I’ve got a creative idea. What if you just had hunks of metal and basically made a little makeshift tipi out of them? I don’t see why that wouldn’t protect you from those initial gamma rays, or what other risks they might pose.
I think if you’re only concerned about shielding against the initial radiation, you might only need the shield between you and the blast.
I wonder how much metal it would actually take. How much would that cost, and weigh? this suggests that “a few inches of lead” would suffice. So let’s say we’re using the minimum viable lead sheet… If you’re lying or standing behind it, 2′ x 6′ would probably suffice. Say it’s 3″ thick, so roughly 3 cubic feet of lead. this says a cubic foot of lead is about 708lbs, so we’re looking at about 2124lbs of lead, give or take. If you need it thicker than that, it’ll obviously weigh more, at 1 cubic foot per inch at that size. Will the structure of your house be able to handle that kind of load where you’d like to put it? The lowest price estimate that a quick search turns up is $1 per pound, which would make such a shield expensive enough to warrant budgeting for but not out of reach on a tech salary.
My impression of the health risk of a nuclear event is that radioactive particles in the environment persist for quite a long time and create health hazards. I get this impression mostly from having visited the Chernobyl exclusion zone and experienced the strict security protocols making sure nobody left with even radioactive dirt on their clothes. While nuclear-blast doses of gamma radiation will definitely kill you right away, I don’t actually know how to quantify the risk of being near all the radioactive stuff if you came out from behind a person-sized radiation shield immediately after a blast.
Thanks for doing that research! Seems a bit much, price-wise and risk of screwing up (in my case) my apartment floor-wise.
But at the same time, it does strike me as a plausible route to go down. This diagram indicates that the radiation levels go down pretty rapidly. So if you could hang out in that little person-sized space for, I don’t know, 12 hours or so, maybe that’d mostly eliminate the risk? It would certainly be uncomfortable. But since this is a situation where your life depends on it, it doesn’t seem too bad. And you could pay more money to have more space if you’d like.
And if you combine it with, say, a $25 P100 mask + eye goggles after you exit your metal shield, my understanding is that the big thing is you don’t want radioactive fallout particles entering your body. The P100 + goggles + not eating/drinking anything radioactive should basically eliminate that risk. So yeah, this actually sounds kinda plausible.
I’ve got a creative idea. What if you just had hunks of metal and basically made a little makeshift tipi out of them? I don’t see why that wouldn’t protect you from those initial gamma rays, or what other risks they might pose.
I think if you’re only concerned about shielding against the initial radiation, you might only need the shield between you and the blast.
I wonder how much metal it would actually take. How much would that cost, and weigh? this suggests that “a few inches of lead” would suffice. So let’s say we’re using the minimum viable lead sheet… If you’re lying or standing behind it, 2′ x 6′ would probably suffice. Say it’s 3″ thick, so roughly 3 cubic feet of lead. this says a cubic foot of lead is about 708lbs, so we’re looking at about 2124lbs of lead, give or take. If you need it thicker than that, it’ll obviously weigh more, at 1 cubic foot per inch at that size. Will the structure of your house be able to handle that kind of load where you’d like to put it? The lowest price estimate that a quick search turns up is $1 per pound, which would make such a shield expensive enough to warrant budgeting for but not out of reach on a tech salary.
My impression of the health risk of a nuclear event is that radioactive particles in the environment persist for quite a long time and create health hazards. I get this impression mostly from having visited the Chernobyl exclusion zone and experienced the strict security protocols making sure nobody left with even radioactive dirt on their clothes. While nuclear-blast doses of gamma radiation will definitely kill you right away, I don’t actually know how to quantify the risk of being near all the radioactive stuff if you came out from behind a person-sized radiation shield immediately after a blast.
Thanks for doing that research! Seems a bit much, price-wise and risk of screwing up (in my case) my apartment floor-wise.
But at the same time, it does strike me as a plausible route to go down. This diagram indicates that the radiation levels go down pretty rapidly. So if you could hang out in that little person-sized space for, I don’t know, 12 hours or so, maybe that’d mostly eliminate the risk? It would certainly be uncomfortable. But since this is a situation where your life depends on it, it doesn’t seem too bad. And you could pay more money to have more space if you’d like.
And if you combine it with, say, a $25 P100 mask + eye goggles after you exit your metal shield, my understanding is that the big thing is you don’t want radioactive fallout particles entering your body. The P100 + goggles + not eating/drinking anything radioactive should basically eliminate that risk. So yeah, this actually sounds kinda plausible.