Potassium Iodide or KI is a salt of iodine and is what the body uses to make thyroid hormones.  If you are exposed to radioactive iodine through fallout , your thyroid will quickly absorb it into your thyroid and cause serious problems.  By super loading your thyroid with safe iodine via Potassium Iodide you can minimize your bodies absorption of radioactive iodine.  It should be noted that Potassium Iodide is NOT a cure for radiation sickness nor will it prevent other problems that will occur from fallout or radioactive exposure.

Potassium Iodide should be taken when exposure to radioactive iodine is imminent.  Local Government and Health Officials will notify the public if this precaution becomes necessary.

Taking Potassium Iodide does not provide 100% protection against radioactive iodine.  Factors include how soon prior to being exposed that Potassium Iodide was ingested, how fast it can absorb into your blood and the total amount of radioactive iodine the person is exposed to.  In other words, it’s critical to take as soon as notification is issued, that you take it in a liquid form and that you take the proper dose.  And, of course, that you limit your exposure to any kind of fallout as much as possible.

There are two typical forms of Potassium Iodide, liquid and tablet.  The liquid form typically comes as a crystalline powder that you mix with water.  Tablets come in 130 and 65 mg, the 130 mg are typically scored for easy cutting.  The dosages are as follows:

• Adults – 130 mg
• Breastfeeding Women – 130 mg
• Children 3-18 – 65 mg
• Children over 150 lbs – 130 mg
• Infants & Children 0-3 yrs – 32 mg
• Newborn – 16mg

Taking a higher dose of Potassium Iodide or taking more than is recommended does not offer more protection and may cause severe illness or death!

These doses of Potassium Iodide are sufficient for 24 hours.  Typical expectations of exposure risks are that if dosing is needed it will likely only be needed for 24 hours.  However, it is possible that exposure risks will continue for several days.  Local Government, Health Officials and Emergency Managers will notify you as to how long you should be taking it.

Potassium Iodide may be harmful to you if you are allergic to iodine or with certain skin disorders.  There is minimal risk to taking Potassium Iodide unless it is taken for several days, you take more than the recommended dosage or you have a pre-existing thyroid disease.

Summing it up:

In my opinion, the easiest way to figure out how much Potassium Iodide to store is to calculate the maximum adult dosage (not the lower children’s dosage) for each member of your family and multiply it by 7 (1 week).  This is designed to give you an excess to allow for spillage, etc.  So, for my family of 10, I calculate 130 mg X 7 X 10 = 9100 mg or 9.1 grams.  I purchase Potassium Iodide in 40 gram bottles (typically for $10 – $15) and have enough for pretty much my whole neighborhood.

Mossberg 500 JIC

I have to admit that I have been a little obsessed with finding a decent option for burying, sinking or otherwise hiding a firearm and other preps since I first saw Mossberg’s Just In Case line of products a number of years ago.

In case you aren’t familiar with it, the line includes a Mossberg 500 shotgun in a pistol grip configuration, a highly durable waterproof tube and depending on the version a survival kit, multi-tool, etc. For some reason I just fell in love with the idea of being able to tie a concrete block to a tube and toss it into a pond to hide it, or bury it somewhere up in the woods.

I can add my own survival kit and tools instead of relying on what I am sure is cheap Chinese made junk and I already own a number of shotguns and have never been a fan of the 500′s so I was more interested in the tube itself. Unfortunately, Mossberg doesn’t sell the tube by itself nor have I been able to discern the manufacturer.

In the few years since the JIC was introduced I’ve read a fair number of articles, reviews and opinion pieces on the Interwebs concerned with burying firearms or other supplies. People seem to have very differing opinions on all aspects of the subject, ranging from whether it will ever be necessary or even prudent to whether there is any way to successfully store a firearm in the ground for any period of time.

In my mind, the question was answered in January 2008 when an author for Backwoods Home magazine wrote an article describing his 15 year experiment burying and finding a Ruger Mini-14 The author used grease, mylar bags and PVC pipe to successfully bury, store and retrieve a rifle, ammunition and some tools in a wooded area for 15 years.

Some take-aways from this article

• Preparation is key. Be sure to properly prep and seal the contents and container against the elements.
• Find at least three immovable landmarks and measure from them to your burial location.
• Landscapes change over time and memories become distorted. Take non-descript pictures if possible before you dig
• Scout out your location before hand. Be familiar with the area you are planning to use. Know when people are there and when

In addition to PVC piping there are now a number of companies providing burial tubes and other products of a similar nature to preppers. The folk at PolyFarm of Idaho were kind enough to provide us with a sample of one of their products which we will review and test in a follow up post.

Our plan is to review the products offered by PolyFarm; then in a subsequent post start a one month side by side burial test to compare the PolyFarm MonoVault to the cheaper PVC alternative. We will also plan to discuss the methods we used to triangulate the location and some methods to help disguise the location from metal detectors or other detection techniques.

Stay tuned!

When:

March 20th (6pm-10pm) and March 21st (10am-4pm). Friday’s class is all instruction, Saturday’s class is instruction plus the possibility of an in apiary portion.

Where:

1206 South 1680 West, Orem, UT.

Cost:

$20 per person; $30 for couples.

Description of Class:

This class is aimed towards the first year beekeeper who is looking gain basic knowledge about bees, the problems, swarming, honey harvests etc.

What you Should Bring:

pen, paper, questions – on the day of apiary instruction, you are responsible for providing your own safety gear (helmet, veil, gloves, hives tools)

Notes:

Please RSVP for the class no later than March 10th.

How to RSVP:

Contact the UCBA association with your name, phone number, email address and number of the students that will be participating. You are welcome to contact us via email, snail mail or phone.

General Contact Information:

Email:

ut.co.beekeepers@gmail.com

Mailing Address:

Utah County Beekeepers Association, PO Box 743, Pleasant Grove, UT 84062

As we’re previously discussed, if we are subjected to a Nuclear Attack, it is imperative that you have someplace to go, the means to get there and that your destination is well prepared.

Bugging Out

We’ve covered some of this in previous posts, bugging out for a nuke means getting out of the target zone. If you’re in a big city you’re going to hope you have 20 minutes notice to enact your bugout plan. 20 minutes isn’t very much time, your best hope is going to be to put 12 miles between you and the blast before the blast happens. Here are the essential components of your bugout plan:

1. Quick access to your vehicle and quick exit from a garage (if you park in one). Make sure you always park as close to the building exits as possible and if you’re in a garage, make sure you park somewhere that gives you the best opportunity to beat the crowd both getting out of the garage and getting out of town.
2. Keep an Emergency Kit in your car. You may need this if you’re forced to take shelter before you get to your planned location. There are several posts on this site that cover BOBs and EDC and what you should have with you.
3. Have a pre-planned route to get out. This should not be the most obvious route – those will likely be crowded by panicked people who have no idea what they’re doing. Plan your route and practice driving it.
4. Have a destination. You’ve got to be going somewhere, the woods won’t save you. Make arrangements with a friend that lives in a rural area that is more than 12 miles out, the further the better. You’ve got to make these arrangements now, not on the phone while your trying to drive like a madman to get there.

When Bug-Out means Shelter-In

If you live in the country or your plan is to head to friends/family in the country your plan is to shelter in place. This means you’ve got to have your preps stored there and things are in order. We’ll go over how the shelter needs to be protected and what needs to be there in a later post. The key thing here is to know where you’re going to go and know that someone is going to be there to welcome you.

Gathering Family

If you have kids or a spouse, you’ve got to think of them as well. Your bugout plan has to include a fast way to pick them up and get gone. This means a rally plan. We’ll discuss family rally plans in a later post but it basically means that your family has figured out the routes they’ll take, where to meet up and how to get there. If you have a spouse and kids at home, they need to pack, go and meet you at a pre-determined destination. If your kids are in a daycare you or your spouse need to be able to call them en route and have a fast way to grab them and go. Kids that are in school need to have a rally point that they should run to by the school so you can do a drive by and pick them up. All this is doable but it has to be planned ahead of time and it has to be able to be executed very quickly.

Other Preps

If there is an adult at home when things get announced, what should they grab in the couple minutes they’ll have before they need to leave? 72 hour kits for sure, kids for sure, clothes on kids and a diaper bag if needed. Should they grab guns, ammo, food, medicine??? This all needs to be planned out now and checklists put together. When executing a bugout plan things are insane and people don’t think clearly. If they can grab a list and start working through it there is a better chance that important things will be grabbed.

Practice Runs

While they won’t be completely realistic, practice runs will help you make your list and help make sure that everyone knows what they’re supposed to do. Your first couple should be planned with everybody and prepared for. This gives you the chance to make and discuss lists before the drill. After the drill it is very important that you go through everything that happened and question whether it went smoothly, whether all steps were critically needed, whether there were things that were left out, etc. You should time each step so you know where your bottlenecks are. The overall plan has one important question to answer – can everything be done in less than 20 minutes? Once you’ve done a couple well planned drills do at least one surprise drill. Hopefully this will go smoothly. Do at least one drill a year, more if possible. Make sure everyone knows their part and how to execute it.

Reality

The reality of the situation is that if you live in the city you probably aren’t going to be able to make a successful bug-out plan. If that is the case and your serious about surviving this, move. Move out to a rural area where you have a good chance of being safe. It will have a lot more benefits than merely surviving an un-likely Nuclear War.

If you are in the country already then you don’t need a big bug-out plan, you can shelter in your home. In an upcoming post, we’ll go over sheltering in place and what requirements there are for it.

In the interest of preparedness and to avoid losing a closet (and therefore a bedroom per building code) I started looking into the option of installing a wood burning stove in the basement.

Our first floor has an Alpine gas stove in a large river rock enclosure.  The spot directly below this in the basement would be an ideal location to install an wood burning stove as I would be able to use all the dead space in the first floor enclosure for the flu.  A little poking around confirmed that there is indeed sufficient space to install a flu pipe in this area.

Armed with this information, I began researching stoves.  After a short while I thought “Can I cook on a wood stove?”.  A little more research and I found stoves designed for just such a task.  A wood burning cook stove will include a surface for cooking on with pots and an oven for baking.  The oven temperature can be regulated fairly well. To regulate the temperature when cooking with pots on the cook surface, you simply move the pot to either a hotter or cooler part of the cook surface. The area closest to the firebox is hottest, farther away is cooler. In terms of preparedness, this seemed ideal as it kills two birds with one stone, heating AND cooking PLUS baking.

Now that I had zeroed in on wood burning cookstoves, I found that there are a number of models available, several options to consider and some insurance/code issues to consider.

Options:

• Warming area- Usually in a decorative shelf area above the backsplash.  Great location for keeping food warm, making certain foods (bread, cheese, yogurt, etc.)
• Water reservoir- contains a couple gallons of hot water with a spigot.  Great for having constant hot water, for cleaning, etc.
• Hot Water to House option- manifold that allows you to plumb your household water line into the stove.  Allows you to heat your household water with the stove.  Hot showers anytime!
• Coal burning grate- Coal burns hotter than wood.  An additional grate is required for burning coal.  Coal is plentiful and cheap in some areas of the country.  Here in Utah, it is plentiful and some of the cleanest burning on the planet.
• Heat Shield- Required if you don’t want to install the stove over 24 inches away from the wall.
• Fresh Air kit- to bring fresh air into the stove rather than internal air.  Required in some locales.
• UL Listed- Certified by the UnderWriters Laboratory.  REQUIRED in some locales for building code purposes.  REQUIRED for most home owners insurance policies.  VERY IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION.

Properly maintained, a wood burning cookstove will last for generations.  While not easy, they can be removed and packed up for moving to a new house if I were ever to move.  After reviewing the options generally available I decided that if I were making the investment to purchase and install one, I would prefer to get one with all the options except a Coal grate (I can buy or make that anytime if it is something I decide I need) and the Fresh Air kit as it is not required or even recommended in my area.

Given that I now had the list of ideal options I would like in a stove, I began looking at the models available.  One of the best sources I found was Lehmans. Based on the information I found there, I also looked at a number of other stoves and distributors. In general I found that the Lehman’s prices were inline with the industry. In fact, Lehman’s prices often include freight costs where for some other companies, the stove is the same price but freight is additional.

Stove Models:

Below are some of the models I looked at and a little information on each one.  I hope this might help someone else who may be beginning to look at these.

Heartland Sweetheart Stove

Approximately $4,000, $400 for reservoir, $200 for Hot Water option.

Heartland’s smaller stove.  Very pretty, all the options you might want.  Reasonably sized oven and firebox.

Heartland Oval Stove

Approximately $4,800, $400 reservoir, $200 Hot Water option.

Not a ton more than the Sweetheart, but provides heat for a larger area as well as a larger cooking surface.  The same large list of options as the Oval with a larger oven and the largest firebox available.

Both the Heartland stoves ARE UL Listed.

Enterprise King

About $4200, No Hot Water option, NOT UL listed

Beautiful Victorian stove.  Enterprise makes beautiful stoves that look like they will last for many generations.  However, they are NOT UL listed.  As I am planning on installing it in my home, this is a MAJOR consideration for me.

Enterprise Monarch

Approximately $8,000, Hot water option is about $200, NOT UL listed.

While not the ‘King’ model, the Monarch is the KING of wood burning cookstoves with a price to match.  Its Victorian styling is absolutely gorgeous and it seems to offer every option under the sun.  Unfortunately it does NOT appear to be UL listed.

Waterford Stanley

Approximately $5200 for black. Hot Water option $300. $5700 for White or Green

This stove is made in Waterford, Ireland.  This particular model has been produced for over 100 years with some original examples still in daily use!  Definitely a work horse.  Very homey looking.  I wanted something a little more ‘Little House on the Prarie’ looking though.

Pioneer Maid

Approximately $2700, $100 for reservoir

A nice Amish made utilitarian stove.  It would look right at home in a cabin.  Not quite what I was looking for.  Also, UL listing is questionable on this one.  It may be UL listed, but that wasn’t clear from the description I read.

Baker’s Choice

Approximately $1600, Hot Water option $100

Another nice utilitarian model.  This one seems to the best ‘bang for the buck’.   The oven and cook area are a little smaller than what I was hoping for though.  It also wasn’t quite up to heating the area I have in mind either.  Great choice for those on tight a budget and/or with a smaller space to heat.

Conclusion:

After a lot of consideration, I concluded that for my family, the Heartland Oval stove met our needs the best.  Now that I knew what I wanted I contacted their local distributor/installer to get a quote.  A visit to our house to inspect the area and a few days later I had the estimate.  Basically, the stove is roughly $5,000 and installation is about $5,000 including a stone hearth on the floor and on the wall behind the stove, floor to ceiling.

This is roughly what I had calculated on my own so I wasn’t overly shocked at the high price tag.  But, when the power is out for several days how much would a warm house, hot oven and hot showers be worth to you?

I’ve begun putting aside money for this next big prep expenditure. Learning to cook and bake on a tempermental wood cookstove might not be for everyone, but it looks like fun to me.

Determining YOUR Scenario

In our opening post we provided some background information on what can be expected in the event of a Nuclear Attack. While one isolated Nuclear Incident by terrorists or some other force is what we can hope for, as preppers we must prepare for the worst possible scenario, a real WTSHTF type of event. For this discussion that means a full scale Nuclear Attack perpetrated by at least one foreign country against us. This scenario means multiple bombs hitting us, potentially in the hundreds. After all, if they’re gonna throw one at us, why not unleash them all and finish the job? That’s what we have to assume we’re prepping for.

Determining your Proximity

While there is no way to know exactly what the targets are going to be, the next best thing is to rely on expert guesses, intel and other sources of information. While it’s rather dated, this list of Primary, Secondary and Tertiary targets provides an outdated expert guess. Visit that link, read through it, it’s excellent information, then find your state in the list of targets and determine how far you live from a primary, secondary or tertiary target. This is very important, your proximity to the cities on this target list will determine what your scenario is and what you need to be prepping for.

Proximity = Blast Zone

If you live in a Primary Target City, your best option is to be fully prepped to bug out at a minutes notice. Then you’ll need to be vigilant in ensuring that you always have the ability to get notifications – my recommendation is that you subscribe to multiple news alert services that will send you a text message of any alerts that are critical to your area. Look for your local paper or news station’s emergency alert system, if you’re in a big city chances are that you can get a text message alert. Pay attention on a national level too. If one city gets attacked by a foreign country, chances are decent that your city will be attacked too. Set up multiple, redundant notification systems so that you know when it’s time to go.

Next, you’ve got to be diligent in maintaining a bug out prep plan. You should have a kit in your vehicle, you should have rally points arranged with your family, have an evac plan, etc (we’ll go over this more later).

The optimal scenario here is that you get at least 20 minutes notice of an inbound bomb. That gives you a very limited amount of time to get to your car and drive like a mad-man through your pre-planned and tested evac route. You’ll want this to be a less than obvious route because all the sheeple will be herding themselves and their iron horses along the obvious routes. Your primary objective is to put miles between you and where the bomb is going to hit. As you distance yourself, you’ll fall into the following ongoing prep plans.

The other option here is, if you have access to a deep underground, hardened shelter – you might head there. But know in advance that you won’t be the only one trying to get there and it might just not be possible to shelter there. You don’t have time for an Option B here so make dang sure that your Option A is feasible.

Proximity = > 1 mile < 12 miles from Blast Zone

Whether this is where you live or if you’ve bugged out from the blast zone you’re in slightly less danger. Your options are to bug out of the danger zone or get into a decent shelter – this can be a well prepared basement (we’ll go into this later). Just like in the previous scenario, you should set up multiple alert systems so you have the most time possible to get ready – particularly gathering the family to safety. With limited time and only one opportunity, every minute you can buy yourself is critical.

Proximity > 12 miles

Your primary concern is going to be fallout. The closer you live to the blast zone, the less time you’re going to have to get everyone into shelter. Dangerous fallout will be landing within the hour of a detonation. You need a notification system just like the people in the blast zone, you need a family rally plan and you need to have shelter preps taken care of.

Proximity > 50 miles

Don’t think you’re safe – you’re safe from the initial hell, but you’ve now got to survive and deal with the aftermath. Your situation is better because you have a little more time to react, but you can’t be slothful – the quicker you get sheltered the better chance of survival for you and your family. The biggest advantage here is that you don’t have to have a fully stocked shelter – you’ll have time to move things into it and hunker down.

This proximity is where we’ll base the rest of this series on since from here you have the highest potential of survival and you are looking at surviving the fallout situation, which is the primary point of this series.

Planning to Survive Fallout

There are several things you need to consider in order to properly prepare for fallout survival. Most of these will be their own post in this series. Each of these needs careful and serious consideration and decisions made.

1. Your bug-out plan – based on your proximity, what do you need to do?
2. Your family rally plan – getting the entire family to the Bug Out Location – even if that is home.
3. Fallout Shelter – can you do it in your house? Possibly. What are the requirements?
4. Food, Water and Food Preparation – you’ve got up to 3 weeks, you better have a plan to eat and drink.
5. Hygiene and Waste Management – again, 3 weeks is a long time
6. Personal Health – what First Aid preps do you need to make?
7. Entertainment – if you have kids, 3 weeks of being cooped up is going to take a toll
8. Communications – how will you get incoming news?
9. Shelter Defense – what if the depraved neighbors or others come calling?
10. Venturing Out – How do you determine if/when it’s safe to exit the shelter?
11. Home and Neighborhood Defense – You’re out, now how do you stay safe?
12. Venturing Forward – You’ve survived hell, how do you soldier on?

I’ve had some feedback that this is a depressing, doomsday, negative series. My response is – no it’s not. This is a very realistic scenario, it could definitely happen, but if you aren’t prepared then yeah, it’s a depressing, doomsday negative series cause I’m telling you you’re gonna die – which you are. You’re only going to survive this scenario if 1) you are INFORMED and 2) you are PREPARED. If you aren’t doing those, you’re condemning yourself to being shot by someone who is prepared while you are trying to steal their stuff to feed your starving family. As I said before, surviving this is simple, being prepared for it is a little more involved and will pay off. Ignoring it just gets you dead.

Why a series on Nuclear Prep?

Some of you might be up on this stuff but for the most part, when the Cold War went away so did major fear of nukes and as far as I know, a LOT of the information about a potential nuclear attack and how to prep for it and survive it was forgotten. It seems that a lot of people are almost too scared to actually confront the possibility, better to bury their head in the sand and pretend it just won’t happen than to study it and learn how to be prepared for it.

I’ve only recently (in the last 6 months or so) really come to the realization that I was clueless about a nuclear attack and really had no idea what to do in the event of one. In my attempts to learn about it and to come to a clear understanding of what needed to be done to be ready, the most significant thing I learned was that it’s really not that easy to get clear answers on this. The reason for this (i think) is that the preps you should make for a nuclear attack vary greatly depending on your location and situation. Your proximity to a high potential target for example greatly dictates what your response plan should be, what your sheltering plan should be and what your proactive protection preparation should be. All the books on this subject try to cover all these areas and it becomes rather confusing – in fact I may still be confused about some things.

My research has centered around preps based on my proximity to a potential target, which is pretty far since I live out in the country. City slickers will have very different requirements than I do. To the point that, if you live in a major city like Los Angeles, San Francisco, or New York your first prep should be to move cause otherwise you really don’t have a very good chance of survival – you’ll be reliant on getting a maximum amount of warning (20-30 minutes) to provide you with an opportunity to respond and shelter. While I’ll cover some aspects of what to do in other situations, this series will focus mostly on surviving a nuclear attack outside the proximity of the initial blast zone.

Dangers of a Nuclear Attack

I’m sure there was a collective ‘duh’ over the title of this section! The bottom line though is that if you are not in the proximity of the initial blast then the danger to you isn’t the actual explosion – it’s what happens AFTER the explosion.

Initial Blast Zone

What is the ‘initial blast zone’? Most research I’ve seen is based on the expectation that the bomb is a 10-kiloton warhead with a ground burst – meaning it explodes on the ground rather than in the air. Given this scenario, the initial blast zone is a 1 mile radius from where the bomb is detonated. Within this radius you can expect almost total destruction lessening as you get farther from the detonation point. The actual blast will flatten buildings and everything else around. The radiation from the explosion will burn up nearly everything within the zone. The only real chance of survival from deep within this zone is to be in a hardened underground shelter – and you’ll be there for a very long time.

Secondary Effected Zone

This zone extends in about a 12 mile radius from the Initial Detonation. Within this area there will be destruction from thrown material from the Blast Zone and extensive radiation from the detonation. This area will also be thickly covered with radioactive fallout within minutes of the Initial Detonation.
Radiation

Outside of the initial blast zone the Primary Threat is going to be exposure to radiation. This will probably not be enough to kill you right away – the real danger is being exposed to enough radiation that it will slowly kill you over a couple days or weeks. Further out, the danger is being exposed to enough radiation that over time you will develop major cancers that will kill you over several months. To survive this, you must be in a radiation safe shelter when the bomb explodes.

Fallout

Fallout is the danger to the rest of us. That huge mushroom cloud that we all know is associated with a nuclear detonation is the result of the explosion, it is all the dust and debris being blasted up into the air – completely radiated. This fallout, once airborne, can travel long distances before settling to the ground. Think of it as ash from a fire that is blown around in the air. As it settles on the ground it continues to be radioactive, potentially contaminating whatever it has come in contact with. The half-life of this radioactive fallout is anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks. That is, within 3 days to 3 weeks the radiation will have dissipated enough that it is ‘safe’ to venture out for short periods of time. During the fallout danger period, it is imperative that you remain in a fallout-safe shelter and that you take radiation meds (all this will be covered in detail later).

Disruption of Services

It is extremely likely, and should be prepared for, that all typical services will cease to exist in a full-on Nuclear Attack. This means you will likely be without power, water, natural gas, phone, internet, cellular phones – and subsequently you will be without sewer, heat, cooling, and most communication. The likelihood of a restoration of these services within a reasonable amount of time is almost zero. It will be a fairly long time before these services are actually available again. All of this must be taken into consideration while prepping for this scenario.

EMP Blast

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, there is a very high likelihood of an EMP wave destroying anything electronic. An EMP wave is an Electro-Magnetic Pulse, a blast of energy that will not register for humans, we won’t really know it happened, but will completely destroy modern electronic circuits. It can be accomplished by detonation a Nuclear Bomb in the air, less effectively by a ground detonation. This means almost all computers, all vehicles less than 30 years old, all appliances with advanced electronic circuits will be completely disabled. This effectively cuts off any mobility and almost all communications.

The Danger from Others

If you’re able to smartly survive this incident, your initial survival may be hampered by attacks from others who were not informed or prepared. Roving gangs or even just individuals will be stripped to their basic survival mode – willing to do anything to provide for themselves and their families. You will potentially be subject to starving people who have been 3 or 4 days without food, wandering around searching houses looking for food and anything else. These people will also be very sick, allowing themselves to be exposed to radiation and radioactive fallout. Hopefully your sheltering plan allows you to create the illusion of abandonment and emptiness. And hopefully it allows you to set up to take a defensible position against any who break in and attempt to steal what you have – most likely by murdering you. My hope is that after 3 weeks when we re-emerge that most of these types have died – either from killing each other, sickness or starvation.

Overall

What all this means overall is that in the event of a full-scale Nuclear Attack, we will be knocked back to the 1830′s. There won’t be food in stores, we won’t have vehicles to get there anyway, we won’t have power or gas. Transportation and thus Shipping and thus Commerce as we know it will be gone completely. You will not be able to re-stock your supplies, if you don’t have supplies you won’t be able to get them in a civil way. If you are able to survive, many many people will be dead – either from the attack or from radiation poisoning, starvation, deprivation and so on. To survive this scenario is really fairly simple but specific – you must be able to shelter in a location that is stocked with food, water, medicine and weapons and is hardened against radiation.

In the next few posts, we’ll go over several scenarios and how to survive them. We’ll cover how simple it is to shelter against fallout, what medications you’ll need and where to get them. We’ll also go over how to convert your basement to a fallout shelter, what things to think through and what you need to get stored up in order to survive this. Most importantly we’ll go over how to make an action plan with your family in order to get everyone to safety in the event of a Nuclear Attack.

In the meantime, I highly recommend you watch the television series Jericho. While there are some issues with their presentation and portrayal of a Nuclear Event, they do a pretty good job of creating a potentially realistic scenario. There are lots of things you will learn from it and lots of things in the show will get you thinking. That link will take you to the CBS page where you can watch both seasons of Jericho in their entirety for free.

The next post in this series can be found here.