Nuclear fallout doesn't have to mean the end of the road for you or your family. While we may think of fallout as something that's going to last thousands of years, the truth of the matter is that the majority of the radiation will be washed away by rain and wind to be dispersed into less-than-lethal concentrations. However, this does take a bit of time, so what can you do to protect yourself until then?

Building a fallout room
1. Make sure your fallout room is within a well-insulated structure. Bungalows, cabins, trailer homes, and the like don't tend to fit the bill.
2. Choose the place furthest from the outside walls within your home. Oftentimes, this is the cellar or basement. The greater the distance you are from the radiation, the better.
3. You'll want to shut off openings like windows, etc. In addition, you'll want to bolster the walls around you with dense materials like bricks, sand, concrete, wood, and even furniture.
4. The fallout room may not be enough during the first couple of days after detonation when things are most dangerous. Thus, you'll want to build some kind of fallout inner shelter within your fallout room. One way to do this is to use doors reinforced on the outside with sand or another bolstering material.
Supplies to have on hand in your fallout room
1. Have enough food for 14 days. If you live [near a blast site], you would need to have a bunker far underground to survive a blast in such close proximity, and then be able to stay down there for up to several weeks.
2. Have enough water for 14 days, unless you're in an area that is near a likely strike zone; in this case you'll want several weeks more.
3. Have a radio and extra batteries as this will be your only real connection to emergency contacts and the outside world.
4. Have tin openers, cutlery, bowls, plates, and etc. for obvious reasons.
5. Have warm clothing on hand.
6. Have bedding on hand and a comfortable bed pad or cot (folding cots will take up less space in your fallout room).
7. Have bathroom supply products. Consider knowing where you will toilet in advance. Since you cannot waste water in a toilet- and may not even have one in your fallout room- have buckets, bags for waste, and disinfectants/ cleaners with you as well.
Invest in a portable 5 gallon toilet.
Also invest in several pounds of bulk cat litter. Yes, cat litter.
If there are more than one of you sheltering in your fallout room, it will be important to keep smells to a minimum – which will make the experience of sheltering in place for several days a lot more pleasant than being trapped in a sealed room filled with foul odors.
As a last resort, have Vick's Vapor Rub (or a generic brand) that you can lather on your skin, just below your nostrils, as a way to distract from any possible foul smelling odors.
8. Save on electricity and fuel (supplied by a generator) and eat your food uncooked (that means you need to be stocked with foods that don't require cooking).
9. Have flashlights and one or two lanterns, depending on the size of your shelter and how many people will be inside.
10. Have cloths, brushes, and brooms for cleaning.
11. Have soap on hand with towels.
12. Have a first aid supply kit.
13. Have things to keep you busy like books, paper, and pens.
14. Finally, have potassium iodide pills on hand. If taken during a nuclear emergency, these pills help protect against a variety of cancers that can result from exposure to nuclear fallout. Better safe than sorry.

One of the most important things you can take away from this article from Secrets of Survival is that nuclear fallout doesn't last forever.

You simply need to wait out the radiation levels. For that reason, we can't recommend enough that you include a radio with your shelter so that you can monitor news and fallout forecasts which will likely be frequently updated.

It will seem obvious to have enough food and water, but make sure you have enough places to dispose of waste; you won't want to be smelling that for weeks on end. Finally, perhaps the most important piece of information from this article is to have something to pass the time. Load your shelter with books you haven't read and games for the family to play; maybe load up on pens and paper and use the time to work finally on that novel you've been dreaming about.