When it comes to surviving nuclear war, being underground is always the gold standard. If you cannot find a basement or underground structure look for buildings or structures made of solid dense materials such as concrete, brick, or stone and get into the center of the middle floor. This will keep equal distance from the fallout on the roof and on the ground, which is where the radiation will be coming from. If it is a single floor structure try to find dense materials to cover up any doors or windows. If no dense construction buildings are available look for one with the largest possible square footage such as a Walmart or big box store, distance will be your savior here rather than shielding, but you can also use various materials you can scavenge to fortify an area a small shelter in the center of the large building. For example many home supply stores or walmarts have brick, stones, bags of soil, bags of sand, water jugs, etc. Remember that distance, time, and shielding are the only ways to protect yourself from radiation. For distance we use the inverse square law so the radiation decreases by the inverse square of the distance from the source so if you double your distance from the source the radiation will be 1/4 of what it was. For time we use the 7/10 rule, for every factor of 7 increase in time the radiation decreases by a factor of 10. For shielding we use halving thickness and protection factors. Generally speaking you will want a minimum protection factor of 10 which would allow only 1/10th of the radiation to penetrate (approximately 3 halving thicknesses). To find out halving thicknesses of various materials check my other cheat sheet about that here: https://www.newyorkprepper.com/post/radiation-shielding-references
Rural areas:
-Root cellars
-Basements
-Caves and caverns
-Mines, active/abandoned (make sure they are structurally stable)
-Rail tunnels through mountains/hills and other types of tunnels (make sure they are structurally stable)
-Large barn with hay bales stacked into a shelter in the center and aong the walls
-Six foot deep trench with roof covered with three foot pile of dirt in a pyramid shaped sloping pile (to distribute the weight so it doesn’t collapse) on top of thick logs placed perpendicularly across with tarp on top.
-Large culverts under roads
-Stone or masonry churches
-Big box stores (walmart, home depot, etc) center of the store and use materials scavenged inside for extra shielding to pile up along doors and to improvise a shelter.
-Schools, they often have fallout shelters or basements and are built very solidly from dense materials
-Hospitals, they often have fallout shelters and basements and are built very solidly from dense materials
Urban areas:
-Any solid concrete building get in the basement, if not middle floor and center of it
-Basement of any building
-Multi-floor buildings made of concrete or brick, the center of the middle floors is best
-Stone or masonry churches
-Big box stores (walmart, home depot, etc) center of the store and use materials scavenged inside for extra shielding to pile up along doors and to improvise a shelter.
-Malls: the center of the mall or the access tunnel for store employees will generally be the best, or inside of a closet or bathrooms
-Parking garages: middle level and center or if there is a solid concrete stairwell that is another option
-Metro stations that are underground such as Grand Central Station in New York City or the Washington D.C. Metro near the U.S. Capitol Building
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