A Skeptical Survivalist

1. Iran is now threatening to strike at any third country in the region that aided Israel in an airstrike on Iran. The aftermath is therefore likely to be further conflict in the region.

2. Oil prices will spike. I imagine you could easily see $150 a barrel or maybe even more. This development could throw the US and Europe back into deep recession.

3. Hizbullah would likely launch rockets, causing at least severe inconvenience to some 1/4 of the Israeli public, which might well have to move house again, and possibly much worse if Hizbullah is able, as they claim, to target toxic gas storage in Haifa or even reactor at Dimona with modified Chinese silkworms. It is not clear that the Israeli public would appreciate all that trouble; they didn’t, in former PM Ehud Olmert’s case (his 2006 Lebanon war was extremely unpopular and his party is no longer in power). A Hizbullah official said on Sunday that Hizbullah would be willing to go to war with Israel if Syria were attacked, so it seems likely the same thing would hold true with regard to Iran.

4. Israel would destroy Lebanon infrastructure in revenge for Hizbullah rocket attacks.

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan.  Please read the other six points at his blog.  

This is old news (July 2010) but I find it interesting that Russia feels the need for more bomb shelters.

Nearly 5,000 new emergency bomb shelters will be built in Moscow by 2012 to save people in case of potential attacks.

(Reuters) - Japan raced to avert a catastrophe on Wednesday after an explosion at a quake-crippled nuclear power plant sent radiation wafting into Tokyo, prompting some people to flee the capital and others to stock up on essential supplies.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said two workers at the Daiichi plant in Fukushima were missing after two more blasts at the facility on Tuesday blew a hole in a building housing a reactor and cooling pool for spent fuel rods.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan urged people within 30 km (18 miles) of the facility — a population of 140,000 — to remain indoors, as Japan grappled with the world’s most serious nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986.

Officials in Tokyo — 240 km (150 miles) to the south of the plant — said radiation in the capital was 10 times normal at one point but not a threat to human health in the sprawling high-tech city of 13 million people.

Toxicologist Lee Tin-lap at the Chinese University of Hong Kong said such a radiation level was not an immediate threat to people but the long-term consequences were unknown.

“You are still breathing this into your lungs, and there is passive absorption in the skin, eyes and mouth and we really do not know what long-term impact that would have,” Lee told Reuters by telephone.

Regularly updated radiation levels from the “Nuclear Safety Division, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Disaster Prevention Network for Nuclear Environments” in Japan. 

Nuclear Safety Technology Center operates the Network System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI Network System) so as to predict, when large amounts of radioactive materials are emitted from nuclear power plants or other nuclear facilities, the air concentration/dose of radioactive materials in the surrounding environment in consideration of geographical and meteorological conditions based on information on the places where radioactive materials are emitted. In the event of an emergency, information which is obtained by calculation and prediction with the SPEEDI Network System is promptly sent through the network to MEXT, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan (NSC) and local governments.

In order to understand the numbers you see you’ll need to know some of the following.  Good luck making sense of it. It sounds like the levels aren’t that bad yet; elevated but not horrible. I’ll need to do more research. 

The chart being linked to in this thread is reporting radiation levels in nano-Grays per hour (nGy/h).

Another thread pointed to a chart showing current exposure rates in Japan. Few people seem to understand what the numbers represent. Below is a short explanation.

The exposure rates are reported here:
[link to translate.google.com] 

Explanations of the units of radiation as well as annual exposure limits are contained in 10 CFR 20. (CFR = Code of Federal Regulations)

10 CFR 20 may be read here:
[link to www.nrc.gov] 

The chart being linked to in this thread is reporting radiation levels in nano-Grays per hour (nGy/h).

What we are concerned with is the amount of Beta-Gamma radiation people are being exposed to. Using a little math, the numbers presented may be manipulated into a more meaningful unit.

Where beta-gamma radiation is concerned:
1 Gray (Gy) = 1 Sievert (Sv)
1 Sievert (SV) = 100 Rem
therefore, 1 Gy = 100 Rem

Per 10 CFR 20, the annual exposure limit to the whole body (that is your core; everything above the knees and elbows) is 5 Rem per year.

The highest dose rate I see reported currently on the chart is 3817 nGy/h.

Alright then, time for a little math.
1 nano-Gray (nGy) = 10 to the minus 9 Grays (10E-9 Gy)
(3817 nGy/h)(10E-9 Gy/nGy)(100 Rem/1 Gy)(1000 mRem/1 Rem) = 0.3817 mRem/h

So, the highest reported beta-gamma radiation thus far is 0.3817 millirem per hour.

As an aside, people are typically exposed to 2 - 3 millirem during one cross-country flight across the U.S.

Back to math. 
(0.3817 mRem/h)(24 h/day)(365 day/yr)(1 Rem/1000 mRem) = 3.82 Rem/yr

Recall that the Federal exposure limit to the whole body is set at 5 Rem/yr. So, while the radiation exposure is much higher than normal, it is still only ~76% of the federal annual limit. The federal limit of 5 Rem/yr is a conservative number as well. Studies performed on survivors from the atomic bomb attacks during WW2 showed that actual limits are closer to 50 Rem/yr. Source

More Background info

What units are used for measuring radiation exposure?

X-ray and gamma-ray exposure is often expressed in units of roentgen (R). The roentgen (R) unit refers to the amount of ionization present in the air. One roentgen of gamma- or x-ray exposure produces approximately 1 rad (0.01 gray) tissue dose (see next section for definitions of gray (Gy) and rad units of dose).

Another unit of measuring gamma ray intensity in the air is “air dose or absorbed dose rate in the air” in grays per hour (Gy/h) units. This unit is used to express gamma ray intensity in the air from radioactive materials in the earth and in the atmosphere.  Source

For the sake of reference, a rem is equal to 1/100th of a Sv - or to put it the other way, 1 Sv = 100 rem. Likewise, a rad = 1/100th of a Gy, or 1 Gy = 100 rad. For converting between Gy and Sv (or between rad and rem), it depends on the type of radiation and sometimes the energy of the radiation involved. For a rough idea, in the case of gamma/x-ray radiation and beta (electrons and positrons), 1 Gy = 1 Sv (and 1 rad = 1 rem). For neutrons and alpha particles, a ‘quality factor’ (Q) is used (see above discussion about the sievert), which varies from 20 (the generally accepted number for alphas) down to a range of 3 to 20 (for neutrons), depending on which standard one abides by (as discussed in the ‘Who makes up all this stuff’ heading below). source BBC

1 mSv = 100 mrem = 0.1 rem source

Measured or calculated doses can be placed into the following frame of reference: Source

Whole-body doses:

Lethal dose

3-5 Sv

Maximal permissible dose

50 mSv/year 

Maximal accumulated dose

100 mSv/5 years 

Natural background

4 mSv/year 

There are three practical dose rate limits

Max surface dose rate on waste

5 mSv/h 

Max dose rate in non classified work areas

2 mSv/h

Max dose rate were people occasionally pass 

20 mSv/h

More authoritative background information from the Encyclopedia of Occupational Health & Safety Vol 1