Potassium iodide?
http://emergency.cdc.gov/radiation/ki.asp

bacpacjac,

Like many others,I've found that with a little imagination and creativity, you can vacuum seal emergency items and compress their volume a bit.

A roll of toilet paper is approximately equal in volume to two rolls vacuum packed. A roll of paper toweld is almost the same.

Tea bags and other food items will last longer. You may not nead them for your daily or weekly uses, but keeping a handful sealed up has been a great addition to my vehicle kit and I even keep some single servings in some of the smaller kits.

Several of our kits have clean underwear & other clothing vacuum sealed. They take up much less volume and stay cleaner during multiple repackings of the kits. You may find this to be an advantage with some of your concerns about clothing / sleeping items.

One caveat is that if you have items like compressible sleeping mats or sleeping bags with a lot of loft, they may need to be "released once a year of so and allowed to fully expand for several days before being repacked as they may not fully come back to full size very quickly.

It will take some playing around as the various vacuum sealers all have their own quirks to deal with.

Regards,
Comanche7

Good advice Comanche7. Thanks! Another addition to the research list.

Famdoc, I've been thinking about ki pills. I'm so close to the plant now, and they did have some sort of leak there about a month ago (heavy water into lake ontario? can't remember the exact details but they told us everything was fine.)

Commanche7 offered some good advice, but if you use the food-type sealers, BE SURE to cut a notch in the edge so you can open them! Otherwise, it's like canned food without a can opener. That plastic is tough.

And NO, you don't need to know how I know this!

Sue

LOL @ Sue. I won't ask but thanks just the same. Good to know!

As I recall, given the CANDU design, KI pills are irrelevant. Others here can no doubt comment with more authority. It's tritium releases that are the most common worry, and the path of harm is through ingestion.

- - -
Speaking to the original topic:
My experience with offices/cube farms affirms that, in that culture, a very specific order/psychology applies. It goes something like this.

Tools are the province of maintenance people and tradesmen -- blue collar, with talented hands and limited abstract-thinking abilities. Totally unfair in some cases, but not always. Tools, if you will, belong to 'infrastructure workers.'

'Knowledge workers' represent a different 'tier' or 'class' in effect -- those who use (or are expected to use) their brains instead of their hands. Their tools are computer networks, Keurig coffee makers, printers, and politics; though to be fair, their responsibilities are significant. Infrastructure issues, requiring tools, are handled through work orders.

Anyway, my point is that these divides are quite specific. You must pick a side and respect its cultural requirements. Like it or not, failure to do so is 'career limiting.' If you are on the knowledge worker side, the Leatherman in your briefcase is for computer repair (and the Streamlight as well). Any 'hardware' that doesn't fit on your keychain is not something you may whip out in a meeting, and even then you need to be discreet.

That doesn't mean you can't have a 24" crowbar in your gym bag. But it must be in your gym bag, painted pink, and wrapped in lululemon tops, white athletic socks, and sneakers.

(I think I'm babbling, but the gist is truth.)

I understand what you mean Doug. Discrection is important. There's definitely a distiction between the two groups, even in such a small office it will probably come into play, maybe more so than in a larger group where annonimity is easier to come by.

Sue,

Hey, good catch, I meant to include the notch comment and incurred the dreaded P.E.B.K.A.C. error. Thank you.

(I think Sheriff Blast included that one in the acronym listing).

Regards,
Comanche7

ps It is also worth mentioning that the plastic edges can be sharp, just like getting a paper cut, blush, like Sue said, don't ask...

Infrastructure workers contrasted with knowledge workers - interesting paradigm. I would agree that it has some validity, but I am curious into which group you would plug field scientists - biologists, paleontologists, archaeologists, and the like. There are surely other occupations that muddy the distinction.

My take is that there is often significant blurring of the two hypothesized groups. I have certainly met many "infrastructure workers" with very significant abstract reasoning abilities.

I would say, that as far as tool display in an office setting goes, approach the issue cautiously and understand the practices within that particular group. In the office groups in which I have worked, a Leatherman tool is seen as a useful item. Nothing works like the pliers at clearing paper jams in the printer or copier. I have been surprised at how often carrying basic first aid items on one's person has been really helpful in an office setting.