Preparing for Nuclear War - Units of Radiation Dose

Before we can discuss the effects of nuclear radiation, it's necessary to get a handle on the units used to describe it. There are a whole lot of weird ones out there; you can be probably guess that a Curie is a measure of radiation of some sort, but what's a Sievert? It sounds like a type of cat. And what about a Becquerel - that sounds like a cute little marsupial. A REM? Is this something to do with sleeping?

Today's lesson is a basic guide to the two most important quantities that we will be discussing; Radiation Dose and Radiation Dose Rate. To keep this post a manageable length, I will only write about the units used to describe these quantities and won't go into how to measure them or what the effects of various doses are. (BTW, while I will mention various specific doses and dose rates for the purposes of illustration below, you can ignore the actual numbers for the time being.)

Preparing for Nuclear War - Answers to the Quiz Questions

Here are the answers to the questions I posed last time.

I should point out that this information doesn't really come under the heading of "Preparing for Nuclear War", as it's not especially relevant to the sort of things you'll have to deal with after the bomb goes off.

The intent of bringing this up was to illustrate that the sort of nuclear physics you get taught at high-school can potentially lead you astray, and, more importantly, it shows why seemingly knowledgeable people pontificating on the subject on the net are more often than not talking complete bollocks. This stuff is harder than it seems and it's easy to think that you know more than you do.

Preparing for Nuclear War - An Introduction

"The most important thing is that when things get really bad and the world looks its darkest, you just have to throw up your hands and say well, all right! 'cause it's probably going to get a whole hell of a lot worse."

Cannibal! The Musical 1993

In 2017 I posted a rant where I complained to the effect that politically and environmentally, there has been such a continuous stream of horrific calamities befalling the world that whenever I start to write a post commenting on one disaster it gets overshadowed by something even worse before I can finish. I promised to do better but the disasters starting coming at an even faster rate.

So I decided to write about nuclear war - it's one of the few bad things that haven't happened yet and maybe I'll be able to post about it before it happens.

Ron Cobb cartoon from 1966 [source]

Praising by Faint Damnation

Recently I received an election leaflet in the mail; it was purportedly explaining why we should not vote for Peter Dutton.



I am shocked at these allegations.

Hippie Halloween

From a political and environmental perspective (which was meant to be the main focus of this blog), this year has so far been such a horrific nightmare that any attempt at a scary Halloween theme would have seemed pitiful by comparison.

So instead, just to be different, this year's Halloween was Hippie themed - although I suppose that here in the heart of Peter Dutton's electorate the concepts of peace, love, tolerance and compassion might well be considered to be terrifying to some.

Trippy Yeti (She Asks Me Why, I'm Just a Hairy Guy) [Photo by Xesce]

Peace Pumpkin 2018

Now The Acid Is Really Starting To Kick In [Photo by Blinky]

We will do more than just tread on you!

[click for larger image]

The photo of the mother possum extracting her baby from the coils of a python is from this story.

Preparing for nuclear war - Review of a cheap eBay Geiger counter

[I was going to preface this review with a brief description of units of radiation dosage, how Geiger counters operate and other related information. However it turned out not to be possible to keep this brief and I am therefore excluding this information from the review. I will try to post this information later. For the time being, the FAQ on my Radiation Monitoring site contains some useful information.]

Here is a cheap Geiger counter I purchased from eBay some time ago.

#BringYourGuillotine To Work

Some time ago I was talked into signing up to LinkedIn. I haven't used my account virtually at all; the last time I remember logging in was to change my password after they got hacked. However I still regularly get their spam.

Normally their emails go straight to dev/null, however recently one caught my eye. It went as follows:

#BringYourWholeSelf

Kids don't have the same inhibitions as adults — so, imagine the possibilities if you could tap your inner child and #BringYourWholeSelf to work. Watch this video in which we ask kids "What does it mean to be yourself?”

Now, your community would love to hear your thoughts on how you #BringYourWholeSelf to work.

So, in these days when corporate profits are at record levels, when wages are being cut and hard-won rights are being wound back and when workers are in general considered to be disposable and treated like shit, they are expecting us to Bring Our Whole Selves to work. To, of our own accord, throw our Whole Selves into our work, with the enthusiasm of a naive child, in order to make even more money for people  who would quite probably harvest our organs for profit if they could get away with it

Go get absolutely fucked!