Do you have a gas mask?

I was reading a survival blog and I noticed that it had an ad banner for a high tech gas mask that "guarantees" protection against nuclear, chemical, biological. It never crossed my mind to have a gas mask but now I'm wondering if it's something I should have just in case. Does anyone else have one? What are your thoughts?

 

Depends where you live.
Most anywhere in the northern hemisphere would be good to have one or two handy and a few disposable hazmat suits!
But they will only be for short term use, as chemical agents are not persistant and decay in sunlight and just the environment.
Biological dies with the host and nuclear fallout has a halflife of just approx. 7 hours!

So once the rains have been, the sun has shone somewhat and time has passed most of the danger will have also passed!

Unless you are down south of the equator that is!
Then in most cases population densities are not enough for chemical or biological weapons to be effective and nothing much is worth a nuke!

 

That's actually quite interesting and something I didn't know. I just looked up about the leftover radiation from nuclear fallout because I was under the very incorrect assumption that it lingered for a very long time, in large doses, and I didn't know whether you were uninformed or me. Turns out it's me! You just hear a lot of scare mongering from places that say it lasts for years and even if you survived a nuclear attack, living anywhere near to one would cause you to get cancer and die really quickly.

 

Fallout has an approximate 7 hour half-life!
But some of the components in the fallout have half-lives of thousands of years but those components are miniscule!
So if the fallout takes 14 hours to reach you it has already reduced its radiation output by 75%

So any fallout that gets as far south as I am will be very dispersed and depleted! only real problem that might occur is if I injest or inhale it
in the first few years!

After a month or so it will be ok to go outside and do stuff but if you are young or youngish avoidance wearing a dust mask and cleaning any foods of fallout is advised
Though not doing so will no longer make you sick in the short term, though inhaling and injesting may pose long term problems! if you live that long.

 

That is fascinating! I never knew they did that. Is that a picture of yours - do you still own it?

 

Sorry to hear that @Keith H. Hopefully you moved to Australia for happy reasons though?

There are a few things from my childhood that I wish I still owned now, especially things which I literally threw away which would possibly even be worth something to a collector these days. I collected a lot of things when I was younger; I had a few different collections that were quite well rounded and well cared for but as a teenager I was ashamed of them and gave/threw them away without a second thought. Hindsight!

 

I live in a very isolated location. I live a few miles away from a small town. Some people would say I live in the middle of no where. So I do not personally have a gas mask. It may be something I should look into purchasing. I might do some research. That was not really anything I thought about before. Then again, maybe my parents have some gas masks for my family. I haven't really thought about it before. But it is something I will definitely discuss with my family.