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Radioactive Snails Crawl Up From Beneath
slidersv writes "Reuters is reporting discovery of radioactive snails in the area where three hydrogen bombs were lost by US in the 1966. The radioactive creatures crawl up from underground, where authorities suspect deposits of uranium and plutonium may be located."
Jokes about radio-cochlear overlords aside, two things come to mind:
- If we don't survive nuclear holocaust: what creatures, more robust than we, will? (Reminds me of the thriving Chernobylian fauna.)
- What ungodly mutations must an organism undergo to thrive therein?
If the future is bleak for humanity, it may be less so for simpler, more robust organisms....are gonna git them some good eatin' now... Escarglow!
> How the fuck do you lose a goddamn hydrogen bomb?
Maybe it was packed into the same box as the moon landing videos.
Sigh. From the article:
three U.S. hydrogen bombs fell by accident 40 years ago may trigger a new joint U.S.-Spanish clean-up operation, officials said on Wednesday.
The hydrogen bombs fell near the fishing village of Palomares in 1966 after a mid-air collision between a bomber and a refuelling craft, in which seven of 11 crewmen died.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
If you're in Tokyo right now...
RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Not so much 'lost' as misplaced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palomares
I for one will be happy to welcome our radioactive slime-spouting overlords.
In, oh, just over twenty years, which is the time it'll take for the snails to crawl from Spain to menace Tokyo (which, as we all know, is the ultimate goal of everything radioactive, oversize or alien in this world).
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
It ends up they basically found them after and detonated them which spread uranium and plutonium in the soil hence radioactive snails. But the summary definetly made it sound like the snails were the least of our problems.
If anyone post anymore snail jokes, they will be slugged.
"How the fuck do you lose a goddamn hydrogen bomb?"
Uh, you crash a plane containing hydrogen bombs.
Technically, none of the bombs were "lost". The B-52 that crashed (due to a collision with a mid-air refueling tanker) carried 4 B28 1.1 megaton thermonuclear bombs. One of the bombs landed intact in the ocean, another landed intact on land, both were recovered. The parachutes on the other two bombs failed to deploy and their conventional high explosive charges went off when they hit the ground. Thankfully, the safety systems of the bombs prevented a nuclear explosion, but the conventional explosions nevertheless distributed a large quantity of radioactive bomb guts over a wide area (thus the contamination problems mentioned).
P.S. RTFA. UTFI (Use The F'ing Internet).
Shouldn't this now be 'our radioactive underlords'
where did my sig go? where's my sig at?
Why should Spain pay for part of the clean-up? It was our mess. We should be cleaning it up. Either the military goes in and fixes it, or we taxpayers foot it.
When I was a kid, I was raised to clean up the mess I made, not entangle everyone else (financially) into the task. I broke a window, I worked it off.
It's all about responsibility...
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
They were trying to get rid of the spanish inquisition before monty python showed up
This situation is the result of what is now popularly known as a "broken arrow". A nuclear weapons accident that does not produce the risk of nuclear war. The weapon (a missing weapon on the nuclear scale)would actually be known as an "empty quiver".
As reported by wikipedia, there are currently 11 such weapons known to be missing from the United States arsenal. It should be noted that these weapons are not the pitiful 1-5 kiloton weapons that Korea is detonating. It is likely they are 10+ megaton city-killers.
All that being said, I wouldn't worry too much about the situation. Anyone (or anything) with the capability to decipher how to actually set one of these missing weapons off is most likely nothing short of a country. Countries with nuclear weapons aren't something terribly dangerous, due to nuclear deterrance (MAD).
Add to that the fact that the US is unable to find these weapons (Some are presumed destroyed or at least damaged beyond repair)and I find it much less likely these will be a threat than, say, the car that passes by me when I walk to school.
Snails on a Plane?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
"How the fuck do you lose a goddamn hydrogen bomb?"
"Uh, you crash a plane containing hydrogen bombs."
More here: http://www.milnet.com/cdiart.htm
From the above source: "[the second most serious nuclear weapons accident on record - MILNET]" (it also goes on to describe a similar accident at Thule).
The B-52s were performing Airborne Nuclear Alert duty under the code-name "Chrome Dome" where bombers would loiter near points outside of the Soviet Union (see Dr. Strangelove).
During this program a mid-air collision between a B-52 and a KC-135 tanker aircraft occurred during aerial refueling over Palomares, Spain on the 17th of January, 1966.
Four megaton-range hydrogen bombs were lost. Two were recovered eventually fairly intact while the other two underwent a minor detonation of the conventional explosives that were an integral part of them. The safety fuses in them prevented a disastrous nuclear detonation. However dispersion of both plutonium and uranium material over several hundred hectares resulted in thousands of tons of contaminated radioactive soil having to be sent back to the USA. The USAF decided this was too expensive to risk again, and it ended that part of the airborne alert program.
There have been several reports of contamination remaining in the area in recent years and currently U.S and Spanish governments have agreed to investigate the need for further clean up, this time sharing the costs.
Interestingly the search efford for the missing bomb out at sea was performed using the Bayesian search theory. Eventually the bomb was recoved with the help of a local fisherman, who then claimed salvage rights from it under the high seas (usually a reward of a few percent of the actual value). But not before U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara had publicly stated a value of no less than two billion U.S. dollars for it. The Air Force settled out of court.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
The movie will be like "Them!" only much, much slower...
Makes you wonder about the real history of Kosher laws in Judaism.
Indeed. I imagine the radioactive exhaust of the flying saucer that parted the Red Sea contaminated some of the food supply for at least the next 40 years. Coincidence?
"Imagine, reading Beowulf by the light of a cluster of these snails..."
Much better.
Immune to radioactivity, yet incredibly susceptible to salt. Nature sure had fun making you.
>The hydrogen bombs fell near the fishing village
Such simple times when you could have a crash, lose 3 nukes then shrug and say 'ah well, never mind'.
These days every ounce of anything remotely useful for bomb making needs to be accounted for just in case some nasty terrorist gets their hands on it. What went wrong? I want the good old days back when you could casually leave weapons of mass destruction lying around near fishing villages ('if they trawl one up they'll probably just throw it back, right?) and not worry about it.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
If god made humans in his image, does that mean he is also a weakling?
Nah, we just tell ourselves that to cover for the undeniable fact that we were scraped together at the end of the Creation project. And at that, using leftovers after the main project deliverable: implementing every imaginable variation on the the concept of "beetle".
And if that weren't enough to kick us in the anthropocentric nutes, it's clear we aren't even in the same league as termites, as measured by biomass or biodiversity. This caused some severe editing of the Creation story, particularly Genesis 1:25 - 1:31, which originally went something like this:
25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
26 And God said, We have checked our deliverables and Creation is complete; so let there be Slack; and God saw the Slack, that it was good, and God separated the productive phase of the Project from the mindless consumption of excess Resources.
27 And the Slack was fruitful of all manner of Diversions of surplus Resources; so God said, Let Us celebrate; and the Celebration begat the Kegger, and the Kegger begat Beer, and Beer begat all manner of amusing indiscretions. And God saw that these where more or less Harmless.
28 Then God noticed that the Project had this left-over mud, and this He fashioned into a Man; but there was not enough fuel left over to fire the clay, so when Man was half-baked, He breathed upon Man and brought him to life.
29 Then Man opened his eyes, and looking on God asked, are You Me? And God said no. Then looking around, Man asked, Is all this for Me? And God said, No, you are only the half-baked leftovers, but if you study Creation perhaps you can become full-baked. And Man thought that this was Bad, and set out to Improve on Matters.
30 So Man said,let there be Self-Serving Sophistry, and let there be Willful Ignorance; and these were fruitful beyond all Measure, and so begat Religion, Conformism, Bigotry and every manner of Officious Narrow-Mindedness. And Man thought these were Good, and he wrote his version of Events down so that none would ever challenge Conformity without Fear.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good, except for the bits that came after the Beer which in retrospect looked somewhat Doubtful. And God, seeing that Slack had used up the Resources He needed to Fix the Problem, said, Let there be Muddling Through; Let there be Counting On Things Working Out in the End. And seeing that these were not Satisfactory and He was over budget anyway, God said, Let there be Hope. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
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