dogs alone for an extended period of time.... I'd rather scoop up kitty litter in one area than shampoo the carpets all over the house.

yeah i get the reasoning behind it.

my dogs are sometimes alone for up to 8 hours a day if both my wife and i have to go in to our offices. mostly she works from home, but it happens a few times a month.

they stay in our mud room off of the garage, which is also where they sleep at night. they’ve got their water in there and the floor is polished concrete, so any accidents are easy to mop up. they can usually do 8 hours without issue, though.

any longer than 8 hours, and we have someone stop in and take them for a walk.

i guess i’ve just never heard of someone using an actual room in their house for that.

 

[saysfaa]

...
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, ...

The pigs may get stomach aches but would probably be ok. The goats are ruminants; if they gorge on grain, they are likely to bloat. Unless it is a very mild caae (unlikely if it it much more grain than they are used to getting), that is an emergency.

Otherwise, from several posts, it looks like you may be missing two things - one is that it you don't have to be all or nothing. Instead of working toward how long can the animals go with no care - work toward how can things be set up so you can take care of the other things in the shortest time possible to allow more time for the animals.

And the same for the other things you need to do in the first trips out to budget more time for them. The half life of most of the fall out is surprisingly short; it isn't long before it is relatively safe to make short trips out, then progressively longer trips. Especially with precautions like covering up and decontaminating.

The other thing that you probably know but I don't see it much here, is the third leg of sheltering. You have distance in the form of keeping the particles away from you (at least filtered out of your clean space). And you have considered time. The third leg is mass. If you add mass to your greenhouse skin you can budget more time in there sooner. Even if you add mass to part of the walls, it gains some margin to work with.

 

[MarGyver7]

The pigs may get stomach aches but would probably be ok. The goats are ruminants; if they gorge on grain, they are likely to bloat. Unless it is a very mild caae (unlikely if it it much more grain than they are used to getting), that is an emergency.

Otherwise, from several posts, it looks like you may be missing two things - one is that it you don't have to be all or nothing. Instead of working toward how long can the animals go with no care - work toward how can things be set up so you can take care of the other things in the shortest time possible to allow more time for the animals.

And the same for the other things you need to do in the first trips out to budget more time for them. The half life of most of the fall out is surprisingly short; it isn't long before it is relatively safe to make short trips out, then progressively longer trips. Especially with precautions like covering up and decontaminating.

The other thing that you probably know but I don't see it much here, is the third leg of sheltering. You have distance in the form of keeping the particles away from you (at least filtered out of your clean space). And you have considered time. The third leg is mass. If you add mass to your greenhouse skin you can budget more time in there sooner. Even if you add mass to part of the walls, it gains some margin to work with.

Thanks for the input @saysfaa!

I didn't think of bloat...SMH.....the goats and pigs are crazy about cracked corn and so they would likely over eat. I guess I should initially only give them a bit more than a normal day's worth and just let them them free feed on the hay until I can safely check on them.

Perhaps a small dose of baking soda in their water would reduce the risk of bloat also, but should I even consider giving it to them prophylactically or could that maybe mess up their gut?

Anyway, the goats graze several hours a day and always have free access to hay in the barn without problems, and the pigs have had free access to a large round bale of hay in their area and have never suffered consequences from overeating it....I don't think they eat much at a time unless they get really hungry.

The dogs are pretty good about just eating their food until they are full (human food would be a different story though.... they'd eat until they'd puke and then eat the puke but we won't give them that opportunity lol). The cats ....well they are cats, and cry for fresh dry food even when the bowl is half food, until they get hungry enough to finish it all.

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?

I don't know if I should pile up dirt onto the plastic walls because of the wieght...it may be ok temporarily but I wouldn't have time to do that in a pinch. Any suggestions of a lighter material I could use for creating more distance between the interior and outside?

I have some old ugly carpet rolls but that would still be pretty heavy....or perhaps pine mulch....gotta a couple big piles just sitting there....

Welp, I gotta get outside now and get some work done but will check in later....thanks again for everyone's help!

 

[Liz Birdlover]

Let me add, if you're in an area that could survive, it is wise to try & be as prepared as you could be. Being just due west, not far from Wash DC & right down the road from Dover AFB, my place would be snuffed out in a nanosecond.

Nuclear fallout is one thing, but not many are talking about what a serious, massive solar flare or CME could do, & the Sun is a very active place, no one has to push any button, it happens, we just haven't been in the direct pathway of a colossal event...yet.

This event was like the Sun shooting a tiny spit ball, that mostly ricochet off earth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event

Theorists claim Venus & Mars magnetic fields & atmospheres were done in by extreme solar activity, that they once had life.
After mapping cosmic radiation levels at various depths on Mars, researchers have concluded that over time, any life within the first several meters of the planet's surface would be killed by lethal doses of cosmic radiation.

https://www.apexmagnets.com/news-how-tos/the-magnetic-fields-of-our-solar-system/

Sorry don't mean to go off topic, ADD at work again

 

[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.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

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.

Yeah. My State has a very surprising amount of public knowledge missle bunkers (probably because hardly anyone lives here) that my dad in particular is convinced we're gonna be a strike zone when/if the US is targeted

 

[saysfaa]

... better protected under the tight seal of the greenhouse plastic....? ..... as apposed to denser, yet leaky walls? What do you think?

...Any suggestions of a lighter material I could use for creating more distance between the interior and outside?

I have some old ugly carpet rolls but that would still be pretty heavy....or perhaps pine mulch....

I don't know which I'd choose between the barn and the greenhouse, especially without seeing either of them.

I'm not going to read all four pages looking for whether you said what kind of barn it is. If it is a bank barn, I would see how feasible it would be to make it less leaky - fill the loft with hay, lay a few tiers of square bales preferably. Or a layer of wood sheathing. Possibly lay some plastic but that would ruin the wood if done for long because it doesn't let the wood breath. I would go for keeping most of the wind out rather than airtight. The ground of the bank and the stone (I assume it has a stone foundation?) are massive enough to be very good protection. Even cement block is pretty good.

If the barn is above ground and has thin walls, I'd look at the greenhouse first. I wouldn't pile dirt against the walls unless it is designed for that. Ideally, a wallipini would be a first choice - it is a good design for its greenhouse function, too. Otherwise, among the things at the top of the list would be cement block walls. They don't have to touch the greenhouse walls and can be dry laid so you can move them. Or barrels of water. Inside or outside the greenhouse. Cement blacks and water are about the best way to get cheap, available, heavy, and handleable all at the same time. Or two walls with dirt between them.

Pine isn't heavy so you would need a LOT of it to get as much protection as a cement block. But some protection is better than none.

Adding something lightweight won't help much, other than if the radioactive particles would otherwise enter the space.

I had the numbers at one time - radiation halving thicknesses or radiation shielding equivalents or something like that is the search term.... I found a chart with a few materials on it here (I know nothing about the site other than it had this info - it looks about right but I didn't check other sources to confirm it is right)
a half inch of lead equals and inch of steel equals 2 1/2 inches of concrete equals 3 inches of packed dirt or sand equals 7 inches of water equals 11 inches of wood (I assume that is pine; osage orange or ironwood would be need quite a bit less).

The numbers for distance (in open air) is twice the distance from the source of the radiation equals one quarter the amount of radiation from that source.

 

[saysfaa]

...the odds of survival in an urban area are low. ...

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.

 

[saysfaa]

One thing about the first level or so of planning for disasters, is that the plans are mostly the same regardless of what the disaster is.

Having a place to go decided on (which room is most sheltered, even if you don't have a basement) and a place away from home decided on; three days of food and water, sensible shoes and clothes, id and meds, list of phone numbers, a flashlight, a small game or toy for kids, first aid kit.

Edit to add. Three days was the nearly universal recommendation by community disaster training, fema, common sense, and such. With the state of the supply chain and of sources, it is probably more days now. Or should have been for quite some time now.

 

[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?