Sometimes I read an innocent looking news article and get to wondering why someone or something did what was reported in the article. I get especially curious when some agency of the government is involved.
Don't you?
Most regular news stories can be traced back to alcohol, sex, drugs, anger, money, and stupidity, or some combination thereof. But government news is different than regular news, most of the time, with a few notable exceptions like Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Rob Ford and whoever that yutz was who was mayor of San Diego.
This article caught my eye, and made me wonder why they did that. The headline reads
Nuke Fear: US Government Orders 14 Million Doses of Potassium Iodide!!1!!
(I added the exclamation points for emphasis)
There aren't many reasons why the US government would order that much potassium iodide. Let's assume that the feds haven't developed a sudden concern for goiter prevention in grade school children. That leaves only one reason: Treatment or prevention of sickness caused by exposure to radiation from nuclear sources.
The order for the 14 million doses specified that they have to be delivered by February 1, 2014. The government must know something that we don't know. Let's speculate, and use some Google-fu
The Super Bowl is in February, by the way. So is the Daytona 500. Big crowds in concentrated areas. Maybe there are reasons for the government to believe that jihadists will try to light off a nuke at one of those events.
Holy schnikes, you need to keep reading.
Now some Google-fu. Fukushima, Fukushima, Fukushima. Google is saturated with articles about the radiation leaking out of the nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan that were severely damaged by earthquakes a few years ago. Leaking may be to gentle a word. Millions of gallons of radioactive water are rushing into the ocean, especially when it rains. A few seemingly credible scientists speculate that with one more earthquake, Japan pretty much gets wiped out by runaway reactions.
And more than a few are speculating *speculating* that the US is now starting to get hit with higher levels of radiation, a situation likely to be made worse as time passes. Hence the need for potassium iodide for the American population.
Here's a map produced by the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center. There are a few areas with elevated readings. But surprisingly, most of them are in the DC/NYC area. Hmm.
This article scares the heck out of me. But what can anyone do? You can't hide from radiation. And how much of this is true, and how much is speculation. And is this at all realted to all the news about the government weaponizing the Department of Homeland Security in the event of national emergency? My head hurts.
What I will do is buy a Geiger counter and monitor the snow and rain. Our weather systems form over the Pacific ocean. Radiation will fall form the clouds. The only answers will be "Okay" and "You're Screwed".
Either way, I'm keeping the bar stocked.
37 comments:
KI is a pretty standard 1st-line antidote, IIRC. I wouldn't be surprised if Japan had distributed it in the immediate aftermath of Fukushima, as is done in other nuclear disasters.
However, iodide isotopes are pretty short-lived, so I'm not sure that this far on it makes sense to distribute. The problem with Fukushima is that it's still not fixed well, and we don't know where and how much material continues to be released.
The bigger problem is the cesium isotopes, which have much longer half-lives. Not much we can do about that other than to avoid, but making iodide available is pretty SOP. If the link is true, it's probably just the gov't making sure we have enough to mind its Ps and Qs. Perhaps California needs them, given the fact that they've got similar geographical activity concerns as Japan. Evidence of Fukushima can already be found there - although in doses too low to be of concern yet
Your link's source is the very conspiratorially minded Alex Jones' outfit Infowars, so apprise accordingly.
Lol - I'm sorry but this comment at your link was kind of funny…
Doesn't Alex Jones offer the same thing from his Store and does any one know if this is good... l was thinking about ordering some…
R&B - That's a problem. Parsing the information to weed out what is true form what isn't true is quite the challenge.
A few videos are very good, especially explaining how cesium in plankton gets concentrated as it goes up the food chain into large fish. And a few videos show researchers getting higher than normal readings form freshly caught tuna, etc.
Somewhere there has to be enough information to cause the Fed Gov to order the potassium iodide on very short notice.
If it is true, or even partially true, where are all the global warming alarmists?
I already have my own doses of potassium iodide (KI), 32.5 mg, 120 doses. I bought it after I moved here because of our proximity to the San Onofre power plant which is about 20 miles away as the crow flies. Iodine-123 is the most volatile radioisotope typically produced in nuclear mishaps and your body sequesters it.
I won't need to rely on the Gubmint.
The bigger problem is the cesium isotopes, which have much longer half-lives.
Cesium is a greater waterborne threat than airborne. An explosion or being downwind increases it danger. It is nasty.
I never made it as far as cesium in my stepwise march across the Periodic Table, but I did write something after the Fukushima disaster: The Great Wave Of Healing
It's good that you're prepared Chickie, but make sure you brace yourself for the next big threat.
Anyway, does the story really change anything? If there's a credible "dirty bomb" threat (although those early scares apparently turned out to be more speculative than probable, from what I've heard), then the more KI the better.
Regardless of where someone gets an antidote for one of a number of effects - most far less treatable than that, it's important to realize that using U235 has risks that are not as easy to contain as we'd like. For people living near fault lines or the ocean, hearings on Fukushima were aimed at understanding the risk here and in our own construction habits. I'd like to know whatever came of that.
But on a (literally) brighter note, has anyone ever seen U235 glass displayed under a UV light? That's pretty cool.
The San Onofre plant isn't near the San Andreas fault and was sited there for that reason. The closest fault lines are all offshore so again, the risk would be tsunami.
But on a (literally) brighter note, has anyone ever seen U235 glass displayed under a UV light?
Does it have to be 235? Natural uranium has much more 238 and is also radioactive though not fissile.
My bad. I'm not seeing that the funny green glass has to be 235. Makes sense.
Ritmo's whistling past the graveyard again.
Like all the Lefties, he's been a good little dhimmi and doesn't want to believe the crazies would come after him, especially since Al Qaeda's on the run.
/sarc
But, yeah, that item has made a lot of people antsy.
Especially since all our Resets and Smart Diplomacy have worked soooo well.
Uranium salts glow in the dark after exposure to light. This was know long before radioactivity was discovered by Becquerel. His story is fascinating: link.
The Curies (Marie and Pierre) discovered radium and kept it around. It glows in the dark and they kept solutions of it in the lab.
Oh yeah. I knew about that from inorganic. Materials that absorb higher wavelength EM waves (UV) and reflect back lower wavelength EM waves (green light) once the electrons drop back down to their original orbital are pretty cool. I used to be obsessed with trying to figure out if if you could catalog all the different materials that would do this and what wavelengths they'd absorb and emit.
Every element has a unique atomic absorption fingerprint. Instead of exciting with UV , they just burn them in a flame plasma and see what colors emit when they find electrons.
Ritmo, you would probably be fascinated by the technical challenge posed in DNA sequencing. Each of the four chain-terminating dideoxynucleotides has a different fluorescent dye and the technical challenge was to irradiate gels with containing the dyes with the same wavelength and get four distinct, machine-readable colors back out.
I'm worse than Crack when it comes to shamelessly self-linking.
I think I'd heard of that. Not as well described as Maxam-Gilbert or Sanger (which was the more popular/more generic? dideoxy method) but still there.
I thought it was interesting that Craig Ventner's private genome sequencing venture ended up being a division of Perkin-Elmer. They were the company that would provide our IR spectroscopy read-outs in organic chemistry labs.
Ritmo, Reefer Madness! Sanity is gradually winning. With Colorado bordering conservative states[Utah, Ks. and Wyoming] I wonder if they're increasing patrols on vehicles leaving Colorado? I'll be in Ogallla tomorrow, maybe see if I can find Dee Boot[Lonesome Dove reference]. On Wed. I'll be soaking in the magic waters in Glenwood Springs, Co. Hope all is well in your world,
Sanger invented the dideoxy chain-terminating sequencing method, but he used four different radioisotopes as labels instead of fluorescent dyes. Perkin-Elmer developed the dye methodology and held the patents on the method, dyes, and machines. It's no surprise that they bought everything in sight.
And for the 2 Geeks, a Jesse from Breaking Bad quote. "SCIENCE, BITCH!" He got a "Bitch" out on the Golden Globes last night.
"The government is wasting money senselessly" should be the go-to answer in the absence of hard evidence that the money is being wisely spent. Not "the government has a closely-guarded secret and a clever plan based around it".
After all, if they buy 14 million pills and nothing bad happens, it isn't like anyone will be held accountable. No budgets will be cut. No staffers will be fired. The taxpayers won't be able to demand a refund or take anyone to court. Even if there is only a one in a million chance of needing those pills, from a bureaucrat's perspective that makes buying them a no-brainer.
Lol Nd. I didn't know he said that. ;-)
Ritmo, There are T-shirts.
Folks want to get rich and they will scare the shit out of you to do it.
Also, there are real threats in the world. If Obama is competent enough to identify this as a real threat and respond accordingly then good on him.
Hrblock commercial versus Turbtax commercial is nuclear suicide for the old regime making money telling the public they are too stupid to do their taxes versus the new saying it's amazing what you're capable of.
Great weather the next week or so nd I hope you have a grand time in CO.
Not, Thanks. I'm always reticent to take this route because of the Vail Pass, even though it's the most direct. I'm just driving through. Vegas this weekend and then Palm Springs for 5 day. The weather everywhere in the west looks great for the next 10 days.
Funny thing about mountain driving is your brakes can get too hot and fail if you ride them for miles and miles and miles.
So Pikes Peak has an official (of what I know not) stop you next to the gift shop on the way down and check the temp of your disk brakes.
Newer vehicles, or high quality ones like my old 1995 Land Rover Disco, have cooled brakes but most vehicles don't. So you stop on orders from the official, then go buy shit at the gift shop and sugar distributorship.
Worked on me.
After reading the link, I don't particularly feel like eating fish ever again.
Glenwood springs. ah. That will feel great. Have fun.
make sure you brace yourself for the next big threat.
The problem was...they just weren't prepared. Not enough backup wine, beer, guacamole, chips, cookies, ice cream..ooooh chocolate!!! or soft fuzzy pillows to fall upon whilst listening to awesome music.
Of the myriad of purchases made by the government, assuming a no larger than average margin of graft and markup in the procurement, this seems like one of the better investments of taxpayer dollars.
I hope they never have cause to distribute them.
What I will do is buy a Geiger counter and monitor the snow and rain.
April hints at what you really should be monitoring with a Geiger counter instead of the rain. Watch that which gathers rather than scatters.
The antidote to tritium is protium -- drink and flush with normal water.
Not, I hear a lot of truck drivers will take 80 instead of 70 just for that reason.
April, I'll think of you this afternoon. I almost always run into Eastern Europeans in the Glenwood pool. They love that stuff.
Forgive me if this has already been noted but I hear tell that there are actually some people in this world who will complain when something bad happens and the government failed to make adequate preparation.
Amazing!
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