E-Book: Nuclear War Survival Skills

Continuing with my recent posts on books and pamphlets relevant to prepping for a nuclear war is the big kahuna: Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson H. Kearny (1987 edition). This book is very focused on surviving a nuclear war over any other disaster. Moreover, because of this focus, it primarily focuses on surviving the initial nuclear attack and the initial couple of weeks when fallout will be the most dangerous, although the discussion on food storage and preparations covers a longer time frame. 

    The contents of the book include some preface sections, including an introduction, followed by the following chapters:

1. The Dangers from Nuclear Weapons: Myths and Facts
2. Psychological Preparations
3. Warnings and Communications
4. Evacuation
5. Shelter, the Greatest Need
6. Ventilation and Cooling of Shelters
7. Protection Against Fires and Carbon Monoxide
8. Water
9. Food
10. Fallout Radiation Meters
11. Light 
12. Shelter Sanitation and Preventive Medicine
13. Surviving Without Doctors
14. Expedient Shelter Furnishings
15. Improvised Clothing and Protective Items
16. Minimum Pre-Crises Preparations
17. Permanent Family Fallout Shelters for Duel Use 
18. Trans-Pacific Fallout

In addition, there are the following Appendices:

    A.    Instructions for Six Expedient Fallout Shelters

    B.     How to Make and Use a Homemade Shelter-Ventilating Pump, the KAP

    C.    Instructions for a Homemade Fallout Meter

    D.    Expedient Blast Shelters

    E.    How to Make and Use a Homemade Plywood Double-Action Piston Pump and Filter

    F.     Means for Providing Improved Ventilation and Daylight to a Shelter with an Emergency Exit

Finally, the book as a selected index and a list of selected references.  I don't have an older copy, but, due to differences in fonts, it appears that Chapters 17 and 18 and Appendices E and F are new to the 1987 edition. It appeared to me that portions of the chapter on food had also been expanded. 

    You will probably notice right away that the Life After Doomsday book incorporates information from this book on expedient shelters, instructions for the fallout meter and ventilation pump design, but not to the detail in this volume. For instance, Life After Doomsday had two trench style expedient shelters, while this has instructions on six styles of expedient shelters. 

    If you are like me, you probably don't have the space or money to add a permanent shelter and would have to rely on an expedient shelter. However, expedient in this case does not mean that you can simply throw it together with whatever you have hand. The designs take a substantial amount of wood for framing and supports and, presumably, fasteners of some sort. I would expect that in the event of an impending attack, you would not have the time to go and shop for all of this, and panic buying might result in the materials not being available even if you had the time. Thus, if you believe that you might need a fallout shelter, you would want to purchase and store the materials beforehand. 

    But before all of that, take a careful look at the fallout maps to see if you will need a fallout shelter. Although there are some scary looking maps, the reality is that the fallout will either be heavier material that will fall out of the atmosphere within a relatively short distance--several tens of miles--or be lighter dust that will be swept high into the atmosphere and probably take years to settle out. And, remember, that we are looking at warheads of less than 1 MT yield each. Thus the map at p. 36 of the PDF, which assumes ground bursts from multi-megaton yield weapons, shows a heavier fallout pattern than what is probably realistic. If you go to p. 29 of Life After Doomsday (p. 34 of the PDF) the author there offers what he considers a more realistic fallout map, reflecting that most of the heavy material will be from surface detonations to destroy hardened facilities such as missile silos. Similarly, on page 46 of the latter volume (p. 51 of the PDF), he shows areas that will likely be fallout free under even a worst-case scenario. Thus, I believe that unless you are downwind of hardened facilities (several hundred miles) or downwind of an airburst of a major city (40 or 50 miles), fallout will probably not such a risk to necessitate a special fallout shelter. Study up on the topic, but I think that you will most likely come to the same conclusion. For most of us, the danger will be radioactive particles building up over months or years from the stuff swept into the upper atmosphere and entering the food chain.