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Ok, plastic and duct tape is a great idea. But what do you do for clean oxygen? Say you make your basement a safe room and plastic up the windows.

What do you do for clean circulating air? How long is a family good for in the basement like this?

You'd hafta have a vent of some sort, huh?

How to get clean circulating air has been my question also. All that I know is that you are supposed to have ten square feet of floor space per person to have enough air to prevent carbon dioxide build-up for about five hours. After the five hours, I don't know how to get clean air. Hopefully someone can answer this.

Ok, plastic and duct tape is a great idea. But what do you do for clean oxygen? Say you make your basement a safe room and plastic up the windows. What do you do for clean circulating air? How long is a family good for in the basement like this?

Wonder what the Israelis do? I know there was a duct tape/plastic suffocation incident...guess carbon monoxide or something built up...anyone have a background in air filtering systems?

NO GRILLS in the basement or safe room, it robs the air of something and you get carbon monoxide poisoning (see what remembering half of the info gets you? LOL)

Never burn charcoal in the house, a man in California used his BBQ last year to kill about 5 kids, they said it was murder.

If you are going to have a generator running (outdoors) you could use a Rainbow vacuum, it will recirculate the air, or any number of machines are sold for the purpose.

Possibly a wet-dry shop vacuums would work.

But I wonder about a bellows that you could pump by hand, like the ones the blacksmiths used to get air to the fire and make it burn hotter.

For info on the old tools, check out the reenactment groups, there are several wonderful sites that will tell you how to chip an arrow, make a canoe or build bellows.

If there are several people in the room, maybe a bellows blowing air into aquarium charcoal or a filter would work.

It might help clean the air and give the folks a way to fill their time while they wait for the next step.

Do you know how an evaporative cooler works? It has a drum with ridges an inch or so high and the pulley to the motor makes it turn and it blows air into the room.

It could be rigged to a bike frame or even a crank, like we used to use on cars and tractors to turn over the motor. I would like the bike frame, better than by hand.

I can hear Bill saying "ANOTHER OF YOUR 15 MINUTE PROJECTS, THAT WILL TAKE ME DAYS TO DO!!!!!" before he started the project.

Any vents to the room, would allow in the bad air also, so the escaping air must go out and not back in.

Stock your room with canned food, that needs no cooking, what you eat at a time like this will be rationed, as it may be days or weeks before you get out.

The first Mine Inspector in the State of Arizona, came here in 1910, by train to one of the mining areas, a young man, new degree, engaged to the daughter of a rich man who was interested in buying a mine that 2 miners had for sale.

The went by horse and wagon to the camp, ate a lunch of canned beans and went in the tunnel. His job to take samples of the ore, which he did.

Then he saw a seam of ore over head and quickly started hammering to get a sample, the miners were yelling at him, and he didn't understand.

The tunnel caved in, the miners on the outside, him on the inside. The tunnel was blocked by the fallen rock.

He was scared and then he recalled that the Welsh miners had more than once kept alive by eating the candles they carried for their miner's lamps, in those days made of sheep or beef tallow.

So he dug and rested and was starving, he felt that he could stay alive if he rationed the candles to one per day.

When he woke up, he ate a candle and started the digging and sleeping and digging. When he had just eaten the last candle, the miners managed to break through and he escaped.

He ran to the camp fire and found more cans of beans on the fire (so he thought) and ate them quickly, mumbling that he was starving as candles just don't fill you up.

The miner's were very confused by all this and finally convinced him that he had not been in the tunnel for 4 days, but rather about 4 hours.

He tells the story himself, in the second book he wrote, Charles Durning as my memory serves me, I have a copy of it.

The first time I read it, I started laughing so loud at his stories, while reading in bed that I woke Bill up, who thought someone was attacking me. Guess that I was lucky that I didn't get shot, we never, woke Bill up without a good reason, as he would come up ready to protect the family.

Being in your safe room for a few hours will feel like days.

Ruth