Panic under your rock

[Shalom]

I had a customer asking about KI the other day. Unfortunately neither of my wholesalers carry the Iosat tablets, and the company (which does sell direct) is out of them until April or so. (They just sold 5.4 million tablets to the government of Kuwait, apparently.)

I believe they carry instructions NOT to use them until someone in authority tells you to start. I wonder how many people buy them and figure they'd better take them anyway "just in case", or because they don't trust the authorities to tell them the truth?

[teh_blumchenkinder]

Yeah, see, LillyFilly lives in Japan, iirc. She'd be advised to buy a gas mask and stuff. Seriously. People panicking when they live across the largest ocean is maybe a good way to burn calories and give them another target to be stupid at, rather than the desk clerk or something. (Hey I can hope, right? ;__; )

[mattm04]

Great idea! Why worry about radiation that isn't going to reach you, or living someplace where the possibility of a similar disaster does exist but is extremely minute, when you can live under a brutal dictator instead?

Some people's kids....

And if you live within a certain radius of a plant, they provide you with the pills and emergency evacuation instructions should something go horribly wrong. As as we witnessed with Japan it apparently did not have any possible impact on the nearby population for several days. Plenty of time to evacuate.

I'm sure all the operators of plants will definatley take a serous look at the engineering of the plant and make any necessary changes.

[jedimaster91]

In any case, taking potassium iodine is NOT something you want to be doing without a clear cut medical reason. It is possible to take too much.

KI's main use is to protect the thyroid by saturating it with stable iodine. That way it can't take up any of the radioactive stuff. Thyroid hormones are essential, so you don't want to go frying the glad unless it's absolutely medically necessary.

Radioactive iodine decays very rapidly, thankfully. You would have to get 100 chest x rays or 10 CT scans to match the amount of radiation that actually is reaching California.

I-131 is a byproduct of nuclear fission and has a half life of ~8 days.* Which might sound like a lot until you remember the uranium-238 that's in there has a half life of ~4.5 billion years. So yeah, I'll take the 8 day half life, thanks.

And it does NOTHING against other forms of radiation.

It's not so much the form of radiation as the isotope. In order for the KI to have any effect, the isotope has to be iodine. It doesn't protect against anything else and all it's doing is protecting the thyroid.




*With I-125 you're looking at about 60 days, but for all intents and purposes, it's a synthetic isotope. And with a decay energy of 35 kEv, it's not very potent. It does have some uses in brachytherapy and to treat prostate cancer and brain tumors. However, with the latter two, there are much more effective treatments out there.

[Sapphire Silk]

I had a customer asking about KI the other day. Unfortunately neither of my wholesalers carry the Iosat tablets, and the company (which does sell direct) is out of them until April or so. (They just sold 5.4 million tablets to the government of Kuwait, apparently.)

I believe they carry instructions NOT to use them until someone in authority tells you to start. I wonder how many people buy them and figure they'd better take them anyway "just in case", or because they don't trust the authorities to tell them the truth?

Man. I should buy stock in that company.

But yeah . . . too many folks would ignore the instructions and do what they want because heaven would fall from the sky if they believed an expert or a government official.

[AccountingDrone]

Ah, so sad, Niantic is a bit of a drive for me. Though maybe when we head up to RI for a day trip, we'll try it. ::heads off to PM::

If you have dust, mold <scritch> or mildew allergies, avoid it <scritch> like the <scritch, scritch> plague <scritch ACHHHHHOOOOOO snarf, scritch>

[Kogarashi]

If you have dust, mold <scritch> or mildew allergies, avoid it <scritch> like the <scritch, scritch> plague <scritch ACHHHHHOOOOOO snarf, scritch>

Luckily my allergies are ridiculously mild. *passes the tissues*

[lobo94]

That reminds me of an episode of scrubs. Some of the characters were watching the news. The news hinted at an epidemic of flu or something like that. Nurses commented about people panicking over stuff like that. A split second later, the ER was crammed full of people who saw the news and thought they had that strain of the flu. Ahhh the power of suggestion LOL

The power of suggestion is a curious thing. Makes one man weep, makes another man sing.

My apologies to Huey Lewis and the News.

[Geek King]

Arg. The news coverage of the Japanese reactors has had me wanting to throw the TV out for the last two weeks.

All the main reactor materials were shut down when the earthquake hit, so there has never been any danger of what most people think of when you say "meltdown." What they are dealing with right now, from what I can tell from some nuclear physics-types talking about it, are spent fuel rods that were stored in too-large of a quantity boiling off the coolant. When the water swamped the reactor site, all the backup pumps were underwater, and there have been some issues with the truck-mounted backup-backups. When the water boiled low enough, the steam was super-heated very quickly by exposed waste material, which caused the hydrogen to separate. Hydrogen goes boom rather easily, and that's causing most, if not all, of the explosions. Most of what has escaped is material with a radioactive half-life between 30 seconds and 3.5 minutes. Really only causing a threat to the reactor site, and survivable with treatment. The workers who are on-site are likely to pull through with few radioactivity issues beyond irritating airport screeners for the next few years.

But, boy, does the idea of a nuclear cloud o'doom crossing the Pacific get ratings! Nevermind that most 747 pilots have a higher exposure to radiation than what's in the clouds making it to the U.S.

Meanwhile, there are thousands of people missing, classrooms full of kids who may have lost every close family member, and whole towns that just don't exist anymore. I've sent my donation along already. All I can do right now, besides pray, being half a world away.

[Captain Trips]

Well, the radiation has made it here to California. And it has raised the background radiation as expected -- we went from something like 5 millisieverts to 6 millisieverts. And it takes at least 100 millisieverts to have any measurable effect on the human body anyway.

So what, big deal. If you live near a coal-fired power plant, you are getting much more radiation than if you lived IN a nuclear plant. And a granite statue will put out 30-40 millisieverts, so should we tear down all the statues in the country?

I can't wait for interstellar travel - the smartest 1 percent will leave this world, and the average intelligence of the rest won't even notice! (Book me a ticket in the S.S. R. A. Heinlein, please.)

[sarasquirrel]

Hi other neighbor!
Btw there is a fantastic book store near Millstone in Niantic, if you live in the same state and want to know where it is, PM me. It's got goats, and cats!...Oh and lots and lots of reasonably priced books and they do trades! It's lovely.

i think ive been there...i remember goats lol

[Ironclad Alibi]

I hear people are buying-up gas masks left right and sideways for when the volcanoes erupt. I'm going to go start building my bunker now...

According to CNN, companies selling doomsday bunkers have seen their sales skyrocket anywhere from 20% to 1000%.

[AccountingDrone]

Luckily my allergies are ridiculously mild. *passes the tissues*

Thag u berry buch
<snorfle>
Any time Rob buys books from there they spend quality time out on the deck being sunned and aired out. I was seriously tempted by the report of the full set of Burton translation of the 1001 Arabian Nights, it was selling for a couple hundred dollars but someone snarfled it up before we could get it. He said it even had all it's original plates [which usually get cut out and sold as art]

[Sapphire Silk]

I can't wait for interstellar travel - the smartest 1 percent will leave this world, and the average intelligence of the rest won't even notice! (Book me a ticket in the S.S. R. A. Heinlein, please.)

I'll be booked in the cabin next door.

My greatest regret in life is that I will not likely live long enough to be able to emigrate off this rock.