People working on the Manhattan Project in the freezing desert used to warm their hands by holding lumps of uranium. A lot of life shortening moves available.
The Soviets deployed a lot of nuclear heaters across their empire. I think they even had nuclear buoys. These units can also produce electricity, which is why capitalist countries also used them, but for space probes too far from the sun for solar.
That stuff got forgotten and abandoned after 1991. It’s caused some rather nasty injuries, that we know about.
I mean, as an alpha emitter the radiation can’t penetrate your skin. As long as you wash your hands afterwards it’s probably fine. You wouldn’t see me trying it though
The First Nations people in the Northern Territory in Australia called an area “sickness country” and didn’t live there (that their history is about 60,000 to 70,000 years). In the mid 1900s it was developed to be a major uranium mining area. It seems that the first people decided that living too close to uranium was not a good thing.
Yeah, a natural source of uranium ore wouldn’t be a great place to be around, if you don’t have the right protective equipment. Lots of potential for dust in the air, or on surfaces that you touch. The danger becomes inhalation or ingestion, bringing the radioactive material into your body.
People working on the Manhattan Project in the freezing desert used to warm their hands by holding lumps of uranium. A lot of life shortening moves available.
The Soviets deployed a lot of nuclear heaters across their empire. I think they even had nuclear buoys. These units can also produce electricity, which is why capitalist countries also used them, but for space probes too far from the sun for solar.
That stuff got forgotten and abandoned after 1991. It’s caused some rather nasty injuries, that we know about.
I mean, as an alpha emitter the radiation can’t penetrate your skin. As long as you wash your hands afterwards it’s probably fine. You wouldn’t see me trying it though
The First Nations people in the Northern Territory in Australia called an area “sickness country” and didn’t live there (that their history is about 60,000 to 70,000 years). In the mid 1900s it was developed to be a major uranium mining area. It seems that the first people decided that living too close to uranium was not a good thing.
Yeah, a natural source of uranium ore wouldn’t be a great place to be around, if you don’t have the right protective equipment. Lots of potential for dust in the air, or on surfaces that you touch. The danger becomes inhalation or ingestion, bringing the radioactive material into your body.
People used to use uranium for all sorts of quack medical purposes, up to including taking pills of the stuff.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_ore_Revigator
https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/radioactive-quack-cures/pills-potions-and-other-miscellany/uranium-homeopathic-medicine.html
Isotopes was a wild field back then
Up and at them!