A Home Shelter May Save Your Life
Public fallout shelters usually offer some advantages over home shelters. However, in many places--especially suburban and rural areas--there are few public shelters. If there is none near you, a home fallout shelter may save your life.
The basements of some homes are usable as family fallout shelters as they now stand, without any alterations or changes--especially if the house has two or more stories, and its basement is below ground level.
However, most home basements would need some improvements in order to shield their occupants adequately from the radiation given off by fallout particles. Usually, householders can make these improvements themselves, with moderate effort and at low cost. Millions of homes have been surveyed for the U.S. Office of Civil Defense by the U.S. Census Bureau, and these householders have received information on how much fallout protection their basements would provide, and how to improve this protection.
Shielding Material Is Required
In setting up any home fallout shelter, the basic aim is to place enough "shielding material" between the people in the shelter and the fallout particles outside.
Shielding material is any substance that would absorb and deflect the invisible rays given off by fallout particles outside the house, and thus reduce the amount of radiation reaching the occupants of the shelter. The thicker or denser the shielding material is, the more it would protect the shelter occupants.
Some radiation protection is provided by the existing, standard walls and ceiling of a basement. But if they are not thick or dense enough, other shielding material will have to be added.
Concrete, bricks, earth and sand are some of the materials that are dense or heavy enough to provide fallout protection. For comparative purposes, 4 inches of concrete would provide the same shielding density as: