"Hot Spot" readings are different from "background" readings. In the event of large particle tertiary fallout, a single particle per square meter can produce a reading many times greater than the background reading, as measured in Roentgens per hour (R/hr). Neither of those methods of measuring radioactivity involve an accumulated dose of radiation -- which requires the use of a dosimeter. All of these reading are critical in determining the rate of radioactive decay, and thus the time required to stay indoors as well as the amount and type of shielding required.  Look at the jet stream map above. I live about 30 miles from Cape Blanco, the farthest west point on the map in SW Oregon. Check the daily jet stream map and you will know if you are downwind from my location; my readings may not be precise for your particular area, but at least for tertiary fallout you will have some clue as to what is heading your way via the jet stream.  I will update this page as frequently as required if I detect tertiary fallout.

Nuclear War Survival booklet, by Miles Stair - $3.95 All Seven (7) Booklets - Print Edition (See list here) - $17.95 All seven of my booklets are revised, expanded and with many color photographs, all in Adobe Acrobat 7.0.   Plus Bonus Books: All seven of my booklets, revised and expanded, with many new color photographs.    PLUS THE FOLLOWING FREE BONUS BOOKS!!!    8.   "Family Shelter Designs" - Office of Civil Defense, 30 pages.       9.    EMP  - How EMP could be employed against the US.   10.  EMP - Practical Protection, by Miles Stair.   11.  Nuclear War Survival Skills book by Cresson Kearney.    12.  Recovery from Nuclear Attack, 24 pages.   13.  Survival and Austere Medicine -  full 213 page ebook.   14.  Infection Control for Viral Haemorrhagic Fevers, 210 pages.   15.  Emergency Food and Water Supplies.   16.  Disinfecting Exposed Surfaces.   17.  Preparing for the Coming Influenza Pandemic   18.  Versatile mini kerosene heaters you can make.   19.  Circular wick reading lamps - care and feeding of.   20.  Kerosene heaters and stoves - photos, uses.   21.  Nuclear Weapons Effects; 37 pages.   22.  Defense Against Toxic Weapons; 60 pages.   23.  Field Management of Chemical Casualties Handbook; 129 pages.   24.  Medical Management of Biological Casualties; 182 pages.   25.  Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Warfare, US Military; 5,374  pages!          PLUS  SEVEN PREP BOOKLETS FROM FEMA! Booklets and Bonus material on CD only $14.95 +S&H   Addressing the Unthinkable, U.S. Revives Study of Fallout http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/19/national/19NUKE.html By WILLIAM J. BROAD, New York Times March 19, 2004 To cope with the possibility that terrorists might someday detonate a nuclear bomb on American soil, the federal government is reviving a scientific art that was lost after the cold war: fallout analysis. The goal, officials and weapons experts both inside and outside the government say, is to figure out quickly who exploded such a bomb and where the nuclear material came from. That would clarify the options for striking back. Officials also hope that if terrorists know a bomb can be traced, they will be less likely to try to use one. In a secretive effort that began five years ago but whose outlines are just now becoming known, the government's network of weapons laboratories is hiring new experts, calling in old-timers, dusting off data and holding drills to sharpen its ability to do what is euphemistically known as nuclear attribution or post-event forensics. It is also building robots that would go into an affected area and take radioactive samples, as well as field stations that would dilute dangerous material for safe shipment to national laboratories. "Certainly, there's a frightening aspect in all of this," said Charles B. Richardson, the project leader for nuclear identification research at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. "But we're putting all these things together with the hope that they'll never have to be used." Most experts say the risk of a terrorist nuclear attack is low but no longer unthinkable, given the spread of material and know-how around the globe. Dr. Jay C. Davis, a nuclear scientist who in 1999 helped found the Pentagon's part of the government wide effort, said the precautions would "pay huge dividends after the event, both in terms of the ability to identify the bad actor and in terms of establishing public trust." In a nuclear crisis, Dr. Davis added, the identification effort would be vital in "dealing with the desire for instant gratification through vengeance." Vice President Dick Cheney was briefed on the program last fall, Dr. Davis said. The National Security Council coordinates the work among a dozen or so federal agencies. The basic science relies on faint clues -- tiny bits of radioactive fallout, often invisible to the eye, that under intense scrutiny can reveal distinctive signatures. Such wisps of evidence can help identify an exploded bomb's type and characteristics, including its country of origin. Solving the nuclear whodunit could take much more information, including hard-won law enforcement clues and good intelligence on foreign nuclear arms and terrorist groups. For that reason, several federal agencies are involved in the program, among them the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The program addresses true nuclear weapons as well as so-called dirty bombs, ordinary explosives that spew radioactive debris. "It's a very hard job," said William Happer, a physicist at Princeton who led a panel that evaluated the identification work. Mr. Happer said he was worried that a rush for retribution after a nuclear attack might cut short the time needed for careful analysis. "If we lose a city," he said, "we might not wait around that long." The effort to fingerprint domestic nuclear blasts is part of a larger federal project to strengthen the nation's overall defenses against unconventional terrorist threats. Mostly, the goal is prevention. For instance, the government recently sent teams of scientists with hidden radiation detectors to check major American cities for signs that terrorists might be preparing to detonate radiological bombs. In contrast, the identification program seeks to increase the government's knowledge and options should prevention fail. "We're trying to resurrect some of our capability," said Reid Worlton, a retired nuclear scientist from the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico who has been called in to aid the fallout endeavor. "It sort of died. They're not doing radiochemistry on nuclear tests anymore, so it's hard to keep these people around." The effort draws on work that began at the dawn of the atomic era. Scientists working on the Manhattan Project built an array of devices to monitor nuclear blasts in the New Mexico desert in July 1945 and at Hiroshima and Nagasaki a month later. The experience helped scientists learn what to look for. The first hunt zeroed in on the Soviet Union. In the late 1940's, military weather planes used paper filters to gather dust particles around the periphery of Russia, and scientists in the United States who analyzed the data at first sounded dozens of false alarms, said Jeffrey T. Richelson, an intelligence expert in Washington. Then, on Sept. 3, 1949, a weather plane flying from Japan to Alaska picked up a slew of atomic particles. "That was the real thing," Mr. Richelson said. Twenty days later, President Harry S. Truman announced that the Soviets had exploded their first nuclear device. The ranks of fallout investigators swelled during the cold war as foreign nations conducted hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests. By all accounts, the sleuths made many important discoveries about the nature and design of foreign nuclear arms. In time, the ranks dwindled as more and more nations decided to move their test explosions underground, eliminating fallout. The last nuclear blast to pummel the earth's atmosphere was in 1980, and the last known underground test, conducted by Pakistan, was in 1998. As the terrorist threat rose in the 1990's, the government began to consider the quandary that would arise if a nuclear weapon exploded on American soil. In 1999, Dr. Davis, then head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at the Pentagon, began an effort to address the identification problem by financing research at the nation's weapons laboratories, many of them run by the Energy Department. The first money came in late 2000, Dr. Davis said, and the attacks of September 2001 "made it clear that a very organized event on a large scale was credible." That perception, he said, helped the effort expand. The secretive work won rare public praise in a June 2002 report ("Making the Nation Safer") from the National Research Council of the National Academies, the country's leading scientific advisory group. Having the ability to find out who launched a domestic nuclear strike, the report said, could deter attackers and bolster threats of retaliation. The report urged that the program go into operation "as quickly as practical" and that the government publicly declare its existence. Since then, weapons laboratories and other federal agencies have worked hard on the problem. "They're making progress but they've got a ways to go," said Mr. Worlton, the retired Los Alamos scientist. In a drill this year, dozens of federal experts in fallout analysis met at the Sandia laboratories in Albuquerque to study a simulated terrorist nuclear blast. Mr. Worlton said they were broken into teams and given radiological data from two old American nuclear tests, whose identities remained hidden, and were instructed to try to name them. Some teams succeeded, he said. Mr. Richardson of Sandia said the laboratory was developing a land robot that could roll up to 10 miles to sample fallout and return it to human operators for analysis. It could also radio back some results if it became stuck. Mr. Richardson said the robots, now in development, are to be ready in a couple of years. Experts say a new aircraft for atmospheric sampling of nuclear fallout is also in development. The Air Force currently has one, the WC-135W Constant Phoenix, for such work. It was first deployed in 1965. Weapons experts say getting samples fast is important because some radioactive debris can decay rapidly. If captured quickly, they can shed light on a weapon's design. One way of trying to identify a bomb's origin positively, several experts say, is to match debris signatures with libraries of classified data about nuclear arms around the world, including old fallout signatures and more direct intelligence about bomb types, characteristics and construction materials. "If you're talking about a stolen device, you might try to do that," Mr. Richardson said. "But if it's improvised, that's less likely to work. It might not look like things you've seen before." A further complication is that even knowing who made a bomb may say little about who detonated it. In a 1991 Tom Clancy novel, "The Sum of All Fears," Islamic terrorists find and rebuild an Israeli nuclear weapon and set it off at the Super Bowl. Federal experts say complex threat scenarios (for instance, an American warhead being stolen and detonated in an American city) mean that many types of intelligence might be needed for successful identification. Over all, it is unclear how much money the government is spending on the effort. Private experts offered suggestions for improvement. Dr. Happer of Princeton, who heads a university board that helps oversee campus research, said the program might be cooperating too little with nuclear allies. "It's to our advantage," he said, "for all of us to share." Dr. Davis, the former head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, made several policy recommendations last April in an article for The Journal of Homeland Security. He said the F. B. I. should lead the program, presidentially appointed overseers should guide it, goals should be set for how long analyses should take and legal issues of prosecution should be examined. In an interview, Dr. Davis said his suggestions had made little headway, partly because of the topic's grisly nature. "This is an ugly subject because your best effort is going to be barely adequate," he said. "That's not the kind of phrase people like to hear." Mr. Richardson of Sandia said that the attribution effort had made good technical progress and had already some ability to identify an attacker. "We're hoping for deterrence," he said. "We don't want anybody to think they can get away with it." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/19/national/19NUKE.html And the reason for this "secretive effort that began five years ago but whose outlines are just now becoming known" was actually published in the UK just days after the post above was published.  It can happen here, which is why I wrote the booklet "Evacuation and Relocation," and why I wrote what is listed on the War Preparations page on this web site. Dirty bomb victims 'may be shot' http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=547552003 JOHN INNES, March 15, 2004 POLICE could be forced to shoot members of the public to maintain order in the event of a terrorist "dirty bomb" or biological attack on Britain, it was claimed yesterday. The Police Federation annual conference in Blackpool was told that so few officers have been trained to deal with a chemical, biological, nuclear or radiological strike that they would have to resort to "very unsavoury but necessary" crowd control. Bob Elder, the chairman of the constables’ central committee, did not refer specifically to officers firing on civilians, but sources within the organisation said it was clear police could have to resort to firearms to stop contamination being spread by fleeing victims. The government had failed to explain how important it would be to keep the public inside a cordon after such an atrocity, Mr Elder said. "This is not about creating mass hysteria," he said. "This is about the opposite. The public has a right to know. "The natural reaction from the public caught up in such an incident will be to get as far away from the scene as possible. This could, of course, only extend the problem." In another reference to the possible use of firearms to keep control of an area, Mr Elder added: "We will be the ones who would have to carry out that containment and we would be the ones held responsible for our actions - whatever those may be." Asked if he could foresee officers firing on civilians, he said: "It’s an option the government is going to have to consider. We haven’t got enough cops trained to deal with full-scale containment and it’s putting everyone at risk." A spokesman for the Home Office insisted police would not have powers to shoot the public to enforce a cordon in the event of a chemical, biological, nuclear or radiological strike attack. "Police have the right to detain people if they present a risk to the public," he said. "There are no circumstances in which police could operate some kind of shoot to kill policy under the law." Site Index