Radiation Monitoring

[Joe]

Above levels are milli Sv so a number like 1.4 mSv is actually 1400 micro Sv. I suspect most people will be concerned with how high a CT scan is.
In a nuclear event you could be breathing in radioactive dust hence why a mask and having your body covered is very important.

[Mortblanc]

Seems like a great waste of time and effort to me. Purposeful worrying and obsession over things you can do absolutely nothing about.

Worry about a nuke power plant? Were you not around during that Chernobyl thing? One second after the instant it happens is too late to do anything about it.

Your cities in GB are so closely packed that if they drop bombs on the big 5 cities and your naval bases no one in the lower half of the island will escape the initial blasts, and those that miraculously do will die of radiation sickness within 3 weeks. Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edenborough will take care of the northern half.

Monitoring present radiation levels is like depending on the idiot lights in your vehicle to monitor your engine. All they do is tell you you just fried your motor.

[Joe]

MB it’s not a bad idea to have some form of radiation detection equipment and to have experience using it. You have two possible events, one is a nuclear power plant in a meltdown/ leak situation and I think most people would like some form of indication in order to navigate to a safe area.
The other is a nuclear war which is significantly more complex and in fairness the Uk will lose a significantly high proportion of it’s population in an exchange.
Do you just do nothing?
The advantage we have at the moment is technology is available for around £100 or so which gives you the capability to avoid hot spots. Is that not a better option than sitting back and slowly dying?
Even a nuclear attack is survivable if you can be out with the primary blast area and have the capability to clear the country without having to use existing infrastructure and transportation.

[bigpaul]

why monitor something you can do nothing about?
the best way to avoid a nuclear power station meltdown is not to live anywhere near one, thats why we moved from Somerset all those years ago.
as for nuclear war I doubt anywhere in the UK is safe from that, if you dont die from the initial blast you will die of radiation poisoning wherever you are and thats not a nice way to go.

[Joe]

BP most people would move to an area out with the fall out zone. For example in my area I have a plant apx 50 miles away, if it went into meltdown I would redeploy to a safe area. Now prepping for this is not nuts, this particular power plant was closed down for safety reasons several years ago when it’s graphite core showed signs of large cracks, now it’s back in operation because someone has erased and rewritten the tolerance limits. You really couldn’t make this up, governments are reckless.

[Mortblanc]

Joe, are you seriously worried that a nuke plant in GB is going to melt down and no one is going to tell you about it so you can refugee out?

So what if your gear tells you there is a sudden spike in radiation? It does not tell you where it came from or what caused it, or which direction to run. You might well be running directly into the path of residual fallout.

And how far do you plan to run? The exclusion zone of Chernobyl covers an area the size of Kent.

I suggest that you relocate preemptively to Finland. They are required to provide bunker space to everyone and all homes, and new construction for many decades now, must include a bunker and be maintained with supplies.

When your Giger counter twitches you can just go downstairs.

[bigpaul]

if a power plant goes down its already too late to bug out.

[Joe]

MB you would be looking at wind direction as the source is upwind, if you’re moving to avoid you would be moving cross wind. If you can monitor levels at least you can avoid the extreme hot spots.
If you look at Fukushima people didn’t hang around, they redeployed to a different area. A lot moved that quick they even left their pets.
An interesting observation from Fukushima was the queues and the fuel stations, some people got held up due to having no fuel.

At the end of the day you don’t need to prep for this event, it’s personally choice. I base my prepping on what I consider real events, things that have happened in history because history does repeat itself.

[Mortblanc]

At Fukushima the population was evacuated due to threat of tsunami well before the meltdown occurred.

Your meters do not tell you where the crosswind, up wind or down wind are. They just tell you that you are fried.

You might well run smack into the very hot spot you are trying to avoid. You run from what you think is a power station meltdown only to discover what spiked your meter was the roll over of a truck carrying nuke waste on the motorway you just entered trying to bug out.

[Joe]

MB in order to gauge wind direction you can simply check the direction the wind is coming from or use a weather site such as xc weather, the fall out is not magic, it’s coming from an upwind source.
In Fukushima the population was initially evacuated to high ground for the tsunami and further evacuated out with the area for the nuclear incident.
So going back to your initial point, yes it’s possible to drive into an area with higher fallout levels but if you have monitoring equipment it gives you a chance to avoid it. That’s the main reason workers in nuclear plants use monitoring/dosage meters.
The ideal situation is to do what BP and yourself suggested and move to a safer area but that’s not always possible and with the Uk nuclear expansion a plant will be appearing near everyone pretty soon.