Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 28: Goiânia incident

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

In this episode we talk about pretty blue lights. DONATE TO BAIL FUNDS AND ETC AND PROVIDE THE RECEIPT TO US VIA TWITTER OR E-MAIL AND WE WILL SEND YOU THE BONUS EPISODES: https://www.phillybailfund.org/ https://www.communityjusticeexchange.org/nbfn-directory https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ms_blm_homepage_2019 (don't tip actblue, they take a cut already) Uchenna's insta: https://www.instagram.com/uckema/ our patreon because we are still wokegrifters: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod primary source was the international atomic agency report, and most images came from there: https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub815_web.pdf 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, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27024528 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, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10011965

Hey, this is Justin in post-production. So, we recorded this episode a while ago, and that's why the goddamn news is not very current. Now, since then, of course, we've entered what historians call the cool zone. And that means there's probably going to be some more important things for y'all to do with your money than give it to us on Patreon to get bonus episodes. So for the duration of the protests for George Floyd and against police brutality, you could donate to any of the charities listed below in the description, and you can send us the

receipt via Twitter DM or email, and we'll send you the link to the bonus episodes, instead of you all having to donate to our Patreon. Alright, so, uh, Black Lives Matter, and on to the episode. But yeah, here I am in the land that God forgot, West

Philly. We're recording from the podcast bunker. Yeah, broadcasting from Mount Weather, as part of continuity of podcast operations. This is where there's your problem, a podcast with slides. No, we got the Greenbrier. We got luxury. Oh, yeah! Yeah!

I think they decommissioned that, right? Yeah, they did. They did. It's still there, they did. They did. It's still there, we could probably buy it. Yeah. Podcast from beautiful, white, south of Springs, West Virginia. The Greenbrier itself is still there, obviously. Well, the bunker's also still there.

Yeah. That's the thing about building a bunker, it does tend to still be there. Yeah, tearing those things up is, I imagine, quite a pain in the ass. Yeah. Yeah, there's the bunkers by the Rockaways, and the ones that are by the shore, I went to them, they're still there. World War II defenses, or, like... Um, no, the ones that they put the Nike missiles in.

Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's kind of fun. They turned one of them into a downlink for the, for that new, what do you call it, trans-social cable. Oh, sick. So it's just guarded, and there's some security guards that are there. So I was like, what the hell?

They were like, what are you doing here? Um, this is a public beach. I love to think about how there's like seven beaches across the world. Just roll it up on the planet like a wire cutter. Yeah, where you could just roll up on them with an axe, and you could just destroy the internet. Yes. Well, no, it's not like that. Yeah, where you could just roll up on them with an axe, and you could just destroy the internet. Yes.

Well, no, it's not like there's a list of 25 locations if you... you only need it's like three guys, a gut, three guys, six vans, you can shut down probably the entire northeast power grid. That's, um, that's our next podcast here. I was about to say, yeah. Shit. I am recording, right? I think I'm recording.

I am recording. I've been recording the stuff that will get me barred from our first live show, because customs will not let me enter the country. I think I hit the button. You don't want to, anyway. Yes. Is it going? Is it going? It's not going.

Alright, now it's going. Great. Okay. The communications here at the Greenbrier are not good. I was about to say, yeah. What do you want, Beth? It's so horrible weather, you can't be helped. Where is room service?

It's so congressional to get, like, a luxury nuclear bunker. No, the congressional didn't go to the Greenbrier. It's the Capital Limited. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's the Baltimore and Ohio on that hotel, if I recall correctly. That's where Deer Park Water comes from. One of the places. Also the place where I bought my van, Banger, Pennsylvania.

Well, you hardly knew her. I hardly did, yeah. Oh my god. Anyway, so... Greenbrier? I hardly knew her. Ohhhh. Coming out like the three-eyed fish from The Simpsons, yeah.

Alright. Speaking of which... Welcome to Well, There's Your Problem, a podcast about engineering disasters, which has slides. I'm Justin Rosniak, I'm the person who's talking right now. I have an engineering degree, so I get to talk about engineering stuff on a podcast. My pronouns are he and him. I am Alice Caldwell-Kelly, my pronouns are she and her, and I wanna abolish the credentials

thing, who cares? Like, we did the American College thing as our last premium episode on Patreon, where we were like, college is dumb. Oh yeah, that's a good point, we could just not do credentials from here on out. We'll just lie, I could just lie, I could just be like, yeah, I've got three doctorates. Really impressive. Yeah.

Oh, did I say my pronouns? She and her. Goddamnit. Yeah, there you go. Just to spite Alice, I am Liam Anderson, I hold two degrees, one in mathematics and one in economics from Rutgers University. I am an expert in all fields, both natural and supernatural, and you can address me as Attorney Anderson.

Liam Anderson, Esquire. My pronouns are he, him. Hey, everyone. My name is Uchenna Kema. So I have experience in nuclear engineering and nuclear operations. Pronouns are he, him. Nice to meet everyone. Yeah, likewise.

It's nice to have you on the show. Wait, didn't you... You were on a nuclear submarine, right? Yes. And carrier. That's so cool. It's... I will never get the smell out of some of my clothes,

but yes. I love that you guys may be doing something cool by accident, and then, like, in order to surround the cool power source, it's just like 500 guys who sleep wedged between two ice cream machines. Oh god. Okay, so, what you may notice on the screen in front of you are lots of people in, like, these clean suits, right? Yeah, doing social distancing, doing... they're masked up. This is good coronavirus protocol.

But this is not actually because of coronavirus. There was no pandemic happening here. This is because... and they have heavy construction equipment, right? Nice. And this is because they are handling radioactive material. Oooh! In the form- yes, we're doing another radioactivity one! In the form of a man's house.

Oh boy. So. Or the remnants of the man's house they were going to talk about the um Goryania accident right which a big really uncontrolled I wouldn't say release

of nuclear material but certainly a dissemination of nuclear material probably one of the worst case scenarios that when it but certainly a dissemination of nuclear material. Probably one of the worst case scenarios that when you find out about it, you'll be impressed and horrified at humanity. That's the world as your problem promise. Yeah.

Yes. But first, we have to do... the goddamn news. Ah, shit, I played that twice. Fuck. Thank you, Alice. Shit. Thank you, Alice. Uh... Oh, fuck.

Fuck. Alice! Goddamnit! There. Okay. There. That is the news. Thank you. Oh, fuck! There. Okay.

There. That is the news. Thank you. Pay no attention to this. As you know, it went smoothly. Okay, so, our first news that happened today is that a bridge in China started oscillating like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Yes!

And it was shut down. No, do not try to jump the queue. We will get to your engineering disaster when we get to it. Pay attention to me! Pay attention to me! Pay attention to me! Pay attention to me! Just arriving to the scene of the bridge collapse, like, here's that attention you ordered.

Yeah. The video's more impressive, but this is a slide. It was going up, and it was also going down, and then this part went down. It went all around. And that part went up. It did not go all around, that's the dangerous part. It was not twisting. Right?

Uh. Lame. It seems like this is a fixable problem. Yeah. Based on the fact it's not twisting. I'm still on the first slide for you, is that, like, just me, or...? Uh... It's probably just me.

I wouldn't worry about it. I am also on the first slide. You're on the first slide? Yeah. Are you looking at the second slide? Uh, oh wait. Hold on, something... Let me go back...

I missed some cool annotations and everything, I'm so pissed. Great. Okay. See, people, you'll be able to edit this so people will just see this smoothly, but like, for me, personally, I have not been seeing any of the cool maddening you've been doing. And I'm attributing that to my failure to, like, properly cue the news theme. This is punishment for all of us.

We have sinned against God, somehow. Anyway, so, to get back on track, probably what they need to do, probably, is put in some stiffening trusses on this thing. Like, probably pretty quick, like, before, you know, something dumb happens. This is a fixable problem. I like that their measurement of straightness here is just to look at it through a big sniper scope. Like you're gonna Chris Kyle the bridge.

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, that's the thing, you look at a suspension bridge through a, um, telephoto lens, it does go up and down a lot. Like even one that's, you know, working properly. Oh, I don't like that. I don't like that at all. No, I would simply not do that. Here in Philly, when a Paco train goes over the, um, the Ben Franklin bridge,

one side sags about a foot lower than the other side. Yeah. That's one of those things I don't like to think about, along with like, buildings like expanding and contracting a few inches, just regularly. Oh, it's fine. That's one of those things I don't like to think about, along with buildings expanding and contracting a few inches, just regularly. Or skyscrapers being designed to sway in the wind. Ooh, no. It's fine.

I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Float like a butterfly and sting like when I pee. Thank you, Liam. You're welcome. A valuable third of this podcast. That's me, baby. We should be aware that CGTN is funded in whole or in part by the Chinese government. I mean, if anything, that's an endorsement of the Chinese government, because it kinda makes them look like shit and they're still running with it.

Yeah, that's about to say. Like, instead of being like, nah,'re still running with it. Yeah, it's bad to say. Like, instead of being like, nah, bridge is fine. Yep. Speaking of governments... Oh, god. Thank you. The gang does a military coup.

Yes. Beautiful, beautiful, yeah. I've been having so much fun just consuming all of the content from this. Have you seen the military coup guy's mercenary firm's Instagram? If I didn't think it was real, I thought it was fake because it just seems so hilarious, but it's authentic. Have you seen their Twitter account? Before it got deleted.

Oh my god. Yeah. It's literally a bunch of bro- a bunch of bro- the most bro-bros you know, decided to have a military coup. And they lost. Yeah, and it's- To a fisherman. And they did. Not even to like-

They did. Not even to like, your marines. A fisherman. No. A fisherman pulled a pistol on them. And they were like, well... Oh. So it's time to give it up.

I mean, this is all about the toughness of Venezuelan fishermen, right? A fisherman pulled a pistol on them. And they're like, well... Oh, oh. So it's time to give it up. I mean, this is all about the toughness of Venezuelan fishermen, right? Yeah. So, for those of you who are listening in audio, there was an attempted coup in Venezuela brought down by a fisherman, you know, with a bunch of, like, bro-type ex-Green Beret guys, and also just cosplayers. I mean, I guess if there's a lesson to be learned from this, it's that you don't have to be particularly smart at non-special forces stuff to be a Green Beret. You just have to be like...

It's like testing well, right? You have to be really good at doing a a million pushups, uh, while a dude like screams at you. You don't have to be necessarily that smart, right? You're not, they're not supposed to be smart. That's why they have the guy. That's why they have the guys in Washington saying, do this, go here, get this, get this good job.

Come back, come back home. Please don't post anything on Snapchat, and then just... Yes. And make sure to leave your Fibit at home, please. Oh fuck, they literally did that! Yeah, and that was beautiful. Yeah, no, I thought this was fake too at first, because I saw the photo that the Venezuelan cops put out of all of their gear that they seized, and one of them had a fast helmet with just a velcro US flag patch on it, and I'm like, no, you've

staged that, because they wouldn't be that dumb. And then I remembered all of the other things that I know about US military intervention, and I'm like, oh, yeah, okay. But yeah, this definitely looks like a bunch of bros decided, hey, we'll get Trump to help us. And it probably could have worked. But they lost. Yeah, but he absolutely

could have done something like invaded Venezuela off the back of a tweet patting him. It's sad for them that it didn't work out. It's very funny. Also, shout out to one Venezuelan fisherman for listening to our previous episode where we talked about that Venezuelan patrol boat embarrassing itself, and deciding he needed to single-handedly restore the prestige of Venezuelan naval combat.

Because he did it. He did, yeah. He did, yeah. Why even have a navy by that point, if you just, like... And I guess the other thing is, this was somehow linked to noted miserable failure, Juan Gallardo, picture... Picture scene. Truly sad.

I swear they make these guys in a lab somewhere, like Brooks Brothers. I can't tell any of these people apart. It's called the, uh, whatchamacallit, for the Americas. Oh, school for the Americas. There we go. Yeah. Oh, would you like to know where, uh, one, uh, Guaido went to school? Would you like to know? Would you like to know where uh one uh guido went to school uh would you like to know would you like to know where gw gw gw oh my god once again proving my point

i should be careful where i try to go to transfer to because because my friend's trying to convince me to go to gw and i'm like no, no. Go to American. The good school. Yeah. You will probably end up having to lead fewer failed coups. Only a couple fewer, though, we must be clear on that. Yeah, there's a quota. Oh man, do you see one of them peed himself? Yeah!

Like, I am. Did it? Oh, god. Yeah, really, there's the photo of them outsideed himself? Yeah! Like, I am. Did it? Oh, god. Yeah, really, there's the photo of them outside, like, that fisherman's place, they have them all on the ground, and one of them's peed himself, and like, they're on an incline, so the pee just like, is going towards his face. That's rough. That is rough.

It's rough. The guy was having a day. I assume still having a day. Yes. That's fair. What could it be? We have a third piece of news. Hmm.

Goddammit. This shit again. A tower in Dubai. Another fuckin' tower made a tinderbox plastic cladding. We fucking told you about this shit. Caught fire again. You gotta... why does nobody listen to our 4 hour podcast where we just call people fucking assholes and idiots and like dogshit brain morons, and then implement all

of our policy recommendations? Which are genius, by the way! Always a fun, fun idea. implement all of our policy recommendations. Which are genius, by the way! Always a fun, fun idea. Yeah, like, don't have the flammable cladding on the outside of your tower block. So I mean, how bad was this, how many people died? Zero. Oh.

That's good, I mean, the firefighters are doing their job. Yeah. Well, even the United Arab Emirates is not dumb enough to think shelter in place is a good idea for a high-rise fire. Yeah. So shouts out to the Dubai Fire Department for, like, doing a good job and also making the London Fire Brigade just look like assholes. Yeah, so this is the Al-Natta Tower, in a city called Sharjah, that's just north

of Dubai. Yeah, so actually a different emirate. Whole different state. Close enough, though. Yeah, well, they got similar okay fire regulations that at least no one died, although the tower did catch fire. Yeah, I see that. Looking not so good.

Looking very kind of Eye of Sauron, there. Yeah, well this is the second big United Arab Emirates tower that's caught fire in recent memory. In 2015, there was a tower that caught fire in a very similar fashion, because someone was grilling on a balcony. I just wanted to know! Not even construction? And I wanted to grill.

Yeah, really? He just grilled too wanted to grill Grover. Yeah, really? He just grilled too close to the sighting. I didn't notice. I just wanna grill, goddammit! Oh great. What was the name of that tower? Oh, Grover Tower. No, it was called the Torch Dubai.

Nooo. Fuck off. I think it caught fire a second time when it was called the Torch Dubai. No! Fuck off! I think it caught fire a second time when it was being restored. Oh yeah, cool. Incredible. Yeah, I love to live on like the 86th floor of Hope We Don't Jinx It, Sharjah. We call it, uh, hubris at the avenue. We just made a giant plaque on top of the tower, flipping off God.

That's kind of what the Burj Dubai is, right? Tower of Badr, episode one. Did you see the times they played tennis up there? Oh, God, yes. Like, on the helipad, and I'm just like, that whole time, I was just having like, heist anxiety, like, you guys are gonna kill Roger Federer, which I don't feel that strongly about, but I feel very strongly about the idea that he's gonna fall off that shit trying to like, serve, and it's gonna take him like, five minutes to hit the ground.

Was he at least tied off? Were they not tied off? I dunno, I mean, isn't that more dangerous? Cause then you gotta like, you trip over the cable and you like, maybe they have to pull you back in? I'll take it, I'll take it, nope. Does the helipad not have a fence? I mean, I would hope, but like, it's...

It makes me worry. Probably not. It makes me uncomfortable. Well, yeah, I mean, having worked on some high rises, like, sometimes you would think there'd be safety systems, and there are not. Yeah. You build stuff that tall and eventually you're just like, the safety system as a guy in a hard hat just gives you a gun, so you can just shoot yourself on the way down, cause you

have time to do that. Instead of like, waiting for like an hour. Yeah. Um. There's a reason I quit that job. And I'm not good with heights anymore. Um, but. That's true.

Uh, so that was... the news. The goddamn news. The goddamn news. The goddamn news. Back to our regularly scheduled program. Okay. So. Let's start this by talking about radioactivity.

Spicy rocks. Yes. Spicy rocks, baby. Thank you. Inanimate carbon rod uh so uh a lot of folks don't have a super intuitive idea of how radiation works i certainly don't i don't work with radiation too often um yeah you gotta go to school for that. Yeah. Well, think of radi- all radiation is is just energy. Radiation exists naturally everywhere. You're looking at it because light is radiation.

The only thing that makes radiation bad is too much of it, and too much of it concentrated, and certain frequencies. Right. So it's vibes, basically. Yes. Literally, Bad vibes. So, we're now doing, like, an hour-long vibe check, essentially. Yes.

And there's ways... Gee, I didn't even put anything about, like, alpha, beta, or gamma waves in here, because I'm dumb. The bad ones are gamma rays. Yeah, I mean, they're all bad, but alpha and beta ones, uh, mostly, they get stopped by stuff. They hit stuff and they don't, like, penetrate it. Alphas, you have to breathe them in.

Betas are blocked by your skin. Gammas, do you got any lead? And neutrons are like, I'm sorry about your DNA, boy, but, uh, could be worse. So when you're measuring, like, dosage of radiation, how much you got, you use something called the gray, right? The little aliens with the big heads? Uh, uh, no, no, it's a guy's name, I think. Huh.

Okay. Well, like, what happened to all of the, like, cool, scary sounding radioactivity measurements, like, um, like, sieverts, or like, uh, becquerels? I believe a... isn't a sievert, like, very similar to a grey? I dunno. I know you measure it in, like, millisieverts, because, like, one sievert is a lot, but I don't know how it compares. I couldn't figure this out either, cause they're both a joule per kilogram. Well, in that case, if they're both the same thing, then it should just be, like,

uh... Which name do you prefer? So, a grey, a funda- fundamentally, a grey is gray is um how much energy you're getting per kilogram of well matter or usually tissue a sievert is a sievert is an equivalent dose used to define say hey we want to have an equalized dose so we want to figure out how much radiation over to your whole body that did this equivalent source give you? Ah, I see. Okay. Okay. So, you can be like, I got this much grazed to, like, one

arm, but, like, a Sievert is like a, I don't know, like an occupational thing for, like, how many hours you can be in a room. Exactly. Sieverts are pretty much generally used to say, hey, how close are you to getting cancer, or do we have to send in a robot or

how long can we send the robots in before they start cooking oh man i feel i still feel bad about the little like a west of a material decaying. Yep, activity. So more means it's doing more radioactivity. Yeah. I feel like this is the biggest gulf between our understanding and like what we need to be so activity is more or less a rate of how much how much of act how much of actually disintegration a material is going through so for example you could have something that is if something has a very high activity it's very much

not good for a person something like low activity like say carbon 14 a very high activity it's very much not good for a person something like low activity like say carbon 14 has very low activity obviously decaying and you know well us as we speak every day yeah so that that decay is what is like the the radioactivity right is yes uh okay cool so i'm with with you so far bear mind, the last time that we talked about radioactivity at all, it was within the context of Three Mile Island, and the level of abstraction that we went to on that one was, you put the spicy rocks over the water and it makes the water hot and you use the steam to turn the thing. So, going from that to individual dosage measurements...

Huge step up. We are professionals. Yes. Yes. And then, in... alright, so in Chernobyl, the series that everyone watched, cause it was on Amazon, they used rote gens, right? Yeah, 3.6, not great, not terrible. 3.6 of them, right?

And that's an old unit that's not used anymore, because it like, varies based on humidity and the medium and stuff, cause we got better ways to measure it. I don't remember what the conversion factor is. You just, yeah, you're looking at this sort of 1985 vintage Soviet Geiger counter that measures stuff in like, inches of mercury. So, pretty much for Rankins, you'd probably have to do some weird conversions to convert them

to something like coulombs per kilogram, because you really don't use Rankins anymore. Okay, so we... Fuck Rankins, all my homies hate Rankins, we don't want to do math. Yes. What we want to do is graze, which are nice and simple and easy. That sounds kind of intimidating, which I think helps.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. Does sound intimidating. You get fucked up by radioactivity. But then, like, radioactive material has a half-life, right? Mm-hmm. Mm.

Half-life 3 confirmed, yes. Yes. That's the time it takes for half the radioactive material to decay, right? Yes. So, if something has a half-life of 30 years, that means in 30 years

it will be half as radioactive. And then again, it'll be half as radioactive 30 years later, so on and so forth until the end of the world. Um. Hmm. Right. Yeah, it's like Zeno's Paradox.

A half-life of 30 years doesn't mean in 60 years you come back and it's gone. It's like one... Mhm. You got it. And like, the shorter the half-life is, the more dangerous it is, because it's emitting more radioactivity, because it's decaying faster. Yes. You got that, right?

The brightest candle burns the quickest. Hmm. Yeah. So my five minute half-life lump of, like, unobtainium is giving me every single cancer you can possibly get in, like, a second. Whereas, like, a five trillion year half-life block of, I don't know, wood or something

is fine. The longest to live lead. There we go. Isn't the proton theorized to have a half-life? Yes, that's one of the big, one of those big physics debates. Does the proton decay? Because it gives a limit to how long the universe

can exist before everything turns into either iron or everything fades into, um, whatchamacallem, electrons. And photons. Photons. Because electrons do decay. Given the choice, I think I'd rather be photons than iron, but... You could become like an iron golem from Minecraft.

That's true, but then what about if you... Well, I guess also the problem is that you would rust, but then the oxygen that causes the rust would also turn into iron. That's better than stainless steel, is what that is. Yeah, on a very long timescale, stainless steel is obsolete. We just wait for stuff to become iron. Yeah. So, okay.

In addition to this, there's some effects of radioactivity you can see with your own two eyes. Probably a bad sign when you do. Don't look at that. Don't look at that. As long as there's water. As long as it's water. Ooh, neat color.

No water. Repent, I guess. That's an option. I keep thinking about one of the things that I saw. It was engraved on like, I think it was like a scientific calibration thing, but it was literally like a bar of radioactive metal, and the only warning that it had engraved on it was DROP AND RUN. It's like, yeah?

Sure. Feel great about this. Yeah. I rule a thumb for both radiation and also welding. Don't look at the pretty blue light. No. Do not go swimming in this pool.

Yes. You can actually go swimming in those pools as long as you do not go below. That's how they do the inspection. As long as you do not go below yeah they're how that's how they do the inspection you can as long as you don't as long as you do not approach the actual the actual lowest levels where the actual rods are where the actual fuel is being pulled it's actually you can actually go swimming however however once you get closer your prop you reach the point of um hey that tingles, too. We have to give him a lead-lightened coffin, boys.

Yeah. Once an episode, we come up with a guy who has the shittiest job in this field. We theorize a different guy, like there's a guy who has to come and clean the rat viscera out of an atmospheric railway. In this case, it's this guy. It's the guy who has to like, yeah, just suit up, dive into the thing, and absolutely do not go below this level. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Or we will start, like, microwave popcorn happens to your genome. I've met the guy, like, he gets paid very well, but the thing is, he can only do it twice a year. Yeah. That is what universal basic income looks like, it's just, we have to make every workplace incredibly dangerous so that there's, like, a cumulative thing, and that's how we do fully automated communism, is, yeah, I do data entry, but for, like, health reasons, I can only be in the office once a year, and when i do it five times i have to retire yep he says it's a great job you tire mandatory retirement at 55

yeah but you can only do it but you do you work twice a year and then the most the other year is like they make him go they make them go to the doctor once a month to make sure nothing's happening sure yeah just just making sure you don't have to order any wetsuits with a third arm. Reminding me of the old Chernobyl joke, where the grandfather and the grandson are looking at the memorials of the liquidators, and the grandkids are like, what's Chernobyl? And the grandfather's like, well, it's the time that, uh, you know, some nuclear power plant had an accident, but it's fine, it's totally safe. And they both walk off together, wagging their tails.

So the blue light here is Cherenkov radiation, right? Which is when the electrons which are coming off of the decaying radioactive thing are going faster than the speed of light in the local medium, right? That doesn't mean they're going faster than the speed of light, that means they're

going faster than the speed of light, in this case, in water, right? Because there's a state speed limit on light, but then there's local speed limits, too. Just doing interstate speed traps, and just like... This is basically like, fucking Alex Roy is, like, a charged electron, and he's just like, blasting straight through a bunch of state troopers. You get picked up by the light cops.

But yeah, if you see the pretty blue light, you should leave. Um, and then there's like, there's different ways you can get contaminated by radiation. This is my understanding, I'm not sure if this is strictly correct but as far as i understand if you if you're exposed to radiation that can murder you and give you nasty cancer but you yourself will not be radioactive yes i.e for example if let's say you get hit by just a beam a beam of gammas or beam of neutrons your dna because if it's a new if it's a neutron it'll bounce it'll bounce hit your dna and cause all sorts of interesting mutations and if it's a gamma it actually could it actually could cause your dn it actually could cause the water in your cells to actually irradiate i don't i hate when i hate when pete boostedge comes to my house and shoots me with a CIA radiation

gun, and like, shoots me in the fucking DNA. I hate when I get shot in the genome. But then there's like, the kind of being irradiated, like where I took a uranium rod and I cut it up like a banana, and I put it in my cereal and ate it. That's also quite radioactive. Yes, and that would be bad. That would be like...

It's permanently inside of you, and it's constantly giving off radiation, so you're slowly dying from the inside out. It's fine, just wait a few million years, we'll be lead. Yes. So then you're... Then you become a radiation source. Well, I am, excuse me. Yeah.

Which is the kind of contamination we're gonna talk about today. Oh, god. The nice, like, friendly one. Yeah. I'm just like, I'm drinking my soda, I'm drinking my post-diftar soda, and I'm just looking at this can like... Man. It's a good thing I don't have an anxiety disorder.

Is the can heavier than usual? Um, no, I don't feel anything rattling around in it, but you know how it is with brains, right? You talk about this stuff for like five minutes, and then you think, huh, is my arm tingling or am I just crazy? Do I have radiation poisoning? This doesn't feel good. I don't think you can make a can with uranium.

There was a bunch of uranium glass that was a hip trend of the 1930s. Yeah, and then people tend to get... yeah. It was so cool back then. I love to like, drink my opium out of a big glass. My nice radium glass, yeah. Oh my god. Radium jewelry and all that shit, hell yeah. Oh yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, you know, this is the worst, uh, obviously, you know, the potential of ingesting radioactive material is the worst with like, something like, you know, radium paint, or like, a powder of some kind, or aerosols, and that's one of the reasons why- Yeah, it's the same with breathing it in, right? You're not talking mostly about cutting up a furor of like, a banana, you're talking about like, dusts and powders and stuff, right? Yeah.

It's one of the reasons why explosions at nuclear facilities are bad. Mmm. Bunch of like, powdered concrete dust. That's just like, highly irradiated. One of the many reasons why explosions at nuclear facilities are bad. Um, in general, you don't want an explosion to happen at all. No. Unless you're doing, like, blasting or controlled demolition

or something. But anyway, now let's talk about some of the nasty kinds of radiation found in your neighborhood. Yay. Yay. So...

She looks jazzed about this. This is, like, from the 50s, I think. Yeah. It's an early radiation therapy machine, right? So, radiation therapy is something we came up with in the 50s, I think, right? And a little earlier, you know, you can zap people with radiation to get rid of the parts that they don't need to have. You know, that have like cancer and shit, right?

Yeah, we were just fucking around with medicine a lot of the time in the early 20th century. Like, that's how we invented, well, discovered X-rays, right, was Conrad Rankin, who may be familiar to you from the measurements discussion earlier, just being like, yeah, I could just fucking zap people with this. It was literally a fun party trick of the 20th century. Hey, look at this ghostly shadow. Oh shit, man, that's cool.

Hope I don't get, like, 50 kinds of incurable diseases from this. Look, everything until about, like... This is one thing I've learned from, like, collecting gas masks, which is about, like, this is one thing I've learned from collecting gas masks, which is a weird hobby, is that everything before about 2005 is giving you every possible disease at once. Everything they made in the Soviet Union was made of asbestos. Everything. And the stuff that wasn't made out of asbestos was made out of, like, benzene and lead.

That's fine. That's lead. Mm-hmm. That's fine. That's fine. That's fine. Everything's still technically made of benzene, cause it's all made of crude oil. It's just been processed. Well, give it long enough and it's all iron. So up here is... this is probably about, you know, a very small amount of radiation

source and then like 600 pounds of shielding. You gotta, like, madden in some like, spooky lines. Oh yeah. That'd be like, pshhh. Yeah. And then this guy spins around, right, with a huge amount of mass, because that way you only get the part you're targeting, as opposed to just shooting a huge beam straight through you, like a cylinder of just tissue huge beam straight through you like a cylinder

of just tissue decay. Right, you wanna avoid that. Yeah. In this case, you are the Hot Pocket ant. Yes. Like, the medical reason for this, like, we talked about how radiation damages cells, sometimes you wanna damage some cells. Sometimes cells go rogue, and just decide, oh hey, I'm gonna start making copies of myself,

instead of what I'm supposed to be, and I'm gonna kill the boss, and that's cancer, and you wanna kill the cancer cells, and a very good way of killing cells is radiation. Yes. So, so long as you can target this, you can Annie Oakley that shit, you can do a trickshot off of a quarter, and like, shoot a beam into somebody's liver, or something, and ideally kill all the cancer cells, and not very many of the cells that aren't, you know, the ones that are still doing what they're supposed to be.

What if we made the guy stand inside a particle accelerator, and then he didn't have cancer anymore? Yeah, exactly. Pretty much. Well, that's the new version of this. That's proton therapy. Yeah, you have every cancer except the one you went in for. Yeah.

So, you know, this requires a radiation source, which is, you know, the radiation's coming out of this here, and usually what they use is one of the scary types of material, right? So you have the stuff with, like, the short half-life, which is very radioactive for a very short period of time. Then you have stuff with a long half-life, which is not very radioactive for a very long period of time. And then there's the stuff in the middle.

of time. And then there's the stuff in the middle. And that stuff, which is not that radioactive on, like, cosmic scale, I guess, but in a human scale for will it kill you, the answer is yes,

it will kill you. It will kill you very badly, and it will do so for several hundred years. And that's stuff like cesium, that's stuff like cobalt 60 right um yeah those are pretty much some of the worst stuff we've probably as humans have made not counting

chemicals of course but you've done plenty of episodes on those it's so cool like all of this incredibly deadly stuff is is also probably our longest lived legacy. Oh, sometimes it's plastic, who knows? Well, I mean, maybe future archaeologists will be pulling bits of plastic fishing gear out of cliff walls, but I think it's more likely that humanity's cosmic record on the

Earth is gonna be somebody looking at a graph with their 18th eye, and being like, huh, there's a weird cobalt spike here, I don't know what that's about. That's pretty much one of the things, once NASA starts making larger space telescopes, a sign of some sort of intelligent civilization. Large spikes of, hmm, hey, why is there a bunch of radioactivity in their atmosphere? That does not exist naturally. We should probably set an appropriate-

Now we get into the fun Drake equation stuff of, like, maybe there's this big filter and the reason why we haven't met aliens, the US Navy over the Pacific notwithstanding, is just, you get nukes, you kinda destroy your own species, it happens. Yeah, I think that's a pretty unintelligent decision for civilization to make, like, a cobalt-60 bomb. You should not do that. Yes. Oh, yeah. Half-life's only, what, five-something years?

That's fine, man. Yeah, it's good after 130 years, yeah. Okay, that's not that long! That's not that long! It's not that deep, don't worry about it, just don't walk there. People, someone got really mad at us in the comments after we did the goddamn news about the Chernobyl fires, being like, that smoke's not that radioactive. Yes.

And it's like... I wouldn't want to breathe it without my own gas, without my CBRN gas mask, just to be safe. Yeah. But you don't wanna fuck around with radiation, is what I'm learning. Don't tempt fate. Nuclear power is good. Don't tempt fate.

It's that old AEC poster that I always think about when we talk about nuclear safety, which is that, um, it was something like, radiation is not inherently dangerous, but it demands your respect. Yes. Right? You have to be like, oh yeah, this is a thing that can kill me horribly. Yes. The whole time.

So the way this guy works, I'm gonna show a GIF that I stole off of Wikipedia, so now everyone can be mad at me for using Wikipedia. Wait, you have a way to show GIFs now? Come on, work. Fuck! Shit. This has always worked before. Killed it.

Killed it. Oh my fucking... Oh, well. Oh, god. Alright, so, uh, never mind. You're just gonna have to madden it. Yeah, I'll have to madden it. Alright, so the idea is, you have a radiation source in here, right?

And you have shielding back here, right? Yeah. You have shielding all around, there's a window in the casing here, right? When you need the radiation source to go, you get an electric motor, swings this guy around, and then the radiation goes out. Mm. It's like a, like a, like a, like chambering a revolver, right?

You twist the thing around and the thing lines up and the thing goes out. Yes. And also, like, a radiation source, you know, that's just inherently radioactive, you're not like, feeding this thing any electricity or anything like that, it just is radioactive. Hmm. It's usually, it's been created somewhere, right? Like a nuclear power plant would have made this for you? I think the source in question we're gonna talk about today was made at Oak Ridge

National Laboratories. Woo! Probably under the control of Union Carbide at that point. Huh! Recurring villain. Yeah, recurring villain. Although at the time of recording, I still haven't even started doing the Bo Paul episode. Send him your audio!

It's sent, I have the audio now, I can work on it. Nevermind! Thank you for sending me your audio! The problem is that the audio is, like, all of our audio, three hours long, because we don't know how to edit. Yeah, I was about to say, I should get this going. Alright, so, now that we've done all this background, let's talk about... Brazil.

Brazil. Brazil. Yes. So, in Brazil is a city called...Goyenia. Right? It's right here, it's right there. Is the engineering disaster the part where they lose to the Germans 7-1 in the 2014 final?

Yeah. This is the capital of the state of Goyas, which I think is something that Liam will call you in the comments. So, it's right near Brasilia,ia which is the capital that was invented city ross's favorite city tell them how much you like it uh it invented by oscar storinov okay hold on this is justin in post-production again uh i meant oscar niemeyer not oscar storinov okay back to the episode. And then right in the middle is a city called Annapolis, which I assume is where the Naval

Academy of Brazil is. Just like a couple hundred miles in line. The biggest river, like, right there, dog. That's true, that's true. Alright, so, uh, most of the action today took place in a neighborhood called Setor Aeropuerto. Right? Aeropuerto. Flamboyant shopping center?

It's, um, it's where the old airport was, because the new airport's over here. I'm still not over the flamboyant shopping center. I like that a lot. Oh, sure. Sure enough, I do like that, yeah. You wouldn't want, like, a dull shopping center. They make you wear the Nathan Robinson peacock costume to get in. Just like they do the Berghain door check at the door of this provincial Brazilian shopping

centre. So, um, now, right here is the former location of the Instituto Goiano de Radioterapia. Right? Ah. That's the radiotherapy institute's former location. Now the convention center's there. Oh, I feel great about that. Oh yeah.

We've probably cleaned it up. Probably. We would hope so, yeah. Well, someone cleaned it up for them, actually. Which is what we're gonna learn about. So they moved in 1985, and when they moved, they left one of their old radiotherapy machines in their old location, cause it was an old crappy one, it used cesium-137 as opposed to copalt-60.

Um. Wasn't good, right? Mm-hmm. And they got held up in litigation, which prevented them from moving the machine to dispose of it properly, right? Or so they say. Oh, cool. So they were in court, and they were being like, hey, we should probably do something

about this machine with the spicy rock in it. Yes. And the courts are just like, yeah, we'll get to that. Worse than spicy rock, it was spicy powder. Mmm! Mmm! Sorry, I was just kind of aroused by that idea. So...

Just bring it into the concept of a spicy powder. You're just hungry. I also really liked, uh, cocaine when I was younger, so I'm all for the spicy powder. Would you call cocaine spicy? I wouldn't think of it as being spicy. It's more like, you would say it's more like numbing. I didn't say it was spicy, I just like cocaine!

I don't get why everyone likes it, it just makes me numb. It's the best 20 minutes of your life, that's the shit I like. They gave it to me when they broke my nose, and I'm like, this is... why does everyone take it, this... like, this is awful, I don't feel my face. Yeah, I don't know, I feel like cocaine is just like, if I wanted a way to be a worse version of myself, just like, make all of the worst parts of my personality like that much more salient, I would just like, record a podcast. The podcaster's high.

It comes in right after the podcaster's high, is when someone says, I made a good point and I did so very, uh, fuck, what's it called when you phrase something really well? Articulately. Yes. That's me, baby. Yeah. Here's your question. The podcast is high as when somebody fucks up and you rename the group chat, so

like you say my-selm instead of myself. Oh, my god. Yeah. New episode title. So anyway, so they eventually got a guard posted in the building, because they knew there was radioactive shit in there, but he wasn't always on duty, right? So now, what do you do with an abandoned building? As an entrepreneur. Condos, baby!

Condos, baby. As an entrepreneur. Yeah. Oh yeah. More condos. No, you're not that kind of entrepreneur. Condos, baby! Condos, baby! As an entrepreneur. Yeah. Oh yeah. More condos. No, you're not that kind of entrepreneur. You're not the kind of entrepreneur who's just gonna, like, build a bunch of condos and call them, like, radiotherapy at the villages.

No, you're the real kind of entrepreneur. Drugs! Ah, I see. Drugs! You steal the bricks! Dammit! Yes! Scrap it! Scrap I see. Drugs! You steal the bricks! Dammit! Yes! Scrap it!

Scrap the shit out of it! So that's what- Alright! Shit. Yeah. That's what some folks tried to do. They decided, we're gonna go in, we're gonna go into this abandoned building when the guard's not there, we're gonna scrap everything we can, you know, rip the copper pipe out, find any equipment,

try and get some scrap money for that, you know, so on and so forth, in that fashion, right? It's the American way. The South American way. Absolutely. Also the North American way. Yeah, this is truly the bond of brotherhood between the entire Western hemisphere is just stripping the copper wiring out of an abandoned building.

So... there's two guys, right? Roberto... Yeah, Mike and Mike. Yeah. Roberto dos Santos Alves and Wagner Mota Pereira. Right? Uh, the fuckin' German names in Brazil always get me. Like, you just have a guy named Wagner, and it's like...

I'm sure that's for normal reasons. I, you know, I'm not gonna speculate about exactly how many genocides his ancestors committed. I'm sure it was several. But this is true of all of us. So... Yeah, that's true. You go to Brazil, and you'll be looking at maps, and there'll be a small town, and you'll

be like, oh, what's this town called? And it's like, Saint This. What's this town called? Saint This. What's this town called? Herzfeldenabendstebentinsitz. And you're like, oh, okay. Wasn't there a town in Spain that was called, like, Kill All the Jews until, like,

2006? Oh, there's a bunch, there's a, yeah, Matahudios, uh, Jew killer, and there's a bunch of Matamoros. You thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought,

you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, you thought, more killer. So, yeah, no, love having towns named after genocides. Oh, God.

I mean, the most fucked vibes in the world is like a South American Oktoberfest, which do exist. You can go and eat sausage. Yeah, that's the Brazilian-German community meeting in Jersey. Oh, God. And it's like you go there, and I'm looking at them, and it's like, Uh, Brazilian? And they look like, and I'm like, this is ridiculous, I cannot look at these...

Fucked vibes. I mean, there's also this, I forget which country it is, but there's Confederados, and I think it might be like, no, I don't even want to guess, but like, in one of the South American countries, there's like a community where the town was founded by Confederate veterans who just... It's Brazil, Alice. Yeah, Americana Brazil! It is? The fuck off, no.

Americana Brazil, baby. Yup. Yup. Yup. Wow. And they dress- once a year, they dress up in, like, grey uniforms, and they have a hootenanny or whatever, and it's- Yeah, Jimmy Carter went there in 1972.

Fuck vibes. There's a photo of him posing with, like, the Confederato monument to the Confederates. Alright, let's- Jesus Christ. I'm literally looking at it, and it looks like... You fucking lost! You fucking lost! It definitely looks like something from a weird alternate universe.

Yeah, I mean, I will point out that Brazil outlawed slavery in 1899, the last country in the Western Hemisphere to do it. In many ways, the kind of lifeboat of reaction, if you have fucked up at doing fascism somewhere else, you can come to Brazil, or Argentina. So yeah, no, it's cool. We're now cancelled in Brazil, but that's fine. Well, 7-1! 7-1! 7-1! Bolsonaro was probably the best they could do.

7-1! Seven to one! Look, no, there is a class character to this, right, and that is that Brazilian politics works in cycles, right. You have one guy who is quite popular and tries to do, like, mild social democracy, and then, for the next 70 years, the entire establishment gets so scared that they lurch headlong into fascism. And that's only ever happened in Brazil, that's not a pattern that I recognise in any other countries, certainly not Britain or America. Yeah. And so, at the time that we said this, we are literally, like, Brazil is coming off

of a couple of military juntas. Which they probably just pronounce it Juntas, because Brazilian Portuguese. Yeah, I still say Junta. I'm just like, can't make me learn! Yeah. And like, it's in the midst of one of these long climb-downs from a brief moment of social democracy, which may go some way towards explaining why a guy has to go and strip all of the copper wiring out of a clinic like, a clinic.

Yes. Which is what we're talking about. Back on track. Back on track. Right. So these two guys, Roberto and Wagner, right? Yeah. They found the big heavy radiotherapy machine, right?

Ah, duh. And they decided, you know, we could probably get some money for this thing right because it's big and heavy and made of metal those are the three things you want if you're a scrapper right this is big enough and heavy enough they probably couldn't tie it on the back like this uh this oven here or a washing machine or whatever that is real real talk though would you not be aware that it's got radiation or or do you just not care? Probably not. Probably no.

Definitely not. Okay. Okay! No, no, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Look, I'm sure these guys were desperate, because you gotta be to, like, pull the copper wiring off of somewhere, but I think also they genuinely didn't, like, know. I would imagine that most people don't know. Yeah.

If I had to guess, if you put a gun to someone's head, and it was like, is this radioactive? They would say, probably not. I don't know, I'm gonna lick it a bunch and see if I tingle. That's half the reason why, in theory, you're supposed to put huge symbols and warnings saying, dangerous, do not touch, stay away. Yep. No good deed is commemorated here, just on

the side of this thing. Yeah. This place is a warning, and a series of warnings, what is here is dangerous and repulsive to us, but that's just like every video description of every video we upload. It's true. So, not me, give us money. No deed of honour is commemorated here. That's true. So... Not me, give us money.

No deed of honour is commemorated here. That's true! Nothing valued is here. They partially disassemble this thing, right? Oh boy. You just know it's gonna be in some, like, barn find kind of way, where they're like, prying bits off of it with shit. Oh yeah, and they find it-

No more ballers, I know what I have, yeah. Inside the big lid and metal casing that's the shielding, they find the stainless steel casing around the rotating assembly for the cesium source, right? No no no no no no no. This is right, but it is counterintuitive, right, because you get into this thing, and you find this orb, and it's like, huh, that must be valuable. You've just gone through a foot of lead, which is incredibly valuable! Yes. But, you know, that's big and it's heavy and it's on the outside, so why would

that be the valuable thing, when it's trying to stop you from getting in to the really valuable thing, and that's not really how... Well, they came back for the rest of the lead later, actually. Oh, good. But, so they took the inner assembly home in a wheelbarrow, they weren't in the pickup truck league. They were in wheelbarrow league. And this is when stuff started to happen.

I hate when stuff starts to happen. I mean, technically stuff starts to happen as soon as they do that, but then there's... This is the other counterintuitive thing about radiation, right, you have this latency thing, where stuff starts to happen, you don't know shit! And then, like, eight hours later, it is very obvious that stuff has started to happen. So this was September 13th, 1987, right? Hmm. So. Okay. A couple

locations here. I pointed them out. This is, uh, Roberto Dos Santos lived here, right? Yeah. Right around here. Um, and they were scrapping the building over here, right? So they take it. He takes it to his house, right?

Yeah. Like three or four blocks, and when the wheelbarrow... So both of them try and start to disassemble the casing, right? As they're doing it, they both start vomiting. Mm-hmm. They're like, ah, jeez, we got food poisoning, this isn is not good um when we finish this we should probably go to the doctor so they both continue to try and disassemble it and wagner per area uh starts to have worse symptoms in the morning he decides he's gonna go he's gonna go to

the doctor because he's vomiting he's got diarrhea it's coming out both ends uh you know he's got he's dizzy his left hand is swelling right so he goes he goes to the doctor and he's diagnosed with yeah it's probably an allergic reaction to something he ate go home and rest right because at the time it's radiation probably would be no reasonable person would think oh it's not radiation he just seemed like

oh he probably had an allergic reaction to some batteries or something yeah you're not thinking like hey number one this guy's got radiation sickness. Now, in the meantime, Roberto had succeeded in disassembling the source to the point where he could see the cesium powder in there, right? Oh no. And in the dark, it glowed blue.

Which is already a big red flag right there. That's a... Big blue flag. Not good. Not good. So he didn't know shit about radioactive materials, right? As is obvious. He thought it was some kind of gunpowder.

Tried to light some of it. Oh, buddy. Oh, buddy. He tried to... Hold up. He thought this was gunpowder, and so his immediate first reaction was, yeah, fuck it, I'm gonna... I'm gonna set some of this on fire and see if it explodes. Hell yeah.

This is a good kind of guy. We appreciate this kind of guy. This is a huge loss to the... these guys, their loss set back the Dude's Rock movement by like, ten years. He survived. He survived this whole thing, yeah. He lost an arm, he survived. He survived this whole thing, yeah. He lost an arm, he survived. Dude's rock. Dude's rock. So he decided, okay, I don't know what the hell this thing is. So Roberto dos Santos Alves decides, I'm getting rid of this, I'm gonna sell it.

He sells it to Devere Ferreria, right, who was the nearby purveyor of another scrapyard nearby. One half-portion. Or a scrapyard, yeah. So they brought it in the wheelbarrow over there, right, to Ferreira's, uh, scrapyard, and, um, Ferreira notices- And it's just rattling around in this wheelbarrow, just full of, like, uh, cesium powder. Yeah, exactly.

Just, you know, spewing cesium powder all over the street, all over everywhere. Dispersed into the atmosphere. Don't like that. Do not like that. Ferreira, he notices a pretty blue glow inside the atmosphere. Don't like that. Do not like that. Ferrera, he notices a pretty blue glow inside the casing, so he brings the thing in his house, where he and his wife try and get the powder out to see what it is. Right? Uh-huh.

And over the next three days, he brings his friends and family into the house to look at the powder. Oh my god, dude. Because they just think it's like, they they're just like look at this mysterious supernatural it's like um if you're literary people it's like some angel story if only there was a what is this thing subreddit oh yeah some of them even take it home with them um There are some instances, once they got enough out, there are instances of people trying to use the powder like it was body glitter or something, like, oh, look, it's pretty blue on my skin, you know?

Sure. Just fuckin' do the entire, like, North American 1920s in an afternoon, and just be like, condense that timeline, be like, yeah, I'm gonna rub it on my gums. Please, no, do not do this. No, do not try this at home. Do not break into a radiotherapy machine. So, on September 24th, Devar's brother, Ivo, lives up here, right? Decides to bring some of the powder home to show

his wife and his six-year-old daughter, right? And his six-year-old daughter does the thing that six-year-olds do. Eats it. Eats it, yeah. Yes, and that's like, oh no. Yeah. Oh no. In the meantime, of course, everyone's

getting sick all around this thing, right? Everyone's getting sick. They all think it's food poisoning. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Just cause you're just thrown up. You feel like shit. Yep.

So, September 23rd, uh, Ferraria's wife goes to the hospital, once again diagnosed with, it's probably an allergic reaction to something you ate, go home and get some rest. Well, I kind of. Yeah. To be fair. Have you eaten anything weird? And she's just like, well, you know, um, this cool powder I found. You know, I ate a whole sandwich made entirely of glowing blue powder, but other than that,

you know. At that point, that's like, huh, that's weird. PB and J and CS137. I did cut up a uranium rod and put it in my cereal. So. Very spicy banana. Yes. The spic spicy banana. Yes. The spiciest banana.

So, in the meantime, there's some of Ferrari's employees were trying to get the assembly disassembled, right? So they could scrap it properly, separate out all the metals, so on and so forth, right? So they're hitting it with hammers, they're attacking it with angle grinders, all kinds of crap, and the cesium-137 dust is just going everywhere, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This was Admiral Sun Alves de Souza, 18 years old, and Israel Baptista dos Santos, 22 years old.

They do the bulk of this work, they make some good progress over a few days, but you know, the thing is, the thing is difficult to get open, right? Hmm. And they're getting sick, which you don't want to happen. Just one of those weird coincidences. So, in the meantime, Wagner Pereira, who we mentioned before, one of the scrappers, he was admitted to inpatient care at a local hospital when they decided maybe it wasn't something he just ate. And they transferred him to the Tropical Diseases Hospital, right? Which I guess is for when they assume you have...

Malaria, parasites, malaria parasites, all sorts of nasty stuff that has malaria maybe they're worried about you giving malaria to the parasite yeah so

they send him over there and then you know, finally, Ferreria goes out and he says, he gives up, he sells the remainder of the assembly, because they can't do too much with it, to a third junkyard, right? Junkyard three. Ferraria's junkyard is junkyard one in the report, and then Evo also had a junkyard, that was junkyard, that was Junkyard 2.

This is, uh... So, everyone's got a- Primarily junk-based economy, which is always a healthy sign. I, you know, I respect it. Yeah. Everyone's just, you know, it's the Patreon of the Global South. It's just cycling junk between people. So, alright.

September 28th. Brary's wife, who has been sick this whole time, like, the worst sick out of any of them, finally figures out, you know, I think this damn glowing blue powder might be the problem. Right? Ding, ding, ding, ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. What if she win? Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, right? She gets her husband to go to Junkyard 3, get the thing back, right, and then

she and one of Ferraria's employees put the thing in a plastic bag, right, and they get on a public bus with this thing. I mean, the plastic bag was smart. Yes, that was smart. Like, genuinely. That was smart. They get on a public bus and they go over to the Vigilante Sanitaria, right? Which is sort of the public health office, right?

Yeah. Or the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency, right? So they go down there with this highly radioactive doohickey by bus, sets it down on the desk of Dr. PM. I only have initials from this point on. Um, and she says, this thing is killing my family, what is it? I mean, like, you gotta give her points for, like, initiative, and, like, deductive reasoning.

Yes. Because I don't know that I would've put that shit together if I had no clue what radiation was. Mm-hmm. Dr. PM didn't know what the thing was. He was worried enough about it that after it sat on his desk for a bit, he was like, I'm moving this out to the courtyard of the building, I'm putting it in a chair in a corner, it's in time out now um

so he suspected it might be part of some radiotherapy device though so and by the way both both ferrari uh ferrari's wife and the employee who helped her get it there sustained pretty serious radiation burns from this trip, which were evident when they got there, I guess, so they were both sent over to the Tropical Diseases Hospital. I love to work in the public health office, and have a lady come in, dump a radiation source on my desk and half a hand comes with it, and be like, yo, what's up with this? I feel very good about my job at that point. You're going to the Tropical Diseases Hospital.

Yeah. So, Dr. PM, after he puts the thing in timeout, he finds, he knew a friend who was a medical, a doctor of medical physics, I guess. Right? A medical physicist. And he calls him up and says, hey, could you come take a look at this thing? And WF were the initials of this guy he says all right yeah sure i'll come by tomorrow because he was in town but for a conference right and wf goes to the office of nuclebras right which is a um the brazilian like sort of nuclear fuel cycle agency doohickey they like regulate nuclear

fuel their office in this town was mostly oriented around prospecting for uranium ore so they had some dose rate meters that they just had so wf is like hey can i borrow that that they just had. So WF's like, hey, can I borrow that? And they're like, yeah, sure. So he gets the dose rate meter, and it's calibrated for, again, prospecting for uranium. So, you know, it doesn't go that high. It goes nowhere near that high.

Yeah, it starts pegging high. Yeah. Yeah, it starts pecking high. Yeah. It measured from between 0.02 to 30 micrograys per hour. Hmm. Yeah. A light spice. A light seasoning.

Yeah, I was about to say, this is more of a- It's basically human. Yeah. It's a bell pepper. Hmm. This is more of a... It's basically human. Yeah. It's a bell pepper. Hmm. So as he's, you know, walking over to the public health office where the source is, he decides he switches on... Oh, no.

He switches on the dose rate meter. Oh, boy. He switches on the dose rate meter like a couple blocks away, and it's immediately pegged to the highest it goes what yeah and he he looks at he's like this thing's busted yeah sure so so he goes back to the office and he says this thing's broken can you give me another one and they do and this time he switches it on earlier and he's like wow this is still very high and you realize oh this is a problem yes all right so when he came back wf came back to the public health office, right, he got there

just in time, because Dr. P.M. had called the fire brigade, right, and they had shown up, and they realized this thing was bad news, and they were about to confiscate it and dump it in the river. Oh no! Oh no! Once again, it was like, getting very close close to shinobu where you just have a guy named misha and his friend just be like huh this thing feels kind of hot to me the scary thing is if it was at least the ocean it probably wouldn't have been as bad because the ocean would have diluted

by sheer quantity of the ocean a river uh i hope it doesn't go to the water supply because the entire drinking supply, you'd have to put some filter. You'd have to put some heavy filters on that to actually remove all the substances. Otherwise everyone's going to get cancer.

And as we know, heavy metals famously interact very, very well with water systems. Yes. Yes. Well, that's kind of a, you gotta rebuild the town five miles down the road kind of a problem, huh? Yeah, exactly.

It's like, ah, well, this is fucked. Move it. Move it. Alright, so, at this point, it's like, alright right we're gonna leave it here we're not gonna throw it in the river um it's a good idea and then they get the full thing dr pm goes back to uh ferrarius scrapyard gets the full story um you know they realize they got the meter with them, it's Dr. PM and Dr. WF, right, and it's offscale everywhere, you know. It's just, you know, everywhere they go, it's all radiation.

The fucked thing is that at some point doing that, they have to have met the daughter? Uh... Just chillin'? The daughter is up here. thing is that at some point doing that, they have to have met the daughter? Uh... Just chillin'? The daughter is up here. Yeah, okay. So, you know, they are, um, so they convince, with some difficulty, Ferreria and

his employees to get off the property. Um, you know, because people don't take radiation seriously i guess um yeah unless they're opposing a nuclear power plant then they take it very seriously but when there's actually radiation on them and they're ingesting it whatever um so then they go to the secretary of health's offices and say, uh, hey, we got a major radiation spill, and manage to convince them, with some difficulty, maybe some resources should be devoted to this. Um.

You just want it to be the case that you can just call everybody, and you have, I don't know, the Brazilian feds down there in 15 minutes, instead of having to sit in a waiting room for an hour and a half, and then be like, yeah, there's a guy who just has a bunch of extremely spicy dust. There's a man glowing blue. In the driveway. There has been a blue man group style incident in the vicinity. So, at this point, CNEN, which was the Brazilian Nuclear Agency, they were put

in charge, and now you had to do containment and clean up, right? Sorta trace where everyone went, who they interacted with... Reconstruct this whole story backwards. Yes. Which... It's gonna be fuckin' difficult, given that everybody is extremely ill at this point. Everyone's extremely ill, they're all also, like, scrapyard people, so they're

belligerent. Just generally. Yeah. So I imagine, uh, I'm just imagining in this situation, for Philadelphia folks, it's just an entire group of Lube Lums. What do you mean, I got radiation poisoning, I was supposed to smoke hazelnut! Just trying to fist fight a guy in a big hazmat suit.

Okay. So what happened here, right? The biggest problem with this kind of incident is there was cesium-137 spreading everywhere, and cesium-137 is very radioactive for a very long time, even when widely dispersed in very small quantities, right? Mm-hmm. Every time they transported it, they spread it further, um, you know- But a plastic bag was a good idea.

Yes. Oh my god. That was the first good idea anyone had in this situation. Um, so yeah, as I mentioned, officials had to basically reconstruct the entire life of this assembly from when they illegally removed it from the building, which I'm sure, you know, made getting the story out harder. And then isolate everyone who was in contact with it, then try and decontaminate them and determine their exposure, so on and so forth.

A belligerent scrapyard guy, and he's still like, well, I'm not going to tell you anything because I'm going to go to jail if I do, and you're just like, yeah, dude, you're going to die in like a week. You don't have time, bud. Effectively, you could argue it's very similar to the contact tracing situation we had, because you have to

effectively break it down. Where did this contamination come from where did you go with who did who did you go with who did you talk to health detective work very interesting it's easier in some ways because at least you you can measure radioactivity in a way that you can't necessarily do with a virus yeah um. Um, not like... Yeah. Where did you come from, where did you go, where did you come from, nuclear Joe? We must contact, trace, and isolate Cotton-Eyed Joe.

Yes. So. Um, and they also had to ensure that sites where the material was were decontaminated. So, after this went public, about 130,000 people decided to go to their local hospital, stand in line, and say, uh, please decontaminate

me. I'm radioactive. Please decontaminate me. And about 250 of them actually were contaminated. Um. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So, you know, most people who were, uh, most people were irradiated by the source, but they hadn't actually ingested any of the cesium. Most of them cleared up fine after just a little bit of decontamination, which was basically, you know, take a shower, you filthy animal. It is funny to me how much decontamination, for pretty much anything, down to like, nerve gas, still is at least somewhat effective to be like, just take a shower. Change your clothes.

Change your clothes, take a shower, use some fuckin' soap. Don't spit! When the Russians poisoned that defector in England last year, there was, like, somebody found, in very similar circumstances, actually, kind of scavenging, somebody found the discarded nerve gas container, which they had in a perfume spray bottle, and the guy gave it to his wife to try on, and then he was like, huh, this stuff's kinda sticky, and he just washed his hands, just to get rid of it. That guy lived, and his wife died, cause she was just like, you know, it's perfume, whatever.

So it is insane how much of a difference that makes. Wash your hands, folks. Wash your fuckin' hands! Wash your hands. Wash your goddamn fuckin' filthy hands, you animals. It's off the Public Health Podcast. Yeah, that's right, yeah. So, 46 people were severely contaminated, right? Mm-hmm.

And 20 of those people got radiation sickness. Yeah. Not a good sign. Again, the vast majority of them recovered. They were treated with Prussian Blue. Oh boy! Yep. The dye.

I bet Brazil just had that laying around, didn't they? Yeah. Look, look, it's fine. We've isolated all the people who are exposed, and we've put a highly visible red armband on them. We just had... Here, in the Brasilia Holocaust surplus warehouse, yeah. To improve blood circulation to critical areas, doctors have recommended you raise

your right arm over your head. Oh man, this will be the one that gets people using the word corralia in the comments. Oh god. Okay, this'll be the one that gets people using the word corralia in the comments. Oh, God. So, alright, but yeah, Prussian Blue, the dye. It's actually very good at accelerating the rate at which cesium is expelled from the body. Decreases the amount of time it spends in there by about half, from I think 70 days

to 30 days. So. But there were four deaths, all associated with owner of the scrapyard, Devar Ferreria. So this is the thing, right? Like, the radiation, you can be like, it's not inherently dangerous, but you have to respect it. It's only going to kill you if you, I don't know, like, fucked around trying to hit it with a hammer for an hour and a half.

Like, put it on a sandwich, just walked around. Put it on your skin. Wheelbarrow. This was the worst case scenario. Both inside and outside the body. So all it's doing is just dumping is this dumping radiation into every one of your critical organs but i was using those that's fine that's weight savings just get a lightning kit for like your uh your lungs yeah yeah so well that's what that's what corona does it adds speed holes oh god uh pandemic humor everyone so yeah um so devar ferrari is two young employees

uh who were hitting the thing with the hammer uh both died yeah uh that'll happen. Uh, Ferrari's... Ferrari's six year old nephew, who ate the powder, uh, turbo killed. Had the highest dose of all of them, like, six greys, I believe. Jesus. Overall. Yeah. Um, Devar Ferrari's wife also died. The one who figured the whole thing out. The only competent one in the story, yeah.

Yeah, the competent one who single-handedly stopped this from being like, this just circulating around every junkyard in central Brazil for the next five years, while these guys have to figure out why everybody's just dropping dead. Yeah. And her reward for doing this is just like, eh, you just die in, like, probably one of the worst ways, if you had to pick. Oh yeah, I think she died by far the slowest. Like, I know Shinobu really hyped up the horror, like, you don't actually end

up looking like the kind of, like, fucked up baked potato, like, melted plasticine thing, as I understand it, but it's grim. Yes. And then, Tavar Ferreria himself received the highest dose of radiation, overall, with seven greys, but since it was spread out, he was fine. He lived. He lived. Godsammit! Yeah, universe is a cruel and uncertain place.

Yeah! Yeah, I'll say. So literally, just him sending it to that other junkyard where he killed a couple of guys, by virtue of having that day off from being highly irradiated, was enough that he didn't die? Yes. Well, he drank- Did he take a vacation?

He drank himself to death in 1994, so, you know. Well, you would, wouldn't you? I mean... You can't win them all, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, after this, of course, now you gotta do site decontamination, right? Mm-hmm. Because there's all this glowing blue powder everywhere.

Just hose it down, just hose it down. Yeah, I was gonna say, just get a big hose, it's gonna hold you back. Get the carter out, and you just, like, shhhhhhh. Into the nearest gutter. That's fine. That's a surprising amount of what it was. That's pretty much how you get rid of radioactive material. You have to move it, bury it.

If it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid. Yeah. So, there were 81 houses that were found to be contaminated by radioactive material. Seven were so contaminated they had to be demolished, and the construction debris treated as radioactive waste,

as well as removing several feet of top soil, also radioactive waste, and then they had to put a pad of concrete over the lot. Christ on sale. Uh, Roberto de Santos Alves house, the first guy, the guy who scrapped

it initially, um, he, who removed it from the building, and he opened the thing right there in his house. It was so contaminated that workers had to demolish it in very short shifts oh fuck oh yeah the shift shit yep yep yeah all right two houses uh were mostly contaminated a lot of the contamination was on the roofs of houses for some reason so two houses had to have it's a it's a

very light dust so naturally it'll actually it'll go up. And as you can see in these pictures, these are not solid roofs. A lot of these are that style roofs. So it's actually going between the bits of between the actual roof into the actual fibrous

material. Oh good. That'll do it. That's where you want it. So, just... I have to comb this roof with, like, a big brush. Oh, yeah. Well, two of the houses had to have their roofs removed

and replaced, which, you know, as far as I'm concerned... That's not in the fucking building down there. That's a free roof right there. That's a consumable. That's probably the most expensive thing that I'm gonna- when I'm gonna cry about my house. Let's get done.

Yeah. Love to pay $25,000 to replace a thing I can't even fuckin' see. Yep. Liam coming out strong for the, like, just put some corrugated iron over it. Yeah! Yeah! What do you care? It'll leak anyway!

Get up there with some hot snot asphalt and just patch it up. Yeah, I've put 75 years on my 25 year roof, it's fine. Yeah, and my roof looks like... my roof is about 25 years but the place is about 30 years so i'm i'm like uh goodbye goodbye money roofs also have a half-life they don't tell you this yeah bad news, Cheddar. Every roof is in a state of decay, constantly. That is real. Where you just, like, lose shingles, and you have to, like... yeah. So, um, anyway.

A lot of personal possessions had to be removed and decontaminated as practical. Right? So, you know, they'd be like, you know, they tried as best they could to save items of great sentimental value, but, you know, at some point, the stuffed animal full of cesium has to go in the barrel of toxic waste, you know? Mr. Bear, no! Aw. All right, so, Sort of the aftermath.

Uh, how about some litigation? What happened? Oh, I bet there's a lot. Yeah. Oh. Well, um, in the interim, as this was going on, Brazil wrote a new constitution, actually. Yeah.

So, and the courts determined they couldn't really prosecute anyone who caused something under the old constitution. Oh. Oh, this'll be one of those, like... That's gonna be good. Yeah, love to do, um, like, some military junta stuff. Oh yeah. Yeah, so, litigation went nowhere and achieved nothing.

Uh, nothing happened. Well, that's efficient, right? Yes. We lost the emergency if it's happening. One of the doctors who owned the clinic was successfully sued for 100,000 real for leaving the clinic in a derelict condition. I mean, yeah, sure. And then the CNE and the Brazilian nuclear agency was ordered to pay 1.3 million

real, I believe in total, to the victims and their families in the year 2000. Oh, that's speedy. Yeah. Yeah, well, what's that in Xboxes, though? An ex- how much is an Xbox? Xbox is, what, 300? The Realtconverter? Yeah, hold on, that's the number we use.

Yeah, divided by the number of victims is the other thing. Oh, that's true. Okay, so, Xbox Brazil price. Man, I'm not seeing... a lot of... man, it... Uh, 4,000 Brazil real. Thank you. Okay, so, and they got what, like, 1.5 million or something, you said? 1.3.

In total. In total. So, divide that by however many victims, I guess, uh, 250 people in total were actually contaminated. Uh-huh. So 1.5 divided by 250 gives us... It's, as far as I can tell, about a thousand bucks a person. Six thousand. Yeah.

Six thousand bucks. A thousand. You can buy an Xbox! This is good, this is efficient government. Yeah, one Xbox each. One Xbox, and Xbox, a game, and accessories, pricing. Yeah. This is a good package bundle that C&EN have offered.

That's a good deal for having your house demolished and all your possessions buried in toxic waste barrels. Plus, a few of them not only got an Xbox, a game, and a controller, but also a free roof. Oh yeah, that's true. Wow, that's government efficiency at work. The free roof was really the good deal here. Yeah, behind door number one is a free roof.

Behind door... yeah, behind the other two doors are death or amputation because of radiation sickness. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. So. The other two doors just lead into a medical radiation source. On the plus side, at the very least, the scrappers were not charged with anything.

Yeah. Well, good. Yeah. I mean, I'd feel bad if they were like... Yeah. ...charged for something they didn't realise they were doing. No. It's like... it's... we're a strongly pro-Scrapyard Guy podcast, and as much as we may be, like,

appearing to derive amusement from these people's suffering, it is just in a kind of horrified way, because I think we're all pretty clear that, like, I don't know any better. I would fuckin' fry open some shit if that was my way of getting paid. Yeah, cause if you're having a stab, exactly. You gotta feed your fuckin' kids, man. Yeah. Yes.

Ideally, you would want not to feed them the, like, the forbidden spicy sandwich. Radioactive sauce, yes. Forbidden chili powder. You just got me thinking about the, like, the green antifreeze the MTA uses, and I'm just like... cause sometimes you see it, like, accumulate in, like, a dumpster or something, and you'll just be like, mm, yeah. The forbidden liquid.

Forbidden Mountain Dew. Oh man. Whatever happened to that Egyptian mummy juice? What's going on with that? They drank it all. Oh, okay. Yeah. Subpoly's.

Limited run bottling. Sorry, collector hazard. Oh, okay. Yeah. So limited run bottling. Sorry, collector hazard. Sick of these fucking limited edition, time-limited content. Oh, good. So what have we learned? Did we learn anything? We've learned that any radioactive material should be required to have a cradle to grave plan so pretty much yeah you should have to have some sort of at least a bond saying hey

in case you go out of business this bond goes to sending this material back to the your radioactive authority so it doesn't get abandoned and government authorities should probably literally have a person whose job it is to make sure to trace every material like hey so once again yeah once again we're doing the good policy recommendations at the end of an hour and a half of just calling everybody involved a useless asshole yeah let's see if they listen yeah probably not yeah but yeah this is pretty much something that should be easily preventable because a source like this should have been on a list

and even if they were out of business the government should have just said we'll just take the source out you can fight over your compound we'll take the source out and keep it in the Brazilian I think they do it like their state equivalent keep it in a state know the um brazilian they think they do it like their state equivalent keep it

in a state equivalent nuclear archive until you guys figure out who owns it just a lending library for nuclear sources a lot of them are pretty much run like that i love when i open up my my like medical nuclear source and there's just like a bunch of like date stamps on there well that's just like accumulating fines that's stamps on there. Just like accumulating finds. That's one of the weird ones, is that they don't know... No one could actually trace where this source had been manufactured. That's weird. I guess probably because people had beaten it up so much with the acetylene torches

and like, grinding wheels and shit, that like, you know, the serial number was unreadable. Oh sure, but like, there's no record of thisreadable but like there's no record if there's no like paper records that's weird they think it was made at oak ridge but they don't know it's like reason it's reasonable approximation it's not like nowadays where every time one of those is made nowadays there's records kept in washington dc and switzerland saying hey we made this today it was escorted by these guys here. Or, hey, this was made by, like, China, and it was sent to somewhere.

Basically what we're saying is, do more paperwork. Nuclear safety, we've said before on the Three Mile Island episode, that nuclear plants work very well by virtue of being boring, and you want them to be as boring as possible, and a big part to be as boring as possible. And a big part of that is doing a bunch of forms.

You wanna have to fill out a bunch of paperwork to do anything. Do not abandon your nuclear material in an abandoned building. Don't do it. Yeah. Don't touch the blue powder. Do not look at the pretty blue light. Don't look at the pretty blue light. Don't look at the pretty blue light. Yeah.

Um. And... Put one of those, put one of those, like, um, like, calibration rod warnings on the fuckin' side of the thing, just in case anybody gets in there that says, hey, if you're reading this, drop this and run. And honestly, a lot of machines should have numbers saying, if you find this, please call this number or 911 Do not open this is poison

This is poison cool 7-1-1 before you scavenge. Yeah, I Think we should just give everyone a Geiger counter Yeah, I'd like that. That's cool. Everyone's walking cool noises. Yeah, everyone's walking around clicking all the time. Alright. But, anyway. Folks, make sure you can track and trace your nuclear material. Um, next... You know somebody listening to this, possibly multiple somebodies will be in charge

of actual nuclear material, so this is not like a... Horrifying. ...an idle joke. Yes. nuclear material so this is not like an idle joke yes once you buy 700 000 smoke detectors and harvest the radioactive material pharma to make your nuclear reactor i hate that we all know i hate that we all know exactly who this kid is still my favorite like i what first time i read i'm like this is fake this can't be reads nrc reads nrc it's real oh my god this is horrifying yeah it'll have to be another episode assemble your own nuclear reactor at home uh And if you can't make your own, store-bought is fine.

It turns out the nuclear reactor is the easy part. The turbine, now that's difficult. Alright. Next episode is the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster. That's right. Next week. Next week. Fun fun fun, fun.

And before we go, does anyone have commercials? Listen to Trash Future, subscribe to the Trash Future Twitch stream, which is twitch.tv forward slash Trash Future podcast. We're playing Shadowrun

on the Thursdays now, if you wanna do some tabletop gaming. Ooh, fun. Yeah. Uh, Franklin 11 is out. Where is Franklin 12? Where is Franklin 12? It's coming soon. I'm making it easier to make than the last one.

That's coming soon. I'm making it easier to make than the last one. Uh, that's my commercial. Uh, Jenna, do you have a commercial? Um, besides follow my Instagram at ucchema.com. Not much, really, but thank you for having me on everyone. Oh yeah. Thanks for coming on and making us and being smart about nuclear stuff when we don't know anything because we're morons we needed we needed someone who knew what they were talking about and you've done a great job thank you for like escorting us idiots through this hey you're not you're not idiots you're all

pretty smart people after quarantine i i'll bring down i'll bring down some like local micro brew i found thank you fun oh shit we'll start a podcast beer exchange i'm excited to go well give me an excuse to go down to philly because i haven't been there in like geez since quarantine oh well i haven't been to new york city since quarantine started so you know do my best to avoid it but yes bye not liam on the other hand listen listen uh i i avoid it uh for uh ethical reasons. I will not be explaining this further. Good night, everybody.

Yeah, bye. Good night, everyone. Bye, everyone.