The Cutting Edge In Radiation Prophylaxis
You can only get this good intel on Vault-Co because civilians aren't supposed to know
When I was in NBC training they made us watch these films on goats exposed to successively higher degrees of radiation. It was supposed to traumatize you a little the same way they exposed you to CS gas in the gas chamber to teach you to value the protective shield of your mask against exposure to the air in dangerous environments.
Remember, these soldiers they had to teach with comic books to get them to master their professions. So many training methodologies relied upon shock value to get you to remember the lesson.
After two hours watching goats dissolve into bloody piles of leaking goo from radiation exposure, you can bet it impressed upon us just how dangerous radiation was despite the fact you could not see it, hear it, taste it or feel it. This meant a competent NBC officer was supposed to rely on his measurements and not think a great sunny day with a blue sky was automatically a safe place. Between your geiger counters, exposure meters, your detection stickers and combined intel over the radio with other commands you were expected to keep the soldiers safe from what they didn’t know. If your NBC officer was telling you to evacuate or put on your mask hours after it had become lethal, he had failed all of you because he was the one who was supposed to give you the head-up just on a suspicion the environment might be contaminated by fallout, chemical weapons or diseases either engineered or natural.
The maxim often was “if you’re treating radiation sickness after exposure, your NBC officer has already f*cked up.” Good monitoring was supposed to keep you out of hot zones and contaminated areas altogether.
Of course I am sure you would know that in real life nothing ever works out so ideal. You being a reader of this blog probably already know the important of survivalists being flexible, dynamic problem solvers in the moment who don’t give up just because they are out of mint capuccino at Starbucks. You adapt, try an approach with whatever expedient materials you have at hand and conquer the hardship. Unlike a lot of millennials nowadays - who simply lie down to die when encountering difficulties. You’ll never be a survivor of a nuclear war if you can’t cope with unexpected challenges. Guarantee you that every day, the very thing you most relied upon might suddenly break with no explanation. That’s why we emphasize redundancy in all things. In this article, we are going to start with the cutting edge in the field and finish with jimmy-rigged treatments and grab-ass systems that will often outperform the best stuff you can buy from the self-described “experts.” God forbid, someday you contract radiation poisoning, you’re going to realize when you are healing up from it that fear was the mind-killer all along. If you get a couple hundred millirems and get sick, remember in a week or so you’re going to be feeling fine just like you had the flu if you get rest, water and some of the prophylaxis and treatments agents described below. You get another couple hundred, you could have a problem and you definitely will be glad you stocked these medical supplies in advance.
I am certain you can imagine situations in which you are more than ten steps away from your shelter and you or your loved ones are exposed to fallout. Relatives can arrive at your shelter door almost a day after they have been driving through skyshine and radioactive ash from several regions which have been devastated by nuclear weapons. They or others could show up with flash blindness from looking at it go off, minor or critical wounds from flying glass and debris, bleeding wounds or exposure to fallout doses that are so severe the prognosis is grim for them to even survive the night. You may think you’ll just ignore them at the buzzer but in many cases we both know you won’t, especially when it is members of your own family. Or worse, you and your family display symptoms not long after arriving at your shelter having driven there from another location in response to nuclear threats. If you’re on the road while fallout is pouring down on top of your family car and you’re unshielded inside, that’s a problem once you have arrived carrying the legacy of that journey in your cells.
This is a good rule of thumb and it hasn’t changed in 70 years. This is the classic scale and it applies directly to the output of the CD-700 Geiger Counter, which is marked in these gradations for that reason. This is what is taught in Civil Defense the past 70 years for purposes of understanding the output readings from the classic instrument issued to shelters marked the “CD-700.”
A rem (roentgen) (RAD to Civil Defense) is a pretty big unit of radiation. The chart above is a little misleading in that some sensitive people can vomit or feel lightheaded from as little as 25 R. Otherwise the chart is a pretty good guide of what to expect.
Remember this is a cumulative dose. If you get 100 rems one day and the next day you get 100 rems, you have a dose equal to 200 rems. It’s like an expense account and once spent, it can take years to be able to spend it again. A 500 R dose is likely to kill you even if it takes a week of 100 R days. You can get a 500 R dose in 15 minutes or over a month period … it’s still a fatal dose. That’s why you should worry if a measurement taken at your shelter door is 10 rems an hour. In a month that’s going to be a serious threat to anybody sleeping near the front entrance. Find shielding or move those bunk beds to the back of the shelter. 1 rem a day is still a dilemma but probably survivable if it accumulates over the course of a year. Your best expedient shielding is found in water. Stacking drums of water behind the doorway won’t hurt the water in the least, in fact it will purify it. That water will help reduce the radiation coming off that door to zero very quickly if you stack it up. Sandbags or big bags of rice will be nearly effective as water in shielding.
Under (<) 200 rads you can get deaths of the elderly, children and people with weakened immune systems. Less than 5%. You will almost certainly see cosmetic effects like hair falling out in addition to swollen glands and light sensitivity. This level of radiation dose can benefit enormously from treatment with radiation drugs and vitamins and minerals to ameliorate the effects. Over 200R, you will see a lot of people die, at least half. Even these people can be helped enormously with medical intervention and good nutrition and sleep. I have heard it is difficult for people with radiation poisoning to sleep soundly because of the damage their bodies are trying to repair. Over 450R the majority of all people exposed will die, but there will be exceptions and you increase the likelihood of recovery in those people with the same medicine and supplements we will talk about below. Over 500 R, it is best to think in another direction entirely and that is limiting suffering with pain killers and anti-inflammatory reagents like aspirin. Very few people with radiation poisoning like this survive - although it is possible. If I had one bottle of medicine to treat radiation sickness and two patients and one of them had gotten over 500 R I would concentrate on the lesser because that patient could benefit by surviving but the other person would almost certainly perish anyway.
Most modern measurement instruments for radiation are marked in millirems or millisieverts … it is important to know the two are very different scales! The CD-700 geiger counter was designed for nuclear war! Most radiation measurement devices are designed to test for things like X-Ray exposure for medical staff. Much smaller scales and hardly of the magnitude described above.
You should expect most discussions to be in millisieverts and unless you know how to convert these values you can be confused easily about the expectations for a person who has been exposed.
Here are some radiation metrics that can give you a bigger picture if you understand the relationships between them.
“Gray” (Gy) = Used in medicine to describe a unit of whole body dosage
Gray units are used in treatment of radiation sickness from conventional sources.
So remember … 1 Gy = 100 Rems. 5 Gy is a near fatal dose of radiation in the chart above when measured in rems as 500 rems. Again, on this scale 1 or 2 Gy (or 100 to 200 rems/RADS) isn’t on average regarded as life threatening - but as you move up the chart, the illnesses and mortality increase just in different metrics of measurement.
1 Gray = 100 Rem
What about “Sieverts” and “millisieverts (mSv) ?” How do you convert to these values from our chart of rems? That’s a little easier …
1 Gray = 1 Sievert
1 Rem = 0.01 Sievert
I hope that helps to make the following charts clear for you in comparison.
This chart gives you a little better grasp on millisieverts as they relate to fatality or severe illness. The risk of cancer is what concerns most people who are not talking about nuclear war when it comes to radiation poisoning.
The chart below goes into greater detail about the long term effects of radiation exposure and what could be expected many years down the road. This is another subject where a person’s medical and nutritional support could be critical to limiting damage and helping them to recover with no ill effects.
For years survivalists have advised one another to stock and take Potassium Iodide before, during or after exposure. Most of them don’t know exactly how it works but they feel it could be life saving. They are correct for most people but the youngest children benefit most. It is vital to have a couple bottles at least in your shelter. Potassium Iodide protects the thyroid glands from absorbing radionucleotides they may have picked up in the air, water or food. If their thyroid is saturated with radioactive compounds it could wither and die and it is very critical to growth and healthy development in children.
Where a young child may be unable to keep these pills down, you should also have a bottle of rubbing iodine because substantial amounts of iodide can be absorbed through the skin. In a very young child under age 10 it might be advisable to try the absorption approach rather than give them the pills. You wet a cotton ball and apply it to the child’s arms, back, all around the neck and chest. This will provide them with nearly as much from a pill and in some cases you will find it is more readily absorbed into the bloodstream this way. It’s good to repeat it once each day for three days after the child has been exposed.
A lot has happened in the last twenty years to advance knowledge on this subject of radiation poisoning. The Russians, Chinese and Americans have all produced new drugs and supplements to not only protect their soldiers and citizens but also to assist in recovering from exposure after the fact. We are not that far off from a real life medical breakthrough like RAD-AWAY, the drug in the Fallout game that actually removed radiation poisoning from the body altogether. Of course the body will still have to repair the physiological damage that has been done … but it won’t have to try to recover when the body is still poisoned by radiological compounds.
Ex-Rad (or Ex-RAD; recilisib sodium (INN, USAN); development code ON 01210.Na) is an experimental drug being developed by Onconova Therapeutics and the U.S. Department of Defense. It is being studied as a radiation protection agent. Chemically, it is the sodium salt of 4-carboxystyryl-4-chlorobenzylsulfone.
The results of two Phase I clinical studies in healthy human volunteers indicate that subcutaneously injected Ex-Rad is safe and well tolerated, with "no evidence of systemic side effects". A study in mice demonstrated the efficacy of Ex-Rad by increasing the survival rate of mice exposed to typically lethal whole-body irradiation. The study tested oral and parenteral administration of Ex-Rad for both pre- and post-exposure radiomitigation.
Research on Ex-Rad has involved collaboration with the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI), the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular & Cellular Biology at Georgetown University, Long Island University's Arnold & Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy, and the Department of Oncological Sciences at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.
There are more compounds under development or likely to become available to civilians in the near future if they are not already sold through prescription.
CBLB502 (Entolimod), a compound being studied for its ability to suppresses apoptotic cell death in hematopoietic and gastrointestinal cells.[5]
Amifostine (WR2721), the first selective-target and broad-spectrum radioprotector, upregulates DNA repair[6]
Filgrastim (Neupogen), a hematopoietic countermeasure of acute radiation syndrome (ARS)
Pegfilgrastim (Neulasta), longer acting than its parent, filgrastim
Sargramostim (leukine), similar in use to filgrastim
N-Acetylcysteine, protects against DNA damage, suggested to be comparable to amifostine[7][8][9][10]
Chelation therapy, a countermeasure for treating internal radio-isotope contamination
DPTA, a chelation agent used to eliminate actinides that have been ingested, one of three U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) radioprotectants stockpiled[5]
Prussian blue/radiogardase, a chelation agent to treat radio-Cesium and thallium consumption, one of three the FDA radioprotectants stockpiled[5]
Potassium iodide, a prophylactic drug recommended before entering radioiodine environments, one of three FDA radioprotectants stockpiled[5]
All these chemical solutions are interesting in that some of them claim to be all upside and no side effects, very promising in initial clinical trials. Some of them are available now depending on where you live and who you know. In most States in the U.S. it is perfectly legal for a doctor to write you a prescription for medical aids intended only for emergency use.
Luckily for us, survivalists have been gathering and collating data on natural, cheap substitutes for these drugs which have performed better in many instances than highly touted cures like “Prussian Blue.”
The most important is N-Acetyl-cysteine, a remarkably cheap and affordable amino acid that can be bought by the bag. It’s protective and recuperative powers have been documented in several studies treating victims of actual radiation poisoning. It’s harmless even in large doses and can be given mixed into liquids to hide the bitter taste. If you follow the link above, you will see that cheap available “NAC” (as it is called shorthand) is comparable in results to the incredibly expensive Amifostine! This alone means every shelter should have a bag of that powder sealed and stored in a cool dry place.
There are other natural compounds or aminos that help in cellular repairs and to revive the body’s immune system whilst simultaneously cleaning the radiation out of the body and excreting it through the urine.
It’s a good idea to keep all these stocked up in a shelter, particularly cilantro which is fantastic at sweeping by-products of radiation sickness out of the body and the toxins they create when they attack cells.
Vault-Co recommends at a minimum :
Potassium Iodide pills
Rubbing iodine
N-Acetylcysteine in a powder
Cilantro in capsules or powder
Rosemary & Dandelion in dried pills
Broad spectrum antibiotics to fight infection
Liquid Multivitamin supplements taken every 2 hours after exposure
Electrolytes to replace fluids after diarrhea or bleeding
Vitamin C, stored as a powder but mixed into a liquid
Iron to help stop blood loss in the intestines, in a capsule
These ingredients will help you treat victims of radiation sickness if you can’t get them to a hospital. At the lower doses of radiation this regimen could be very effective but at the higher dosages it is entirely in Gods hands because most of these wouldn’t help in lethal doses of radiation poisoning. Again, for that reason you might want to stock pain relief medication to help ease suffering.
I hope this has been of some help, this is an extensive subject and we have only touched on some of the basics here.
Cresson Kearny (the author of NUCLEAR WAR SURVIVAL) said that the panic from suspected radiation poisoning could actually be worse than the actual sickness that results. For this reason he urged every shelter to stock monitoring and survey equipment for radiation. He also stated that fear can make people ill where they are not even sick. If people stay calm, drink plenty of fluids and are treated with the above panaceas there is every reason to believe in most cases they will make a full recovery.
Always remember this promise to God’s Children that they should endure.
And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.
— Matthew 24:22 KJV
Regards, Tex
Sadly, most Americans believe they will not survive a nuclear war.
Why?
Because Hollywood's movies have been miseducating them for 75 years that over 90% of them will die in a nuclear war.
And the federal government has gone along, even encouraged this lie, because they do not want to spend the money required to create proper shelter, supplies, education, etc. to ensure survival.
See, for example, the golden standard of nuclear war survival....Switzerland.
They can shelter 114% of their populations when the missiles fly (yes, they have extra bunkers for foreigners who might be among them when the strike occurs.
You, American citizen, are on your own. So is your family. So are your neighbors.
Since 1962 TACDA.ORG has been educating Americans about natural and manmade disasters, including nuclear war.
The information is free. I spent months uploading our decades of the Journal of Civil Defense so you can find the information you and your family need to survive.
Take advantage of this gift.
Be sure to buy the correct K103.
When the Fukishima, Japan nuclear power plant failure fallout was heading to California, the Californicators went on the Internet and purchased Chinese sawdust pills lying that they were potasium iodate.
Here is one source of the real protection for your thyroid.
https://tacda.org/product-category/potassium-iodate-kio3/