Duct tape

[englishgirl1]

(forwarded by a US-based friend)

Duct Tape, "Homeland Security on a Roll". No home is truly secure without duct tape. In light of the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) recent advice for Americans to ready themselves for possible chemical and biological warfare strikes, I have put together
this helpful list:

1. Use duct tape and plastic sheeting to create airtight "safe room" in
Your dwelling. That's what the DHS recommends. I suggest that an
airtight room may get rather stuffy and oxygen deprived after the recommended
three day inhabitance, so I suggest using Bubble WrapAE instead of plastic sheeting - when you're running out of air, you just pop the little bubbles.

2. If you are going to choose one room of your house to make airtight for Three days, I suggest the kitchen, "That's where the food is." But, "If you have to hold it for three days you're gonna be in a world of pain! Make your airtight room the bathroom."

3. Or, skip the airtight room altogether and make your own biohazard suit
by duct taping yourself from head to toe. "I suggest that you duct tape
over an old suit or a pair of long johns. Do NOT apply the tape
directly to your skin. It's binding, it pinches, and when you remove it you'll
also be removing every hair on your body."

Note: If you want a bright orange biohazard suit like the professionals have, use DuckAE brand's X-FactorT tape in blaze orange. Women may desire a more feminine look and opt for hot pink duct tape. Or, if you want to hide from evil doers, use camouflage duct tape.

4. Duct tape sticky-side-up around the perimeter of your house will stop Evil microscopic bugs in their paths.

5. Fill a cardboard tube (like those inside rolls of toilet paper) with Hundreds of duct tape baffles and duct tape this to your face covering your mouth and nose. Make sure the sticky sides of the duct tape baffles are facing away from your mouth. When you inhale, the sticky baffles will filter the air you are breathing. (Use paper towel tubes - if you want to take deeper breaths.)

6. Cover the whole country with a large sheet of plastic and duct tape
it securely to the east and west coasts and along the Canadian and Mexican borders.

7. I recommend that you start stockpiling duct tape just in case the Terrorists get smart and destroy our duct tape manufacturing plants.

8. Increase your duct tape from 2.5 rolls in every house to 1.5 rolls in every room of your house.

9. Your SUV can make a great airtight family escape pod. Get the family in The vehicle and then hire a neighbor kid to wrap your SUV in 150 rolls worth of overlapping duct tape strips. Make sure he gets into the wheel wells and under the chassis. This will not only make sure that the SUV is airtight, it will also assure that you aren't driving the vehicle and blowing through our precious oil supplies (you'll kill two birds with one stone).

10. Speaking of saving gas; You can become less dependent on foreign oil using duct tape. Just make a big wad of sticky-side-out duct tape on the front bumper of your vehicle. Drive up behind another car going your direction, smack into their back bumper (give them a friendly wave and mouth "sorry") attaching your car to theirs. Put your vehicle in neutral and
turn off your engine. You'll enjoy fuel economy in the 100s of miles per gallon.

11. And, possibly the best suggestion for using duct tape to secure our homeland: A strip of duct tape over some key mouths in Washington, DC.

[littleleda]

Sounds more like a Christo and Jeanne-Claude project.
Is duct tape standard in the hacker's toolkit?

[debwalin]

I'm thinking of making a big duct tape and plastic wrap bubble over my entire house. Somehow the fact that my govt is suggesting duct tape and plastic wrap as the best defense against terrorists is kinda....scary. I think I'll be going to find my big rock to hide under til this is all over, thank you very much.

Deb

[Noia]

LMAO....thats rather stupid...if there IS a Biological or Chemical attack, the Army should be prepared to minimize the casualties using BIO clean up crews and such.....I'v seen some of them in practise and they look rather effective....

oh well...

- Noia

[drew]

couldn't we all build bomb shelters? i think they'd work better then duck tape.

[englishgirl1]

Personally I think the best use for duct tape is for covering your ears so you can't hear the panic-engendering advice coming out from your govt Deb. I bet the paint manufacturers will be rubbing their hands together at the prospect of all these folks ripping the hell out of their window frames sticking bits of plastic up.

But Noia makes a good point, the limited damage and the speed at which clean-ups can happen make advising people to hide in shrinkwrap can only serve to increase irrational fears. The probability of being involved is so small, and each of us does much more risky things each day (like crossing the road).

Rachel

[Trust_Not_123]

hmm, i read this book once that was made during the cold war. it was about making nuclear fall out shelters, some of them are so simple and easy to build. and yet, even today the same methods are used. making them provides you with clean water and oxygen and even a WDU(waste disposal unit). i will see if i can dig it up on the net or even scan some of the pages up here so you can have a look.

i just figure that if they work for rad fallout then surely it would work for bio or chemical weapons.

*starts seaching*

[englishgirl1]

Yeah....but...if you believe in them, paper hats are very effective too. You'd have to be *so* unlucky to be in the right place at the wrong time.

(Quasi-poetic interlude)

Fear is:
Afraid your house will be burglarized (is that a word???)
Irrational Fear is:
The house will be burglarized when you haven't had a chance to clean the place up

Fear is:
Afraid that the plane will hit turbulence
Irrational fear is:
The turbulence will hit just as you start picking your nose

And finally:

Fear is
Fear itself
Irrational fear is:
Worrying if your fears are rational or not

(End quasi-poetic interlude)

DIY products rarely save lives, but often take them.

R.

[SodaMoca5]

I have to agree with Englishgirl1 here. Let's go through a few if then else statements (hey we're all computer literate right).

If (Terrorists use Chemical/biological warfare && Chemical/Biological agents are in your area)
Then
{Goverment Discovers and Warns You
You take recommended counter measures with duct tape and plastic
Breathing agents all the time you are putting up defenses
You are infected/dead and your house is a mess
}
Else
{Government doesn't discover and warn you
You are infected/dead but your house can be marketed easily by your surviving heirs
}
}

If (Terrorists use a nuclear bomb && You are in the blast radius)
{Plastic and duct tape provide no protection
What house
}
If (Terrorists use a nuclear bomb && You are in the fall out radius)
{Radiation penetrates plastic and duct tape
Soon with radiation sickness you wish you were in the blast radius
Your house is off the market indefinitely
}
If (Terrorists use a nuclear bomb && You are outside the effects)
{ Plastic and duct tape unnecessary
House value will probably rise due to the destruction
}
If (Terrorists use conventional bomb && You are in the blast radius)
{Plastic and duct tape probably failed the bomb proof vest test
You would be a perfect target for a terrorist to prove the gov. can't protect its people
Wearing plastic and duct tape probably means the only one sitting next to you is a terrorist
Unless he follows you home your house is probably safe whether it has plastic and duct tape or not
}
If (Terrorists decide not to attack and just send e-mail a lot)
{ Government constantly raises terror alert
Government gives poor advice to look like it is doing something
People continue to panic and live their lives in fear
Stress rises
Heart disease thrives
People keel over from heart attacks brought on by stress and aggravated by wearing kevlar vests, gas masks, and plastic and duct tape biosuits.
Property values drop because so many houses are on the market so you can't sell yours anyway
}


Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself". I believe that is true today. I am in far more danger from someone driving drunk, slipping in the bathtub, or lightning striking me than I am from a terrorist. However I am still going to drive to work, take baths, and enjoy the rain. Also, since I rent it is not nearly so stressful to worry about how I might die Sure, be prepared, have some extra food and water around, buy a gas mask if you want (they're cheap and make cutting onions painless), watch the news if you want to be depressed, read the news if you want to be informed and depressed, but then go for a walk and enjoy the world. If you want a thrill take a roller coaster ride instead of climbing on the government and media's emotional rollercoaster. Better yet play Counter Strike, be the Counter Terrorists and stop the Terrorists from doing all sorts of nepharious things. This would do as much, and maybe more, than putting duct tape and plastic all over your house.

That's my opinion and I am sticking with it.

BTW, the sticky part of duct tape won't really filter most airborn toxins, biological germs, and certainly not nerve gases. So if you make that gas mask then you are making yourself a bigger joke than the first post, the department of homeland defense, and the terrorist threat level all rolled together.

[debwalin]

Honestly, all joking aside, my mission right now is to make sure that my son doesn't hear all this crap. It's bad enough that you can't filter it out, I have a little boy that is worried about war...but if he started hearing this crap about duct tape and plastic wrap and small pox and chemicals...it's just awful. I really wish that our govt would just shut up...all they do is scare people, and by the time we had a chemical/biological attack, it would probably be too late to put the plastic up anyway, and I don't see a lot of houses covered in plastic around me...I think it's becoming more and more of a joke, and what scares me is that *if* they ever do have anything credible and timely to tell us, no one is going to listen. Like the little boy that cried wolf...we've had so many warnings now, they change the alert color, they tell you what to do, blah blah blah...and nothing happens. When something finally does happen, it's going to be a case of too little too late...or too much too early, depending on your view of things. So I do agree w/ SodaMoca. Take your family where you want to go. Do the things you want to do. Because even w/ all the precautions....what if you're not in your plastic covered house when it happens? It's going to be too bad at that point anyway. So you can either live your life w/out fear, or you can tremble at every new warning...it's your choice.


BTW...those of us in Florida live w/ a stockpile of "extra food and water" anyway...pesky hurricanes! LOL

Deb