Surviving Fukishima

There are a ton of survival threads here on ATS. The majority of which have to do with surviving a crisis like martial law, hyperinflation, the market collapsing and even zombie attacks.

I have major props for those here that have given me valuable info on building a shelter, garden, how to build a bug out bag, etc.....HOWEVER even though the other stated survival threads are helpful, I really haven't seen a thread dedicated to this:

Fukishima reactor #4 cooling pool is damaged beyond repair by an earthquake. Radiation amounts are being released into the air unprecedented in human history. What is the first thing you do to try to survive? Is it pointless? What precautions and preparations can one do in order to survive this inevitable situation?

Because it's not a matter of IF, but WHEN......

I'd appreciate any input from the ATS community.

Yep, Japan is screwed. They are just 2 stupid to admit it.

reply to post by amongus


Other then taking Iodine tablets and perhaps trying to somehow move underground in the southern hemisphere of the globe I have no real suggestions.....get cloths made of lead lol.

Originally posted by wrksstudios
Yep, Japan is screwed. They are just 2 stupid to admit it.

If my above scenario happened, humanity is screwed.......or are we?

Thank you very much for starting this thread, I have also been contemplating this scenario. I am hoping some people with knowledge in the radioactive area can shed some light on possible outfits to look for, maybe respirators fit for a nuclear winter or whatever. And also food, maybe the world will have to resort to MRE's in that case I need to start shopping! Hah.

Originally posted by safetymeeting
Thank you very much for starting this thread, I have also been contemplating this scenario. I am hoping some people with knowledge in the radioactive area can shed some light on possible outfits to look for, maybe respirators fit for a nuclear winter or whatever. And also food, maybe the world will have to resort to MRE's in that case I need to start shopping! Hah.

Exactly....what kind of foods will be best? What to wear? Etc, etc.

I haven't a clue....but I know I'd be prepared for zombie apocalypse lol.

This Fukishima situation is a lot closer to reality than any other survival scenario.

I think ultimately, all bets are off in this case. I do not think there is a plan or could ever really be one. If anything, I suppose you could prepare for every possible natural disaster. I believe worse case would be we would be lucky to just make it from one day to the next.

You know I see a lot of these types of things come up in these forums but all written by people that don't actually live in Japan.
I admit that during the crisis and even now Tepco (the power company) did NOT tell the truth about this but that IS the Japanese way of doing business and trust me I know i've been working for them for 10 years.
I have a contact in a big Oil Company that rung me and told me to get out of Tokyo the day before the first reactor blew and he basically told his wife who was staying with me to get out as well taking my wife and I with her.
He knew this through insider information and has always known and kept me up to date on the readings.
I for one would not stay here and I AM still here ever since the earthquake IF I did not have this info.
I think you guys especially in the states should back anything like this with actual figures release by a sensible authority before making huge statements about the world is going under because of this event.
I know a few people will probably be smart about this and call me foolish for still being here but I have contacts that you do not and certain elements of business would not be risked if the radiation count here was too high in Tokyo.
Sorry I cannot be more specific about that but I'm not getting anyone into trouble and the company he works for would not risk their equipment to radiation (they don't even consider the people anyway).
So....... FACTS people FACTS or just ease up on the fear mongering as the world is a crappy enough place as it is without making it worse and the poor people here have suffered like you do not know!
Peace.

I am going with this option if Fukishima completely melts down....I can't wait to live in my cave and grow freaky kids!!!

Originally posted by chancho
You know I see a lot of these types of things come up in these forums but all written by people that don't actually live in Japan.
I admit that during the crisis and even now Tepco (the power company) did NOT tell the truth about this but that IS the Japanese way of doing business and trust me I know i've been working for them for 10 years.
I have a contact in a big Oil Company that rung me and told me to get out of Tokyo the day before the first reactor blew and he basically told his wife who was staying with me to get out as well taking my wife and I with her.
He knew this through insider information and has always known and kept me up to date on the readings.
I for one would not stay here and I AM still here ever since the earthquake IF I did not have this info.
I think you guys especially in the states should back anything like this with actual figures release by a sensible authority before making huge statements about the world is going under because of this event.
I know a few people will probably be smart about this and call me foolish for still being here but I have contacts that you do not and certain elements of business would not be risked if the radiation count here was too high in Tokyo.
Sorry I cannot be more specific about that but I'm not getting anyone into trouble and the company he works for would not risk their equipment to radiation (they don't even consider the people anyway).
So....... FACTS people FACTS or just ease up on the fear mongering as the world is a crappy enough place as it is without making it worse and the poor people here have suffered like you do not know!
Peace.

Plenty of facts on ATS. Use the search button at top right of page. I'm not here to debate you about if this is fear mongering. I started this thread to find out different survival methods if the reactor #4 goes.

After researching the stats, and realizing this is not fear mongering, but a legitimate concern please start a thread talking about being an employee of TEPCO.

Originally posted by amongus

Originally posted by wrksstudios
Yep, Japan is screwed. They are just 2 stupid to admit it.

If my above scenario happened, humanity is screwed.......or are we?

Unless there is a pill or something that can be ingested that will combine with the radioactive particles to make them inert, yeah, we're screwed. Fukishima would not only release cesium and iodine, it would also release plutonium. I did a quick analysis and it looks like about 550lbs into the atmosphere. It takes 1lb to kill all the people worldwide and about 2 lbs to kill every living thing on the planet.

This Fukishima problem is a world killer if not handled effectively and efficiently with some haste.

Cheers - Dave

Originally posted by bobs_uruncle

Originally posted by amongus

Originally posted by wrksstudios
Yep, Japan is screwed. They are just 2 stupid to admit it.

If my above scenario happened, humanity is screwed.......or are we?

Unless there is a pill or something that can be ingested that will combine with the radioactive particles to make them inert, yeah, we're screwed. Fukishima would not only release cesium and iodine, it would also release plutonium. I did a quick analysis and it looks like about 550lbs into the atmosphere. It takes 1lb to kill person and about 2 lbs to kill every living thing on the planet.

This Fukishima problem is a world killer if not handled effectively and efficiently with some haste.

Cheers - Dave

How long would it take to kill everyone? Are we talking about days, months, years?

I can't fathom the chaos on this planet if word got out that humanity is doomed.

reply to post by amongus


After the initial meltdown, the atmospheric dispersion has to take place, that would be about 30 to 60 days to effectively get around the northern hemisphere. Then there is rainfall, that filters some of the plutonium and other radioactive materials out but it deposits them on the ground, so there will be ground level plutonium dust. Once the dust gets in your lungs your pooched within anywhere from probably about 60 days to a year depending on your immune system. If you eat food that has been rained on, you will ingest plutonium. On your feet or your hands, you will develop lesions and skin cancers. In any event it would be an ugly death via lung cancer, stomach cancer, mouth or esophageal cancer, skin cancer, etc.

I think the winds would take the longest to get to South Western Australia or maybe Tasmania. The first to be hit would be Hawaii followed by western North America. With each cycling of air in the northern hemisphere, a percentage of that air will be exchanged with air from the southern hemisphere, so it will get there eventually.

If I were to predict a time line, I would say if Fukishima went critical and exploded on June 1, 2012 that everything on this planet would probably be dead by 2018. Even underground facilities would start to overload due to radioactive air filter systems that have to be disposed of and then there is the problem with manufacturing new ones. As well, there are ground water issues.

Cheers - Dave

HERE is a great rundown of what could happen if the #4 reactor goes down.

From modernsurvivalblog:

The most extreme precaution (meaning – life uprooting) would be to move to the southern hemisphere. The further south the better, as some of the radiation will eventually migrate to the equator regions and spill below. For the U.S., the radiation ‘fallout’ will be the worst on the west coast, and possibly parts of Alaska, as this is the first landfall of the predominant jet-stream winds from Japan. Rains will scour out some of the radiation from the air and toxify the west and central U.S. a bit more than the East. Unfortunately this is where lots of food is grown. The top several inches of soil will become contaminated. For long term issues, the food supply will be the deadliest aspect of this disaster. I suppose that food grown in the southern hemisphere and shipped north, will be less contaminated. Those foods would certainly demand a premium and become VERY expensive. A limited amount of food safety may come from growing food ‘inside’, out of the elements, out of the contaminated air and rain, in greenhouses, in non-contaminated soil.

A problem though will be feeding the plants (and yourself!) with non-contaminated water (where will it come from or how to filter it). As far as I know, one ‘partially’ effective way to separate radioactive particles from water is through water distillation (However some distillers will not rid radioactive iodine). I found this apparent factoid… “One of the problems with distilling is that iodine has a low boiling point – it turns into a gas at 363-degrees F (184 C). The little home distillers use high pressure for efficiency and if they are using over ~140 psi they will be vaporizing the radioactive iodine along with the water. A low pressure distiller like the type used for distilling alcohol won’t boil off the iodine.”

Boiling water will NOT remove radiation (or any other chemicals), but instead will concentrate it. The evaporated steam will also contain ‘some’ radiation. I’ve also heard that a Reverse Osmosis water filter may be effective to remove ‘most’ of the radiation particles. Water from a natural spring, which itself draws water from deep below the ground, may be a good source of safer water than contaminated surface water. Regarding finding non-contaminated foods, the most assured way is to have it stocked up ahead of time, before the nuclear disaster, in your long term food storage supplies. This of course will only last until you run out, and then you’re in the same radiated boat as the rest of the people.

There will be new food processes popping up that will claim to produce non-contaminated foods, as many will attempt to profit from the disaster. Some may be real while I’ll bet many others will be false claims. The problem is that most of these sources will likely only produce relatively small volumes of food while the majority of the population depend upon mass produced foods. Food will continue to be grown and produced as before because there will be no other choice. People who consume it will simply and horrifically become more and more contaminated themselves over time. The radiation particles accumulating in their bodies will eventually damage surrounding tissue and/or DNA, leading to cancer and premature death. It is a scary thing, for sure. The only immediate and somewhat effective solution that I see, is to grow your own food, in a greenhouse environment with soil that has been scraped from a depth of at least 4 inches below the topsoil, and fed with water from a natural spring. Obviously, a sufficient amount of food would need to be grown, and a sufficient amount would need to be preserved for the non-growing season. It would be very difficult, at best, to successfully accomplish this unless you are a seasoned gardener with the right knowledge, tools, and resources to do it.

Surviving a Fukushima fuel pool collapse will involve arming yourself with the knowledge, skill, and resources to grow your own food as described, to procure your own water which is safe to drink, and to stay out of the elements when it is storming. The hardest part of all this is to actually have the land to accomplish this, as the majority of the population lives in suburbia or the city. If you believe strongly that the risk is of high potential, then your only course of action, is to take action now, before it is too late.

Originally posted by bobs_uruncle
reply to post by amongus

 

After the initial meltdown, the atmospheric dispersion has to take place, that would be about 30 to 60 days to effectively get around the northern hemisphere. Then there is rainfall, that filters some of the plutonium and other radioactive materials out but it deposits them on the ground, so there will be ground level plutonium dust. Once the dust gets in your lungs your pooched within anywhere from probably about 60 days to a year depending on your immune system. If you eat food that has been rained on, you will ingest plutonium. On your feet or your hands, you will develop lesions and skin cancers. In any event it would be an ugly death via lung cancer, stomach cancer, mouth or esophageal cancer, skin cancer, etc.

I think the winds would take the longest to get to South Western Australia or maybe Tasmania. The first to be hit would be Hawaii followed by western North America. With each cycling of air in the northern hemisphere, a percentage of that air will be exchanged with air from the southern hemisphere, so it will get there eventually.

If I were to predict a time line, I would say if Fukishima went critical and exploded on June 1, 2012 that everything on this planet would probably be dead by 2018. Even underground facilities would start to overload due to radioactive air filter systems that have to be disposed of and then there is the problem with manufacturing new ones. As well, there are ground water issues.

Cheers - Dave

edit on 5/10.2012 by bobs_uruncle because: (no reason given)

Thank you! Excellent insight.

So, if #4 goes then there is no point in trying to survive.

reply to post by amongus


If you have a radiation detector and access to land that you can enclose that has a deep well water supply you might be able to survive for quite a while. You would have to make airlocks for your "house." You would have to know how to generate electricity so you could run the robots you would have to design and build to grow your food. You would have to have an enclosed place to keep animals and breed them for food. You could almost never go outside and if you did you would need boron or something to decontaminate your shoes and clothes.

If you live in the city, most of this is not do-able unless you have access to a rooftop (you still need a sealed greenhouse and natural light to save on electricity).

So you have to be pretty handy, know electronics, greenhouse agriculture, construction, plumbing, wiring, etc. pretty much a good overall knowledge of a lot of things to survive. Whether or not one would live to a ripe old age of 70 is extremely questionable, even if they did everything right. You still need certain medicines and dentists, possibly surgeons, so a group effort is best.

Now just try and get all those people together before SHTF and when they stop laughing about how it will never happen, you can try a bunch more. I can do everything above except dentistry and I have a bit of knowledge on field stitching (in war zones) but not actual surgery. Put a group together, I am willing to go to the Andes.

Cheers - Dave

reply to post by amongus

Of all the things one can do to lessen the impact of radionuclides in ones local environment, the simplest and most important is to try and reduce the contaminant particles from entering the body a), and b) try and rid the body of any that do get in. Stuff we touch can be washed off, but stuff we breathe, eat or drink is harder to remove.

About water we drink...

Distillation will kill and remove bacteria, viruses, cysts, as well as, heavy metals, radionuclides, organics, inorganics, and particulates.
---
Over 95% of our minerals come from our food and less than 5% from drinking water. You would practically have to drown yourself by drinking it to get the RDA of any beneficial minerals.
---
Pure water refers to water that is H²0, and that’s it! It’s not H²0 with Calcium, Iron, Flouride, etc …Distilled water comes the closest to this definition.

myths about distilled water

reply to post by amongus

First a small disclaimer: I'm not a nuke expert so there may be some errors in my text but at least I had several weeks about nuclear physics in school.

I was thinking about this topic also for month and read a lot about it. If we assume that the worst case happened the most important rule would be: Stay calm as this is always the best for any kind of desaster.

Also radiation is really bad for every living beeing on this planet (or at least for 99.999%) we know a lot about it. Radiation is no mystery and we are able to handle it (also those companies just see their profit and don't add all the neccessary security features to their reactors).

The only possibility for us to get radiated is ingestion of radioactive particles or standing close to them. Radioactive particles are more or less just small metal-dust pieces flying around. It's just unstable metal and while disintegrating they emit parts of their nucleus (alpha/beta/gamma rays) that can modify your dna -> cancer -> dead.

So all you have to do is:
- Don't let these particles enter the space around you.
- Avoid ingestion of radioactive particles

As radioactive particles are not very small (compared to other atoms) it is possible to filter these particles out of air or water. Even an expensive HEPA filter is capable of filtering these particles out of the ait according to some reports I've seen. So you have to build a room with filtered air and water supply. hardware should be available for this.

As alpha and beta radiation from particles outside your room would be shielded away by the walls/windows you just have to care about the gamma rays. Shielding these away is a bit harder as they have very high energys. As I asume that we won't get enough lead the best options would be:
- Unterground (have to research how much sand is neccecary to shield gamma rays. Maybe the basement is enough.
- Putting something other around you like water. Water should be a good shield against gamma rays but I guess we will still need a meter or so around us. So maybe we should buy some aqariums. Could be used as an emergency water supply also with some UV/filter treatment.

Most important: Get a good dosimeter (not a simple radiation detector that is only on when you check) to know what is going on and if it is still save. I bought a GammaScout device that is always on (batteries should last for 10 years according to the manufacturer).

The biggest problem would be food. Water for drinking can be filtered but you can't filter food. You also can't measure plutonium with alpha emission if if's inside a fish. The dosimeter would warn you if the food contains a gamma source as this can be measured but plutonium would be a problem.

The 'good' think for us is that plutonium is relatively heavy and should fall to earth quick. So maybe we don't have to worry about this as it will just be present around Japan and in the Pacific. That's the reason why I don't by any fish from FAO 61,67 (6x and 7x in general) already. Plutonium also shouldn't make it into the Atlantic as it should sink to the ground.

Please correct any of my statements if they are wrong as I'm not an expert for this. Just learned a lot about this topic in the last month using all the sources in the net.

reply to post by UnixFE

As I can't edit anymore a short add on here:

Found this relatively cheap water filter where the company states that it can reduce/filter radioactive particles out of water: Link to filter in online shop They have other unit too that are more powerfull but more expensive.

Regarding air filtering I found for example this website explaining that HEPA filters can remove radioactive particles out of the air. Of cause the radioactive particles are still in your home collected inside the filter material. So the filter unit should be shielded too and the filter replaced if the dosimeter shows a higher day dosis.

Main problem will be enough food. If you have the money and enough free space you can buy 1000 cans of ready to cook food NOW but this wan't be an option for most people.

reply to post by UnixFE


Here is an interesting article on plutonium remediation, specifically soil, but some of the principles might apply to air, LINK HERE. It's a PDF and comes from the DOE (doe.gov).

What I find interesting is the "potential" for magnetic separation and collection. Magnetic processing is used with the centrifuge and other processes in the refinement of plutonium for weapons manufacturing. So it stands to reason logically, that magnetics of sufficient strength might be able to remove p239 from the air. If I were to design a system to do this in a post SHTF scenario and I had limited resources, if I could not find HEPA filters, I would use vehicle air filters instead, two or three levels of them (they handle between 100cfm and 600cfm each) and place my magnetics in the filter housing. Now the real problem is the magnetics, everything else is pretty simple. You would need rare earth magnets that you could easily clean once a month (8 to 12kg gauss each and probably a few hundred of them) or you could make an electromagnetic system, but then you need to have generators, solar panels, batteries, to keep these things running.

There are plastic permeable membranes that have a 500 to 1000 nanometer "mesh" size that are available, but expensive. A sieve will remove a majority of the particles but since the mesh is so small, you need extremely large areas to get sufficient air flow rates. I only know about these because I use them as a permeable membrane for moving electrons for H2 + O separation in electrolysis systems that also combine O3 to double the O2 output. Actually, I think there is a pic here in my account of the H2 + O generator. You can actually take any excess O3 and use an oil furnace filter to bubble it through water and give it a good cleaning. The third O molecule bonds to biological and some chemical pollutants causing oxidization which can again be separated by a sieve.

One additional thought, plutonium is quite heavy, therefore a vortex effect in a single centrifuge chamber has the capacity to perform "some separation of plutonium from air. You see these vacuum cleaners that operate this way by forcing the heavy materials to the outside where they are collected for later removal.

In all cases plutonium and neptunium (or any radioactive material) are extremely dangerous, so cleaning sieves and chambers requires a lot of protection, as in a radiological suit. You'll have to find one of those as well.

In a post-SHTF scenario, it's necessary that one has the critical thinking skills to be able to mix and match to "create" a solution without the help of advanced technology as none might exist or be available for use.

Cheers - Dave