The fol­low­ing was pro­vid­ed to me by my good friend Shane.  He’s con­tributed to this blog in the past as Shanethenurse.  Shane and I fre­quent­ly talk about bug-out loca­tions, shel­ter­ing in, med­ical prep, etc.  As you can imag­ine the most recent dis­cus­sions cen­ter around COVID-19.  One top­ic that con­tin­u­al­ly comes up from time to time is neg­a­tive pres­sure rooms.  Today, with Shane’s per­mis­sion, I am going to share his iso­la­tion room plans with you, so that if you are tak­ing COVID-19 very seri­ous­ly, and I know Shane hopes you are, as he has seen some hor­ror shows in his pro­fes­sion­al life.  Both Shane and I hope you get some­thing out of this, and that you can pre­pare your­self should COVID-19 con­tin­ue in a down­ward spi­ral path, and the coun­try is forced to shut down once again or worse.

As an aside, Shane has built iso­la­tion rooms for some of the hospitals/clinics in which he has helped man­age care for COVID-19.

The fol­low­ing are instruc­tions on build­ing an iso­la­tion room should some­one you know or some­one in your fam­i­ly have COVID-19 or anoth­er virus where­by they must be iso­lat­ed from the rest of the pop­u­la­tion or res­i­dents for treat­ment in the loca­tion in which you or they reside…

Isolation Room Instructions

Pick a room with an ensuite, if pos­si­ble, to avoid the infect­ed from hav­ing to walk through the house and poten­tial­ly con­t­a­m­i­nate oth­ers. Also allows for a source of water. Typ­i­cal­ly, most bath­rooms have an exhaust fan capa­ble of mov­ing many cubic feet per minute, CFM, check your fan’s capa­bil­i­ties. A 20x20x8 room is 3200 cubic feet and the air would have to be changed 12 times per hour 3200x12=38400 38400/60=640 CFM. Remem­ber to take a cubic foot mea­sure­ment of every­thing in the room and sub­tract it from the gross cubic feet of the room. You may be sur­prised.

Like­ly your bath­room fan will not be enough, and a sup­ple­men­tal fan will need to be placed in a win­dow. If peo­ple must walk beside or under it the plan will have to change. But for now, we will assume this is not an issue and place a plain old box fan in the win­dow and seal around it. Of course, this will become quite intol­er­a­ble if the weath­er is extreme. Some of the box fans at the big box stores will move 2000CFM and are very inex­pen­sive. A heater may be need­ed if it is too cold. Of course, small­er and more com­pact fans can be used as required to move the appro­pri­ate CFM of air. Make sure the fan blows the air out of the room. A high-qual­i­ty fur­nace fil­ter can be placed on the inside por­tion of the fan which may help to fil­ter and trap to make it a lit­tle safer for those out­side of the build­ing, but this is not guar­an­teed and you may still wind up con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing oth­er peo­ple.

Get a small microwave, hot plate, and fridge for the iso­la­tion room. Use dis­pos­able plates, cups, etc. Have a garbage can or dis­pos­al area just for those items that get placed in anoth­er garbage and sealed when it is brought out of the room.

Food should be some­thing they actu­al­ly like to eat, high calo­rie too, and plen­ty of flu­ids such as soda, Gatorade, and fla­vored drink mix­es. The afflict­ed may not want to eat for sev­er­al days, this is nor­mal and may lead to a pro­found weight loss. Diges­tion takes a lot of ener­gy that is oth­er­wise being spent on fight­ing the infec­tion.

To seal the room, use a heavy plas­tic sheet 10 mil­lime­ters if pos­si­ble though a cheap har­bor Freight Tarp will do the trick, and on sale, they can be had for $1.99 or even free some­times. Tape the plas­tic to the door using qual­i­ty duct-type tape, I use T‑REX. Tape a zip­pered dust door to the plas­tic sheet, get one that opens like a “U” or a “C”. This makes it a lot eas­i­er to get through. If you get a “U” door­way remem­ber to attach it with the zip­per run­ning down oth­er­wise you are walk­ing on your door­way which is self-defeat­ing.

Below are some images of the steps:

  1. Start by using a stan­dard 5 x 7 Stan­dard Tarp
  2. Door­way Cen­tered on the Tarp
  3. Tape Around the Cen­tered Door­way
  4. Step One — Done
  5. Use the width of a Lev­el to Off­set From the Zip­per & Make a Straight Line For Cut­ting
  6. Tape Around, Cut, and Step Two is Com­plete

If you can do an inner and an out­er door this is even bet­ter. For the out­er door leave a ½ inch gap at the top of the bar­ri­er, and for the inner door to leave a ½ inch gap at the bot­tom of the bar­ri­er this way it is less like­ly any droplets or par­tic­u­lates will get out. The gap is need­ed to allow for air­flow and must not be omit­ted. Once you have secured the door to the plastic/tarp open it and cut the hole need­ed for the door open­ing. Once this is done tape it on the inside. A lot of these dust doors are large enough to cov­er a stan­dard door­way with­out adding extra plas­tic, use your judg­ment. Do not be stingy with the tape no mat­ter which method you use.

If you have the abil­i­ty to make a vestibule get a shal­low pan you can stand in and keep a spray bot­tle, the pump kind for gar­den­ing works well, with a water and bleach mix. Have anoth­er out­side of the door­way in the com­mon area any­ways. If you are alone con­sid­er mount­ing the wand like a show­er­head. If you have help, get a spray down before remov­ing the safe­ty gear. This of course would only apply if you are using a sperm suit. Though if things are this bad…

Oth­er stuff you need.

  • Masks: N‑95 is what we use in the hos­pi­tal, it does the job. You must use a new mask with every entry. We also use non-per­me­able gowns which must also be changed with every entry. This can get expen­sive quick­ly. You can also get a non-per­me­able suit, AKA the sperm suit, and they are also expen­sive.
  • Gloves: Nitrile or Latex are best, and a box of 100 is pret­ty cheap. Alter­na­tive­ly, you could use your own cloth­ing which you would have to remove every time you left the room, place it in a plas­tic bag, seal, and wash. There are bags that dis­solve in high heat so this may be a viable alter­na­tive, but I would rather use the dis­pos­ables and get it out of the build­ing.
  • Gog­gles are great too, to pre­vent any pos­si­bil­i­ty of the infec­tion enter­ing through the orbital area. Some infec­tions require a full res­pi­ra­tion sys­tem and they are quite expen­sive though a scu­ba rig will do the same thing, with a mul­ti­tude of oth­er steps to pre­vent any type of cross-con­t­a­m­i­na­tion required, so I won’t even dis­cuss it, because if things are this bad…

Putting on the pro­tec­tive gear is straight­for­ward. See attach­ment from CDC for the don and doff sequence.

Use hand san­i­tiz­er after every glove removal. This will destroy your skin after a cou­ple days. Get a good mois­tur­iz­er or your skin will crack poten­tial­ly allow­ing infec­tion in. I use pure Lano­lin. It stinks but works very well.

Alco­hol and bleach wipes are your friend and they are cheap too,  so keep some in the room, the vestibule if you make one, and the clean area.

Alco­hol hand san­i­tiz­er is a great thing to keep in mul­ti­ple places also.

Know­ing the trans­mis­sion route of the infec­tion is crit­i­cal. Droplet, blood, feces, touch, spores all have dif­fer­ent life spans with some almost inde­struc­tible, clostrid­i­um dif­fi­cile comes to mind. Oth­ers can live for days, weeks, and even months out of the body.

Know­ing if the infec­tion is bac­te­r­i­al or viral is also crit­i­cal. No point in tak­ing an antibi­ot­ic when an antivi­ral is need­ed. Should any­one need these med­ica­tions are sure to add Lac­to­bacil­lus aci­dophilus to their dai­ly diet to pre­vent any type of gas­troin­testi­nal issues. This is found in yogurt. If you are going for pills, get the one that is alive and needs refrig­er­a­tion.

If they have a res­pi­ra­to­ry issue such as a coro­n­avirus, CoV, get a small SpO2 mon­i­tor, they can be had for less than $20 on Ama­zon. A pulse oxime­ter, SpO2 mon­i­tor, is great to have any­ways.

Any­body with any co-mor­bid fac­tors such as heart dis­ease, emphy­se­ma, asth­ma, dia­betes, etc. is less like­ly to sur­vive than some­body who is healthy and does not smoke, drink, or do drugs. So just a heads up that your best efforts may be for naught because of the pre-exist­ing com­pro­mise.

Body Disposal

Spe­cial Legal Note from Sub­ur­ban Sub­ur­ban Sur­vival Blog, nor its own­ers, authors, con­trib­u­tors, or writ­ers, part­ners, or ven­dors, in any way endors­es the fol­low­ing while soci­etal norms, Rule of Law, and med­ical ser­vices are avail­able to all.  The fol­low­ing state­ments are made only for edu­ca­tion­al and illus­tra­tion pur­pos­es only.  If you take action on the below, you do so at your own legal risk.

If soci­ety has not total­ly col­lapsed and you can call the local Emer­gency Med­ical Ser­vice (EMS) or Police and they will either call for a Med­ical Exam­in­er (ME), trans­port to a local hos­pi­tal or des­ig­nat­ed body facil­i­ty if things are real­ly bad, or allow you to call the mor­tu­ary of choice and they will come to get it.

If you are on your own, soci­ety has col­lapsed, and you must do it your­self,  place the body in a body bag to con­tain flu­ids, because in a very short amount of time in a heat­ed dwelling cel­lu­lar break­down and decom­po­si­tion will hap­pen rapid­ly. No body-bag? No prob­lem. Wrap the body in the bed­ding and tie off with string, rope, straps, belts, what­ev­er you have. Wrap and seal a tarp around this. If no tarp used garbage bags you may have to do sev­er­al lay­ers to get a secure cov­er­ing. No mat­ter your reli­gious pref­er­ence, the best way to dis­pose of the body is by cre­ma­tion. Leave it out­side and the assort­ed crit­ters start chew­ing on it and it spreads even fur­ther. If the body can be secured in a shed with tem­per­a­tures below freez­ing to facil­i­tate freez­ing the body this may be an alter­na­tive stor­age method before dis­pos­al.

The best way to burn is in a bar­rel with 1 gal­lon of gaso­line per 10lb of body weight, there will be noth­ing left. The prob­lem is we just cre­at­ed a mum­my and it will not fit in a bar­rel. Alter­na­tive­ly, stack sev­er­al pal­lets with plen­ty of tin­der and branch­es on top. Place the body on top of that and cov­er with more branch­es or pal­lets. Douse with a flam­ma­ble liq­uid, gaso­line, kerosene, etc., and light it up. I know this seems some­what harsh but burn­ing is the best way to pre­vent fur­ther infec­tion trans­mis­sion. Keep the fire burn­ing until there is noth­ing left, then burn a lit­tle longer so all the mar­row is dena­tured too. If you can dig a grave first then do the above burn­ing pro­ce­dure in the grave every­thing is con­tained with­in that hole and just need the dirt replaced. Put rocks on top to decrease the like­li­hood of crit­ters dig­ging some­thing up.

Be sure to doc­u­ment every­thing, because there will come a day when some­body wants to know what hap­pened and a video of the sick, becom­ing the dead, becom­ing the ash may be the only thing that keeps you out of prison if the Rule of Law is restored.

 

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