EMERGENCY HOUSEKEEPING
Following is a checklist of preparations for, and best ways of, living in close confinement for two days to two weeks when a shelter may have to be your home. Also included is a resume of the first aid information you may need.
Water
It is more vital than food. Humans can live on a quart of water or other fluid a day, but an allowance of a gallon is far more comfortable, especially in a warm shelter.
Store water in five-gallon or larger containers to conserve space. If you use small glass containers, seal them well and pack them with newspapers or wadding to prevent breakage. Some may want to test their stored water for smell and taste every three months, but it is not necessary for health. Odorous as it might become, it will still be useable in an emergency. Announcements on your radio may tell you whether local water supplies are safe. If they are not, you can preserve a considerable safe water supply in your house by closing the water shut-off valve leading in from the street. The water in toilet flush tanks, pipes, hot water tanks, and similar home sources is drinkable.
Unless authorities have pronounced it safe, try to avoid using water from outside the house or open sources (lakes, reservoirs) after the attack without purifying it. Germs or radioactive material, or both, may get into water. Cloudy or unclear water should first be strained through a paper towel or several thicknesses of clean cloth, or else be allowed to settle in a deep container and then siphoned off. After that, it may be freed of germs with water purification tablets, obtainable at drug and sporting goods stores, or by boiling vigorously for a few minutes, or by adding 20 drops of iodine to a gallon of clear water or 40 drops to a gallon of cloudy water. Then let it stand for 30 minutes. Liquid household bleaches of the sodium hypochlorite type can also be used. The label usually gives instructions.
Radiation it itself does not affect water. It is only if the radioactive particles themselves get into water that the water becomes dangerous. There are effective ways to decontaminate water containing radioactive particles. The particles can be removed by the simple filtering process with paper or cloth that was described earlier, or by running the water through one of the devices that are sold to soften water for home use. Perhaps an easier way would be to mix a handful of clay soil with each gallon of water and allow it to settle out over a period of a day.
Radiation meters
Because gamma rays, like X-rays, are not detected by any of the five senses, each shelter should have some simple instruments to detect and measure them. Instruments developed specifically for home use can be ordered through department stores and other retail outlets. Having these instruments does not automatically provide you with simple solutions to problems of radiation exposure since the relations between dose rate, total does, time, radioactive decay, etc., must be learned. Instructions will be available, however, on how to interpret the instrument readings. If these are studied and understood in advance, the instruments can be of great value in intelligently planning your action in a fallout situation.
A ratemeter will tell what the intensity of the radiation is. It is similar to a speedometer in a car except that it measures roentgens per hour rather than miles per hour. Thus, from a ratemeter reading made just outside the shelter, you can get an indication of whether it is safe to leave the shelter for a brief period. It is similar to a mileage indicator in a car but it measures total roentgens rather than miles. Carefully study the instructions provided with these instruments by the manufacturer.
Food
Wherever you live – in the country, city apartment, or suburban house – you should keep a two-week supply of food on hand. Large community shelters in existing buildings are going to be stocked by the Federal Government with emergency foods. But for the present, and especially for apartment residents who may have to take quick refuge in the central core or basement of their building, a good plan is to keep handy a box or basket with rations and water.
In planning a two-week supply of food for whatever shelter you will use, bear these things in mind:
Ten thousand calories will be adequate for an adult during an inactive two-week shelter stay. Select familiar foods (they are more heartening and acceptable during times of stress) and food that will last for months without refrigeration and can be served without cooking. Suggestions: canned meat, fish, poultry, beans, peas and fruits; cereals and tinned baked goods; cheese spreads, peanut butter and jellies with crackers; evaporated or dried milk.
Pick cans and packages of a size suitable to your family's needs for one meal; this prevents spoilage and offers you greater daily variety. Keep all foods in their original containers. Those that do not come in cars should be wrapped and tape-sealed in polyethylene sheets. Write the date of purchase on cans or packages, and use oldest purchases first.
After a nuclear attack, food stored indoors should be safe to eat. That is especially true of food in freezers and refrigerators, which should, of course,e be kept closed as much as possible. Eat the perishable foods first, especially if electricity and gas are cut off. Bread is still edible even when moldy; sour milk is drinkable. Fruits and vegetables with "rotten" spots cut out are safe to eat; if they have been exposed to fallout, wipe, wash and peel them, disposing of wash-water and peelings outside the shelter.
Throw out canned foods if bubbles appear in the juices, even though they smell all right. In an emergency, most canned and packages animal foods can be eaten by humans without harm.
Ventilation
A hand-operated air blower, like this one below, would provide ample ventilation for any underground family shelter. Other models are being developed.
Fresh air is more vital than food and water. A basement home shelter will get its air via door cracks and other crevices through which fallout particles are unlikely to drift. But well-sealed community shelters and home underground ones will need ventilation systems because even at rest a person should have at least three cubic feet of air a minute.
In many home underground shelters a three-inch intake pipe is installed to suck in fresh air by means of a hand-operated blower that is cranked periodically, and an exhaust pipe is set up to vent stale air. The air-intake pipe should extend at least a foot above the ground, and have a weather cap over it to keep out fallout particles.
Community shelters should have an air filter to remove particles that may get into the ventilation system. Since this filter may collect radioactive material, the people in the shelter should be shielded from it. No blower is necessary for the outlet or exhaust pipe because of the pressure created within the shelter by the intake blower. In smaller shelters the outlet pipe may be unnecessary because air would leave through cracks around the door. Blowers are available at hardware stores.
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