Back to fun gadget related survival instead of the drudgery of feeding
livestock and stockpiling boring buckets of hard red winter wheat.
:-) Israeli gas masks must be very carefully selected, old canisters
especially before 1993 when the bad mask scandal broke are worthless
(Gulf War
vintage masks were worthless toys.) Even then gas masks are not a
one size fits all thing, they must be sized seal tested with banana
[oil]
scent
and irritant
smoke. Israel is one of the few places where a gas mask is a warranted
purchase (but we get them provided along with an atropine injector
from the
rear command) because we have standing armies on our borders with chemical
artillery in large quantities and our population density is high.
The employment
of gas weaponry in the USA is unlikely (except in an urban terrorist
attack) because it requires such large amounts to be effective on
a large scale.
A real protection from biological/chemical is to know how to seal a
room (basement with shielding in a nuke scenario) and how to filter
the air. The law here requires
shelter
room in all new construction (since the Gulf War) including filters,
vault door, and concrete construction. Every block has several meklat's
bomb/gas
shelters for
those without shelter rooms. Thyroid blocking doses of [Potassium]
Iodide and a radiation sensor would be a better purchase than a gas
mask and
filters, since nuclear
weapons would be more likely to be employed and effective in the case
of a
war.