Dear Free Republic:
While playing around with my plutonium pit, it went critical and irradiated me. I taste iron in my mouth and dancing blue lights are in my eyeballs. What are your suggestions?
“I taste iron”
Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.
If the top of your head blows off in the meantime, then you dont need to worry.
You need to move to Calgary, STAT. As part of their ‘green plan’, our communist city council has dimmed many street lights and keep a great number off at night. The blue glow that you are emitting, will help people to see better at night.
You’re welcome.
All three...
While playing around with my plutonium pit, it went critical and irradiated me. I taste iron in my mouth and dancing blue lights are in my eyeballs. What are your suggestions?
—
Reminds me, there was an historical incident where a guy accidentally stuck his head in a particle accelerator. Surprisingly, he actually survived, although he did suffer some facial paralysis and hearing loss in one ear.
“Unknown to Bugorski, the accelerator was still running, and the warning lights that would have alerted Bugorski of the hazard had been switched off during a previous experiment, and had not been turned back on. As soon as his head crossed the invisible beam of proton, his brain was zapped. Bugorski felt no pain, but he reportedly saw a flash “brighter than a thousand suns.””
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2020/02/anatoli-bugorski-man-who-stuck-his-head.html
>>While playing around with my plutonium pit, it went critical and irradiated me.
On August 21, 1945, Daghlian was working on a criticality experiment, attempting to build a neutron reflector. He was working alone and late at night. While working on the experiment, the neutron counter indicated placing the last brick would cause the assembly to go supercritical. While slowly backing away before placing the tungsten carbide brick, he accidentally dropped it. Already having received the initial blast of neutron radiation, he disassembled the pile, exposing himself to additional gamma radiation. He died 25 days later at the hospital in Los Alamos.
On Tuesday, May 21, 1946, Louis Slotin was demonstrating a criticality experiment that involved gradually bringing together two beryllium-coated halves of a sphere that held plutonium at its core- without allowing the halves to touch- and recording the increasing rate of fissioning. Then, in one fateful moment, the screwdriver slipped.
Louis Slotin
A blue glow flashed from the sphere and the Geiger counter clicked furiously. Slotin, exposed to nearly 1,000 rads of radiation (well above a lethal dose), reacted instinctively and knocked the spheres apart. His action stopped the chain reaction and prevented the seven other individuals in the room from being exposed to the same high levels of radiation as he experienced. Slotin’s health rapidly deteriorated and he spent his last nine days receiving around-the-clock care as he went through the ravages of radiation sickness, passing away on May 30, 1946.
https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/atomic-accidents
Plutonium went critical? Happens all the time. Connect yourself to a power grid and sell your kilowatts. Stay away from Nagasaki. They’re a little touchy about PU.
Just curious, do lamps come on when you walk by? I heard that’s bad.