Planning and Preparing for Nuclear War

As you can see, coming through a nuclear emergency unscathed is unlikely to be accomplished by simple chance. You stand a much better chance of protecting yourself and your family if you are prepared and have a plan before hand. In addition to planning for a bomb shelter, you should plan for shortages. You can avoid problems with shortages by preparing ahead of time and keeping some basics on hand.

MINIMUM NEEDS

The average American is accustomed to eating regularly and abundantly. He may not realize that for most people food would not be essential for survival during the first two or three weeks following a nuclear attack. Exceptions would be infants, small children, and the aged and sick, some of whom might die within a week without proper nourishment. Other things are more important for short-term survival: adequate shelter against the dangers from blast and fallout, an adequate supply of air, and enough water.

The average American also may not realize that small daily amounts of a few unprocessed staple foods would enable him to survive for many months, or even for years. A healthy person if he is determined to live and if he learns how to prepare and use whole-grain wheat or corn can maintain his health for several months. If beans are also available and are substituted for some of the grain, the ration would be improved and could maintain health for many months.

The nutritional information given in this chapter is taken from a July, 1979 publication, Maintaining Nutritional Adequacy During a Prolonged Food Crisis.26 This book brings together from worldwide sources the nutritional facts needed to help unprepared people use unaccustomed foods advantageously during the prolonged crisis that would follow a heavy nuclear attack. The practical know-how which will be given in this chapter regarding the expedient processing and cooking of basic grains and beans is based on old ways which are mostly unknown to modern Americans. These methods have been improved and field-tested by civil defense researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

LOSS OF HIGH-PROTEIN ANIMAL FOODS

A massive nuclear attack would eliminate the luxurious, complicated American system of food production, processing, and distribution. Extensive, heavy fallout and the inability of farmers to feed their animals would kill most of the cattle, hogs, and chickens that are the basis of our high-protein diet. The livestock most likely to survive despite their owners’ inability to care for them would be cattle on pasture. However, these grazing animals would swallow large numbers of fallout particles along with grass, and many would drink contaminated water. Their digestive tracts would suffer severe radiation damage.27 Also, they would suffer radiation burns from fallout particles. Thus in an outdoor area where the total dose from gamma radiation emitted within a few days from fallout particles on the ground might be only 150 R, most grazing animals probably would be killed by the combined effects of external gamma- ray radiation, beta burns, and internal radiation.

PRECAUTIONS WHEN EATING MEAT

In areas where the fallout would not be enough to sicken animals, their meat would be safe food. In fallout areas, however, animals that have eaten or drunk fallout-contaminated food or water will have concentrated radioactive atoms and molecules in their internal organs. The thyroid gland, kidneys, and liver especially should not be eaten.

If an animal appears to be sick, it should not be eaten. The animal might be suffering from a sickening or fatal radiation dose and might have developed a bacterial infection as a result of this dose. Meat contaminated with the toxins produced by some kinds of bacteria could cause severe illness or death if eaten, even if thoroughly cooked.

Under crisis conditions, all meat should be cooked until it is extremely well done – cooked long past the time when it loses the last of its pink color. To be sure that the center of each piece of meat is raised to boiling temperature, the meat should be cut into pieces that are less than 1/2-inch thick before cooking. This precaution also reduces cooking time and saves fuel.

SURVIVAL OF BREEDING STOCK

Extensive areas of the United States would not receive fallout heavy enough to kill grazing animals. The millions of surviving animals would provide some food and the fertile breeding stock needed for national recovery. The loss of fertility caused by severe radiation doses is rarely permanent. Extensive experiments with animals have shown that the offspring of severely irradiated animals are healthy and fertile.

LIVING ON BASIC PLANT FOODS

Even if almost all food-producing animals were lost, most surviving Americans should be able to live on the foods that enable most of the world’s population to live and multiply: grains, beans, and vegetables. And because of the remarkable productivity of American agriculture, there usually would be enough grain and beans in storage to supply surviving Americans with sufficient food for at least a year following a heavy nuclear attack. The problem would be to get the unprocessed foods, which are stored in food-producing regions, to the majority of survivors who would be outside these regions.

Surprisingly little transportation would be needed to carry adequate quantities of these unprocessed foods to survivors in famine areas. A single large trailer truck can haul 40,000 pounds of wheat enough to keep 40,000 people from feeling hunger pains for a day. More than enough such trucks and the fuel needed to carry basic foods to food-short areas would survive a massive nuclear attack.28 It is likely that reasonably strong American leadership and morale would prevail so that, after the first few weeks, millions of the survivors in starving areas should receive basic unprocessed foods.

Eating food produced in the years after a large attack would cause an increase in the cancer rate, due primarily to its content of radioactive strontium and cesium from fallout-contaminated soil. Over the first 30 years following an attack, this increase would be a small fraction of the number of additional cancer deaths that would result from external radiation.29 Cancer deaths would be one of the tragic, delayed costs of a nuclear war, but all together would not be numerous enough to endanger the long-term survival of the population.

LIVE OFF THE LAND?

Very few survivors of a heavy attack would be in areas where they could live off the land like primitive hunters and gatherers. In extensive areas where fallout would not be heavy enough to kill human beings, wild creatures would die from the combined effects ‘of external gamma radiation, swallowed fallout particles, and beta burns on their bodies. Survival plans should not include dependence on hunting, fishing, or gathering wild plants.

FOOD FOR SHELTER OCCUPANTS

Most people would need very little food to live several weeks; however, the time when survivors of blast and fallout would leave their shelters would mark the beginning of a much longer period of privation and hard manual labor. Therefore, to maintain physical strength and morale, persons in shelters ideally should have enough healthful food to provide well-balanced, adequate meals for many weeks.

In most American homes there are only enough ready-to-eat, concentrated foods to last a few days. Obviously, it would be an important survival advantage to keep on hand a two-week supply of easily transportable foods. In any case, occupants of shelters would be uncertain about when they could get more food and would have to make hard decisions about how much to eat each day. (Those persons who have a fallout meter, such as the homemade instrument described in Chapter 10, could estimate when and for how long they could emerge from shelter to find food. As a result, these persons could ration their limited foods more effectively.)

During the first few weeks of a food crisis, lack of vitamins and other essentials of a well-balanced diet would not be of primary importance to previously well-nourished people. Healthful foods with enough calories to provide adequate energy would meet short-term needs. If water is in short supply, high-protein foods such as meat are best eaten only in moderation, since a person eating high-protein foods requires more water than is needed when consuming an equal number of calories from foods high in carbohydrates.

EXPEDIENT PROCESSING OF GRAINSAND SOYBEANS

Whole-kernel grains or soybeans cannot be eaten in sufficient quantities to maintain vigor and health if merely boiled or parched. A little boiled whole-kernel wheat is a pleasantly chewy breakfast cereal, but experimenters at Oak Ridge got sore tongues and very loose bowels when they tried to eat enough boiled whole-kernel wheat to supply even half of their daily energy needs. Some pioneers, however, ate large quantities of whole-kernel wheat without harmful results after boiling and simmering it for many hours. Even the most primitive peoples who subsist primarily on grains grind or pound them into a meal or paste before cooking. (Rice is the only important exception.) Few Americans know how to process whole-kernel grains and soybeans (our largest food reserves) into meal. This ignorance could be fatal to survivors of a nuclear attack.

Making an expedient metate, the hollowed-out grinding stone of Mexican Indians, proved impractical under simulated post-attack conditions. Pounding grain into meal with a rock or a capped, solid-ended piece of pipe is extremely slow work. The best expedient means developed and field-tested for pounding grain or beans into meal and flour is an improvised 3-pipe grain mill. Instructions for making and using this effective grain-pounding device follow.

Improvised Grain Mill

The grain mill described can efficiently pound whole-grain wheat, corn, etc., into meal and flour thereby greatly improving digestibility and avoiding the diarrhea and sore mouths that would result from eating large quantities of unground grain.

TO BUILD:

(1) Cut 3 lengths of pipe, each 30 inches long; 3/4-inch-diameter steel pipe (such as ordinary water pipe) is best.

(2) Cut the working ends of the pipe off squarely. Remove all roughness, leaving the full-wall thickness. Each working end should have the full diameter of the pipe.

(3) In preparation for binding the three pieces of pipe together into a firm bundle, encircle each piece of pipe with cushioning, slip-preventing tape, string or cloth in the locations illustrated.

(4) Tape or otherwise bind the 3 pipes into a secure bundle so that their working ends are as even as possible and are in the same plane resting evenly on a flat surface.

(5) Cut the top smoothly out of a large can. A 4-inch-diameter, 7-inch-high fruit-juice can is ideal. If you do not have a can, improvise something to keep grain together while pounding it.

Fig. ORNL-DWO 73-11449 (Illustration)

TO MAKE MEAL AND FLOUR:

(1) Put clean, dry grain ONE INCH DEEP in the can.

(2) To prevent blistering your hands, wear gloves, or wrap cloth around the upper part of the bundle of pipes.

(3) Place the can (or open-ended cylinder) on a hard, smooth, solid surface, such as concrete.

(4) To pound the grain, sit with the can held between your feet. Move the bundle of pipes straight up and down about 3 inches, with a rapid stroke.

(5) If the can is 4 inches in diameter, in 4 minutes you should be able to pound 1-1/2 lb. (one cup) of whole-kernel wheat into 1/5 lb. of fine meal and flour, and 3/10 lb. of coarse meal and fine-cracked wheat.

(6) To separate the pounded grain into fine meal, flour, coarse meal, and fine-cracked wheat, use a sieve made of window screen.

(7) To separate flour for feeding small children, place some pounded grain in an 18 X 18-inch piece of fine nylon net, gather the edges of the net together so as to hold the grain, and shake this bag-like container.

(8) To make flour fine enough for babies, pound fine meal and coarse flour still finer, and sieve it through a piece of cheesecloth or similar material.

As soon as fallout decay permits travel, the grain-grinding machines on tens of thousands of hog and cattle farms should be used for milling grain for survivors. It is vitally important to national recovery and individual survival to get back as soon as possible to labor-saving, mechanized ways of doing essential work.

In an ORNL experiment, a farmer used a John Deere Grinder-Mixer powered by a 100-hp tractor to grind large samples of wheat and barley. When it is used to grind rather coarse meal for hogs, this machine is rated at 12 tons per hour. Set to grind a finer meal-flour mixture for human consumption, it ground both hard wheat and feed barley at a rate of about 9 tons per hour. This is 2400 times as fast as using muscle power to operate even the best expedient grain mill. With its finest screen installed, this large machine can produce about 3 tons of whole wheat flour per hour.

Unlike wheat and corn, the kernels of barley, grain sorghums, and oats have rough, fibrous hulls that must be removed from the digestible parts to produce an acceptable food. Moistening the grain will toughen such hulls and make them easier to remove. If the grain is promptly pounded or ground into meal, the toughened hulls will break into larger pieces than will the hulls of undampened grain. A small amount of water, weighing about 2% of the weight of the grain, should be used to dampen the grain. For 3 pounds of grain (about 6 cups), sprinkle with about one ounce (28 grams, or about 2 tablespoons) of water, while stirring constantly to moisten all the kernels. After about 5 minutes of stirring, the grain will appear dry. The small amount of water will have dampened and toughened the hulls, but the edible parts- inside will have remained dry. Larger pieces of hull are easier to remove after grinding than smaller pieces.

One way to remove ground-up hulls from meal is by flotation. Put some of the meal-hulls mixture about 1 inch deep in a pan or pot, cover the mixture with water, and stir. Skim off the floating hulls, then pour off the water and more hulls. Sunken pieces of hulls that settle on top of the heavier meal can be removed with one’s fingers as the last of the water is poured off. To produce a barley meal good for very small children, the small pieces of hulls must again be separated by flotation.

Figure 9.1 illustrates sieving fine, dry barleymeal and the smaller pieces of hulls from the coarser meal and the larger pieces. The sieve was a piece of window screen that measured inches before its sides were folded up and form an open-topped box.

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(Illustration)Fig. 9.1. Sieving ground barley through a windowscreen sieve.

To lessen their laxative effects, all grains should be ground as finely as possible, and most of the hulls should be removed. Grains also will be digested more easily if they are finely ground. The occupants of crowded shelters should be especially careful to avoid foods that cause diarrhea.

COOKING WITH MINIMUM FUEL

In areas of heavy fallout, people would have to remain continuously in crowded shelters for many days. Then they would have to stay in the shelters most of each 24 hours for weeks. Most shelter occupants soon would consume all of their ready-to-eat foods; therefore, they should have portable, efficient cook stoves. A cook stove is important for another reason: to help maintain morale. Even in warm weather, people need some hot food and drink for the comforting effect and to promote a sense of well-being. This is particularly true when people are under stress. The Bucket Stove pictured on the following pages (Figs. 9.2 and 9.3) was the most satisfactory of several models of expedient stoves developed at Oak Ridge and later field-tested.

° Bucket Stove

If operated properly, this stove burns only about 1/2 pound of dry wood or newspaper to heat 3 quarts of water from 600 F to boiling.

Materials required for the stove:

* A metal bucket or can, 12- to 16-quart sizes preferred. The illustrations show a 14-quart bucket and a 6-quart pot.

* Nine all-metal coat hangers for the parts made of wire. (To secure the separate parts of the movable coat-hanger wire grate, 2 feet of finer wire is helpful.)

* A 6 X 10-inch piece of a large fruit-juice can, for a damper.

Construction:

With a chisel (or a sharpened screw driver) and a hammer, cut a 4-1/2 X 4-1/2-inch hole in the side of the bucket about 1-1/2 inches above its bottom. To avoid denting the side of the bucket when chiseling out the hole, place the bucket over the end of a log or similar solid object.

To make the damper, cut a 6-inch-wide by 10-inch-high piece out of a large fruit-juice can or from similar light metal. Then make the two coathanger-wire springs illustrated, and attach them to the piece of metal by bending and hammering the outer 1 inch of the two 6-inch-long sides over and around the two spring wires. This damper can be slid up and down, to open and close the hole in the bucket. The springs hold it in any desired position. (If materials for making this damper are not available, the air supply can be regulated fairly well by placing a brick, rock, or piece of metal so that it will block off part of the hole in the side of the bucket.)

To make a support for the pot, punch 4 holes in the sides of the bucket, equally spaced around it and about 3-1/2 inches below the bucket’s top. Then run a coat-hanger wire through each of the two pairs of holes on opposite sides of the bucket. Bend these two wires over the top of the bucket, as illustrated, so that their four ends form free-ended springs to hold the cooking pot centered in the bucket. Pressure on the pot from these four free-ended, sliding springs does not hinder putting it into the stove or taking it out.

Bend and twist 4 or 5 coat hangers to make the movable grate, best made with the approximate dimensions given in Fig. 9.2.

For adjusting the burning pieces of fuel on the grate, make a pair of 12-inch-long tongs of coathanger wire, as illustrated by Fig. 9.3.

To lessen heat losses through the sides and bottom of the bucket, cover the bottom with about 1 inch of dry sand or earth. Then line part of the inside and bottom with two thicknesses of heavy-duty aluminum foil, if available.

To make it easier to place the pot in the stove or take it out without spilling its contents, replace the original bucket handle with a longer piece of strong wire.

Operation:

The Bucket Stove owes its efficiency to: (1) the adjustable air supply that flows up through the burning fuel, (2) the movable grate that lets the operator keep the maximum amount of flame in contact with the bottom of the cooking pot, and (3) the space between the sides of the pot and the inside of the bucket that keeps the rising hot gases in close contact with the sides of the pot.

In a shelter, a Bucket Stove should be placed as near as practical to an air exhaust opening before a fire is started in it.

 Fig. 9.2. Bucket-stove with adjustable damper and movable wire grate.

Fig. 9.3. Bucket-stove with its sliding damper partly closed. Foot-long tongs of coat hanger wire are especially useful when burning twisted half-pages of newspaper.

Book Page: 82

If wood is to be burned, cut and split dry wood into small pieces approximately 1/2 inch square and 6 inches long. Start the fire with paper and small slivers of wood, placing some under the wire grate. To keep fuel from getting damp in a humid shelter, keep it in a large plastic bag.

If newspaper is to be burned, use half-pages folded and twisted into 5-inch-long “sticks,” as illustrated. Using the wire tongs, feed a paper “stick” into the fire about every half-minute.

Add fuel and adjust the damper to keep the flame high enough to reach the bottom of the pot, but not so high as to go up the sides of the pot.

To use the Bucket Stove for heating in very cold weather, remove the pot and any insulation around the sides of the bucket; burn somewhat more fuel per minute.

If used with the Fireless Cooker described on the following pages, a Bucket Stove can be used to thoroughly cook beans, grain, or tough meat in water. Three quarts of such food can be cooked with less fuel than is required to soft-boil an egg over a small campfire.

° Fireless Cooker

Fig. 9.4. Boiling-hot pot of food being placed in an expedient Fireless Cooker.

A Fireless Cooker cooks by keeping a lidded pot of boiling-hot food so well insulated all around that it loses heat very slowly. Figure 9.4 shows one of these simple fuel-saving devices made from a bushel basket filled with insulating newspapers, with a towel-lined cavity in the center. The Cavity is the size of the 6-quart pot. A towel in this cavity goes all around the pot and will be placed over it to restrict air circulation. If the boiling-hot pot of food is then covered with newspapers about 4 inches thick, the temperature will remain for hours so near boiling that in 4 or 5 hours even slow-cooking food will be ready to eat.

The essential materials for making an effective Fireless Cooker are enough of any good insulating materials (blankets, coats, paper, hay that is dry and pliable) to cover the boiling-hot pot all over with at least 3 or 4 inches of insulation. A container to keep the insulating materials in place around the pot is useful.

Wheat, other grains, and small pieces of tough meat can be thoroughly cooked by boiling them briskly for only about 5 minutes, then insulating the pot in a Fireless Cooker for 4 or 5 hours, or overnight. Whole beans should be boiled for 10 to 15 minutes before they are placed in a Fireless Cooker.

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COOKING GRAIN AND BEANS WHEN SHORT OF FUEL OR POTS

° Cooking Grain Alone

When whole grains are pounded or ground by expedient means, the result usually is a mixture of coarse meal, fine meal, and a little flour. Under shelter conditions, the best way to cook such meal is first to bring the water to a boil (3 parts of water for 1 part of meal). Add 1 teaspoon (5 grams) of salt per pound of dry meal. Remove the pot from the fire (or stop adding fuel to a Bucket Stove) and quickly stir the meal into the hot water. (If the meal is stirred into briskly boiling water, lumping becomes a worse problem.) Then, while stirring constantly, again bring the pot to a rolling boil. Since the meal is just beginning to swell, more unabsorbed water remains, so there is less sticking and scorching than if the meal were added to cold water and then brought to a boil.

If any type of Fireless Cooker is available, the hot cereal only has to be boiled and stirred long enough so that no thin, watery part remains. This usually takes about 5 minutes. Continue to cook, either in the Fireless Cooker for at least 4 or 5 hours, or by boiling for an additional 15 or 20 minutes.

When it is necessary to boil grain meal for many minutes, minimize sticking and scorching by cooking 1 part of dry meal with at least 4 parts of water. However, cooking a thinner hot cereal has a disadvantage during a food crisis: an increased volume of food must be eaten to satisfy one’s energy needs.

If grain were the only food available, few Americans doing physical work could eat enough of it to maintain their weight at first, until their digestive tracts enlarged from eating the very bulky foods. This adaptation could take a few months. Small children could not adjust adequately to an all-grain diet: for them, concentrated foods such as fats also are needed to provide enough calories to maintain growth and health.

° Cooking Grain and Beans Together

When soybeans are being used to supplement the lower quality proteins of grain and when fuel or pots are in short supply, first grind or pound the beans into a fine meal. To further reduce cooking time, soak the bean meal for a couple of hours, keeping it covered with water as it swells. Next put the soaked bean meal into a pot containing about 3 times as much water as the combined volume of a mixture of 1 part of dry bean meal and 3 or 4 parts of dry grain meal. Gently boil the bean meal for about 15 minutes, stirring frequently, before adding the grain meal and completing the cooking.

Stop boiling and add the grain meal while stirring constantly. Again bring the pot to a boil, stirring to prevent sticking and scorching, and boil until the meal has swelled enough to have absorbed all the water. After salting, boil the grain-bean mush for another 15 minutes or more before eating, or put it in a fireless cooker for at least 4 or 5 hours.

Soybeans boiled alone have a taste that most people find objectionable. Also, whole soybeans must be boiled for a couple of hours to soften them sufficiently. But if soybeans are pounded or ground into a fine meal, and then 1 part of the soybean meal is boiled with 4 parts of meal made from corn or another grain, the soybeans give a pleasant sweetish taste to the resulting mush. The unpleasant soybean taste is eliminated. If cooked as described above, soybeans and other beans or dried peas can be made digestible and palatable with minimum cooking.

100% GRAIN AND 100% BEAN DIETS

A diet consisting solely of wheat, corn, or rice, and salt has most of the essential nutrients. The critical deficiencies would be vitamins A, C, and D. Such a grain-based diet can serve adults and older children as their ‘”staff of life” for months. Table 9.1 shows how less than 1-3/4pounds of whole wheat or dry yellow corn satisfies most of the essential nutritional requirements of a long-term emergency ration. [The nutritional values that are deficient are printed in bold type, to make an easier comparison with the Emergency Recommendations, also printed in bold type. Food energy is given in kilocalories (kcal), commonly called calories (Cal).] Expedient ways of supplying the nutrients missing from these rations are described in a following section of this chapter.

Other common whole grains would serve about as well as wheat and yellow corn. At least 1/6 oz of salt per day (about 5 grams) is essential for any ration that is to be eaten for more than a few’ days, but 1/3 oz. (about 10 g or 3/4 tablespoon) should be available to allow for increased salt needs and to make grain and beans more palatable. This additional salt would be consumed as needed.

To repeat: few Americans at first would be able to eat the 3 or 4 quarts of thick mush that would be necessary with a ration consisting solely of whole-kernel wheat or corn. Only healthy Americans determined to survive would be likely to fare well for months on such unaccustomed and monotonous food as an all-grain diet. Eating two or more different kinds of grain and cooking in different ways would make an all-grain diet both more acceptable and more nourishing.

Not many people would be able to eat 27 oz (dry weight before cooking) of beans in a day, and fewer yet could eat a daily ration of almost 23 oz of soybeans. Beans as single-food diets are not recommended because their large protein content requires the drinking of more fluids. Roasted peanuts would provide a better single-food ration.

GRAIN SUPPLEMENTED WITH BEANS

People who live on essentially vegetarian diets eat a little of their higher-quality protein food at every meal, along with the grain that is their main source of nutrition. Thus Mexicans eat some beans along with their corn tortillas, and Chinese eat a little fermented soybean food or a bit of meat or fish with a bowl of rice.

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