Will these work or am I wasting money in terms of preps?  My location is 25 miles east of two probable targets, but we do have a basement.

KI Pills Potassium Iodide

Link is bad (I looked at the source and there's a bunch of text in addition to the URL.) Working link.

Those will work for adults (adult dose is 130mg per day.) Children need 65mg.

Note all KI does is provide some protection from future cancers due to reducing radioactive iodine uptake,
it really doesn't provide any protection from radiation.

And only cancer in a particular organ, I don't remember which (thyroid???).

And radioactive iodine is only a hazard in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear detonation or major accident at an operating reactor. It does nothing to protect you from radiation in the short term. So depends on what kind of threat you are worried about.

You want Potassium Iodate, not Potassium Iodide.
Different pills.

Potassium Iodate

Yes, thyroid cancer.  The thyroid takes up the safe iodine and won't take up the radioactive iodine.  More valuable for children and youth since thyroid cancer from exposure can take up to 40 years to develop.  At least based on what I've read.

jd1

According to this company, they have an FDA approved potassium iodide tablet approved as a thyroid protection from radioactive fallout.

No. Potasium Iodide is what you want.

This may be stating the obvious for most of you guys, but just in case someone with little experience on the topic reads this thread, here's how it all works:

In order to be harmed by radiation, you need to either be in the path of some penetrating source of radiation, or you need to ingest something that is contaminated with a source of radiation.

There are several forms of radiation. Alpha and Beta radiation are pretty weak and can be stopped by thin layers of protective gear (like paper or clothing). Gamma rays and X-rays (some argue they're basically the same thing, and the line between them is blurred) are penetrating radiation, so to stop them from harming you, you need massive, dense protective layers between you and the source. For instance, you can effectively shield yourself from gamma radiation with a two-foot thick wall of concrete or a 3-foot thick wall of dirt.

The way radiation harms your body is by screwing with the DNA in your cells. With acute doses of radiation, your white blood cells will die, which eliminates your immune system, and you die from infection. This happens quickly. There are germs living in your body that are always trying to kill you, so the second your immune system is gone, you're pretty much done for. Acute radiation poisoning can cause other forms of injury, too, but the destruction of your immune system is the big one.

Now, when you receive a lesser dose of radiation, your injuries can range from nothing to irreparable harm to your DNA which leads to cancer later in life.

When a nuclear bomb is detonated, the nuclear reaction itself releases an intense burst of gamma radiation, but this burst doesn't extend much further than the fireball. Anyone in danger of being irradiated by the initial blast has bigger problems to worry about, because they just got cooked. A nuclear explosion also spews into the surrounding area the byproducts of the nuclear reaction, which include radioactive variants of certain elements, namely, radioactive iodine. Since iodine is ingested and stored in your thyroid as a normal part of being a human, the prospect of radioactive iodine getting into your body poses a real problem. If one were to ingest other radioactive products, you would most likely pass them, thus somewhat limiting the harm. It's sort of like eating an X-Ray machine and then pooping it out, so it was only able to hurt you while it was in your body. But since your body retains iodine in the the thyroid, it's a but like eating an X-Ray machine that you CAN'T poop out, so it lingers and causes longterm exposure.

The idea behind Iosat and other potassium iodide pills is that they flood your thyroid with safe iodine so that if any radioactive iodine gets into your body, it is passed rather than absorbed.

A nuclear explosion that occurs near the ground also irradiates a bunch of dirt and buildings and whatnot, which has been pulverized and spewed into the atmosphere. Said material will eventually fall back down to earth in the form of, you guess it, fallout. Each particle is a like a small X-ray machine. The only protection from these particles is shielding. They spew penetrating gamma rays, and are harmful merely by being in their vicinity. Potassium iodide pills won't protect you from that. Again, only shielding will.

Thats a really good break down. Thank you.

A really good breakdown.  I should also add (or at least expand upon one thing you mentioned) in regard to fallout (primarily Alpha and Beta particles), is that in most NUDETS fallout should be relatively negligible.  This is because ground bursts (which generate a lot of fallout) are inefficient in regards to doing the maximum damage possible to large areas; they are good for hard targets (which most locations and even military facilities are not).  Air burst are good at taking out large areas full of soft targets which most facilities/locations (even military ones) are made up of.  Air bursts also throw up much less debris from the ground and cause far less fallout than a ground burst.  Thus, while a nuke is still a nuke, most nuclear strikes from a military will cause relatively little fallout.  Where you are most like to see fallout problems are 1.  If you live downwind from (or relatively close to) a hardened or underground facility or 2. In the event a 3rd part were to get ahold of a nuclear weapon, which would most likely end up with a ground burst due to the lack of an appropriate delivery and fusing system.  That's not to say that a military would never use a ground burst but that they are less efficient in doing large amounts of damage than an air burst in the majority of cases and even the sloppiest militaries kind of value efficiency where possible.