Part 2 of Arnie Gundersen Interview: Protecting Yourself If the Situation Worsens

Arnie Gundersen Interview (Part II): Protecting Yourself If the Situation Worsens

Friday, June 3, 2011

Executive Summary

• Identifying the health dangers from radiation & contamination
• Steps those living in Japan and the US West Coast should be taking today
• Precautions to take with food
• The implications of radioactive seawater
• Urgent steps to take in a worst-case scenario if Reactor 4 collapses 

Part I: Exclusive Arnie Gundersen Interview: The Dangers of Fukushima Are Worse and Longer-lived Than We Think

If you have not yet read Part I, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

Part II: Arnie Gundersen Interview: Protecting Yourself If The Situation Worsens

Chris Martenson:  So with radiation there is three types. There is the alpha particles, which is a particle; we have beta, which is a particle; and then we’ve got gamma rays. So I guess when we are saying radiation, it is like somebody says oh, let’s talk about cars. There is Lamborghinis, there is VW Beetles, there is Mustangs, there is all these different things. So we have to first we have to know a little bit about that. And radiation exposure levels, as I understand them, are set at sort of a whole body level that says you can have so many REMs. Which, you can get a REM of alpha particles hitting you, a REM of beta, a REM of gamma. It is just sort of a standardized way of saying you are going to get this whole body exposure, we are just going to hit you. Like when you go to get an X-ray or something, another type of radiation, an X-ray. So that is one part. But the contaminated particles that happen to be emitting radioactivity are the issue because they can localize. Just make it simple, we inhale a 10 micron particle and it happens to be radioactive. It goes into our villi in our lungs and it sticks there potentially. And it is now going to, in a very, very, very small, very close way, intimate way, be bombarding that tissue around that particle for however long it happens to be radioactive or until it gets excreted somehow. 

So the idea here then is that radiation tells us sort of something, but very few people actually die from radiation, as I understand it. It is a very rare event, because you need a whole lot of it on a whole body level to really take somebody down. But contamination is a whole different matter, that the lethal dose from contamination can actually be really small measured on a radiation scale. I am thinking now of this guy, Litvinenko, who was actually poisoned. He was a Russian dissident, and he was poisoned in London in 2006 with a very, very small amount of polonium 210, it is an alpha emitter. He got that in his food somehow and then because of where polonium goes it ended up killing him, I think very rapidly, in nine or 10 days, considering. So the thing that I really want to invite people to consider is the real key around contamination is to not get it in your body. That’s part one. 

How would people, how do you do that? So let’s imagine, Arnie, there you are, you are living in Tokyo now or closer, how would you be behaving over there right now? 

Arnie Gundersen:  Yeah, and actually we should extend this to the West Coast, because the same particles there, too. To answer your question about Tokyo; what I’m advising people in Tokyo who are there now, is take your shoes off at the door.