> I think my biggest concern is dirty nukes

Dirty nukes aren't that dirty, and it doesn't spread that far, as I understand it. They're more properly called radiological bombs or radiological dispersal devices (if you have a degree, I guess :->), and they don't have that big a range even downwind because they rely on high explosives to spread the radioactive component.

Even if you were in a town where an RDD was exploded, the increase in radiation would not be generally fatal to the populace, and the increase in risk of, say, cancer would be small enough to make connecting any one cancer to exposure impossible. The major problem is hysteria, although that would be delayed till someone noticed the increased radiation - it would look like a regular bomb with some casualties from the debris.

An article here
http://csis.org/files/publication/091109_Terrorism_WMD.pdf
says the increase in cancer in a couple of blocks downwind of an RDD would be 1 death per hundred due to radiation in midtown Manhattan, with some deaths farther out but at decreasing rates (1 in ten thousand). See pages 64 and 65.

It would have to be cleaned up, and the disruption would be enormous because of the hysteria, but the actual death rate would not be great.

I'm from Texas, and I would want a shelter for tornadoes if I still lived there. Those suckers are totally devastating. Nukes? Not so much. I never lived near any terror targets, and I had no concern about fallout from the West Coast after living through all the fall out from our own atmospheric testing in Nevada. :->

Now I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I still have no concern over dirty bombs, and I live far enough from San Francisco that a small nuke there might not even attract my attention, assuming it's not an air burst.