EM/RF Shielding and Its Effects on Nuclear Fallout

Oxillini and I have recently had discussions on the uses of EM/RF shielding and have decided to do a three part series of postings on what The Hanso Foundation could use this technology for. (Its long, but bear with us, its good.)

First, EM/RF shielding and its effects on nuclear fallout.

Oxillini has a great essay on nuclear winter/fallout:

With the knowledge that the mysterious Valenzetti equation predicts nothing short of the extinction of the human race, and the common conception that this extinction will come about due to global thermonuclear war, I found myself pondering a few questions.

First, why would THF want this equation?
Do they want to prevent extinction by changing things in the world? Is THF really a well-meaning company that believes its end goal is so noble that any amount of evil deeds to reach that goal is acceptable? Perhaps THF would like to choose a set of humans to survive Armageddon. Maybe that’s why the Lost "Others" are so obsessed with "the Good Ones." Perhaps, THF will sell opportunities for this. (Now that sounds very Bond movie villain-esque!)

Second, what does it mean for the Earth to undergo global thermonuclear war?
How long before the surface is inhabitable? Will the atmosphere ever really recover? If I was on an island in the South Pacific and the US and Russia annihilate each other, how long do I have left in my secluded paradise? Minutes? Years? This is what I intend to research here.
The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD, appropriately enough) states that if I fire a nuclear weapon at you, you’ll fire at least one back at me. This doctrine provided a tense but workable peace between the US and USSR throughout the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis, which was the impetus for the UN commissioning Valenzetti’s eponymous equation, introduced the World to this concept in a real-world scenario.

So someone fires a nuclear weapon at someone else, that second party fires back and the nuclear party starts. In 1986, the World Meteorological Office (WMO), a branch of the UN, published their study on Nuclear Winter. This study assumes half the world’s nuclear arsenal is detonated, with a total yield of approximately 6000 Megatons. This report estimates that, within 14-35 days of the detonations, ambient temperatures would fall by 59 to 104 degrees, using 68 degrees as a baseline initial temperature. These temperatures would destroy one year’s worth of agricultural production. The UN Food and Agriculture Office estimates the global food stockpile at 33 days. Developed nations could have as much as one year’s food while the third world would run out in days or weeks. Mass hysteria and chaos (among the survivors) would result from the imbalances in food supply.

Third, so maybe THF could prepare for a nuclear winter in bunkers, what about fallout?
Fallout is the residual radioactive contamination that literally falls out of the atmosphere following a nuclear explosion. Under the scenario listed above, where the big players in nuclear arsenal get in on the act, fallout will be spread throughout the globe, but not evenly. All nuclear arsenal powers are located in the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere will receive fallout, but to a lesser degree than the Northern. Placing a "survival station" on an island at the equator is better than, say, Europe but is not ideal.

It is important at this point to differentiate radiation from contamination. I have seen this confused many times. The best analogy I’ve heard is this: "Imagine you have a bowl of rotten eggs. The eggs themselves are the contamination. The stench is radiation." Radiation is simply energy transmitted via waves in the electromagnetic spectrum. Contamination (in the nuclear context) is matter which gives off radiation.

When nuclear weapons detonate, the fireball vaporizes everything within a given range. This vaporized material becomes the nuclear fallout. This fallout will consist of more than 300 different fission products, each with a unique half-life; unfissioned fuel material, up to 98% of the total fuel load; radioactive dust, stable matter that underwent neutron bombardment to become radioactive; and short-lived elements which can only be created under the unique conditions of a thermonuclear blast (like einsteinium).

This fallout is quickly carried into the stratosphere by the blast and will take years to settle out. The radioactivity levels associated with this dust evenly coating the globe would not be life threatening to humans. The danger is from ingestion of fallout. Iodine –129, Iodine-131 and Strontium-90 are three long-lived isotopes that would accumulate in the body. Strontium-90 substitutes for Calcium in bones and will not leave the body once ingested. Iodine-129 and 131, will be absorbed by the thyroid and cause cancer. (If you ever see "Radiation Tablets" being sold, what they do is saturate the thyroid with non-radioactive Iodine so that Iodine-129 cannot be absorbed; the Russian Navy issued these to submariners!)

Fourth, what to do about contamination?
Assume, then, that THF puts people on an island in the South Pacific with at least one year’s food supply. The world’s nuclear powers do not aim missiles near the island to cause high local doses of radiation. That island could withstand nuclear winter given enough food, shelter, heat, etc. Could they withstand the fallout? I believe they could. Decontamination of the island would take years, if not decades would be difficult but possible given the near limitless resources of a corporation the size of Hanso. Could the SPIDER protocol consist of going into holes to wait out nuclear Armageddon?

Now, my theories on why I think THF has an RF shield set up on the island, and some insight into the SPIDER protocol in conjuction with Ox's information:

It has been proven that RF shield can protect from radiation. So its obvious that THF would love to have an RF shield to protect themselves against the nuclear fallout that is inevitable. (If, indeed the valenzetti equation is true)

It has also been proven that the EM waves could interfere with a missile's targeting systems, throwing thw warhead of course. If THF is going to bomb the world as a preemptive strike against an inevitable armageddon. (Something I'm not sure of yet.) They would need some kind of a defense from other nations firing back. (see the MAD protocol as refernced by Ox)

Finally, the last reason why I think THF has an RF shield on the island is because they have referenced to the spider protocol in the multicolored letter we have received. SPIDER possibly stands for "Scalable Processor Independent Design for Electromagnetic Resilience". This protocol as used by NASA is a new family of fault-tolerant architectures under development at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC). The SPIDER is a general-purpose computational platform suitable for use in ultrareliable embedded control applications. The design scales from a small configuration supporting a single aircraft function to a large distributed configuration capable of supporting several functions simultaneously. This SPIDER protocol could be used to control to large networks of antennas that are needed to produce an RF shield to the strength THF needs.

Next week, Ox and I hope to produce a post on the uses of a EM shield in conjuction with fusion energy.

Namaste dudes,

Crossfade and Oxillini