I was watching LAX the other night and toward the end they wound up marching several hundred irate passengers threw one of those make-shift mass decontamination showers in a hanger because one of the passengers had meningitis & collapsed. What happens if there’s an incident and someone refuses to take off their clothes and go threw the process? Do they strip you? Can you be arrested? Isn’t one of the reasons they make people strip to make sure no ones hiding anything that could have been used to cause the incident?
I believe many places have laws that give the government extraordinary powers in the event of a health emergency, such as an epidemic of a deadly disease. So if the government considered it an emergency, they could detain all of the passengers who might be a source of infection. If someone didn’t want to “go with the program”, they could be detained and held in quarantine.
Decon showers, like the one you describe, aren’t used in the face of infectious disease. The exposed people would be told to go to their local health departments, or private physicians to be checked and given whatever therapy is appropriate.
To answer your question, in a decon situation, anyone thought to be contaminated, is required to go through the process. Yes, they could be arrested. But before going to jail, they would still have to go through the decon process.
My source for this is my firefighter/paramedic husband who is also a haz-mat tech. He has been in that exact situation. They have come close, but have never actually arrested anyone. It seems when the person finds out they’re going through the shower either way, they opt for shower without jail.
The last time they had a decon situation was after our last earthquake. A pipe in the ceiling of an office building burst, pouring sewage down on 20 or 30 workers.
One of the reasons for mandatory decon is to avoid contaminating the rescue vehicles.
Wouldn’t any decontamination shower be just as effective if people entered it clothed? (Obviously it’d destroy suede, but that’s not the concern)
I’ve seen a couple of people deconned (for chemicals) at a refinery, and they left their underwear on. 'Course in some prople’s case (mine), that would be impossible.
Peace,
mangeorge
That would depend on the type of contamination. When I went through military training for nuclear/biological/chemical warfare, the presumption seemed to be that if you needed a decon shower, your clothes were hazardous waste and you were not going to get them back.
All these agencies, that I know of, have coveralls for you.
When I worked for Henze-Movats I wore a bathing suit under my anti-cs. More than once I saw a guy in tighty whities go streaking though in a panic because he forgot that I was going to be onshift :smack: unfortunately they were all not particularly <ahem> scenic, usually 40ish out of shape ex navy nukes 
I did get decontaminated one time, and there was a female there that was in radiation control who did my back for me.
I would pretty much assume that the mass decontaminations that would be taking pace would be segregated sexually, with the males and females going through separately, and there are female health workers around so modesty would be taken care of…
Though after as much time as I have spent in hospital, I could probably take a crap in a bucket in the middle of grand central station and only worry about where the roll of tp was if it was a mass decontam scene