NEK kit

[worried mother]

Has anyobe thought of a NEK or nuclear emergency kit, i was thinking more of a dirty bomb kit really, anyone any thoughts on the needs for such an event ?

plastic sheeting and duct tape.


can anyone add please ?

[Ian]

Depends on what you mean by a 'dirty bomb'. If you mean a terrorist device dispersing radioactive material by using conventional explosives, the quickest, easiest, safest and surest method of protection would be:

RUN AWAY!

Any direction would do. Upwind best. (know your prevailing winds)

Any longer term arrangements to deal with radiation will be put into place by the emergency services and you will have little say in what happens. (Visit your local fire-station and ask what they would do, they won't bite)

During the attacks on Israel a couple of years back, people sealed themselves into rooms when the air raid sirens sounded because of the perception that poison gas or radioactive dust would be used during the bombardment. Many died through suffocation even when an actual attack did not happen. Some even died because they did not remove the plugs from their gas mask cannisters!

You have my personal guarantee that there will be no aerial attack on the UK in the next twenty years and that should there be one after that you will have years of warning to prepare.

Wikipedia, for once, has a good, information filled and reliable article on dirty bombs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_bomb

US DHS Fact sheet, a bit old now and the UK is not the US, we just don't handle things the same way.

http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/releases/press ... _0085.shtm

[worried mother]

I was meaning a terrorist device, not an air assault by another country

The fact sheet says 2 weeks water would that be enough ?

[Ian]

As I said the leaflet is old and for the US where they do things in a different way. In some US cities there are public shelters and the emergency services are not as well prepared as ours. You could be on your own for a few days until help comes, thus the stored water and shelter materials. For example the majority of fire brigades are volunteer based similar to our 'retained' fire-fighters rather than like our full time specialists. In the UK we do not have mass bomb shelters for these events.

If there was a 'dirty bomb' close to you you would be moved out to alternative accommodation, certainly for the short term, say, a week. So keeping water for such an event is pointless (you might wish to for other reasons though). Every Council in the UK has plans for providing 'rest centres' to evacuate hundreds of people to if required. You sometimes hear on the news that a shelter was opened when people are stranded in snow or if a street is evacuated because a bomb has been found in someone's back garden. These plans are extensive and cover anything you may think of, including cages for peoples pet budgies.

Here is one for Portsmouth: http://www.portsmouth.gov.uk/media/RestCentrePlan.pdf Have a Google around and see if there is one for your location. The plans are not secret except for personal numbers of the people involved and the rest centre locations in case they become 'secondary' targets.

I do however feel it is worth having a grab bag so you may spend some days in a rest centre in comfort. Have no fear, everything will be provided at a rest centre even if you arrive naked, but it will be basic and you might be more comfortable if you have your favourite brand of chocolate and your own underwear for example. A subject for another thread I think.

[luxor]

You have my personal guarantee that there will be no aerial attack on the UK in the next twenty years and that should there be one after that you will have years of warning to prepare.

sorry but i disagree,
there have been several accidental warnings of nuclear attack over the years when the superpowers thought they were under attack.
therefore the risk of being attacked by accident is very real
Launch on Warning of an attack is current policy,
http://www.nucleardarkness.org/solution ... onwarning/
http://www.armscontrol.org/print/1953

The disaster of an accidental nuclear war has not happened yet, in spite of a large number of false warnings of which at least a few have had very dangerous features. This is a credit to the care and alertness of the military in both Russia and the U.S. It should not be taken as reassurance. A single launch of nuclear weapons on a false warning would result in nuclear war, and the end of civilization as we know it, just as surely as a nuclear war started by an actual attack. There would be no chance to review the system to make it safer after one failure of that kind.

Although the Cold War is considered over, both Russia and the United States have chosen to retain their launch-on-warning capabilities, and they are generally believed to be continuing their launch-on-warning policies. This is inexcusably dangerous.

Due to a lack of funds, Russia has to rely on warnings from only one system for much of the time. The Russian satellite fleet is incomplete and there are periods when segments of the country's periphery are not properly monitored (2). Decaying Russian technical systems must increase the likelihood of false warnings, as well as the possibility of overreaction in a confused situation.

The "threat conference"

When warning systems detect a possible attack, there is at most a total of 20 minutes for human operators and commanders to call and conduct what the United States calls a "threat conference." If the warning were to be assessed as a nuclear attack, top U.S. or Russian military commanders (as the case might be) would contact their president to advise him, and the president would have only a few minutes to decide whether to retaliate, and would be under great pressure to do so (3). The threat conferences require, and so far have achieved, the extraordinary standard of perfect accuracy.

The US government has kept information about false warnings secret ("classified") since 1985, and Russia has always kept that information secret, but it is clear that threat conferences have not been rare events. Most of the false warnings have probably been routine and easy to dismiss; (4) others have been serious enough that launch preparations have been started which would have been visible to Russian satellites (5). In January 1995 a Russian false warning resulted from the launch of a rocket from a Norwegian island, for atmospheric research. It is reported that the Russian nuclear weapon forces went on full alert, and President Yeltsin was handed the "nuclear football" activated and ready to order launch. The event was the subject of a report to Congress. There is an article on it by U.S. experts von Hippel, Blair, and Feiveson, in The Scientific American (6).

http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/200 ... arning.htm

this is an interesting read.
20 Mishaps That Might Have Started Accidental Nuclear War
one as late as 1995.
if this had gone off course for any reason and looked like it was entering russian airspace, we might not be here discussing this.

20) January, 1995: Russian False Alarm

On January 25, 1995, the Russian early warning radar's detected an unexpected missile launch near Spitzbergen. The estimated flight time to Moscow was 5 minutes. The Russian President, the Defense Minister and the Chief of Staff were informed. The early warning and the control and command center switched to combat mode. Within 5 minutes, the radar's determined that the missile's impact would be outside the Russian borders.

The missile was Norwegian, and was launched for scientific measurements. ON January 16, Norway had notified 35 countries including Russia that the launch was planned. Information had apparently reached the Russian Defense Ministry, but failed to reach the on-duty personnel of the early warning system.

http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-is ... ar-war.htm

Russian military officers stared wide-eyed at the glowing image on their radar screens: an incoming missile on course to hit Moscow in 15 minutes. They were tracking a rocket about the size of a U.S. submarine-launched Trident that seemed to be streaking in from the Norwegian Sea. There had been no particular tension between Russia and the U.S. on Jan. 25, 1995. Still, the officers knew that if this were a surprise attack, the first American missile to be fired would probably be from a submarine, aimed to detonate over Russia and generate an electromagnetic storm that would fry the country's electronic circuitry. The radar crew flashed a warning of the possible nuclear attack to an underground control center south of Moscow.

Duty officers inside that bunker went by the book, relaying the warning up the line. One buzz went to the three nuclear code briefcases assigned to President Boris Yeltsin and his top two military officials. On each briefcase a small light beside the handle blinked on. The officer carrying Yeltsin's case rushed to the President and flipped it open. On an electronic map inside, they saw a bright dot over the Norwegian Sea. Beneath the map was a row of buttons, offering a menu of attack options on targets in the U.S.

Read more here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 46,00.html

False alarm, nuclear danger

Russia's existing ground-based early-warning radar network, intended to detect incoming missiles, provides incomplete coverage [yellow]. Most of the radars are positioned along the country's periphery, with a few scattered in neighboring countries. From corridors on both the north Atlantic and the Pacific, submarine-based Trident ballistic missiles could fly, undetected, to attack Moscow and Russian missile fields.

Indeed, because of the prolonged effects of Russia's floundering economy, if a similar incident occurred today, Russian leaders would have far less information than they had in 1995. Currently, Russia is totally blind to a Trident attack from the Atlantic and Pacific, and, for all practical purposes, it is equally blind to a Minuteman or MX attack from the continental United States. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia lost an important radar station in Latvia that was designed to warn of nuclear attack from the Atlantic. Plus, there is still an unmonitored corridor of attack from the Pacific. The result is that crucial gaps are evident in Russia's early-warning radar fence

http://russianforces.org/podvig/2000/03 ... nger.shtml

[Ian]

I am sorry Luxor but I must stay with my guarantee.

An accident is not an attack.

It is also extremely difficult to make a nuclear weapon work, even deliberately. It was estimated that half to two thirds of weapons launched in anger would not explode. I met a lad whose job was to disarm unexploded warheads from nuclear bombs (wartime and terrorist) in the New York State area. I asked him how he did it. He said.
"Kick the warhead hard, if it goes off, tough. If not, just start undoing screws as it is safe and nothing will then set it off."

I also don't believe launch on warning is current policy or ever has been for the UK (your references are fairly old and are US based) and I doubt if it is anywhere these days as the consequences are so bad if it was a mistake. We really can't know.

To quote a modernish reference, a 2008 BBC Radio 4 programme titled "The Human Button"
"Although the final orders of the Prime Minister are at his or her discretion, and no fixed options exist, four known options are often presented to prime ministers by military advisers when writing such notes of last resort: (i) Captain ordered to respond to the nuclear attack on the UK by launching submarine's nuclear weapons; (ii) Captain ordered not to respond with nuclear weapons; (iii) Captain ordered to use own judgement whether to return fire with nuclear weapons; (iv) Captain ordered to place himself and ship under the command of Her Majesty's Government of Australia, or alternatively of the President of the United States."

We will never know the true policy, of course, as being uncertain is part of the deterrence.

[luxor]

I am sorry Luxor but I must stay with my guarantee.

An accident is not an attack

sorry Ian, i still dont agree,
if an accident leads to an attack, its still an attack in my opinion.

It is also extremely difficult to make a nuclear weapon work, even deliberately. It was estimated that half to two thirds of weapons launched in anger would not explode.

the yanks dropped two in world war 2,
both went off ok.
if a full exchanged ever happened and only a very small percentage of the nuclear weapons work as planned,
its game over

I also don't believe launch on warning is current policy or ever has been for the UK (your references are fairly old and are US based) and I doubt if it is anywhere these days as the consequences are so bad if it was a mistake. We really can't know.

it doesn't need to be UK policy, in a full exchange between the super powers you can bet we would also be targeted as well.

thats because since 1985 its been classified.

The US government has kept information about false warnings secret ("classified") since 1985, and Russia has always kept that information secret,

the launch on warning is current as of 2011

Russian and US long-range nuclear weapons are still at "Launch on Warning", which makes a purely accidental war possible at any time. Their basic attitude of confrontation and deterrence, carried over from the Cold War, is dangerous but will not easily be changed. It is essential and urgent to rid the world of the additional danger of an accidental nuclear war between them. While "lowering the alert status" of their nuclear weapons would not be consistent with current deterrence theory, it would be relatively easy and quick to eliminate Launch on Warning without losing the alleged stability of deterrence.
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/200 ... arning.htm

[Bladerunner]

Back to the original question.

I take Lugol's iodine as a supplement. Every cell in the human body has iodine in it yet 94% of people are iodine deficient. Included with the bottle are instructions for blocking the damaging effects of recent nuclear fallout. It also has a link to the website of a US Iodine specialist for recommended daily doses.

www.drbrownstein.com/blog.php

I for one will probably stay put. I don't trust the government at the best of times and governments have been know to lie to the masses to get them to relocate or do things they otherwise wouldn't.

If a green army truck stops outside my house and a couple of soldiers knock on the door, I will be out the back door and over the hedge until they bugger off.

Be lucky (and paranoid)

[Technik]

I bought 6 months supply of Iodine for 2 people 2 weeks ago and got my S10 with 4 brand new NBC canisters for anything less serious.
And I too think that if the government says "everything is ok" then you should panic and think what are they trying to hide from you. If they say that there's something wrong and you should prepare yourself then it's already too late because it happened 2 months ago.

And if that same green truck stops at my door I will go round the back, sneak to the front and puncture their tyres and then run

[Bladerunner]

And I would happily lend you the screwdriver to do it.

Be lucky (and rebellious)