Reply to How far away do you need to be from DC to be safe from a nuclear attack?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I attended a conference on dirty bombs years ago. Lesson was not to try to escape but to get inside and into a basement or sub basement. As low as you can go. [/quote]

The radiation hazard from IRD’s (dirty bombs) is a LOT more dangerous and persistent than the radiological hazards created by the fallout from a nuclear weapon.

The blast damage is much, much smaller with an IRD, but the contamination dangers are far longer-lasting because of the types of isotopes likely used for dirty bombs.

If a nuclear weapon was detonated over your neighborhood, there would be obviously be massive destruction from the blast. But after about 6-8 weeks, the danger of radiation will have largely subsided, except for a few longer lasting isotopes, which themselves have longer half-lives, but generally emit lower amounts of radiation (because their half-lives are so long).

On the other hand, a dirty bomb would do very little physical damage outside of the immediate area of the explosion (think “car bomb”) but the contamination would last for decades or centuries, not mere weeks. [/quote]

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