Posted: 10/21/2009 5:50:20 PM EDT
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I understand that fallout from a nuclear blast gives off Alpha, Beta, and Gamma radiation. Lets say that a can of food is exposed to the gamma radiation for a period of time.
Will the gamma radiation just pass through the can of food, or will some of the radiation accumulate in the can/food? We are not talking about radioactive fallout getting on the can, but a can inside the house in the cupboard that has merely been irradiated. Another example. Lets say a tomato is in a glass container that is covered in fallout. The fallout has gamma radiation that is irradiating the tomato. We know the cells in the tomato would be damaged and it probably would not be able to produce more tomatoes with the seeds, but if you removed the container would the tomato be okay to eat? Or does the radiation accumulate inside the tomato? |
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I understand that fallout from a nuclear blast gives off Alpha, Beta, and Gamma radiation. Lets say that a can of food is exposed to the gamma radiation for a period of time. Will the gamma radiation just pass through the can of food, or will some of the radiation accumulate in the can/food? We are not talking about radioactive fallout getting on the can, but a can inside the house in the cupboard that has merely been irradiated. Another example. Lets say a tomato is in a glass container that is covered in fallout. The fallout has gamma radiation that is irradiating the tomato. We know the cells in the tomato would be damaged and it probably would not be able to produce more tomatoes with the seeds, but if you removed the container would the tomato be okay to eat? Or does the radiation accumulate inside the tomato? Food in a can will be fine. Radiation does damage by cross-linking DNA. You can eat irradiated food all day (in fact you probably do already*). It's dangerous to consume particles that are actually radioactive. As long as you're not exposed to, or consume, the radioactive particles you are fine. As far the tomato reproducibility, it depends on the dosimetry. It depends on the size of the object, the mass of the radioactive source, the distance to the source, and the amount of time exposed to the source. Gamma irradiation facilities hire health physicists that figure out the amount of time objects to be irradiated must spend exposed to the source in order to be sterilized. * - Most dry herbs you get at the grocery store is gamma irradiated. Some tea is irradiated. If you've ever bought a kids meal and got a toy inside, that's been irradiated. Tons of hospital products are gamma irradiated. |
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Food in containers would be OK. You may want to find a copy of Cresson Kearny's book, Nuclear War Survival Skills. Very handy. Ops important enough to say twice! Thank you. I will find that book and check it out. I talked to my BIL about what to do if we saw a nuclear bomb go off in Cleveland since we would get hit with fallout if the wind was normal. We talked about burying the windows of the basement in 12" of dirt to help keep out most of the gamma rays. They already have 8" thick foam block construction walls. We would stay in the basement, but we could stack stuff in front of the main floor windows to help create more mass to help block rays. We would also have two insulated floors and an insulated roof to help protect. The old basement would be enough to protect most of the long term food storage in containers and keep fallout away. I talked to my sister and the kids about what to grab in the hour or so (75miles) before the fallout would get there. Water, buckets and garbage bags for waste of all sorts, all perishable food and enough to eat for everyone for a couple weeks. Lots of other stuff they could grab as well. We just started with basics so they would not spend any time worrying or crying about it, but doing something immediate that would really help to keep them healthy. No time to waste. |
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I understand that fallout from a nuclear blast gives off Alpha, Beta, and Gamma radiation. Lets say that a can of food is exposed to the gamma radiation for a period of time. Will the gamma radiation just pass through the can of food, or will some of the radiation accumulate in the can/food? We are not talking about radioactive fallout getting on the can, but a can inside the house in the cupboard that has merely been irradiated. Another example. Lets say a tomato is in a glass container that is covered in fallout. The fallout has gamma radiation that is irradiating the tomato. We know the cells in the tomato would be damaged and it probably would not be able to produce more tomatoes with the seeds, but if you removed the container would the tomato be okay to eat? Or does the radiation accumulate inside the tomato? Food in a can will be fine. Radiation does damage by cross-linking DNA. You can eat irradiated food all day (in fact you probably do already*). It's dangerous to consume particles that are actually radioactive. As long as you're not exposed to, or consume, the radioactive particles you are fine. As far the tomato reproducibility, it depends on the dosimetry. It depends on the size of the object, the mass of the radioactive source, the distance to the source, and the amount of time exposed to the source. Gamma irradiation facilities hire health physicists that figure out the amount of time objects to be irradiated must spend exposed to the source in order to be sterilized. * - Most dry herbs you get at the grocery store is gamma irradiated. Some tea is irradiated. If you've ever bought a kids meal and got a toy inside, that's been irradiated. Tons of hospital products are gamma irradiated. I figured that was the case, but I cannot tell you how much it means to have people who know what they are talking about to confirm my understanding. Thank you very much. Arfcom rocks! 
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Food in containers would be OK. You may want to find a copy of Cresson Kearny's book, Nuclear War Survival Skills. Very handy. Ops important enough to say twice! Thank you. I will find that book and check it out. I talked to my BIL about what to do if we saw a nuclear bomb go off in Cleveland since we would get hit with fallout if the wind was normal. We talked about burying the windows of the basement in 12" of dirt to help keep out most of the gamma rays. They already have 8" thick foam block construction walls. We would stay in the basement, but we could stack stuff in front of the main floor windows to help create more mass to help block rays. We would also have two insulated floors and an insulated roof to help protect. The old basement would be enough to protect most of the long term food storage in containers and keep fallout away. I talked to my sister and the kids about what to grab in the hour or so (75miles) before the fallout would get there. Water, buckets and garbage bags for waste of all sorts, all perishable food and enough to eat for everyone for a couple weeks. Lots of other stuff they could grab as well. We just started with basics so they would not spend any time worrying or crying about it, but doing something immediate that would really help to keep them healthy. No time to waste. As usual Ops knows what he's talking about. NWSS is an excellent book and is available free online, might be cheaper to buy a copy than print it out but wouldn't hurt to have it on a flash drive if you don't have a generous employer who will let you print the book. http://www.oism.org/nwss/ |
| You can download a PDF of this book at http://www.nukepills.com/docs/nuclear_war_survival_skills.pdf |
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I understand that fallout from a nuclear blast gives off Alpha, Beta, and Gamma radiation. Lets say that a can of food is exposed to the gamma radiation for a period of time. Will the gamma radiation just pass through the can of food, or will some of the radiation accumulate in the can/food? We are not talking about radioactive fallout getting on the can, but a can inside the house in the cupboard that has merely been irradiated. Another example. Lets say a tomato is in a glass container that is covered in fallout. The fallout has gamma radiation that is irradiating the tomato. We know the cells in the tomato would be damaged and it probably would not be able to produce more tomatoes with the seeds, but if you removed the container would the tomato be okay to eat? Or does the radiation accumulate inside the tomato? Food in a can will be fine. Radiation does damage by cross-linking DNA. You can eat irradiated food all day (in fact you probably do already*). It's dangerous to consume particles that are actually radioactive. As long as you're not exposed to, or consume, the radioactive particles you are fine. As far the tomato reproducibility, it depends on the dosimetry. It depends on the size of the object, the mass of the radioactive source, the distance to the source, and the amount of time exposed to the source. Gamma irradiation facilities hire health physicists that figure out the amount of time objects to be irradiated must spend exposed to the source in order to be sterilized. * - Most dry herbs you get at the grocery store is gamma irradiated. Some tea is irradiated. If you've ever bought a kids meal and got a toy inside, that's been irradiated. Tons of hospital products are gamma irradiated. +1 good post. www.buildanark.net Under videos their is a FREE video of a class given at a campout on Radiation Protection. |
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Batmanacw,
Think in terms of mass for radiation protection... the books will give you the exact figures, but roughly 2' concrete, 3' dirt, 5-6' of water or about 22' of feathers! You will need it above you also. Google Kearny fallout meter & build one & know how to use it to figure your safe exposure times when needing to leave the shelter for short times. Good luck.. PS... after carrying a back pack nuke back in the '60's, I think that the odds are high that we will see a nuke/s go off in our bigger cities in the future.. |
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Batmanacw, Think in terms of mass for radiation protection... the books will give you the exact figures, but roughly 2' concrete, 3' dirt, 5-6' of water or about 22' of feathers! You will need it above you also. Google Kearny fallout meter & build one & know how to use it to figure your safe exposure times when needing to leave the shelter for short times. Good luck.. PS... after carrying a back pack nuke back in the '60's, I think that the odds are high that we will see a nuke/s go off in our bigger cities in the future.. fortunately I already have a survey meter so I have that covered, even though it says I am getting 1 rad all the time at home and at all my family and friends houses. |
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The rays threat fallout particles give off are damaging too living beings. If the radioactive dust particles are ingested, inhaled or stuck to you or your clothes it is big problem.
Non living matter is not adversly affected by the rays that the fallout particles emit. Now if there is radioactive dust in grain that you make flour from you have a grave problem. Or, if there was radioactive dust in soil in which corn you eat was grown there may be a big problem there too, but canned goods will be fine. Maybe better than before for having been irradiated 
As an adult, you could walk around in fallout dust in rubber boots after the dust had degraded enough & then wash the dust off your boots before coming back into your nuclear sterile area & then be alright. |
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Batmanacw, Think in terms of mass for radiation protection... the books will give you the exact figures, but roughly 2' concrete, 3' dirt, 5-6' of water or about 22' of feathers! You will need it above you also. Google Kearny fallout meter & build one & know how to use it to figure your safe exposure times when needing to leave the shelter for short times. Good luck.. PS... after carrying a back pack nuke back in the '60's, I think that the odds are high that we will see a nuke/s go off in our bigger cities in the future.. fortunately I already have a survey meter so I have that covered, even though it says I am getting 1 rad all the time at home and at all my family and friends houses. Is your meter a surplus CD item? If so, have you had it re-calibrated recently? |
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Batmanacw, Think in terms of mass for radiation protection... the books will give you the exact figures, but roughly 2' concrete, 3' dirt, 5-6' of water or about 22' of feathers! You will need it above you also. Google Kearny fallout meter & build one & know how to use it to figure your safe exposure times when needing to leave the shelter for short times. Good luck.. PS... after carrying a back pack nuke back in the '60's, I think that the odds are high that we will see a nuke/s go off in our bigger cities in the future.. fortunately I already have a survey meter so I have that covered, even though it says I am getting 1 rad all the time at home and at all my family and friends houses. Is your meter a surplus CD item? If so, have you had it re-calibrated recently? Yes. My friend bought us both one and this is the only one that made it through calibration. The other one was not working properly. I am letting it warm up right now. Its saying 1.5 rads. Its usually lower at 1 rad. Its read about the same just about everywhere I have gone. Maybe this part of the country is just naturally higher in radiation levels? It was calibrated by MJW technical services. in July of this year. Maybe the put the calibration on the wrong one? I am going to pick up some better batteries and go try out the other meter. The battery I am using is putting out 1.6v so I doubt that 1/10v would hurt anything. |
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I understand that fallout from a nuclear blast gives off Alpha, Beta, and Gamma radiation. Lets say that a can of food is exposed to the gamma radiation for a period of time. Will the gamma radiation just pass through the can of food, or will some of the radiation accumulate in the can/food? We are not talking about radioactive fallout getting on the can, but a can inside the house in the cupboard that has merely been irradiated. Another example. Lets say a tomato is in a glass container that is covered in fallout. The fallout has gamma radiation that is irradiating the tomato. We know the cells in the tomato would be damaged and it probably would not be able to produce more tomatoes with the seeds, but if you removed the container would the tomato be okay to eat? Or does the radiation accumulate inside the tomato? Neutron radiation is the only type of radiation that can make other things radioactive. Neutron radiation only comes from nuclear reactions and there is no real way to have a substance that produces any significant amount of neutrons... experimentally it can be produced by bombarding beryllium with alpha particles, or it's produced at very low levels by spontaneous fissions in fissionable materials like thorium, uranium and plutonium. Most of the common fusion reactions produce high energy neutrons which range from a neutron bomb (thermonuclear weapon designed for maximum prompt radiation effect) down to a Farnsworth Fusor (build in your basement as a science fair project to demonstrate fusion). Fallout is dirt, debris, and bomb material that has been made radioactive by the intense neutron flux coming from an exploding nuclear weapon mixed together with the actual radioactive fission by products (as well as unreacted nuclear material)... which conglomerates into a dust or sand and then falls out of the atmosphere. Gamma irradiated food in an SHTF would probably be preferred as it would be well sterilized. As long as the container is sealed then no fallout would be inside... wash the container to remove any fallout dust before opening. There's a lot of food on the market which is sterilized or preserved by being exposed to radiation. Quoted:
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Batmanacw, Think in terms of mass for radiation protection... the books will give you the exact figures, but roughly 2' concrete, 3' dirt, 5-6' of water or about 22' of feathers! You will need it above you also. Google Kearny fallout meter & build one & know how to use it to figure your safe exposure times when needing to leave the shelter for short times. Good luck.. PS... after carrying a back pack nuke back in the '60's, I think that the odds are high that we will see a nuke/s go off in our bigger cities in the future.. fortunately I already have a survey meter so I have that covered, even though it says I am getting 1 rad all the time at home and at all my family and friends houses. Is your meter a surplus CD item? If so, have you had it re-calibrated recently? Yes. My friend bought us both one and this is the only one that made it through calibration. The other one was not working properly. I am letting it warm up right now. Its saying 1.5 rads. Its usually lower at 1 rad. Its read about the same just about everywhere I have gone. Maybe this part of the country is just naturally higher in radiation levels? It was calibrated by MJW technical services. in July of this year. Maybe the put the calibration on the wrong one? I am going to pick up some better batteries and go try out the other meter. The battery I am using is putting out 1.6v so I doubt that 1/10v would hurt anything. What kind of meter is this? True 1 RAD radiation levels would make you sick and would constitute a national emergency. If it's a CD-V700 and you're on the lower range scales it will pick up and react to normal background radiation levels. You can do things like compare the readings outside between the probe pointed down versus pointed up at the sun. If you have an ion chamber meter like a CD-V715,717 or 720 and you're getting any reading at all under normal conditions something is wrong. |
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batman, I'd call them up and ask what's wrong. Are you sure you're reading the thing right? Constant 1 roentgen would eventually have physiological effects. Any new limbs/superpowers? I agree. IIRC 2 rad = ~20 years of background. If background is reading that high something is off. |
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Does it have a seperate handheld probe? If so it is likely reading in Millir. If it's an Ion chamber (all of the CD instruments except the CDV-700, and maybe the airborne stuff) it's reading in r. (lowest scale is .5r/hr full scale on the CDV-715). Newer stuff (fluke 451, CDV-718) reads from below 1mr/hr to over 1000r/hr
You aren't reading in the bottom 10% of the scale are you? It wouldn't be unusual to see a false reading of 1-2% of full scale. if so turn the know to a lower scale. BTW, 1h/hr is a letal dose rate. Not today, not tommorow, but by next weekend you will be getting sick. Actually thats just a guess. Poeple don't exposed t these kinds of levels for a long period of time except in nuclear war or some attempt to murder by radiation, or keepign a stolen Cobalt-60 source in your house. If you got 240 Rads in one event, you would likely be in the hospital, and likely to survive. A doctor at Grady hospital in Atlanta reported on the internet of treating such a patient maybe 10 years ago and then declined to answer any questions about it. Short of nuclear war one would expect either a accidental criticality or some horriable Xray machine malfunction (which has happened, google Therac-25, or Panama CIty, Panama cancer clinic) |
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I am going to have to google the company my friend sent them too and ask them. I am positive about the reading. The lowest range is x.1. This range is pegged out. The next range is x1 and its at right about 1.5 on the scale. I will give the model number later.
The meter is consistent everywhere I go. My friends house was a 1.5r and my sisters house was 1.4r. The farm is 1.3r. I am guessing its just not calibrated correctly or I am in big trouble. I have been living in that house for 9 years! |
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I am going to have to google the company my friend sent them too and ask them. I am positive about the reading. The lowest range is x.1. This range is pegged out. The next range is x1 and its at right about 1.5 on the scale. I will give the model number later. The meter is consistent everywhere I go. My friends house was a 1.5r and my sisters house was 1.4r. The farm is 1.3r. I am guessing its just not calibrated correctly or I am in big trouble. I have been living in that house for 9 years! It's not out of calibration, I thought it might be reading in mr/h, but if you pegged the x.1 range, I doubt thats the issue. 1 mr/hr is high dose rate, definitally not something you want any kind of constant exposure to That would give you about 8 Rad in a year. I'm betting something is fried. If it is a GM tube (such as the CDV-700), you could be picking up radiation from the checksource on the side, but this shouldn't be the case when the probe is snapped in the bracket. Since the meter is really measuring the interaction of a radioactive particle (or photon) with the tube/chamber, any sort of "calibration" wouldn't explain detecting 100s of events that didn't happen. So I'm betting on bad electronics. Otherwise, you may be looking at the next superfund site, |
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My meter model is CDV-715-1A. This is a picture that shows the range its in and the reading. http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i307/batmanacw/DSCN0847.jpg I emailed the company that we sent it to for calibration. If that was a real reading and it's been that way for weeks you'd be in the hospital (or dead) along with anyone else living there. I'd hazard a guess that you have an instrument malfunction. |
| Thank you Gamma762. Your post is of course spot on. You also added to my knowledge base. Other than from an operating nuclear reactor, a detonating nuclear weapon, the Sun (a big fusion reactor), a particle accelerator, or decay of certain isotopes, I didn't know there was any other source of Neutrons. The Farnsworth–Hirsch Fusor (as it's listed in Wikipedia) was a really interesting concept. From what I've been reading, it appears to be a mini fusion device. Too bad it apparently can't be scaled up to deliver useful power. |
| I am wearing 3 (work mandated) radiation dosimeters as I type this, and your meter is way off real exposure. If you ever had to rely on it for accurate readings in a real world scenario you would be fooked (might as well carry a canary). If you don't have at least one robust and accurate meter get two so at least you have a backup to compare readings with. |