At 02:42 AM 3/16/2011, Sullivan Scott wrote:
>The latest issues in Japan reminded me of one of my reasons for having
>a Vanagon Westy. That is a shelter in case of a disaster. I was
>wondering if anyone out there had a prep sheet that included what to
>have in the van and how to maintain critical items such as the propane
>and water? If so would you be kind enough to share it.

That would be a darn useful thing to have.

>Seems like a good time to put some effort in up front preparation.

I understand from the news that there's a good deal of alarm on the
west coast about the possibilities of radioactive particulate matter
from Japan reaching us and causing problems here.  The winds are such
that during WWII the Japanese released large numbers of paper
incendiary balloons intended to cause trouble on our west coast, and
a few of them actually made it there and I believe two of them
exploded, one of them while being examined by a party of several
curious people who were killed.  However we also quite deliberately
exploded two nuclear bombs in Japan, one uranium and one
plutonium.  Such bombs throw large amounts of irradiated particulates
into the upper atmosphere.  To the best of my knowledge no
appreciable amount of fallout (that was a word we heard seems like
every day when I was a kid) reached our coast.

Yours,
David