Well There's Your Problem | Episode 28: Goiânia Incident

In this episode we talk about pretty blue lights.
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Uchenna's insta: / uckema
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primary source was the international atomic agency report, and most images came from there:
www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publica...
cherenkov radiation image:
By Argonne National Laboratory - originally posted to Flickr as Advanced Test Reactor core, Idaho National LaboratoryUploaded using F2ComButton, CC BY-SA 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
teletherapy machine image:
By Unknown photographer/artist, from G. Terry Sharrer, Ph.d. National Museum Of American History. - This image was released by the National Cancer Institute, an agency part of the National Institutes of Health, with the ID 1819 (image) (next)., Public Domain, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Captions (provided by user Mickulty)
0:00:00 Editing Update
0:00:56 Intro
0:07:20 The GD News: Bridge Wobbles For Attention
0:11:07 The GD News: Cosplay Chuds Can't Coup, Caught (LLBD Episode 118)
0:16:09 The GD News: Another Tower Made Of Tinderbox Plastic Cladding
0:20:28 Context: Radiation Beyond "Spicy Rocks"
0:28:56 Context: The Pretty Blue Light
0:33:13 Context: Ways to Be Irratiated
0:36:48 Context: Radiation Therapy
0:45:27 Context: Brazil
0:47:29 The Instituto Goiânia de Radioterapia
0:50:36 How (Not) To Pull Oneself Up By The Bootstraps

[@NotJustBikes]

You guys just yammer on for ages making stupid jokes and take forever to get to the point but I love it and I can't stop listening. WHY?!

[@AnnekeOosterink]

Huh, it's really weird to see you here after listening to the more current episodes, including the one where you're a guest.

[@geoffreyentwistle8176]

Congratulations on discovering your neurodivergence. Please collect your fidget toy and first prescription at the door. 😂

[@johnobrian566]

I've played enough video games to know that you always pick up the glowy stuff. That's rare drops.

[@tangledfish]

"Hey this is Justin in post-production. You'r probably wondering how I got here..."

[@JoJoModding]

Welcome to "well there's your problem, a podcast about engineering slides. With disasters"

[@Raw774]

Funny story: Before covid forced me into becoming a hermit who lives in my parents' attic, I was a scrap yard person (we are fairly belligerent), specifically we recycle waste electronic products. We got a pair of what look like giant microwaves from the local university, they're actually incredibly high temperature kilns. They're massive and mostly made of medical grade stainless steel, which is potentially a big payday for us, not to mention they take up a bunch of space which we're always short on. But we've not touched them since they arrived; aside from wrapping them in as much cardboard, plastic and wood we can so nobody fucks with them. The reason we haven't touched them is our boss won't buy a Giger counter and we have no idea what's been put in these kilns. The inside of them could very well be Spicy and the university may have tried to pull a fast one on us by treating it as e-waste rather than disposing of it properly.

[@joshporter5205]

You can often get older civil defense giger counters on ebay, etc.. relatively cheap. They are the big yellow ones. I did a bit of research on this back when I lived in Las Cruces, wedged neatly between White Sands and Radium Springs with the Trinity site within driving distance.

[@Raw774]

@@joshporter5205 Good shout, I'll look into getting one when I can get back to work. Thanks pal!

[@user-gn5wv2lx5t]

any update?

[@Raw774]

@@user-gn5wv2lx5t I'm still on lockdown

[@user-gn5wv2lx5t]

@@Raw774 word homie, stay safe

[@rubenthiel1214]

Justin describing the daughter as being "turbokilled" as a consequence ingesting caesium-137 gets me every time

[@sleatersan]

He got a chuckle out of me! I was impressed; I've always thought that was one of the saddest parts of this story.

[@Jaqhnun]

it was a blink-and-you-miss it mention, but I was excited to hear proton therapy come up! My mom underwent experimental proton therapy for a brain tumor in the 70's, which basically means they opened her skull and zapped the tumor with a proton beam until the tumor was gone. Annie Oakley trick shot off a quarter, right into her brain. It saved her life, and ~20 years later, I happened. The science and development behind the different forms of radiation therapy is very cool! And it's also kind of a major reason why I exist, which is also very cool for me, specifically.

[@NationalistsRuinAmerica]

What am I thinking right now?

[@robin8404]

I absolutely lost it at "Capital of the state of Goiâs, which I think is something that Liam will call you in the comments"

[@yrobtsvt]

You missed the crucial reason the guard was off duty at 50:35. It's because he went to see a screening of the film HERBIE GOES BANANAS. This fact is permanently engraved in my memory.

[@rafaelneumann8365]

Herbie was very popular in the 80s and 90s in Brazil. The beetle (called "fusca" here) was a very popular car until the mid 90s. Today it is considered a collector's dream.

[@coreygolphenee9633]

@@rafaelneumann8365 you guys got all the cool Volkswagens dokas panthers 412s

[@indyrevoly3060]

too many bananas in the Herbie movie, it was throwing off the geigercounters

[@MyNathanking]

I can tell from just a minute of listening to this crap that these guys can't be trusted to put on a well-done, professional documentary of anything. Just look at the title: Goiania incident. Yet they talk about a potpourri of stuff that doesn't even relate to the Goiania accident. These dedicated-title-potpourri videos ALWAYS raise red flags for me.

[@fern5505]

@@MyNathanking buddy it’s a comedy podcast

[@dadahound]

1:03:50 one of my favorite anecdote from my radiology professor is an apocryphal story about Pierre Curie, husband of Marie Curie. Besides getting exposed to horrendous amount of radiation during their experiments, the Curies allegedly had a habit of taking a glowing vial of radium with them to gatherings to show off to their friends. After a couple of gatherings Pierre, who carried the vial in his breatpocket developed a nasty and painful rash on his chest and died soon afterwards. ... When he absentmindedly walked into traffic and got run over by a speeding horse. Always to look both ways before crossing, kids.

[@bananian]

I thought he used it as a glow in the dark sex toy. Disappointed.

[@wolight]

I gotta say this story is like the first 20 minutes of a horror film where none of the characters know zombie-ism is spread through bites but the audience does

[@adrift-at-c]

Cherenkov radiation is from the lights on all the subatomic police cruisers going off to catch the speeding electrons.

[@botbtquarrel4072]

This is genuinely going to help me remember what it is

[@joshporter5205]

ASCAB All Subatomic Cops Are Bastards!

[@Corvicula1979]

This comment made my day.

[@davidwright7193]

A subatomic cop pulls an election over Cop “are you aware you are travelling at 0.95 c in a built up area?” Electron “you bastard, I was going home and now I am lost”

[@Ealsante]

"Oi! You have your faster-than-light loisence!?"

[@TheRealE.B.]

*One time, one of the grunts at Lincoln Electric told me that the safety precautions surrounding tungsten welding electrodes were overblown because "the amount of radiation they emit is less than what you get from a microwave."* *I didn't bother to correct him on the difference between non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation and inhale-able dust that emits alpha particles.*

[@danielkorladis7869]

inside, or outside the microwave?

[@lace_mononym]

this is incredibly sad and horrifying for the people involved but also farcical in how the spicy dust went from junkyard to wheelbarrow to house to junkyard like a macguffin in a badly written action comedy

[@distaffpope2603]

Honestly, I'd watch that mini-series. Love a good tragi-comedy

[@dmrr7739]

Wait, how do you discuss this without mentioning the nearly identical incident in Juarez that gave America’s restaurants radioactive table legs? Okay, so a guy in Juarez picks up a an old radiotherapy machine that sold for the sweet price of $9. He transports it in his highly-advanced safety pickup, but not before spilling some of the 6,000 spicy spheres of cobalt-60. He takes the machine to a scrap yard where it is knocked around for weeks, spreading cobalt-60 everywhere in the yard. Because the cobalt was in the form of relatively mundane silvery balls rather than cool blue glowing powder, it didn’t get played with and eaten. That’s good! But it also means, in the absence of people falling over dead, no one knew there was a problem. The kids playing around the guy’s highly radioactive truck where it sat for eight weeks with a flat tire didn’t know. The scrap yard that was busy melting scrap metal and unintentional cobalt-60 into rebar and restaurant table legs didn’t know either. And of course, no one knew that tiny stray spheres of cobalt were also being pressed into road surfaces around Juarez- at least until the radioactive surveillance helicopter spotted them. So for a short time, this Mexican scrapyard became one of the world’s leading nuclear material exporters by tonnage without even trying. Or in any way knowing. So why was there a radioactive surveillance helicopter flying over Juarez? Because, earlier, a truck carrying these radioactive products into the US got lost in New Mexico. And it just happened to turn onto the road leading to the entrance of Los Alamos Laboratory, where radiological alarms suddenly went crazy. From there, it was a fairly straightforward matter to trace the source, collect all of America’s radioactive table legs, tear down the buildings made with the rebar and track down every last remaining ball of cobalt-60.

[@kjj26k]

W O W Does this event have a catchy name that I can search up more info on it by?

[@AGenericMoron]

I... don't think "what the fuck" is enough to reply to this comment. Nonetheless... what the fuck

[@jaysea5939]

@@dmrr7739 this was a fucking wild ride, thank you

[@kjj26k]

@@dmrr7739 Daaaaaaang, awesome work! I wish KZbin had not waited two months to notify me of this...

[@prjndigo]

Goiania was cesium, a water soluable metabolite toxin. Cesium is toxic all the way down it's chain of decay products. I've got a 92lbs piece of high uranium content petrified wood about 6 feet from me. A cobalt 60 source doesn't poison the ground and water table.

[@paulseifert6598]

Abridged Version: "But Moe, we don't know nuthin' about scrapping radiological hazards!" *smack* "Shaddup! You hoid the lady! Now start scrappin' !"

[@plushifoxed]

Heh heh heh. Moe is their leader.

[@windwalker5765]

Nyuck nyuck nyuck, wowowowowowowowwo

[@traaztek1996]

Oh man I thought your French was awful Justin but really it's quite beautiful when compared to your Portuguese

[@ClaudiaNW]

The difference between Justin and Alice , when it comes to foreign languages, is the difference between Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg.

[@burajirujinn]

I'm from Goiânia. Love seeing those videos about the one thing my otherwise unremarkable city is most known for outside Brazil. Nowadays there are basically no lasting effects of the accident on the city, but most of us are pretty aware of what happened. There are seven cemented empty lots at Setor Aeroporto and that's it since it was miraculously contained relatively early. I've been to the radioactive material storage site from the accident on the outskirts of the city. From outside it is basically a large grassy hill and an adjacent museum, pretty unremarkable but pretty interesting nonetheless. It is continuously monitored for any leaks, which none happened to date. It is almost a miracle Goiânia isn't some kind of a brazilian version of Pripyat.

[@mrboomward]

Shout out to the lady who brought a bunch of Cesium powder in a plastic bag on a public bus and actually saved at least dozens of lives doing so

[@geoffreyentwistle8176]

The woman deserves way more recognition for actually figuring out what might be causing all of the sudden mysterious illnesses... Like Alice says: if I didn't know what radiation was, I don't think I'd have figured out it was the weird glowing powder that made me sick...

[@NamelessMoreOne]

I think there was a lack of mentioning of when did this happen and the social context for the unfortunate people that decided to invade the clinic. It was 1987. Brazil was still practically a dictatorship (Although it was a transition period between 1985 and 1988). The dictatorship ended, mostly, due to raging hyperinflation and failed economic plans. In this pre-democratic period, a third economic plan in a year was being implemented. People were employed but they received a pittance due to inflation (80% in 1986, 360% in 1987), price fixing left markets empty (And black markets full), and people were generally miserable. The old building was deactivated in 1985 and partially demolished with the machine still inside. Apparently, it was partially disassembled, so it didn't look like that full machine you showed. One of the condemned people recently said the cesium container was entered for safe-keeping in a Hospital and "somehow made it back" to a demolished building. Cesium didn't spill out everywhere, it was "just" under 100 grams, so not an absurd amount (As far as general quantities go, I'm sure 100 grams of cesium is a fuckton of radiation). Metal recycling is pretty profitable in Brazil, because some of the worst parts of metal recycling (Collection and separation) is usually done cheaply by people that live under minimum wage and couldn't get any other type of work to do, and we have a ton of people in that situation. Those roofs are made out of tile, not thatch. Your Xbox guy is scamming you, the One X is 3k. 271 victim were recognized, but over a thousand still seek help from the government, to be recognized as affected by the accident. A minimum wage was to be paid to the victims by the state government since 1996, but that was slow too. I really enjoyed how quintessentially Brazilian this story got told. A friend with a friend digging stuff up to sell out of desperation, Ivo with his daughter living almost overtop a river and almost certainly contaminating the water table anyway, the ingenuity of the wife figuring the blue glow was bad, a doctor that didn't know exactly what to do calling a friend to help out, that friend then borrowing equipment that just happens to be useful, the casual "it's crap, throw it in the river so it stops being our problem" by a government official... That's just so unintentionally Brazil.

[@rafagd]

And then telling the story while cracking jokes about these poor people's misfortunes. I think overall it could have been way worse, but it somehow worked out in the end. Which tends to be a theme for us as well.

[@UchennaKema]

Its me!

[@SofaKingShit]

Just as l suspected.

[@foursix32]

haha weeb

[@jessicamacdonald3055]

whats up uchenna! we went to take back nyu together back in the day (and i had a uh... different first name). cool life crossover of cool podcast and cool dude from college

[@MarsCBG]

really disappointing that you didn't point out that the security guard wasn't there that day because he went to see a screening of the movie "Herbie Goes Bananas" with his family

[@MrJohndoakes]

Could have been worse - he could have been blowing a matinee watching a dubbed print of the clunker John Astin family non-comedy "Wacky Taxi" (1972).

[@CommieGIR]

If its blue light in water: Its fine. Your safe. If its glowing blue in air and its not a glow sitck: Drop, run.

[@grmpEqweer]

@Liberatum Plox Just let your teeth and hair fall naturally as you wobble away?

[@CommieGIR]

@@grmpEqweer That's how you do the radiation walk!

[@jgraaay18]

If it's glowing blue in air and not a glowstick; drop, inform hazmat, walk calmly to the nearest pallative care facility. If you're in the same space as something hot enough to emit Cherenkov radiation in air, you're dead. You just haven't stopped moving yet.

[@JsD200186]

For more radiotherapy-related shenanigans, the Therac-25 overdoses (aka 'that one time a software engineer did an oopsie and a bunch of people got acute radiation sickness') are *wild*

[@ExperimentIV]

oh god the therac-25 incidents are truly horrifying, and a great example of poor software engineering. i would love to hear someone cover it, even if it isn’t this crew.

[@dominiccasts]

@@ExperimentIV If you can audit/take a 3rd year computer science ethics class, you'll get a lecture on it, I promise.

[@viliphied]

Shadowfury333 exactly where I heard about it. Did you get to read the manual? Paradox games have an easier learning curve.

[@invalide]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/d6GToKV9eM6iq5o great (horrific) vid on this

[@OriginalPineapplesFoster]

@@ExperimentIV If you're still interested there are excellent videos by the channels Plainly Difficult (brief, animated) and Kyle Hill (more in-depth, visual), and an episode of the podcast Causality. ✌️🍍

[@wkiernan]

Near airports in the U.S.A. if you want to put up a tall building you have to get a permit from the Federal Aviation Administration so as not to interfere with the flight lines. Once I worked on a building where the permit required the highest point of building to be lower than 360 feet (NAVD88), so the architect designed a little decorative flourish up top at 359' 11". It so happens the thermal coefficient of concrete is pretty much the same as for steel (good thing for ferroconcrete, huh?), which is one part in ten thousand per fifteen degrees Fahrenheit. If you heat up a 350 foot tall concrete building from 50°F. (typical air temperature in St. Petersburg, Florida in February) to 95° F (typical air temperature in St. Petersburg in August) it becomes taller by 0.105 feet, or 1-1/4". So if you're flying into Albert Whitted Airport in the summer time, make sure you come in just a tad high.

[@teslashark]

SPLAT

[@leaffinite2001]

I love seeing stuff like this

[@mikachu69420]

architects.

[@GreatgoatonFire]

The triupant return to the podcast of SPICEY ROCKS!

[@davefurey1989]

Podcast inside jokes good, cars bad

[@CykoruKun]

So this time they literally shook hands with danger. And then put the danger on a wheelbarrow.

[@SantaFebuff]

As an electrician at a steel mill that recycles old scrap metal, part of my job is maintaining radiation detectors across the plant to prevent melting a source like this.

[@benjaminmschroeder]

Didn't realize Matt Christman was already grillpilled and also in UAE in 2015

[@PlainlyDifficult]

Great pod as always!! Really enjoyed this one!

[@ThugShakers4Christ]

Knowing that your fearmongering ass like this podcast makes me like it less. Don't you have more antinuclear propaganda you ahould be spreading right now?

[@dwavenminer]

@@ThugShakers4Christ you seem to be confusing education and fear mongering...please go back to what you call the "fear mongering center", or as the rest of the world calls it, school.

[@tardvandecluntproductions1278]

@@ThugShakers4Christ This man is delusional, get him to the infirmary.

[@ThugShakers4Christ]

@@dwavenminer he consistently ignores that new reactors are safer and produce less waste. He acts like any new reactors would be built with 50 year old tech. Whether he likes it or not, nuclear is the only real option if we want to stop climate change.

[@dwavenminer]

@@ThugShakers4Christ When does he say that new reactors arn't much safer and that it isn't the only real option to stop climate change??? (well until Fusion becomes economical, whenever that will happen...hopefully in my lifetime...) He is simply going over historical accidents that happened and why they happened... I think you've been watching too much German anti-nuclear propaganda and now think that any discussion about its historical issues must also be propagada...

[@metrofox2]

The discussion of radioactive bars of metal at 29:00 reminded me of a great story my cousin told me. He formerly did some work at Sellafields before he quite for the sake of his mental health (and supposedly his management got arsey because he wouldn't do any work related to Trident), he once told me about an incident where he was talking to some coworkers and noticed a sign that had fallen and was hanging down, facing away from them. He asked his colleagues what the sign said, but they didn't know, so he went over, flipped it over and read "Danger! Radiation!" and thought to himself "Oh... shit" and then noped his ass straight to be decontaminated. According to him, he received only slightly higher than what was considered normal. Great guy, want to sit down and talk to him about all the work he's done, but with regards to the same reason he quit, he's not been in a good way as of late.

[@philipmalcolm4550]

Sellafield doesn't do anything related to weapons further than store plutonium that's produced as a byproduct of reprocessing spent fuel. Aldermaston is where they make the bombs.

[@unicorn4031]

Fun fact: this also inspired an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. (“Thine Own Self,“ Season 7, Episode 16.) Not So Fun fact: when the 7 year old niece (not nephew) was turbokilled (She ate the cesium) they buried her in a lead lined coffin like Chernobyl. The locals found out and were not happy. They went to the cemetery and rioted.

[@danielkorladis7869]

damn, that is depressing.

[@geoffreyentwistle8176]

😢

[@Summer-it3wh]

Talking about human legacy on earth and radioactivity, if you want to make a geiger counter nowadays you're in a little bit of a pickle, because thanks to nuclear testing since the 50's, almost all steel produced in the world is slightly radioactive, to the point it causes problems in highly sensitive radiation measuring equipment. The reason for this is that widespread nuclear testing threw a massive amount of radioactive material into the atmosphere, which is then injected into steel during the production process which uses atmospheric gas. One major source of non-radioactive metal is actually warships that were sunk prior to widespread nuclear testing, such as during the first and second world wars. Which leads some people to (illegally) try to salvage them to sell the low-background steel they're made of. So there is already a pretty noticeable difference in the composition of the earth's atmosphere and geology as a result of human activity in the last century.

[@disjustice]

On the plus side, it makes spotting counterfeit paintings much easier since any modern forgery will have a different radiological signature than the real McCoy.

[@PlainlyDifficult]

disjustice that’s really interesting!

[@brentb5303]

Isn't that fun. Fills one with pride and wonder of our possible accomplishments in this century.

[@drewgehringer7813]

it is actually possible to make new low-background steel without taking it anything from the atmosphere, its just quite a bit more expensive compared to just taking metal off Germany's WW1 fleet that was scuttled in the Scapa Flow (since it was scuttled and no one went down with those ships, scrapping them has no 'graverobbing' concerns)

[@niagarawarrior9623]

Although that's largely true, in recent years new techniques in smelting combined with the fact that there hasnt been an above ground nuclear test in many decades means that steel can be made with very low radiation contamination. Apparently, these new smelting techniques mean that its no longer viable for illegal salvaging operations to scour the ocean floor for old ww2 ships made of pre-atomic steel.

[@Summer-it3wh]

Becquerels is like scovilles for rocks.

[@casualevils]

ain't Becquerel that french sauce base

[@antivanti]

I bet there is an unnecessarily hot hot sauce named Becquerel 🤔

[@JB-ru2zb]

@@casualevils Bechamel

[@Cha0sWaffle]

@@JB-ru2zb thats_the_joke.jpg

[@grmpEqweer]

@@casualevils I understand Mme Curie loved to cook with it.

[@edimccredie]

As a medical physicist this is PAINFUL to hear about

[@edimccredie]

I had to watch this in tiny chunks to mitigate the pure horror of improper source disposal

[@Derkiboi]

@@edimccredie it's worse, the owners of the hospital were warned and they ignored it way before anything happened

[@ewetoo]

All WTYP themes should be played at least 3 times for mandatory hilarity.

[@lennyjay8390]

Every time the theme is not played all the commenters should ask: "Hey, why is the theme not playing?“

[@gregl6619]

Hey! The cities named Matamoros were named after people with the last name of 'Matamoros'... who inherited their names from families who were proud of killing a bunch of moors on the iberian peninsula...

[@teslashark]

I think there's a count who gave himself the title Matamoros after some wars he won against the moors, then his offsprings and underlings also took the title as a name

[@valuebrandmelkor5973]

Imagine naming a city Deathmoor.

[@MeonLights]

Listening to this is like reading The Color out of Space. Nobody is really sure what they are dealing with and what is going on but YOU do and now everything is fucked.

[@OH-pc5jx]

any time something on this show is an “incident”, you know it’s a bad bad bad situation

[@halfpintrr]

Black Lives Matter, and thank you all. We have now entered THE COOL ZONE.

[@chaxfox]

This incident is always extra scary - there's something in your house killing you in a weird way, but it's out of context & you have no frame of reference to even ID what's happening.

[@SivakAurak]

Ah, classic Lovecraft.

[@teslashark]

@@SivakAurak Cthulu doesn't want to be there either!

[@joshuahadams]

Ever read HP Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out Of Space”? A weird rock falls from space in a farmyard. It rapidly decays, and ends up tossed down a well. The family who gets their water from the well goes all funky, things start to glow with “a colour not seen on earth” and then people start decaying and dying. It pollutes the whole farm and, until up basically blasts it’s way into space, makes *everything* weird and unnatural.

[@Kapi.23]

here in Chile every now and then, some contractor leaves their expensive equipement at their car, and some junkie brakes in and steals a nuclear densimeter. They warn about it in the news and then by miracle it appears abandoned near some place of interest

[@stupititykills]

"I didn't say it was spicy, I just like cocaine" -Liam, 2020

[@SofaKingShit]

Cocain is a salt. Almost all drugs are a chemical salt to get the drug molecule to bind to the water in your body. That's why drugs taste so shitty however I have only ever been informed of this fact by complete strangers and this comment is not applicable in any legally binding manner.

[@lefteyereport6354]

@@SofaKingShit they are almost always either an alkaloid or a salt depending on the specific properties of each. 3-meo-pcp tastes like plastic, or the smell of a stale marble clad office tower lobby

[@lefteyereport6354]

@@SofaKingShit "SWIM says..."

[@Tomartyr]

@@SofaKingShit Cocaine tastes sweet except it actually tastes like gasoline..

[@therideneverends1697]

@@Tomartyr amphetamine tastes somewhere between lemon and orange peels. Its medicinal

[@TalkingSoup]

i'm actually on a quest to find a piece of radioactive ceramic partyware, like a dish or a mug or something. one of these days i'm gonna have a bright orange mug on a shelf and someone's gonna ask me about it and i'm gonna smile slowly and explain

[@rafagd]

- This case is the one they teach in our schools, whenever they teach about "hey guys, radiation is bad". - Your pronunciation of Goiânia is somehow on point, everything else not so much. - Wagner is somehow a popular name in Brazil, not everyone of them is of German descendancy, but all of them are probably named after the nazi's favorite composer. - I don't think symbols would have helped here. I think schools only started teaching the dangerous symbols after this incident. - Flamboyant (pronunced the french way) is the name of a tree, I think. Never made the connection until you mentioned it. - The Amnesty is probably our worst mistake in 1988. - The Prussian Blue jokes killed me.

[@danielkorladis7869]

the amnesty?

[@TheoEvian]

@@danielkorladis7869 Not prosecuting the old crimes beause of a change in regime. Sometimes it is just an excuse for pardoning the corrupt members of the previous regime, sometimes it is a necessary step towards burrying the hatchet.

[@henriquepacheco7473]

@@danielkorladis7869 Basically, we let all of our military dictators, the torturers, a bunch of other awful military government people and their collaborators get off scot-free after the regime ended. This, to massive surprise, had long-lasting negative consequence for the country.

[@jordanrelkey]

I can just imagine seeing the "Oh Shit!" moment on W.F.'s face after switching on the second dose meter and registering the value. I couldn't help laughing my ass off at this point, despite the utter tragedy.

[@KevinSiebert]

"hey doc, I think I ate some spicy powder I got rashes and I don't feel so good" "Oh here, wash it down with some fucking paint, lmao"

[@phelan1201]

"the man's house was extremely spicy"

[@PedroGuedesbm]

oh yes i finally got the chance of having wtyp butcher my language!!! thank you i'm flattered

[@dairallan]

"You'll edit it and people will see it run smoothly". I guess Alice has never actually watched back an episode yet :p

[@TalkingSoup]

Also I really appreciate Uchenna walking things back into realism wrt radiation and how it's actually safe if you just, yanno, respect it and contain it properly. There's so much misunderstanding around radiation so it's nice to have an actual expert to be realistic.

[@devinfaux6987]

You know, I think it was reading about this incident that convinced me for certain that we definitely do not live in a universe designed and created by a loving god -- that the laws of physics allow for the existence of a substance that is lethal poison simply to have nearby, but which an under-educated person will have no way of knowing is death.

[@kattkatt744]

This is why my atheist ass wouldn't follow a God even if it literally appeared in front of me. Going by the stories they all behave like abusive dads and I'm not into that.

[@Smonserratm]

After studying physics you realize that a lot of things aren't human friendly. Like the whole thermodynamics is a lost battle for humanity, osmosis goes the wrong way for desalinization, most things are non-linear or not solvable analitically, turbulence is a fucking mess, stellar/galactic/cosmic distances are huge, etc.

[@steemlenn8797]

If you look at it logically, there are 2 possibilities (taken for a god like in the bible): A) There is no God B) God is not only omnipotent and omniscience, but also omniasshole Because if She wouldn't be a super asshole, She would have done a lot of things a lot better.

[@devinfaux6987]

Cesium. Cesium run. Run, sium, run.

[@cableknit3057]

See Cesium, run

[@lodiped]

There was a TERRIFYING tv show called Linha Direta that kinda traumatized me back in my early teens when they did an episode on this incident. They filmed a "simulation" with actors and scary music in it. It doesn't sound so bad now but trust me I was fucking scared.

[@tgies]

Nice, this looks like it kzbin.info/www/bejne/g5fWmYJphdufj9U

[@schnoodle3]

I'm giving this episode a glowing review.

[@peterpanda5069]

Oh THIS circus. After the last one, this’ll be a downright knee-slapper...

[@JoranGroothengel]

Ah, the wonderful world of IAEA incident reports. I read a lot of them once I found out about them, slept badly for weeks...

[@schnoodle3]

Those, Chemical Safety Board, OSHA and whole bunch of governmental agencies make for some of the best horror reading to be found.

[@ianhomerpura8937]

@@schnoodle3 have you discovered the gem that is the USCSB KZbin channel? If not, I recommend it.

[@schnoodle3]

@@ianhomerpura8937 I love that channel, they don't release often enough

[@punchfisttop]

Words don't describe how much I love these podcasts! Informative AND sarcastic...putting the 'fun' in funeral!

[@adamjones7891]

Travelling with the caesium powder in a bag just makes me think of the Simpson’s intro where the plutonium rod travels across Springfield.

[@viniciusdesouzamaia]

Brazilian here. I live in Campinas, near Americana, and Bolsonaro got SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT of the votes in the region. Also, slavery was abolished here in 1888, not 1899. Great consolation, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Also, in the 1920 and 30s a family started a Nazi farm exploiting kidnapped black children here in Campinas. Racism sticks around longer than cobalt, apparently.

[@Personal_Chizo]

Hell yeah, that's the South American representation I've been waiting for. Put a poll up when you finally do something on Buenos Aires, I think there's plenty to choose from.

[@deeznoots6241]

Hermes Bouza the Argentine government for one

[@ianhomerpura8937]

How about the 2012 Once Tragedy?

[@WaLlAb33]

Repeatedly yelling “oh fuck” during this episode as things continued to get worse and worse as they seasoned their town with spicy powder

[@afonsooliveira4417]

I know it's been a year but y'all forgot to mention that the equipment was left behind because a court had prevented the owners from removing the hazardous materials because of some litigation from the building owner, who was not the radiology institute. The IGR actually tried many times to remove the equipment and even wrote several letters to the national nuclear comition to warn them that it was a terrible idea to keep radioactive material in an abandoned building lmao

[@jeanlucdiscard]

Ahem, okay I think I got this one team: 🚄 Train good ✈ Plane bad ☢ Radiation lawful neutral 🇩🇪 Germany 7, 🇧🇷 Brazil 1 😇 Liam "I didn't say it was spicy, I JUST LIKE COCAINE. "

[@forcea1454]

Bring back the East is Red.

[@tangledfish]

The east is red, the sun is rising. From China, appears Mao Zedong. He strives for the people's happiness, Hurrah, he is the people's great saviour!

[@milobrosamer272]

do you have the recording alice used? i haven’t found one that’s triumphant enough

[@Stjaernljus]

Might be wrong but it sounds like this episode predates the change to East is Red

[@WaterMan416]

@@Stjaernljus it just sounds like this was recorded prior to editing and releasing the bhopal episode.

[@alicecaldwell-kelly9530]

next time I will play The News theme and The East is Red at the same time. centrism

[@willmiles7978]

Also the 'compensation to Xboxes' comparison has extra hurdles in Brazil due to how hard to get and overpriced consoles are there. The PS2 is still massively popular in Brazil because newer consoles are such a pain to find. Nintendo straight up stopped distributing there in 2015. I think the PS4 Pro when it came out from some sources cost around $1800 (USD). techinbrazil.com/the-market-for-video-games-in-brazil So your compensation will probably only buy half the expected number of Xboxes. Uchenna's quoted BRL4000 is $806.57.

[@Julietmindset]

Just wanted to say that the dealio yall are doing with the donation receipts in return for bonus episodes, literally giving up a major chunk of your source of income for the cause, is extremely selfless. Some Major Comrade Energy right there. 💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

[@joinedupjon]

sadly real top-tier junkyard bosses are going to think all the danger! stop! call 911! warnings are just trying to scare them off reaching the treasure.

[@TrashHeapCustodian]

I love when I listen to one of these and there's a part where I go "OH YEAH I KNOW ABOUT THIS ONE" like 43% of the way in to the video, it makes it more EXCITING somehow.

[@RWnope]

I must know why you STILL have several images of Pete Buttigieg on your desktop. This is still important.

[@BlarryOfficial]

Never forgive Never forget

[@DeadWhiteButterflies]

Just as a reminder what failure looks like in image form.

[@justinokraski3796]

he's a CIA asset who has managed to infiltrate Justin's computer

[@TiagoJoaoSilva]

Target practice

[@markifi]

"if you're reading this, drop this and run" might be the most terrifying thing that can be written on a thing

[@snack881]

Love how you've got a reactors guy on and your first impulse is to make him talk about vibes

[@SenMysrana]

Reading about this incident was truly one of the most intense "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" reactions that I ever had.

[@TheSullie1]

Spicy powder, the official fuel of the Pennsylvania secret service

[@TheOzzyMartin1]

The Cool Zone TM

[@pinkgnu]

gotta be honest i find deep diving on oil rigs or dams a lot more terrifying an idea than diving a couple of metres into the fire pool

[@elijahm3688]

Uchenna: As long as there's water [between the pretty blue light and you], you're fine. Pretty blue light and NO water? ...Um, repent, I guess?

[@lodiped]

Alice don't be sorry for sidetracking. You always bring up some cool stuff.

[@nova5303]

Love having a guest who talks for a total of 5 minutes in a two hour episode

[@FirestarsLegacy]

1:06:00 I once read a tumblr post wherein OP said they enjoyed the way bananas make your mouth tingle. They then found out they were allergic to bananas.

[@prjndigo]

Usually the immersion reactor inspection divers wear two safety ropes that literally don't let them get close.

[@georgemachappy]

Definitely looking forward to the nuclear boy scout video re: all those smoke detectors...

[@PlainlyDifficult]

Am-241 as David Hahn found out is pretty nasty in a large enough quantity!

[@YaBoiKeith]

Listening to you guys talk about physics I finally understand how the airplane guys feel.

[@burnsbothends]

I grew up in Bangor, Pennsylvania, and the Deer Park source is literally right next to a fish hatchery and it's also a town full of slate mining detritus that is very close to one of the largest landfills in the region. I don't drink Deer Park.

[@corbing7786]

Justin you're awesome

[@bigburd875]

Remember my great grandfather was being treated for throat cancer with radiation. They gave him a high dose and burned a hole in his neck, he had to eat through a rubber tube the rest of his life and it took him 2 and a half hours to eat dinner

[@MxArgent]

For anyone who wants to not sleep, look up the 1999 Tokaimura Criticality Incident - Particularly what happened to technician Hisashi Ouchi in the wake of it. The Doctors of the Tokyo University Hospital's hopeless attempts at saving Ouchi with then-cutting edge technologies take the forefront in most accounts for very good reasons, but JCO's conduct leading up to the criticality is an episode in and of itself seeing as Ouchi and his peers wouldn't have taken *17 sV* of gamma and neutron radiation if JCO weren't forcing their workers to play fast and loose with safety regulations.

[@bananian]

I'm guessing Hisashi's got an Ouchi?

[@jwhiteside91]

@@bananian More than an ouchi, he pretty much dissolved into a puddle of human tissue whilst the doctors poked and prodded the poor fucker.

[@kevinjohnson3203]

This makes me want an episode about the nuclear boy scout. It would also allow for the consideration of the Boy Scouts of America as an engineering disaster, or at least as a proto fascist organization.

[@WaterMan416]

They seem to be getting rid of a lot of the actual fascists in the org by becoming a little more progressive. But nationalism is built into the stupid program.

[@justinokraski3796]

as an Eagle Scout myself, I'm ashamed to see the shift to the right that the membership has experienced (despite the organization moving to the left). I think they are losing their focus on community service and civic duty in place of things like the importance of the organization itself and shooting sports

[@WaterMan416]

@@justinokraski3796 a lot of the members have always been right wing. They're just going mask off now.

[@hpalpha7323]

at last, my favorite podcast to listen to at my engineering job

[@SportyMabamba]

Same

[@emmadebeer8134]

From the moment I understood the weakness of my protons, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of iron

[@gatblau1]

Scary to think how many other incidents like this have happened around the world that were never discovered.

[@MegaBanne]

There was a nice news letter article from back when they found out how fucking poisonous radium is. It said something like this: """ She would rub it on her teeth every day. It went fine till all her teeth began to fall off. """ Lol

[@Erlec]

Great episode with a great Bridge! But the next episode with the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster is gonna be awesome!

[@piguyalamode164]

Rapid unplanned dispersal of radioactive material. In the same category as Rapid unplanned disassembly

[@FionaOfMountLawley]

The same sort of thing happened in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico four years earlier in 1983, three years later in Xinzhou, China (1990), seven years later in Tammiku, Estonia (1994), eleven years later in Istanbul, Turkey (1998), thirteen years later in Samul Prakan, Thailand (2000), twenty three years later in New Delhi, India (2010), also about 23 years later somewhere in Saudi Arabia except that it wasn't detected until a ship carrying a Cobalt-60 rod mixed in with a load of copper scrap arrived in Genoa, Italy in 2010, twenty six years later in Mexico though in this case the truck carrying it was hijacked, the source was removed from it's shielding and left in a field near Hueypoxtla (2013, the two men involved in the hijacking are presumed to have died as result of the exposure) and a 23 kilogram Iridium-192 source went missing in Malaysia in 2018, having fallen from or having been taken from the back of a pickup truck and is still unaccounted for. The Wikipedia page entitled "List of civilian radiation accidents" is unpleasant reading

[@mcarp22]

The Goddamned News needs to mention the Golden Gate bridge railings causing a whistling sound that can be heard across the bay area.

[@bobthenecromancer2339]

29:20 That's the ATR reactor in Arco, Idaho. I've seen the building its stored in, They use it to make materials for medical treatments.

[@TF_Tony]

Once they start taking it apart this derails into the worst trainwreck of bad decisions I've ever heard of.

[@marinary1326]

Wait, if cancer cells are trying to kill the boss, shouldn't we be encouraging them?

[@lenmrt]

Is cancer praxis, yes or no?

[@cwestrephx]

Nah, first the cancer needs to unionize. Right now, cancer is widely known to scab.

[@prjndigo]

At the time that the Cesium machines were built there wasn't really any symbol for radioactive material in use. Even later with the Cobalt-60 machines including the mutiple cobalt rod capsule irradiator event in India there was only a simple trefoil emblem but that wasn't even used by all manufacturers. It wasn't until the Samut Prakan that the trefoil-skull&crossbones-running-away triangle was implemented.

[@frankishe7317]

Hosing down cesium sounds like a rather energetic experience

[@BobbinMcferry]

Well There's Your Problem Podcast: the birthplace of the X-box index.

[@user-cw3yc3yk3h]

The most exciting disaster rating system since the Waffle House Index