Knowing how much steel or dirt that you need between you and incoming radiation can be important in a situation where nuclear fall-out is imminent. The chart below is a list of how many inches or centimeters of a given material to cut the amount of incoming radiation by half. This is called an HVL or halving layer of protection. HVL's cut the radiation by an additional half for each subsequent layer. So if you have 4 inches of concrete between this would be 2 HVL layers between you and the source of radiation so you would divide the amount that you would receive by half 2 times (amount of radiation halved twice or 2 HVL)
As the average person will not want to see the exact amounts I have rounded the chart below to the nearest 10th inch or centimeter.
As the average person will not want to see the exact amounts I have rounded the chart below to the nearest 10th inch or centimeter.
HVL Layer Chart
| Material | Inches | Centimeters |
| water | 4.2 | 10.6 |
| dirt | 2.6 | 6.6 |
| steal | .5 | 1.4 |
| concrete | 1.9 | 5 |
| aluminum | 1.7 | 4.5 |
| lead | .1 | .3 |
| iron | .6 | 1.5 |
Last edited by Frosty on August 31st 2014, 3:32 pm; edited 1 time in total
