The Q&A portion of the Wild Bunch Dispatch will be held on this page from 6:00pm to 7:30pm (Mountain Time) today. Any questions you might have on the 72nd issue (How To Prepare For A Nuclear Event – Just In Case) please post here and I will try to answer them to the best of my ability. Some ground rules:
1) Please stick to the subject matter of the newsletter.
2) This is not a debate forum. If you have some concerns I’m happy to address them, but I can’t get into a long circular debate while other people have questions.
3) If I do not respond to your question immediately, don’t freak out. I’ll get to it, don’t worry.
4) Try to keep to one or two questions each time you write a post. Please refrain from essay-long multi-question posts. It is much appreciated.
I will begin discussion at exactly 6:00pm Mountain time. Looking forward to your questions and thoughts on the Wild Bunch Issue #72. If you missed out on this discussion you can still subscribe for the next issue and participate. For more information on how to subscribe, visit the link HERE.
Regards,
Brandon Smith, Founder of Alt-Market.us
Discussion is now open on Issue #72.
I completely agree with your consistent assessment over the years that there will be no global thermonuclear war that wipes out continents and, instead, there will most likely be limited nuclear strikes on a select few cities. With that background I have two questions:
(1) How far away would one need to be in order to not worry about the fallout from a nuclear blast? Example: if an eastern seaboard USA city was hit with a nuclear bomb, would the Mountain West USA need to worry about fallout?
(2) Do you think it is possible the elitists would fake a nuclear strike? I can see the headlines now about ‘Russian backed Patriots nuke Washington D.C. in horrendous act of terrorism’ or some such nonsense.
And, RE: #1, would that take out the electrical grid nationwide… if so, for how long?
An aerial strike would take out at least part of the national grid. If a LPT (Large Power Transformer) is hit then a large part of the country would be without power until it’s replaced and that could take a year or more.
1) It depends on the type of weapon and the size of the blast. There are numerous factors that affect the radioactivity and spread. The general rule is this: If you are within 25 miles of ground zero (I would recommend 50 miles) and downwind you must go into a sheltered area sealed from outside air as much as possible and do it IMMEDIATELY. Fallout can travel for hundreds of miles and smaller particles travel around the world. The biggest threat is when fallout is concentrated into rainfall. You just have to be ready to track weather patterns and check often with your Geiger counter.
2) I definitely think they would use a false flag nuke attack and blame it on patriots or the Russians. It’s impossible to actually “fake” a nuke attack, but I’m guessing that’s not what you meant.
Byron,
The answer is wholly dependent on weather, wind direction…etc. Fallout is exactly that: it is material that has been radiologically contaminated falling from the upper atmosphere. This is why a ground burst is worse for after-effects and an air burst is more effective for immediate effect on the target. Imagine throwing ashes into the air on a windy day. Almost no contamination on the upwind side but downwind contamination can persist for thousands of miles. The safest bet is to stay inside for a minimum of 3 weeks in the proximity or downwind of any nuclear strike and then have the ability to test (Geiger counter). If the area is contaminated, have a decontamination process for coming back into your house….which is too much to get into here. Just imagine that the world is covered in a poisonous talcum powder…how would you keep it out of your house, your person and your food and water?
Iodine supplements are used to ensure that your thyroid is maxxed out and does not absorb the radioactive iodine that may get into your system and create a long list of problems.
After the fact, there are natural foods that chelate these bad elements out of your system: anything in the brassica family, for instance (raw broccoli, kale or cabbage) and cilantro is the ONLY herb that chelate heavy metals from your system.
Prussian Blue can also be used but you have to get a prescription from a doctor to get the medicinal version.
The way I see it, even in the event of a full-blown nuclear holocaust it would hardly make a dent to life on Earth. And the aftermath would be less like Mad Max or the Fallout games and more like the collapse of the Roman Empire with the survivors forming into tribes and creating new nation-states out of the ashes with rural towns becoming the new major cities while the old cities will likely remain in ruins.
I believe the sociological impact (societal breakdown) would do more damage in the long run than even a major exchange. In the US, the general moral degradation would wreak havoc on any societal cohesion we might be tempted to believe we have now.
Exactly. Life adapts, it doesn’t end, even after a nuclear event. The moderately prepared will survive, the unprepared likely will not.
I believe that, despite what anthropologists would have you believe, the spear chucking, loin cloth wearing societal state is the condition to which we fall when societies collapse, now the start of civilization. That is why many tribes exist on the lands of amazing ruins where empires once reigned.
Nukes wouldn’t cause that kind of destruction. Maybe a pandemic with a massive death rate of 90% or more. Something on the scale of the obliteration of the Incas by smallpox.
Do you have any recommendations of specific radiation meters? I note you indicated around $200 was the starting point for something decent.
I don’t have a particular brand recommendation. Anything which has the Geiger counter AND the dosimeter in one unit and is specifically for a radiation emergency. There are survey units and then there are emergency units. Stick with the emergency units.
You recommended three weeks of potassium iodide but the iosat pills come in two week packs. Which would be the correct length of time to take the 130mg/day dose?
Any recommendations for Geiger counters? There’s quite a plethora of brands on the market and it’s hard to discern which would be better in the lower price range.
Thanks!
A 130mg dose is used once a day for an adult, and cut in half for a child.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi is the only person to have been officially recognized by the government of Japan as surviving both nuke explosions in WWII.
With that example in mind, it seems that lack of electricity & people freaking out could possibly be the greatest dangers. If electricity was out for a year, do you suppose gas station owners would find a way to manually pump out what gasoline they had left in their underground tanks & sell or barter it? Or, would they abandon them?
Would any semi-trucks even try to refill them from what’s left in larger regional distribution storage tanks?
Just trying to think how I could do without electricity from the grid for a year, wondering how long I’d be able to run a gasoline/propane generator for, sporadically. I would pressure can the freezer contents on a propane stove (or possibly over a campfire) the sump pumps OTH, what a liability they are.
They would use a manual pump or a gas powered pump (as long as it’s self contained – sparks are bad) to remove the gas from the underground tanks. It only takes a half gallon of gas to run one for hours. Unless the disaster was immediate and made people completely leave the area, the gas would probably be emptied before you ever got to it. Solar and a battery bank with four 100AH 12V batteries would serve most of your electrical needs. Heating would have to be done with something else.
Discussion is now closed on Issue #72. Thanks to all those subscribers who participated. If you missed out on this issue or would like to subscribe to The Wild Bunch Dispatch to receive future issues, visit the subscription page HERE.