Resources:
Geiger Counters:
Ebay Seller Impexeris
(This is the black GM tube bug from the video, which is a standalone as well as Iphone/Android, and the kits for GM tubes and Arduino)
The Black Phone Bug
RH Electronics
(The red and blue boards from the video, DIY kits you can pay $12 for him to build)
RH Electronics on Ebay
SBM-20 GM Tubes
CDV High Level Survey Meters:
Ebay CDV Meters
Shane Connor’s calibration service – $92 plus return shipping
Radiation is always my least popular topic here, but I’m going to keep at it in hopes that enough of you will pay attention. As I’ve explained many times, if you think a collapse is coming, most likely radiation will be a part of it. Someone has to run the nuclear reactors out there, and though most of them have a food supply of several months for the workers, eventually that food is going to run out. And this is assuming the workers don’t leave to go take care of their own families when the fighting in the streets begins.
Nuclear war? Yea whatever. I don’t think the oligarchs running this charade want that big a variable in the mix, but you never know. Anyway…
Geiger counters, and radiation detectors in general, come in two types, high level and low level. For high level there aren’t a lot of options. On most of our budgets, you can choose between the old 1960s Civil Defense (CDV) meters and..oh yea well nothing else it’s pretty much just those. If you don’t know what these are, I have made a special video to explain them, and I’ll link to Ebay to buy them as well. For the most part, CDV meters are in good working order, and you just have to send them out to get them calibrated. There is only one non-governmental place to do this as I write this, and the cost is $92 plus return shipping. I have had many meters calibrated over the years, and I usually just ship them directly in from Ebay.
As I explained in the video, there is no cheap or even expensive substitute for one of these “survey meters” that were built by the government during the Cold War. Any regular Geiger counter, including those that are the subject of this article, will blank out at extremely high radiation rates. Geiger tubes saturate at some point, and that point is about the level where the human body is badly affected in a short amount of time. This is a much higher level of radiation than people currently discuss, and it occurs only in the 48 hours after a nuclear explosion. High radiation relative to regular background radiation isn’t that uncommon. Any regular Geiger counter will go crazy on an airplane at 33,000 feet for instance. Comparatively, there is a ton of radiation up there. But it is not past the threshold of harm, and any regular Geiger counter will work. At nuclear bomb and nuclear reactor explosion levels, regular Geigers saturate and become useless in seconds.
After a nuke plant explosion, or after a nuclear bomb goes off, the radiation rates will skyrocket for at least 48 hours, then most of the radioactive materials will die, or transform to a less harmful isotope. It is during this first 48 hours that you have to know whether you are in a hot zone or a cooler zone, and/or if your fallout shelter insulation is working. For this you absolutely need a survey meter. I have covered some of the details of how the numbers work in prior articles.
I have looked into this, and the other options that seem like options aren’t as good as you would think. There is a Russian meter that I did buy but have not yet tested that can supposedly measure high and low radiation, but there is no calibration service for them. There is also the newly manufactured $150 NukeAlert keychain dongle, and it’s big brother, the $750 NukeAlert ER. I bought the dongle and the plastic broke and it fell of my keychain. The ER I also bought, at a discount from the creator, Shane Connor, but I had some batteries blow up in it and it hasn’t worked right since. I explained this in the video. My advice is to buy a survey meter and have Shane’s service calibrate it.
As for new meters coming into production, don’t hold your breath. Bill Clinton dismantled the American Civil Defense program in the 90s (hookers and blow are expensive), so what is out there is what is out there. The good news is that most people have no idea what these survey meters even are, and they are really inexpensive.
As I write this, there are working CDV-715 meters on Ebay bidding for as little as $17, and there are many buy it nows for $40 and up. There are several CD-717 auctions for ridiculous plices. And recently a lot of CDV-720 meters have shown up on Ebay that I had never seen beflore. They are also high level meters, with a sliding door for the chamber on the bottom. I ordered one and will send it out for calibration for an update at some point. I think the best meter is the CDV-717 because it has a remote sensor, and for me it is hard to believe that as many times as I’ve linked to these meters in my articles, with upwards of 100,000 readers per month just on this column, that as I write this you can still buy a brand new condition CDV-717 for $49 shipped in its original numbers matching box. There is also, right now, a deal for 2 meters for a total of $65 with shipping, and there are 4 of the pairs available. I hope my regular readers are up early this morning. These prices are crazy.
But what’s even crazier is that the few CDV-700s on Ebay right now are going for in the hundreds of dollars. These are just regular Geiger counters, and because they have been used in the field much more than the survey meters, they tend to be rough, or in clearly rebuilt condition. Even an inexpensive Russian Geiger based on the SBM-20 tube is better than an old CDV-700. The Geigers in this article are also better, at a fraction of the price
That brings us to the subject at hand, low level Geiger counters. As you’ll see from the video, as important as it is that you have a high level survey meter, it is equally as important to have a low level GM tube Geiger. After a nuclear event, radioactive particles will be thrown into the air, and these particles will drift with the clouds for potentially thousands of miles. We are still too close to Fukushima for the current coverup to be uncovered, but if you look back at Chernobyl in 1986, the secrets from back then have revealed that radiation showed up in food even here in the US. You can’t count on the government to tell you what is safe and what is not. The government of Ukraine forbid scientists to even take radiation measurements until 4 days after the explosions. The doctors were forbidden from listing radiation as a source of cancers for decades after people who had worked on the site began to die. Now, Fukushima radiation has been reported in the heartland of America as well, just not by official sources. After the collapse you are going to need to test the soil on your own property for long living isotopes, especially Cesium 134 and 137, Strontium 90, and Cobalt 60. I <a href="bought samples of all of these from a lab supplier, and you can see the video for the results.
My radiation samples are probably a good deal higher than radiation you would find in food, but I think it will show you that these inexpensive electronics kits will work just fine. Food and water themselves can’t become radioactive from being irradiated with gamma rays. Most of our imported fruits and veggies and actually irradiated with gamma radiation before they reach the shelves, to kill foreign bacteria. But food and water can be sprinkled with radioactive isotopes, which would be mostly invisible. Ingesting these, even in small quantities, will cause cancers within a matter of months.
Above I linked to both these new Geigers from Ebay seller Impexeris from Lithuania, and my old Geigers from RH Electronics/Radiohobbystore.com located in Israel. If you have some history with soldering, all of these kits will be easy for you. All of the boards are hole through, and plated. You have to be careful with the close holes to not create a solder bridge, but I was able to get them right on the first try without any debugging. If you haven’t soldered before, just buy the completed kits. On the RH website you have to pay an extra $12, and he sells completed kits on Ebay as well. It doesn’t look like the plastic case kit is available for the Impexeris kit right now, but you could contact him directly and see if he has some. I have emailed back and forth with him and he is very nice. That little black bug with the GM tube is a big score at $74 including shipping. You don’t need a phone connected to use it. Inside there are watch batteries, and it will beep and blink all by itself. The pin diode Geiger that I reviewed is half that, and this is a real GM tube and extremely robust circuitry.
It’d really suck to survive the collapse then die two months later of cancer tumors. The mechanics of survival are complex, and you have to think about them, and act on them if you want to take this seriously. Most preppers, myself included, genuinely hope to be wrong. But with every passing day it looks more and more like we are correct, and this is all going to melt down in the near term. There are very few of us out here sharing real secrets with you, without trying to sell you anything. Just saying.