nuclear war

[Pete Grey]

Do your research wikipedia is useful. Here are some facts.

First is the flash and high energy gamma radiation, you need some solid material between you, 2 foot of concrete or 3 foot of solid packed earth is good and will help protect you from the heat flash and blast wave, obviously distance from ground zero is important and wether it’s a surface or air blast. Concrete or packed earth will also protect from fallout.

There are two basic types of fallout, fallout from an air burst where the fire ball does not touch the ground is a small amount of fine particles of radioactive isotopes with long half-lives, from the bomb itself. These can take months or years to settle and spread around the earth.

Fallout from a surface detonation or where the fire ball touches the ground produce a vast amount of irradiated sand and dust with short half-lives. From the detonation fallout starts to fall in 30-40 minutes after the blast and could take up to 24 hours to fall. The further you are from the blast the longer it,takes to reach you.

This fallout has a short half life and follows what is known as the seven/ten rule (a good approximation).

For example if when the fallout has landed radiation level is 1000R/hr after 7 hours it will be down to 100R/hr. After 49 hours (2 days) it will be 10R/hr. After 14 days it will be 1R/hr. After 3 months it would be 0.1R/ hr.

If that doesn’t sound much remember radiation is an accumulated dose, for humans 400R is fatal to half the population, 600R is fatal to ALL of the population.