…for not posting to my very own blog lately. Because of that, you deserve a little update from Wyoming.

Since my last posting in early April, many things have happened. I graduated from Central Wyoming College with another degree. I lost my job running the college radio station because of that (bad timing, that…), which I have been doing for over three years. Sadly, my professor, boss, and good friend Dale Smith, after becoming blind due to complications from chemotherapy, spent the last few weeks of the semester in the hospital, getting out the day of graduation. He also had his job at the college changed from electronic media to humanities by the CWC powers that be. He’s doing better health wise, but I’m concerned for him as a friend, and will check with him regularly to see how he is doing.

The day after graduation, the wife and I and grandson loaded up a 5 by 8 Uhaul trailer for my daughter, and left for a cross country trip from central Wyoming, to Nashville, Tennessee, where she was moving. A nice leisurely trip there, got her unpacked and moved in, and then drove south to Birmingham, Alabama to visit family there that we hadn’t seen since our move to Wyoming in 2000. We spent 3 days there, had a wonderful visit, and still with the Uhaul in tow, headed west to Dallas, Texas…actually Plano, which is the northern boundary of the huge DFW metroplex. In Plano, we visited my mom and sister, and wife’s dad and step mom and brother. Stayed there for about 5 days, and then with the Uhaul loaded with tools from my late dad’s workshop, (which I spent 2 days cleaning out for mom) and a few pieces of furniture, we headed back north, home to Wyoming.

Then things got exciting. This was the day that the huge tornado hit in northeastern rural areas of Denver. We had spent the nite before in Raton, New Mexico, and had just hit Colorado City, and the rest area there for lunch, when I got a call from a good friend, whom we had just visited the day before in Ft. Worth, as we were leaving the DFW area. He was watching the news and weather, and got the news about the Denver twister forwarded to me by cell phone. In Colorado City, I couldn’t find any wifi for a net connection, so we headed north to Colorado Springs, the home of Cheyenne Mountain and Peterson Air Force Base. Got off the highway there, checked the McD to see if it had wifi…nope. Then, having spent several nites in various Super 8 hotels across the country the last two weeks, found one on the west side of the interstate…and yes, wifi.

I got on, hit weather.gov, and then the Denver area radar and Nexrad. Holy crap…the storm cell system I was seeing in real time was the WORST storm system I’d ever seen, as far as having to personally deal with it Real Soon Now, by having to get through it to get home. The super cell that hit Windsor, Colorado, was in an anti-cyclonic rotation, and was moving counter clockwise, and heading towards Laramie, Wyoming, which was our connection from 287 to Interstate 80, and places west. Warnings were posted in the Denver forecast page of the current storm, tornado, damage, direction, and so forth, and it just didn’t look good for us.

We heard on the radio about the storms and damage, and decided to take Highway 287 up through Fort Collins..getting of Interstate 25 asap. That took a while to get to, and just as we got through town, and about to get on the highway itself north of Fort Collins, the highway was shut down due to a bus and semi accident. We got detoured through the little town of Laporte to the east, and hit the highway AGAIN, north of the major accident.

All was going well for about 20 minutes. Then, we started seeing a lot of snow on the sides of the road…LOTS of snow. Next, we started seeing vehicles heading south from the summit on 287, with what looked like snow on their front bumpers and windshields. Weird. The skies to the north and east were astoundingly stormy and dark. Sunset was approaching quickly, and the storm clouds hastened the effect. Just then, I realized that what we were seeing on the sides of the road wasn’t snow…but HAIL….INCHES of it. Totally blew me away.

As we kept heading north on 287, it started raining lightly, and soon quite moderately. Within moments, the medium pouring rain was joined by small snow pellets that exploded quietly on the windshield of our car. As it got heavier and darker, the snow pellets turned to pea sized hail…and then to actual snow…and then to VERY heavy snow. The road conditions were deteriorating the closer we got to the summit, and the rain slick roads become ice slicked and then slushy fairly quickly. A group of cars, trucks, and a couple of semi’s (with us in the middle of the convoy) kept plugging along, at about 20 miles an hour, all of us with flashers blinking into what literally turned into a blizzard.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, we hit the crest, and started down the miles long hill that led down into the south side of Laramie. Strangely, it was dark…where it wasn’t supposed to be. Seems that the supercell from Denver/Windsor, dropped another tornado, which tore up some houses and a couple of farms, and took out a few hundred blocks of power. We stopped at the Flying J truckstop to gas up, cleaned the snow and ice off the front of the car and the trailer, and hit the road on I-80. The snow, sleet, and rain stopped about 20 miles west of town, and from there on home, it was very dark, and very cold. Throughout the last 200 miles of our trip, from Laramie to Riverton, the roadway was clear and safe, but the sides of the road held quite a bit of storm passage…meaning snow as far as the eye could see…all the way to Beaver Rim, and halfway down that 9 degree grade of that steep hill.

We arrived home around 3:30am, dragged ourselves in, and went to bed.

It took us a week to recover from that 3600 mile trip. Holy crap we were tired.

Since returning home on May 23, we’ve been busy working on getting ready to move into a new apartment in town, packing boxes, cleaning our storage unit out, and doing a lot of computer work.

And, oh yes, SUMMER college classes…Society and Self from U. Wyo, History and Statistics from CWC. 10 credit hours during the summer session.

THAT’s what we’ve been doing since April.

More to be added later…including some great news about the SurvivalRing website project.

Rich

I had my first live radio interview tonight, and was on the American Voice Radio network for 2 hours this evening. I was interviewed by Michael Lehman, and the topic of the day was family preparedness.

I’ve got the show right here. Just click the player button below and listen to the entire show…

 

 Rich Fleetwood on Civil Defense, Nuclear Preparedness and Fallout Shelter: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Rich

First, click here…

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=e…25&ie=UTF8&z=3

The map is off…but note the links on the LEFT side….

The White House is pointed out in A…but the next link below it goes to a blog. Hundreds of blogs were spammed with the same crap….fabricated BS using foreign land images…more on that below….

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q…-8&sa=N&tab=lw

Here…let’s try the first hit…

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/01/16/the-note-on-bush/

Here’s just one version of the damning “woo-woo” evidence…comment 45. Various versions of this are posted on the hundreds of other political blogs…

Really now? I’ve driven thru Hanna a NUMBER of times, and never seen any signs saying DHS CONCENTRATION CAMP, RIGHT TURN AHEAD…CAUTION…WE’RE HIDING…

Continue Reading »
ok….here’s the proof…RATHER long…NO USA Concentration Camps

I got one for you…

You wanna believe in US Concentration camps?

Google “Swift Luck Greens”

DHS facility supposedly right here in Lil’ Old Wyoming.

Aerial pix and everything!

Find the main story, and you’ll find the long/lat for the facility.

Enter those into Google Maps/Google Earth/Yahoo Maps…your choice.

Just northeast of Hanna, Wyoming.

All done now?

Come back here and tell me what you find…

Only THEN, will I tell you the truth about this facility…unless you find it yourself…and you can post that bit of info here as well.

Yep…I can prove it…

See the next post….

Hi folks….

I’ve been doing a lot of scanning over the last many years, of a LOT of the huge library and collection of original government created civil defense, nuclear preparedness, nuclear war planning, and most specifically, nuclear fallout shelter documents I’ve amassed over the last 15 years.

I solved a mystery tonight, that had been vexing me for a couple of years.

The document named in the title above is probably the SINGLE best compendium of FALLOUT SHELTER RADIATION SHIELDING I have ever run across.

I’ve had the first 124 pages scanning in for almost three years, and had lost place of where I was.

In my move of my main computer system from a tiny desk in the corner of the bedroom, to a huge corner desk in the living room, I also brought out several of the boxes of prepping hardcopy in my collection. A small part of it consists of xerox copies of the originals that I had checked out from interlibrary loan, and couldn’t scan completely in time. My fix was to xerox what I didn’t scan, and set aside for future scanning.

In this repurposeing of my living room corner into a work area, I went through a LOT of material, added two new bookcases to the living room, and sorted out hundreds of books.

Amongst the misc. stuff….several xerox copies of things…some complete, others partial. The most vexing one was around 150 pages, that started with page “4-81″…and all throughout, no mention of the title of the source book.

Great stuff, including that most astounding piece of fallout shelter info I have found yet that I’ve never seen online…7 full pages of a TABLE OF MASS THICKNESSES…also known as appendix B of TR-20(Vol. 1).

Examples…Adobe 12″ thick gives a P.S.F (protection safety factor) of 116.
4″ common bricks PSF 40, Ceramic tiles PSF 3., 6″ Cinder Blocks PSF 30, etc, etc.

Very useful info.

So, in other words, *I FOUND THE MISSING HALF OF VOLUME 1*

My last big batch of scanning was in the 2nd full year (2004/2005) of my return to college life full time with my wife and kids. Well, all but my middle son have earned several degrees, and I’ve been able to bring some focus back into getting these docs put out to the masses, and finishing already started projects.

With all of the world seeming ready to fall apart at the seams (russian planes, stock woes, Iran borders, dogs and cats living together), I’ve had that little voice in the back of my head the past few weeks saying “finish your work…finish your work”.

A few of you that know me really well know that can mean a lot of things for me, but for this middle aged guy, finishing this scanning job and getting THIS manual online is that *one note * that rings true in my very near term responsibilities.

Here is the first 7 pages of the scan, and a shot of the cover.

and here is the pdf file of the Table of contents…

http://www.survivalring.org/TR-20(Vol_1)Shelter_design_and_Analysis(sample-TOC).pdf
(166k in size and 7 pages long)

I’ll put many hours into it this weekend.

Something tells me this kind of info really needs to be available NOW.

Here’s the short version of different kinds of nuke bursts, blast waves, radiation and fallout, decay rates, values for dose and dose rate formulas, radiation effects on the body, barrier effectiveness vs. photon energy, mass thickness for different kinds of protection, and on and on.

This puppy is chock full of MATH, way over my head, has multitudes of charts for figuring out doses, effects, and such, and fallout shelter analysis of simple building to complex angular radiation paths.

There will be a few who really get the math part, and most folks should be able to get enough info to create safe fallout shelter spaces in whereever they plan to shelter…IF they need to shelter.

Here is a taste of the math part….

So, stay tuned. I also have vols. 2 and 5 scanned in already. No luck on 3 or 4. I’m still looking for those.

Comments welcome….

Rich

This documentary aired on HBO last night. I had seen the promos for it for a few weeks. Yesterday, on the 62nd anniversary of the attacks, it was broadcast, after years of waiting for the right time.

Having done all the research I have on dealing with and surviving a nuclear attack, including reading such classics as John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”, I was not fully prepared to hear from the actual victims and survivors of the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

It’s one thing to read about it. Still another to see the old films of before, during, and immediately after the attack.

To hear many of the very badly injured people tell their story in their own words, and see their wounds and injuries still affecting them even after 60+ years was powerful beyond words.

I found the documentary very objective, without any kind of sensationalism, editorial context, or slanting, and both the American and Japanese bureaucracies before and after are covered as well.

For any of you that have in your preps for planning for a nearby nuclear detonation (global thermonuclear war, or terrorist dirty bomb) there is a LOT to learn from this film.

It will be on many more times this month on HBO, and can even be seen on HBO’s website.

Here are several links….

main HBO page for the documentary…
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/whitelightblackrain/index.html

Synopsis of the show…
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/whitelightblackrain/synopsis.html

Debuting on the 62nd anniversary of the bombings, WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN provides a graphic, unflinching look at the reality of nuclear warfare through first-hand accounts of both survivors and American men who carried out the bombing missions.

“With WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN, I wanted to tell one of the great human stories of one of history’s monumental tragedies,” notes Okazaki, who met more than 500 survivors and interviewed more than 100 people before choosing the 14 subjects featured in the film. “The personal memories of the survivors are amazing, shocking and inspiring. They put a human face on the incalculable destruction caused by nuclear war.”

In addition to interviews with 14 atomic bomb survivors, many of whom have never spoken publicly before, WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN spotlights four Americans intimately involved in the bombings. Okazaki interweaves rarely seen, intense archival footage and photographs, banned for 25 years after the war, with survivors’ paintings and drawings, all of which convey the devastating toll of atomic warfare in human terms.

While 140,000 died in Hiroshima, and 70,000 in Nagasaki, the survivors - 85% of whom were civilians - not vaporized during the attacks continued to suffer burns, infection, radiation sickness and cancer, which would ultimately result in another 160,000 deaths. In a succession of riveting personal accounts, the film reveals both unimaginable suffering and extraordinary human resilience. Sakue Shimohira, ten years old at the time, recalls the moment she considered killing herself after losing the last member of her family, saying, “I realized there are two kinds of courage - the courage to die and the courage to live.”

Other survivors include: Kiyoko Imori, just blocks from the hypocenter, the only survivor of an elementary school of 620 students; Shigeko Sasamori, 13 years old at the time, one of the 25 “Hiroshima Maidens” brought to the U.S. for plastic surgery; Keiji Nakazawa, who lost his father, brother and two sisters, and devoted his life to retelling his story in comic books and animation; Shuntaro Hida, a young military doctor at the time, who began treating survivors immediately after the explosion and continues to provide care for them 60 years later; and Etsuko Nagano, who still can’t forgive herself for convincing her family to come to Nagasaki, just weeks before the bombing.

In addition to physical suffering, survivors were later subjected to intense discrimination from fellow Japanese, and received little or no help from the Japanese government. To this day, to identify oneself as an atomic-bomb survivor, or a descendant of a survivor in Japan, can invite prejudice.

The four Americans profiled are: Morris Jeppson, the weapon test officer on the Enola Gay mission to Hiroshima; Lawrence Johnston, a civilian employee of the University of California, which manages Los Alamos; Harold Agnew, a scientific advisor; and Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, the navigator who believed the mission would end the war and save lives overall.

Today, as global tensions rise, the unthinkable once more becomes possible. The urgency of the warning conveyed in WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN is borne out by a comment from one of the four Americans: “We have opened Pandora’s box, and the genie can’t be stuffed back in the bottle.”

HBO Video releases WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN: THE DESTRUCTION OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI on DVD Aug. 7.

Steven Okazaki’s films, which explore the extraordinary lives of ordinary people, include “Days of Waiting,” winner of a Documentary Short Subject Oscar®, as well as a Peabody Award, and two other Oscar® nominees: “Unfinished Business” and last year’s Cinemax Reel Life presentation “The Mushroom Club.” Among his other documentaries are: “Hunting Tigers,” “Troubled Paradise,” “Americans Sons,” “The Fair” and the HBO documentary “Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street.” Visit the filmmaker’s website.

WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN: THE DESTRUCTION OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI is an HBO Documentary Films presentation, produced by Farallon Films; directed, written and produced by Steven Okazaki. For HBO: consulting editor, Geoff Bartz; supervising producer, Sara Bernstein; executive producers, Sheila Nevins and Robert Richter.

Interview with the filmmaker…
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/whitelightblackrain/interview.html

Bios of the victims and even developers and delivery team of the bombs…
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/whitelightblackrain/subjects.html

Schedule of future broadcasts…dozens of them…
http://www.hbo.com/apps/schedule/ScheduleServlet?ACTION_DETAIL=DETAIL&FOCUS_ID=621813

Filmmakers own website….
http://farfilm.com/web/ffnews.htm

Watch a one minute video from the film on this page…
http://www.hbo.com/docs/index.html

In conclusion, if you are SERIOUS about knowing the real threats of nuclear weapons to any human being, you must see this film to completely and fully understand what these weapons do to the human body….but that also, you can survive an attack depending on your preplanning, and understanding of how nukes work in the real world….and stay aware of world events.

As a prepper, author, husband and father, I can not stress enough how important this work is.

Watch it. Share it. Discuss it. And Learn from it.

Rich