The Woman Who Ate Chernobyl's Apples

atlasobscura.com ^ | Dan Nosowitz

[BenLurkin]

For the past couple of years, a young woman known only as “Bionerd23” has been making strange, dangerous videos in and around one of the most infamous nuclear zones on Earth—the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

Nothing is too radioactive or risky for her. She has shown herself getting injected with the radionuclide technetium, eating radioactive apples from a tree in Chernobyl, being chased by a possibly rabid fox, and picking up fragments of the nuclear plant’s reactor fuel with her bare hands. When a freakishly large catfish appears on camera, she calmly explains that it’s probably not a mutant—“They are just that way because nobody catches them,” she says in a video, watching a six-foot-long catfish, eerily like a shark, swim around a murky pool of water.

In a few non-Chernobyl-related videos, she pours liquid mercury over her bare hands, comparing the feat to smoking a single cigarette: not dangerous in limited doses, she claims. Her most popular videos are driven by a need to explain why things commonly seen as dangerous are in fact not, hence her typical lack of protective gear. It’s so odd to see her protecting herself, in fact, that she will begin some videos with an explanation about why she felt the need to don something as basic as a pair of gloves.

What is her secret? “Push away your fears and everything you've heard, and embrace the Zone,” she writes Atlas Obscura in an email.

[null and void]

Nor did they tell her about the scientist at the Manhattan project who touched plutonium for some reason to save others in the room and he died a horrific death.

They were "tickling the tail of the dragon", bringing two slightly sub critical masses close together to calibrate the reaction rate.

The top piece slipped and landed on IN CONTACT WITH the bottom piece.

This produced a spike of radiation so intense there was a brilliant flash of blue Čerenkov radiation.

In effect it became a nuclear reactor at full power, with no shielding, the scientist grabbed the top piece and removed it, stopping the reaction in its tracks.

Too late for him, he was effectively touching part of a neutron bomb and had received a lethal dose of radiation.

But he did save the people in the rest of the building...

[BenLurkin]

Fukushima sushi

Not to be confused with Rila Fukushiima.

[McGruff]

In a few non-Chernobyl-related videos, she pours liquid mercury over her bare hands, comparing the feat to smoking a single cigarette: not dangerous in limited doses, she claims. Her most popular videos are driven by a need to explain why things commonly seen as dangerous are in fact not, hence her typical lack of protective gear. It’s so odd to see her protecting herself, in fact, that she will begin some videos with an explanation about why she felt the need to don something as basic as a pair of gloves.

What is her secret? “Push away your fears and everything you've heard, and embrace the Zone,” she writes Atlas Obscura in an email.

[nuconvert]

kooks love attention

[WKUHilltopper]

LOL

[Alex Murphy]

I remember as a boy in the 50s playing with mercury all the time. You could buy it in some places. In my hands, fingers, etc..... 55-60 years later I write this.

You may not see it, but the rest of us can see (via your post) that it has affected you. You've clearly lost the ability to type in anything but italics :)

[Gaffer]

I have done some, what cancer hysterics would consider, really crazy sh!t in my childhood. Once overseas when the housing authority towed a DDT sprayer tanker through the complex, I rode my bicycle right in the thick of it behind it.

[MrEdd]

It’s been 19 years.
I would eat the apples at this point.
Vegetation around Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fairly safe by 1964.

[thackney]

When she grows her third and forth breast, will she become more or less cute?

[cripplecreek]

They were "tickling the tail of the dragon", bringing two slightly sub critical masses close together to calibrate the reaction rate.

I remember reading about that. The scientist in contact made everyone else in the room stop at that moment and mark where they were at in the room to study the effect of radiation on them over various distances.

[RedMDer]

Keep Free Republic Alive with YOUR Donations!

Make a difference.

PLEASE Contribute Today!

[thackney]

I remember as a boy in the 50s playing with mercury all the time. You could buy it in some places. In my hands, fingers, etc..... 55-60 years later I write this.

Similar, High School Chemistry Lab aide. Me and a buddy would hold it in our cupped hands. I've gotten in a few decades since then.

[Gaffer]

You sir, are a punctuation purist! :0)

[dp0622]

Thanks for the info!!! I am humbled very often on FR and actually appreciate it. My knowledge base gets bigger every day. Fascinating that it can be healthy in small doses.
And I was wondering what was the big deal with the catfish?
I probably wouldn’t eat the apples there out of an abundance of caution though.
I cant BELIEVE it became a nuclear reactor in effect regarding that incident at Manhattan project. If he didn’t lift the top part off, how bad would it have gotten?

[dp0622]

Wow! If he didn’t lift the top part off, how bad would it have gotten?

[ifinnegan]

“they tell her about the scientist at the Manhattan project who touched plutonium for some reason to save others in the room and he died a horrific death.”

Who was that?

[Dr. Sivana]

I remember as a boy in the 50s playing with mercury all the time. You could buy it in some places. In my hands, fingers, etc..... 55-60 years later I write this.

As a youngster, my open wounds were treated with mercurochrome (the real stuff). After I was married I checked my mom's medicine cabinet. It was still there.

[dp0622]

Some FReepers explained it in detail in a few of the posts above

[rottndog]

Plutonium is very chemically toxic, in addition to being radioactive. Plutonium has a very long half-life, which is why the chemical toxicity is far more dangerous.

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

Bingo!

He was dead the moment he saw the blue flash... it just hadn’t caught up with him yet. So grabbing the plutonium wasn’t an act of self-sacrifice (though it was still noble and laudable in the service of others); he just punched his ticket a little faster...