On 05 Apr 2023 at 15:09:08 BST, "The Natural Philosopher"
<tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 05/04/2023 15:06, Andrew wrote:
>> On 05/04/2023 08:48, charles wrote:
>>> In article <k94mecFe7reU2@mid.individual.net>,
>>> alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk> wrote:
>>>> On 05/04/2023 07:40, Tim+ wrote:
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> We were in New Zealand in 2019 when they had a test. Totally undramatic
>>>>> (but unmissable). Folk seem to be running around like headless chickens
>>>>> here with ridiculous ”what if• scenarios.
>>>
>>>> Unless the Government have provided nuclear warfare bunkers for the all
>>>> of the population and educated the population on what to do there is no
>>>> point in having a siren test? I'll bet most people would want to be
>>>> oblivious of their death rather than being told that they are going to
>>>> die in 4 minutes time.
>>>
>>>> Or is it like the 1960s again where on hearing the siren you are meant
>>>> to get out your DIY tools, take a door off its hinges and hide under it
>>>> until after the blast?
>>>
>>> The alarm is not a 4 minute warning. It's for things like flooding.
>>> Anyway, if you're at home the 4 minutes is enough time to get out the
>>> bottle of malt and have a last dram - or two,
>>>
>> If the sun suddenly died or blew up we wouldn't know
>> for 8 minutes anyway.
> I wonder how much warning for a Germany sized asteroid hitting the pacific?

A Germany sized asteroid (by which I assume you mean a body of some hundreds
of miles diameter) would generate enough energy to melt the entire surface of
the planet and boil the oceans dry - complete sterilisation of the planet. It
would the take at least a 1000 years to cool enough for the mother of all rain
storms to ensue - rain non-stop for some months.

--
Bessie Braddock: "Winston, you are drunk!"
Churchill: "And you, madam, are ugly. But I shall be sober in the morning."

On 05/04/2023 16:39, Spike wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> On 05/04/2023 14:40, Spike wrote:
>>> A 1MT high-altitude (100 mile high) burst over the North Sea will wipe out
>>> most electronics in the UK, although such a blast won’t kill anyone.
>>>
>> I wonder.
>>
>>> What will kill people is the ensuing panic.
>>>
>> Like lockdown?
>>
>>> Roving gangs of psychopaths will kill for food, booze, and sex.
>>>
>> So pretty much like the House of Commons writ large?
>>
>>> It won’t be pretty.
>>
>> They aren't.
>>
>> Joking apart how far would people get if cars are buggered due to EMP?
>> As far as the tank will take them because the electric fuel pumps wont work.
>>
>> No, those gangs wouldn't last very long in the major cities. Once they
>> had looted the supermarkets of food and drink.
>>
>> I actually think that EMP wouldn't be that bad. But until it happens no
>> one knows.
>>
>> The Tsar Bomba was 50MT over Novaya Zemlya, No EMP effect.
>> High altitude tests to produce EMP but nothing else show it could go a
>> long way and be quite destructive, but to whom?
>>
>> Russia itself would be very vulnerable - more so than Europe.
>
> The EMP from the K-3 300kt test at 180 miles over Sary Shagan in October
> 1962 put up to 3400A into an instrumented 570km telephone cable before it
> failed, burned down the Karaganda power station, knocked out radars 1000km
> away, and a six-month pause the cosmonaut programme is alleged to be due to
> EMP damage to the electronic equipment at Baikonur, over 700km distant.
>
> After the collapse of the Soviet Union, some details released about the K-3
> device revealed that it was not designed to be EMP-efficient.
>
so yet another weapon that is as likely to damage you as your opponent.

--
The biggest threat to humanity comes from socialism, which has utterly
diverted our attention away from what really matters to our existential
survival, to indulging in navel gazing and faux moral investigations
into what the world ought to be, whilst we fail utterly to deal with
what it actually is.

On 05/04/2023 18:31, Tim Streater wrote:
> On 05 Apr 2023 at 13:57:50 BST, "The Natural Philosopher"
> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> The one thing that does make a difference, and is present in reactor
>> leaks and nuclear blasts, is radio iodine, which fortunately is gone ion
>> a matter of hours. However if you don't flood your body with (ordinary)
>> iodine come may end up in the thyroid and give you thyroid cancer.
>
> Agree about the thyroid part but it's a little longer than hours. A kilo of
> I-131 will decay entirely (not a single atom left) in a little over 22 months.
> Even a 1000 tons is all gone after 28 months.
>
(i) you don't get a kilo. Bombs have surprisingly little
uranium/plutonium in them, and what there is left gets blown to bits and
dispersed over a wide area.

(ii) I agree was a little optimistic, but with an 8 day half life it is
not a long term contaminant, although one of the more fiercely
radioactive ones. It washes out of the air quickly too.

--
The biggest threat to humanity comes from socialism, which has utterly
diverted our attention away from what really matters to our existential
survival, to indulging in navel gazing and faux moral investigations
into what the world ought to be, whilst we fail utterly to deal with
what it actually is.

On 05/04/2023 18:37, Tim Streater wrote:
> On 05 Apr 2023 at 15:09:08 BST, "The Natural Philosopher"
> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 05/04/2023 15:06, Andrew wrote:
>>> On 05/04/2023 08:48, charles wrote:
>>>> In article <k94mecFe7reU2@mid.individual.net>,
>>>> alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>> On 05/04/2023 07:40, Tim+ wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We were in New Zealand in 2019 when they had a test. Totally undramatic
>>>>>> (but unmissable). Folk seem to be running around like headless chickens
>>>>>> here with ridiculous ”what if• scenarios.
>>>>
>>>>> Unless the Government have provided nuclear warfare bunkers for the all
>>>>> of the population and educated the population on what to do there is no
>>>>> point in having a siren test? I'll bet most people would want to be
>>>>> oblivious of their death rather than being told that they are going to
>>>>> die in 4 minutes time.
>>>>
>>>>> Or is it like the 1960s again where on hearing the siren you are meant
>>>>> to get out your DIY tools, take a door off its hinges and hide under it
>>>>> until after the blast?
>>>>
>>>> The alarm is not a 4 minute warning. It's for things like flooding.
>>>> Anyway, if you're at home the 4 minutes is enough time to get out the
>>>> bottle of malt and have a last dram - or two,
>>>>
>>> If the sun suddenly died or blew up we wouldn't know
>>> for 8 minutes anyway.
>> I wonder how much warning for a Germany sized asteroid hitting the pacific?
>
> A Germany sized asteroid (by which I assume you mean a body of some hundreds
> of miles diameter) would generate enough energy to melt the entire surface of
> the planet and boil the oceans dry - complete sterilisation of the planet. It
> would the take at least a 1000 years to cool enough for the mother of all rain
> storms to ensue - rain non-stop for some months.
>

Now that's the sort of man-sized global warming I can relate to

--
To ban Christmas, simply give turkeys the vote.

Tim Streater <tim@streater.me.uk> wrote:
> On 05 Apr 2023 at 15:09:08 BST, "The Natural Philosopher"
> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 05/04/2023 15:06, Andrew wrote:
>>> On 05/04/2023 08:48, charles wrote:
>>>> In article <k94mecFe7reU2@mid.individual.net>,
>>>> alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>> On 05/04/2023 07:40, Tim+ wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We were in New Zealand in 2019 when they had a test. Totally undramatic
>>>>>> (but unmissable). Folk seem to be running around like headless chickens
>>>>>> here with ridiculous ”what if• scenarios.
>>>>
>>>>> Unless the Government have provided nuclear warfare bunkers for the all
>>>>> of the population and educated the population on what to do there is no
>>>>> point in having a siren test? I'll bet most people would want to be
>>>>> oblivious of their death rather than being told that they are going to
>>>>> die in 4 minutes time.
>>>>
>>>>> Or is it like the 1960s again where on hearing the siren you are meant
>>>>> to get out your DIY tools, take a door off its hinges and hide under it
>>>>> until after the blast?
>>>>
>>>> The alarm is not a 4 minute warning. It's for things like flooding.
>>>> Anyway, if you're at home the 4 minutes is enough time to get out the
>>>> bottle of malt and have a last dram - or two,
>>>>
>>> If the sun suddenly died or blew up we wouldn't know
>>> for 8 minutes anyway.
>> I wonder how much warning for a Germany sized asteroid hitting the pacific?
>
> A Germany sized asteroid (by which I assume you mean a body of some hundreds
> of miles diameter) would generate enough energy to melt the entire surface of
> the planet and boil the oceans dry - complete sterilisation of the planet. It
> would the take at least a 1000 years to cool enough for the mother of all rain
> storms to ensue - rain non-stop for some months.

You mean like a Scottish summer? ;-)

Tim

--
Please don't feed the trolls

On 05-Apr-23 14:55, Andrew wrote:
> On 05/04/2023 14:37, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
>> Am 05/04/2023 um 09:58 schrieb Robin:
>>> On 04/04/2023 23:40, Michael Chare wrote:
>>>> On 04/04/2023 20:50, Cursitor Doom wrote:
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> Does anyone know when that test is being carried out? - the one where
>>>>> they activate everyone's mobile phones with a siren to warn about a
>>>>> nuclear attack? I can't find anything in the Mail/Express online about
>>>>> it at all. Apparently there was some concern that turning everyone's
>>>>> phone into a siren could imperil women who have a secret phone they
>>>>> keep from their partners or some such nonsense. Like that's going to
>>>>> matter two fucks with Armageddon 4 mins away!
>>>>> But anyway, anyone know if this is going ahead and if so, when?
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> To get alerts on an Android phone it needs to be running Android
>>>> version 11 or later and connected to a 4G or 5G network.
>>> The official advice is that's what you need to be sure of being able
>>> to get them.  For others they have "If you have an earlier version of
>>> Android, you may still be able to receive alerts. To check, search
>>> your device settings for ‘emergency alerts’. "
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Back in the day, when radio amateurs were men and not like resident
>> trolls in here, they were the ones spreading emergency messages
>> around. Raynet only do cocktail parties nowadays.
>>
>>
>
> Radio 4 used to broadcast emergency messages for people on
> holiday, telling them to ring xxx hospital where their xxx
> relative is dangerously ill.

And we kept the phone number of the Severn Bridge toll booths on hand.
In order to pass on a message - if someone had left on a work trip, but
some urgent message arrived, shortly after they set off.

--
Sam Plusnet

On Wed, 05 Apr 2023 08:48:06 +0100, charles <charles@candehope.me.uk>
wrote:

>The alarm is not a 4 minute warning. It's for things like flooding.

Oh yes - it's for flooding. How foolish we are to suppose otherwise.
;->

On 05 Apr 2023 at 19:46:50 BST, "The Natural Philosopher"
<tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 05/04/2023 18:31, Tim Streater wrote:
>> On 05 Apr 2023 at 13:57:50 BST, "The Natural Philosopher"
>> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> The one thing that does make a difference, and is present in reactor
>>> leaks and nuclear blasts, is radio iodine, which fortunately is gone ion
>>> a matter of hours. However if you don't flood your body with (ordinary)
>>> iodine come may end up in the thyroid and give you thyroid cancer.
>>
>> Agree about the thyroid part but it's a little longer than hours. A kilo of
>> I-131 will decay entirely (not a single atom left) in a little over 22 months.
>> Even a 1000 tons is all gone after 28 months.
>>
> (i) you don't get a kilo. Bombs have surprisingly little
> uranium/plutonium in them, and what there is left gets blown to bits and
> dispersed over a wide area.
>
> (ii) I agree was a little optimistic, but with an 8 day half life it is
> not a long term contaminant, although one of the more fiercely
> radioactive ones. It washes out of the air quickly too.

Yeah I appreciate that, especially the bit about having your own iodine
supply. In fact the unfortunates at Chernobyl could have had iodine tablets
except for the usual Soviet paranoia about accepting them from others.

In part I was making the point that too many people just assume that all
fallout is "radioactive for millions of years", whereas for many isotopes, the
half life is quite short, and so for Chernobyl, Fukushima, there's none left.

--
If socialism helps the poor, why are the poor in socialist countries so much poorer than the poor in capitalist countries?

Mark

On 4/5/2023 10:17 AM, Andrew wrote:
> On 05/04/2023 14:40, Spike wrote:
>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>> On 05/04/2023 13:34, Colin Bignell wrote:
>>>> On 05/04/2023 13:23, Paul wrote:
>>>>> On 4/5/2023 3:31 AM, alan_m wrote:
>>>>>> On 05/04/2023 07:40, Tim+ wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> We were in New Zealand in 2019 when they had a test. Totally undramatic
>>>>>>> (but unmissable). Folk seem to be running around like headless chickens
>>>>>>> here with ridiculous “what if” scenarios.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Unless the Government have provided nuclear warfare bunkers for the
>>>>>> all of the population and educated the population on what to do there
>>>>>> is no point in having a siren test?  I'll bet most people would want
>>>>>> to be oblivious of their death rather than being told that they are
>>>>>> going to die in 4 minutes time.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Or is it like the 1960s again where on hearing the siren you are
>>>>>> meant to get out your DIY tools, take a door off its hinges and hide
>>>>>> under it until after the blast?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> A fort made out of cardboard boxes.
>>>>>
>>>>> When I was younger, that always worked.
>>>>>
>>>>> Your main protection is getting below grade, as an earthworks
>>>>> of any sort, would help with the blast overpressure (5PSI).
>>>>> (That's like a couple hundred tons pressing against one side
>>>>> of the house.) Which is equivalent to something like a 163 MPH wind.
>>>>> Hard to say where your door ends up, during the shock wave or wind
>>>>> (assumes the house has disappeared above your head, and you
>>>>> experience the tail edge of the shock wave).
>>>>>
>>>>> So maybe if you made a structure in the basement, it would
>>>>> need to be bolted to the concrete floor (the legs). That's so,
>>>>> if you thought the door was going to stop household debris that
>>>>> had fallen on top of you, the orientation of the door remains
>>>>> protective.
>>>>>
>>>>> Maybe with enough sandbags, you could do it with ballast.
>>>>
>>>> You were not expected to survive in the blast zones, and you chances
>>>> were not too good in the areas around them. However, at least half the
>>>> country was expected to be unaffected by the direct effects of a nuclear
>>>> attack. That is where you would need protection from fallout and enough
>>>> food, water and chemical loos to stay in there for at least two weeks.
>>>>
>>> I would agree with nearly all of that. Except the bit about protection
>>> from fallout. That was what they thought then, today we know it really
>>> isn't a huge issue.
>>> Iodine pills for a day or three, yes, after than no problemo. But given
>>> that most of the countries infrastructure was expected to be blown to
>>> hell, stockpiled food was no bad thing.,
>>>
>>> Back then loss of electricity would have been an inconvenience, today it
>>> would completely cripple our ability to function. I would expect more to
>>> die of cholera and typhoid due to the collapse of pumping stations and
>>> sewage processing plants
>>>
>>> And you can't run a cashless society without electricity.
>>
>> A 1MT high-altitude (100 mile high) burst over the North Sea will wipe out
>> most electronics in the UK, although such a blast won’t kill anyone.
>>
>> What will kill people is the ensuing panic.
>>
>> Roving gangs of psychopaths will kill for food, booze, and sex.
>>
>> It won’t be pretty.
>>
>
> It's like that in parts of London now.

Don't lose your grip on the door then.

The only people with iodine pills here, live next to the nuclear reactors.

They were promised iodine pills when the things were built, but never got them.
I think a ceremonial bottle of iodine pills was delivered to each house in that
town about three years ago.

So they're ready. All they need now, is doors. And a good grip.

To lend some authenticity to the thread here (disaster preparedness),
the power went off for about ten hours, and I've just finished plugging
stuff in and checking things after the power came back (my internetz weren't
working at first). There was a bit of water on the basement floor, but
no obvious ingress, so it must have been the floor drain backing up.

That leaves checking for roving gangs of psychopaths. What's best for that ?
Flashlight ? Bait trap ?

Paul

On 4/5/2023 5:55 PM, Tim Streater wrote:
> On 05 Apr 2023 at 19:46:50 BST, "The Natural Philosopher"
> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 05/04/2023 18:31, Tim Streater wrote:
>>> On 05 Apr 2023 at 13:57:50 BST, "The Natural Philosopher"
>>> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The one thing that does make a difference, and is present in reactor
>>>> leaks and nuclear blasts, is radio iodine, which fortunately is gone ion
>>>> a matter of hours. However if you don't flood your body with (ordinary)
>>>> iodine come may end up in the thyroid and give you thyroid cancer.
>>>
>>> Agree about the thyroid part but it's a little longer than hours. A kilo of
>>> I-131 will decay entirely (not a single atom left) in a little over 22 months.
>>> Even a 1000 tons is all gone after 28 months.
>>>
>> (i) you don't get a kilo. Bombs have surprisingly little
>> uranium/plutonium in them, and what there is left gets blown to bits and
>> dispersed over a wide area.
>>
>> (ii) I agree was a little optimistic, but with an 8 day half life it is
>> not a long term contaminant, although one of the more fiercely
>> radioactive ones. It washes out of the air quickly too.
>
> Yeah I appreciate that, especially the bit about having your own iodine
> supply. In fact the unfortunates at Chernobyl could have had iodine tablets
> except for the usual Soviet paranoia about accepting them from others.
>
> In part I was making the point that too many people just assume that all
> fallout is "radioactive for millions of years", whereas for many isotopes, the
> half life is quite short, and so for Chernobyl, Fukushima, there's none left.
>

That's why, when we ran samples through the Slowpoke reactor in university,
when they came back up from the reactor core, you had to let them sit
for ten minutes in the tray, before handling. That allows the short lived
isotopes to die out. Then you could pop the sample into the gamma ray
spectrometer, for assay. I don't even think we had a geiger counter
on the table, while working there.

We got to go into the reactor room, and there was a cute control panel,
with three meters on the face for control (about the size of a control panel
in Star Trek). And the flux dial, went through about three orders of magnitude
or so. The reactor output (max), was 10kW thermal, perfect for heating a household.
if you could get a permit for it.

The greenies used to do pamphlet campaigns about that thing, claiming there
would be a Three Mile Island, and that tiny core would "go to China". I think
to get there, it would have needed a mighty push :-) Where that thing sat, is
now just dirt, so they (or Father Time), won in the end. No more "free heating".

Paul

Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
> On 4/5/2023 10:17 AM, Andrew wrote:
>> On 05/04/2023 14:40, Spike wrote:
>>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>> On 05/04/2023 13:34, Colin Bignell wrote:
>>>>> On 05/04/2023 13:23, Paul wrote:
>>>>>> On 4/5/2023 3:31 AM, alan_m wrote:
>>>>>>> On 05/04/2023 07:40, Tim+ wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> We were in New Zealand in 2019 when they had a test. Totally undramatic
>>>>>>>> (but unmissable). Folk seem to be running around like headless chickens
>>>>>>>> here with ridiculous “what if” scenarios.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Unless the Government have provided nuclear warfare bunkers for the
>>>>>>> all of the population and educated the population on what to do there
>>>>>>> is no point in having a siren test?  I'll bet most people would want
>>>>>>> to be oblivious of their death rather than being told that they are
>>>>>>> going to die in 4 minutes time.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Or is it like the 1960s again where on hearing the siren you are
>>>>>>> meant to get out your DIY tools, take a door off its hinges and hide
>>>>>>> under it until after the blast?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> A fort made out of cardboard boxes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> When I was younger, that always worked.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Your main protection is getting below grade, as an earthworks
>>>>>> of any sort, would help with the blast overpressure (5PSI).
>>>>>> (That's like a couple hundred tons pressing against one side
>>>>>> of the house.) Which is equivalent to something like a 163 MPH wind.
>>>>>> Hard to say where your door ends up, during the shock wave or wind
>>>>>> (assumes the house has disappeared above your head, and you
>>>>>> experience the tail edge of the shock wave).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So maybe if you made a structure in the basement, it would
>>>>>> need to be bolted to the concrete floor (the legs). That's so,
>>>>>> if you thought the door was going to stop household debris that
>>>>>> had fallen on top of you, the orientation of the door remains
>>>>>> protective.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Maybe with enough sandbags, you could do it with ballast.
>>>>>
>>>>> You were not expected to survive in the blast zones, and you chances
>>>>> were not too good in the areas around them. However, at least half the
>>>>> country was expected to be unaffected by the direct effects of a nuclear
>>>>> attack. That is where you would need protection from fallout and enough
>>>>> food, water and chemical loos to stay in there for at least two weeks.
>>>>>
>>>> I would agree with nearly all of that. Except the bit about protection
>>>> from fallout. That was what they thought then, today we know it really
>>>> isn't a huge issue.
>>>> Iodine pills for a day or three, yes, after than no problemo. But given
>>>> that most of the countries infrastructure was expected to be blown to
>>>> hell, stockpiled food was no bad thing.,
>>>>
>>>> Back then loss of electricity would have been an inconvenience, today it
>>>> would completely cripple our ability to function. I would expect more to
>>>> die of cholera and typhoid due to the collapse of pumping stations and
>>>> sewage processing plants
>>>>
>>>> And you can't run a cashless society without electricity.
>>>
>>> A 1MT high-altitude (100 mile high) burst over the North Sea will wipe out
>>> most electronics in the UK, although such a blast won’t kill anyone.
>>>
>>> What will kill people is the ensuing panic.
>>>
>>> Roving gangs of psychopaths will kill for food, booze, and sex.
>>>
>>> It won’t be pretty.
>>>
>>
>> It's like that in parts of London now.
>
> Don't lose your grip on the door then.
>
> The only people with iodine pills here, live next to the nuclear reactors.
>
> They were promised iodine pills when the things were built, but never got them.
> I think a ceremonial bottle of iodine pills was delivered to each house in that
> town about three years ago.
>
> So they're ready. All they need now, is doors. And a good grip.
>
> To lend some authenticity to the thread here (disaster preparedness),
> the power went off for about ten hours, and I've just finished plugging
> stuff in and checking things after the power came back (my internetz weren't
> working at first). There was a bit of water on the basement floor, but
> no obvious ingress, so it must have been the floor drain backing up.
>
> That leaves checking for roving gangs of psychopaths. What's best for that ?
> Flashlight ? Bait trap ?

I don’t think there’s any need to worry about roving gangs of psychopaths
not finding you.

--
Spike

On 05/04/2023 22:55, Tim Streater wrote:
> On 05 Apr 2023 at 19:46:50 BST, "The Natural Philosopher"
> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 05/04/2023 18:31, Tim Streater wrote:
>>> On 05 Apr 2023 at 13:57:50 BST, "The Natural Philosopher"
>>> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The one thing that does make a difference, and is present in reactor
>>>> leaks and nuclear blasts, is radio iodine, which fortunately is gone ion
>>>> a matter of hours. However if you don't flood your body with (ordinary)
>>>> iodine come may end up in the thyroid and give you thyroid cancer.
>>>
>>> Agree about the thyroid part but it's a little longer than hours. A kilo of
>>> I-131 will decay entirely (not a single atom left) in a little over 22 months.
>>> Even a 1000 tons is all gone after 28 months.
>>>
>> (i) you don't get a kilo. Bombs have surprisingly little
>> uranium/plutonium in them, and what there is left gets blown to bits and
>> dispersed over a wide area.
>>
>> (ii) I agree was a little optimistic, but with an 8 day half life it is
>> not a long term contaminant, although one of the more fiercely
>> radioactive ones. It washes out of the air quickly too.
>
> Yeah I appreciate that, especially the bit about having your own iodine
> supply. In fact the unfortunates at Chernobyl could have had iodine tablets
> except for the usual Soviet paranoia about accepting them from others.
>
> In part I was making the point that too many people just assume that all
> fallout is "radioactive for millions of years", whereas for many isotopes, the
> half life is quite short, and so for Chernobyl, Fukushima, there's none left.
>
Inside the sarcophagus the elephant's foot is still *critical* I think.

"The foot is still active. In ‘86 the foot would have been fatal after
30 seconds of exposure; even today, the radiation is fatal after 300
seconds. There were fears that due to the continued chemical reactions
occurring within the mass that it may penetrate deeper into the ground,
potentially connecting with ground water, but these have proven unfounded."

The bad news is that Chernobyl was the worst possible nuclear accident
that released more radioactivity than a thousand nuclear weapons.
All over Europe.

The good news is that only 75 people died and 3000 people had their
cancerous thyroids removed. Apart from that the wildlife is doing great,
the people who refused to leave are doing great, and not one of the dire
predictions about a swathe of cancers all across Northern Europe turned
out to be correct.

Like Climate Change, the reality was a damp squib compared with model
predictions, because the models were likewise based on false assumptions

--

“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

On 06/04/2023 09:21, Paul wrote:
> On 4/5/2023 10:17 AM, Andrew wrote:
>> On 05/04/2023 14:40, Spike wrote:
>>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>> On 05/04/2023 13:34, Colin Bignell wrote:
>>>>> On 05/04/2023 13:23, Paul wrote:
>>>>>> On 4/5/2023 3:31 AM, alan_m wrote:
>>>>>>> On 05/04/2023 07:40, Tim+ wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> We were in New Zealand in 2019 when they had a test. Totally
>>>>>>>> undramatic
>>>>>>>> (but unmissable). Folk seem to be running around like headless
>>>>>>>> chickens
>>>>>>>> here with ridiculous “what if” scenarios.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Unless the Government have provided nuclear warfare bunkers for the
>>>>>>> all of the population and educated the population on what to do
>>>>>>> there
>>>>>>> is no point in having a siren test?  I'll bet most people would want
>>>>>>> to be oblivious of their death rather than being told that they are
>>>>>>> going to die in 4 minutes time.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Or is it like the 1960s again where on hearing the siren you are
>>>>>>> meant to get out your DIY tools, take a door off its hinges and hide
>>>>>>> under it until after the blast?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> A fort made out of cardboard boxes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> When I was younger, that always worked.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Your main protection is getting below grade, as an earthworks
>>>>>> of any sort, would help with the blast overpressure (5PSI).
>>>>>> (That's like a couple hundred tons pressing against one side
>>>>>> of the house.) Which is equivalent to something like a 163 MPH wind.
>>>>>> Hard to say where your door ends up, during the shock wave or wind
>>>>>> (assumes the house has disappeared above your head, and you
>>>>>> experience the tail edge of the shock wave).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So maybe if you made a structure in the basement, it would
>>>>>> need to be bolted to the concrete floor (the legs). That's so,
>>>>>> if you thought the door was going to stop household debris that
>>>>>> had fallen on top of you, the orientation of the door remains
>>>>>> protective.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Maybe with enough sandbags, you could do it with ballast.
>>>>>
>>>>> You were not expected to survive in the blast zones, and you chances
>>>>> were not too good in the areas around them. However, at least half the
>>>>> country was expected to be unaffected by the direct effects of a
>>>>> nuclear
>>>>> attack. That is where you would need protection from fallout and
>>>>> enough
>>>>> food, water and chemical loos to stay in there for at least two weeks.
>>>>>
>>>> I would agree with nearly all of that. Except the bit about protection
>>>> from fallout. That was what they thought then, today we know it really
>>>> isn't a huge issue.
>>>> Iodine pills for a day or three, yes, after than no problemo. But given
>>>> that most of the countries infrastructure was expected to be blown to
>>>> hell, stockpiled food was no bad thing.,
>>>>
>>>> Back then loss of electricity would have been an inconvenience,
>>>> today it
>>>> would completely cripple our ability to function. I would expect
>>>> more to
>>>> die of cholera and typhoid due to the collapse of pumping stations and
>>>> sewage processing plants
>>>>
>>>> And you can't run a cashless society without electricity.
>>>
>>> A 1MT high-altitude (100 mile high) burst over the North Sea will
>>> wipe out
>>> most electronics in the UK, although such a blast won’t kill anyone.
>>>
>>> What will kill people is the ensuing panic.
>>>
>>> Roving gangs of psychopaths will kill for food, booze, and sex.
>>>
>>> It won’t be pretty.
>>>
>>
>> It's like that in parts of London now.
>
> Don't lose your grip on the door then.
>
> The only people with iodine pills here, live next to the nuclear reactors.
>
> They were promised iodine pills when the things were built, but never
> got them.
> I think a ceremonial bottle of iodine pills was delivered to each house
> in that
> town about three years ago.
Well if it bothers you that much..

https://www.amazon.co.uk/iodine-supplement/b
Hardly hard to obtain or expensive

>
> So they're ready. All they need now, is doors. And a good grip.
>
> To lend some authenticity to the thread here (disaster preparedness),
> the power went off for about ten hours, and I've just finished plugging
> stuff in and checking things after the power came back (my internetz
> weren't
> working at first). There was a  bit of water on the basement floor, but
> no obvious ingress, so it must have been the floor drain backing up.
>
> That leaves checking for roving gangs of psychopaths. What's best for
> that ?
Oh, they are easy to spot. They only have one line
"We are from the government, and we are here to help you"
Shoot on sight

http://vps.templar.co.uk/Cartoons%20and%20Politics/GBU.png

--
"Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They
always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them"

Margaret Thatcher

On 06 Apr 2023 at 12:07:12 BST, "The Natural Philosopher"
<tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> Inside the sarcophagus the elephant's foot is still *critical* I think.

Don't see how it can be. Criticality now would mean runaway heat production,
which would melt it again. The thing would only be critical because of its
*shape*. If it happened to be near spherical (spherical is the worst shape in
this context), and critical, it would have melted through the reactor bottom
and the floor (which is what it did), but then, like any liquid which you
*pour* *out*, it would *cease* to be spherical and would flatten out. And
thereby would *instantly* cease to be critical. So heat production would drop
dramatically and it would freeze in place. Which is what it did - hence the
"foot".

The salient point here is its shape, and therefore surface area. Minimum
surface area is always a sphere. Change that and the surface area shoots up,
larger surface area for the neutrons to escape through, and it drops below
critical.

--
"A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled." - Sir Barnett Cocks (1907-1989)

On 06/04/2023 12:41, Tim Streater wrote:
> On 06 Apr 2023 at 12:07:12 BST, "The Natural Philosopher"
> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Inside the sarcophagus the elephant's foot is still *critical* I think.
>
> Don't see how it can be.

And yet it is, sorta . Its not a runaway chain reaction but a chain
reaction it is.

Criticality now would mean runaway heat production,

That is not what criticality means. All it means is a sustained chan
reaction.

> which would melt it again. The thing would only be critical because of its
> *shape*. If it happened to be near spherical (spherical is the worst shape in
> this context), and critical, it would have melted through the reactor bottom
> and the floor (which is what it did), but then, like any liquid which you
> *pour* *out*, it would *cease* to be spherical and would flatten out. And
> thereby would *instantly* cease to be critical. So heat production would drop
> dramatically and it would freeze in place. Which is what it did - hence the
> "foot".
>
> The salient point here is its shape, and therefore surface area. Minimum
> surface area is always a sphere. Change that and the surface area shoots up,
> larger surface area for the neutrons to escape through, and it drops below
> critical.
>

--
"And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch".

Gospel of St. Mathew 15:14

On 06/04/2023 12:47, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 06/04/2023 12:41, Tim Streater wrote:
>> On 06 Apr 2023 at 12:07:12 BST, "The Natural Philosopher"
>> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> Inside the sarcophagus the elephant's foot is still *critical* I think.
>>
>> Don't see how it can be.
>
> And yet it is, sorta . Its not a runaway chain reaction but a chain
> reaction it is.
>

Why is it a chain reaction? As opposed to the natural decay of leftover
radioisotopes from 1986?

> Criticality now would mean runaway heat production,
>
> That is not what criticality means. All it means is a sustained chan
> reaction.
>

Critically is a naturally unstable equilibrium, apart, maybe, from in a
huge geological formation. (Kenya or somewhere like that)

The short lifetime of nuclear fission propagation, means, if it goes
above critical, 1 child fission produced per fission, it means you have
exponential growth. Think Covid R number with the doubling period in sub
millisseconds.

The thing that stops it is heat, blowing it apart.

On Wed, 5 Apr 2023 17:08:04 +0100
alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk> wrote:

> For flooding or living under a dam you would opt in for the warning.
> Alerting a whole nation for a local event is a sure way for people to
> ignore such warnings in the future.

The alert can be issued by individual cell towers, so only affected
areas will be alerted.

On 06/04/2023 13:20, Pancho wrote:

> Critically is a naturally unstable equilibrium, apart, maybe, from in a
> huge geological formation. (Kenya or somewhere like that)
>
Sorry, Gabon, not Kenya.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor>

On 06 Apr 2023 at 13:20:57 BST, "Pancho" <Pancho.Jones@proton.me> wrote:

> On 06/04/2023 12:47, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 06/04/2023 12:41, Tim Streater wrote:
>>> On 06 Apr 2023 at 12:07:12 BST, "The Natural Philosopher"
>>> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Inside the sarcophagus the elephant's foot is still *critical* I think.
>>>
>>> Don't see how it can be.
>>
>> And yet it is, sorta . Its not a runaway chain reaction but a chain
>> reaction it is.
>>
>
> Why is it a chain reaction? As opposed to the natural decay of leftover
> radioisotopes from 1986?

Actually that is much more likely.

>> Criticality now would mean runaway heat production,
>>
>> That is not what criticality means. All it means is a sustained chan
>> reaction.
>
> Critically is a naturally unstable equilibrium, apart, maybe, from in a
> huge geological formation. (Kenya or somewhere like that)

You're thinking of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor

which wasn't really a large formation, just the confluence of two rivers, one
of which brought down dissolved uranium and where waters from the other caused
the uranium to precipitate out. Add to that that 2 billyun years ago the
proportion of U235 was around 3% instead of today's 0.7%, and with the water
acting as a moderator, you have conditions similar to inside today's reactors.

--
"Once you adopt the unix paradigm, the variants cease to be a problem - you bitch, of course, but that's because bitching is fun, unlike M$ OS's, where bitching is required to keep your head from exploding." - S Stremler in afc

In message <u0jukl$3tkjd$5@dont-email.me>, at 14:55:31 on Wed, 5 Apr
2023, Andrew <Andrew97d@btinternet.com> remarked:
>On 05/04/2023 14:37, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
>> Am 05/04/2023 um 09:58 schrieb Robin:
>>> On 04/04/2023 23:40, Michael Chare wrote:
>>>> On 04/04/2023 20:50, Cursitor Doom wrote:
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> Does anyone know when that test is being carried out? - the one where
>>>>> they activate everyone's mobile phones with a siren to warn about a
>>>>> nuclear attack? I can't find anything in the Mail/Express online about
>>>>> it at all. Apparently there was some concern that turning everyone's
>>>>> phone into a siren could imperil women who have a secret phone they
>>>>> keep from their partners or some such nonsense. Like that's going to
>>>>> matter two fucks with Armageddon 4 mins away!
>>>>> But anyway, anyone know if this is going ahead and if so, when?
>>>>
>>>> To get alerts on an Android phone it needs to be running Android
>>>>version 11 or later and connected to a 4G or 5G network.

>>> The official advice is that's what you need to be sure of being able
>>>to get them.  For others they have "If you have an earlier version
>>>of Android, you may still be able to receive alerts. To check, search
>>>your device settings for ‘emergency alerts’. "
>>>
>> Back in the day, when radio amateurs were men and not like resident
>>trolls in here, they were the ones spreading emergency messages
>>around. Raynet only do cocktail parties nowadays.
>>
>
>Radio 4 used to broadcast emergency messages for people on
>holiday, telling them to ring xxx hospital where their xxx
>relative is dangerously ill.

Which was code for "dead". But they still want to let the close
relatives know before they read about in the newspapers.
--
Roland Perry