Exactly Why We are Organic .. Sterile in the Navy

My Grand Daughter just told me what the coffee clutch in N.Carolina Navy wives just noticed. All the men on the hanger deck .. USS Truman Nuclear propulsion, Nuclear waste in the shells, Nuclear bombs etc.

Either are not having children, high rate of deformed children .. and all girls.

Idaho State U. research of asbestos from Libby, Montana mine .. high incident of R. Arthritis and Lupus .. possible more ailments to come .. watch your potting soil for you and your kids.

What has your coffee clutch noticed? My son in laws brother in Iraq .. Sargent in the Marines heavy equipment .. over coffee they were B.S. about all the deaths of new recruits driving Humvees and get in their first fire fight and wreck it and kill everyone aboard. He jumps on his D-8 Cat and makes a mogul area and all new recruits have to drive it and learn what the vehicles can take at different speeds and different angles .. deaths drop 90% over a cup of coffee.

not in any coffee clutches myself. i seem to recall a few years back a hurricane coming and a reserve unit evacuating a beach on the east coast, recking a humvee. had to be a direct result of lack of training. same as all the people sticking their vehicles in the sand.

DustyTrails wrote:
My Grand Daughter just told me what the coffee clutch in N.Carolina Navy wives just noticed. All the men on the hanger deck .. USS Truman Nuclear propulsion, Nuclear waste in the shells, Nuclear bombs etc.

Either are not having children, high rate of deformed children .. and all girls.

Idaho State U. research of asbestos from Libby, Montana mine .. high incident of R. Arthritis and Lupus .. possible more ailments to come .. watch your potting soil for you and your kids.

What has your coffee clutch noticed? My son in laws brother in Iraq .. Sargent in the Marines heavy equipment .. over coffee they were B.S. about all the deaths of new recruits driving Humvees and get in their first fire fight and wreck it and kill everyone aboard. He jumps on his D-8 Cat and makes a mogul area and all new recruits have to drive it and learn what the vehicles can take at different speeds and different angles .. deaths drop 90% over a cup of coffee.

Wow, co-inky-dinky's all around me.

I was just talking over the last 24 hours, to 3 people here about the town in France that made it LAW to require all children school meals and meal on wheels for the elderly must be organic.  As a result the nearby farms slowly had to, and then the homes of the children, & then friends.

So, the farmers had a meeting about it, and some refused to go organic because this is the way it is done.  You put on your hazmat suit, tape your boots and gloves, put on your respirator, mix the stuff up, and spray it from the back of a quad.  Sadly, the man the held out, his daughter died at a very young age due to cancer from the chemicals he was spraying.  Direct Cause and Effect.

There is a high rate (as I understand from the movie) of cancer among farmers and families as a result of the chemicals both sprayed and added to food we (universal royal we) buy from stores.  Scary stuff and times.

I saw two documentaries about the use enriched uranium or plutonium on weapons, iI f your bullet or shell  is covered with these sort of substances it penetrates the armour on a tank better acording to these documentaries, so ordinary bullets and shells are maybe covered in radioactive material. THe documentaries  talked of what the american millitary had to sufer from being exposed to this sort of substance and about wha tthey suffered in Kuwait from these substances being used on their land or it was in the bit of irak they did invade in the gulf war. It was because of these documentaries  that i  i did a lot of cartoons against the Irak war. The documentaries were about the use of enriched plutonium and empoverished uranium or what they called impoverished uranium and turned out to be enriched plutonium. I saw these documentaries before the irak war, before it was even thought  of if I remember right and so i don't remember all the details.
    There are some bits of news that you see often, this makes you feel that they are true, or so i believe, news that get repeated and repeated and on which all the journalists have an opinion sound as if they must be true which they probably are but other bits of news you only hear something about twice or three times and that   late at night and in lengthy and seriouse documentaries which lengthyness stops a great porcetage of the population ligstening to them.  News is often the comments of different experts on the news. When there are only two documentaries on something and you hear no mor eof it for years you begin think you imagined it. People doubting their own memory easily is a fact that polititians use to lie to them.
     The use of uranium or plutonium on weapons is a great evil that has terrible effects on American soldiers and also on the countries they attack in as far as it is one thing attacking people now and another leaving polluted waste that will last for decades giving the people and children illlnesses and deformities, though  if you want to make sure people never again drive planes into sky scrappers in your country, a punishment that will effect their children for decades is a good deterrent. The documents i saw on how americal soldiers were affected by the use  of uranium or plutonion on weapons  was made by american. All the members of a team sent in to clear up a tank that had been put out of order with weapons hardened up with a bit of uranium or plutonium had died or had cancer and were dying as were other soldiers who were part of the gulf war in Kuwait.  
 The bullets left round the tank which children were playing with, were proved to have a lot of plutonium or uranium in them, one bullet was taken to an german hospital to be inspected and when they  came to get the results they found the hospital buzzing with police, the uranium in one small bullet was way beyond the permited amount in germany.  The man telling this story was a surviving member of the team sent  in to clear up the tank.  
     It is a nasty topic, hellish would maybe be a better word. Before miners died of the coal dust, now it is children getting lucemia or being born with deformities because of atomic power.
  Talking of the really nasty, why was the dust of the two towers so damaging and should the governmnment have known and got the air tested?
 I have heard of the children of people working in nuclear power centres who got cancer as children years after ther parent worked there. I have heard of the babies of people in contact with pulutonium and uranium being born with deformities. I would believe your grandchild Dusty Trails, dont know that it will help her but if people will believe in the dark side of things they might stop disaster for the next lot of people and there is not need for uranium if we can have clean energy, it is a question of how much money we are willing to pay to get clean energy that at first will be expensive and as to weapons i suppose it is public opinion that makes it hard to use atom bombs so maybe public opinion could stop the use of uranium in more conventional weapons that would not help in a submarine that carried nuclear bombs as a deterent to troublesome nations still maybe public opinion could change even that, or make sure they did not get lazy with saftey precautions. 
       I heard a man on telivision claming atomic power was absolutely inoffensive. I dont get it rammed down my throat as other bits of the news are but i hear about the dangers of it repeatedly if seldom how could he claim that it does no damage to anyone. . A man from greenpeace was on the show too but he was no good at argueing and made no case against the man who defended nuclear power.  I remember my brother in law said he had talked to a doctor who worked near Belfast, my brother in law is a belfast man and there is an atomic power station near there, who said that before the atomic power station infant leucemia was unheard of, nearly, and after it the cases were pretty frequent, and i have heard Dr Sanjay Gupta talks of the amount of peole who suffer from cancer going up a lot, he did not say why, i was left to wonder if it would not be because of all the things we do, of which herbicides and pesticides are a large part.  agri rose macaskie.  

Some say follow the money. No money in cures. If that is the logic, then one could conclude there is money in making people sick. People say no one would do that.

Read leukemia can be caused from low levels of radiation, so that would make sense. Another source of low level radiation is radon and smoke detectors. For fun, I always mention that when I walk by them in the store. No one ever reads the labels. Then there are/were the glow in the dark kids clothes, recalled, and then sent to other countries.

It could be they are speaking in legalese , causing misunderstandings to the commoner.

There seems to be a hell of a lot of money in cures for insurance companies and pharmaceuticals’ only they like taking the money and refusing the treatment they want easy money. We understand people making easy money on something like video games but it is hard to understand if people are making money and lots of it and giving poor service on peoples health, it is one of those things that are so wicked that no one believes they are cheating people on things that effect the lives and health of others so they can go n doing so with impunity and there are people who believe in the free market.
  In the novel i like maybe best which is maybe a silly way of thinking about books, “Lottering With Intent”, by Muriel Spark, the protagonist says something that later on I found to be true in disagreeable situations, she said sometimes you bang into things so evil you can't believe they are true and then too true not to believe them, too in your face, not to believe them. 
  The fact that people can’t believe others would be so bad as badies are, is one of the things the manipulative depend on, they find out they can easily lie about the more devilish things they get up to because people are reluctant to believe they would be that bad. It is easier to lie about really bad things. That is more true for big public firms who get away from being criticized because it is hard for people to believe they would be bad to the sick say but big firms have another advantage when it comes to lying, it is hard for the public to believe that there are not watchdogs stopping them from being too abusive.
      What happened to all the money everyone gave to Haiti, they did not even set up sand filters and sodis sun filters or more traditional filters expensive filters for the drinking water for people and other bits of protection from cholera which they knew was a threat in the circumstances, let alone building them houses. They had lots of money for Haiti and they did not even do a minimum by them. What did they do with the money? Strengthen their position as organization or in the case of faith backed organizations increase their range for converting people with the money, after all much as faith based organization talk about poverty their true firs tgoal is conversion wh8ich makes them inefficient against poverty.  Maybe pay for new missions instead of for reducing poverty. If you are meant to be a charitable organization people are even less likely to ask questions than they are if you are a pharmaceutical company. I am furious about what happened in Haiti and I think others should be furious too.
      At least we should ask what happened to all that money, we should ask for some sort of guaranty before we give money to charities again. I can understand them using part of the money for their other projects around the world but not them leaving those they pretended they wanted it for, those the public wanted to help at that moment, as totally destitute as they have left Haitians and after what has happened I am not even willing to just give them the benefit of the doubt that they are helping the poor in other places with the money they are not spending in a disaster zone, I want to know what they are doing with it, just in case they are doing something I don’t agree with.
  Some of the charitwble organizations are still asking for money for Haiti, even after it has become plain in the last year that they don’t give a damn about Haiti, plain they use it elsewhere or for themselves. They have a cheek. agri rose macaskie.

Children's clothes were intended to "charge up" on visible or UV light: they don't contain radionuclides.

Luminous watch dials, airplane instruments, and gun sights have vaguely the same sort of fluorescent/phosphorescent material, but get their energy from radionuclides instead of the sun or the previous few minutes of room lighting. The radionuclides are separate from the materials that glow visibly.

Some armor-piercing ammunition contains radionuclides, but doesn't glow in the dark because it doesn't contain any fluorescent or phosphorescent material. Plutonium is more precious than gold, and isn't part of any conventional weapon's design. The nuclear industry does produce a lot of depleted uranium, analogous to a cheesemaker producing whey (except the isotope you need for nuclear technology is 0.7%, compared to 3% or so milkfat). There is definitely money in finding a use for depleted uranium.

so Joel you think tha tthe documentaries coiuld not have goti it right? I did see a film that talked of uranium or some such tipped bullets too.
rose.

Depleted uranium ( DU) is used in ordinance, either as a coating or as the entire slug. supposidly it gives the round greater penetrative abilities, making it "attractive" for anti-armor use.
Of course the downside is the fact that if you are *using* ordinance, it is because the area is not safe for your people ( I am trying to refer to usage generally, rather than specific instances), and as such you are unlikely to stop and recover the round that you just eliminated a hostile armour with, despite the knowledge that radiological agents are present in the munitions.

Plutonium is *expensive* as it has to be made in a reactor, as compared with DU which is a waste product from the purification process needed to make Uranium viable for a (standard) reactor

So IMHO the use of DU is the result of profit ( finding a way to sell tons of a waste product) trumping over common sense ( something that causes cancer should not be used to shot people with)

  I agree that somethign that causes cancer should not be used to shot people with . nor should material that causes deformities, bullets, many of htem end up littering the floor.  If you are talking of war this sort o fdiscussion gets a bit  weird you are permiting one sort of violence and going against another.
    It has a bad effect yon you own soldiers health, which is terrible. Soldiers  already have enough problems. It effects the civilian population of those we fight with. In ancient stories they used to fight people and sing their praises as worhthy wariors and such, now it seems we have to see them as devils not people caught up in the same sort of tangle we our selves as soldiers are caught up by the complexities of politics like self rule or interference from others. bboth the soldiers of the enemy and our own soldiers have families they love waand tha thas always been the case fo rtime immemorial and now we seem to think the enemy i stoo monsteriouse to have fatherly feelings we live in strage times. All groups of soldiers have  their families and such that they care about.
It is maybe crazy of hte allies to think they need that little advantage tha they maybe have with depleted uranium tips to their weapons. They have the advantage in so many other things and this advantage may hep to      kill an enemy shooting at a soldier but it also may help to giv ethe soldier cancer so it can't be considered worth the risk. it is an advantage that is bad for the soldiers because it can effect their health.
 
  Humans just can't resist things that are new and that they deem to be efficient, even when they are deadly. We just crash around between being wonderfully clever and responsible and being crassly stupid and irresponsible. both as humans and as individuals we are stupid and clever all in the same individual.  Our own cleverness blinds us to the fact that we are given to stupidity too, it seem irational that we should be both. Wand me have all these blind spots. Our efficientcy blinds us to our, all present, terrible, inefficienty money too takes us down some bad roads. rose macaskie.

Go to the store and pick up a bag of pecans. Pound for pound pecan meat is more radioactive than depleted uranium. Because the pecans have a good amount of potassium 40 in them (DU gives off Alpha particle radiation which can't make it through a sheet of paper, while potassium goes through beta decay and that can penetrate body tissues). The relationship is such that DU is used to shield precision instruments from background radiation(most of which is from potassium), if it were leaking radiation then it would totally fail at that charge. DU is used because it is fairly hard (about as hard as iron) and at the same time extremely heavy (about 80% heavier than lead).

Anecdotal evidence is extremely convincing to people that something is going on, while at the same time it's not a very powerful way of discovering something (that is to say you get a lot of false positives, leads when there is no story). A coffee clutch is usually 6-12 people. too many and coffee is too hectic. So you have lets say 9 women. But these aren't 9 random women these are 9 women who hardly ever see their husbands because their husbands are out to see for months and months at a time. This means that some of them are planning on waiting until 'dad' is home to have kids and the rest are less likely to conceive in any given year because their husband is not sleeping with them very frequently. Birth defects and miscarriages are very common in all peoples from all walks of life and have been for hundreds of years (literally as far back as our records go). Lets say that 4 of these couples have one kid a piece and 1 couple has 2. Well girls are 50% of the population (slightly less around the time of birth, but a larger fraction of boys die for want of a good X chromosome from the mother) so that means that the chance of 6 kids all being girls is 1/2^6 or 1/64. How many coffee clutches of this size are there in the same predicament? A thousand? So that means that roughly 15 will have about 6 girls with no boys even if there is nothing funny going on.

Statistics is very counterintuitive to humans, but when you notice something going on the best first step is not to step forward and try and figure out what is causing it but rather to step back and assess whether or not what you have noticed is out of the ordinary.

Emersom White people are hedgy about talking about the dangers to the military of radioactivity and it is hard to know if stories are true or not as they are heard infrequently but that does not mean they are not true. It is more because of stories about cancer from weapons tipped with uranium in all those who touched object that had been struck by them than for birth defects that i had heard of this problem for the military.
     There is great resistance to believing we are asking for anything so horrible of our boys and that can make it hard to believe that we are indeed but why should we not believe it, we have been sending people to work in the mines, though coal gives lung problems, for years, we do keep quiet about the horrible things that are out there because we don’t know how things could go on if certain horrible things did not happen.
 We always send young males to war and then forget to look after them properly when they come home this is so much so that there are fairy tales about the soldier coming home and wandering around jobless and having to face his devils without support.
     When the English prohibited the slave trade in the 19 century, first those who wished to do so had to inform the public of the things that were going on, they did not know about, it is easy for us not to know about things. The same with poverty that the writers in the 19n century described so as to show that it was not just laziness that left these people without a job, and described how far people were poor, the rich just find excuses for the worst effects of poverty that have nothing to do with the poor being underpaid, like their children die because they are dirty, when hunger reduces immunity to illness. Or if they did not drink they would not be poor, when the rich have enough money to drink themselves silly and to be able to eat or the excuse that  if they weren't no good they would have a job, when the truth is that rich can support their children at school for much longer than the poor and until they pass their exams can so increasing their likely hood of getting a job, the rich children have a lot of unfair advantages and then pretend they got there because they worked harder.
 It is so likely that we ask soldiers to do something thoroughly unhealthy as to be impossible not to believe it and it is so important to face up to the possibility just in case it is true and the likelihood of it being true seem to me great and the stories i have heard of children getting leukemia are of those of people working in atomic power stations not in the army anyway, or of those living near an atomic power station and that was a doctor saying that before the atomic power station there had been nearly no cases of child leukemia. and doctor Sanjay Gupta says that the numbers of the population who will suffer from cancer are on the rise, why would that be i wonder? In the long run we are all affected by the products we use that are canceriginous such as pesticides and herbicides. and pesticides are used in the highest concentrations in the house I imagine, my husband and son can't bear to see insects in the house.

 Another thing adults do is to imagine other adults are stupid and have not thought of the fact that they are a group who see their husbands less often when they probably have taken that into account and are comparing themselves to the wives of soldiers or sailors who have nothing to do with atomic energy, the wives of fisher men or some such. Adults are also if they are paternal patriarchal enough capable of just liying to calm down the population, and also their nearest and despised their wives and daughters and other innocent people, to align themselves with the governors and tell their families what they think they ought to know not what they think is true, they might for instance, as they read the paper more often, know a politician is lying n but because they agree with his party tell their women folk for example who might be squeamish about politicians who are out an  out liers that they are not lying, not giving  others all the information they have it is  a sort of bullying to make people do what you want because you have  lied to them. All the men in my family do it to me, they say I I am a good judge of character and then take what I say with so many pinches of salt as to annihilate me if what you say carries no weight you don’t exist in a sense as they say there are many ways to kill a man or woman.
 Humans are such when it comes to the good of the whole, supposedly, they might even get so happy about risking the lives of some that they even get careless about reducing the risk of proximity to radio active objects when they can do so. To use weapons tipped with radioactive material so as to get a slight advantage in a situation in which they already had so many advantages, even though it was fatal for their own soldiers is an example of this, so you need to keep an eye on things just to make sure the risks are minimum if we do think we have to ask some sections of society to mess around with such objects or that we only have them doing so when it is really necessary.
 Gandhi managed to get the English out of India by just continually thinking of new ways to make them look bad in the eyes of the world without actually taking a gun to them. It is an example worth weighing up all the time it is worth having regiments dedicated to thinking up none mortal ways of winning battles. Gandhi was always thinking up new ways to show the british up and hamper them rose macaskie.

You don't have to be stupid to not be able to make a good statistical inference, you have to have not taken and courses on statistics. It's all very counterintuitive.

It is stupid not to notice if your rate of having children differs from former generations of sailors , not to have thought that maybe it is because of the absensce of your husband that your friends aren't having children and it is so normal for people to think others are stupid without thinking they have gone very far on that front wat our of line that it is necessary to be very on our guard about it.  The most normal and biggest human problem is that we underestimate each others abilities and as we think all others are stupid we dont even think we have greatly underestimated them iy is so normal for us to underestimate others that it does not seem that we have gone over the top when we do it again. 
      This makes me  think that people who insist on the difference between person and person instead of the similarity which allows us to write books we are so sure that others will understand what we are talking about, are crazy.  To do anything to increase the difference between people is to increase a problem that is already enormouse. I find men cut me out of a lot of activities on the reasoning that as i am different i dont enjoy the thinds they do. THe idea of difference is the anti christ to love your neighbor as yourself if my neighbor is different i can imagine they will like things i would hate i can then take for myself pleasures i dont have to provide for them.   rose macaskie.

Emerson White wrote:
Go to the store and pick up a bag of pecans. Pound for pound pecan meat is more radioactive than depleted uranium. Because the pecans have a good amount of potassium 40 in them (DU gives off Alpha particle radiation which can't make it through a sheet of paper, while potassium goes through beta decay and that can penetrate body tissues). The relationship is such that DU is used to shield precision instruments from background radiation(most of which is from potassium), if it were leaking radiation then it would totally fail at that charge. DU is used because it is fairly hard (about as hard as iron) and at the same time extremely heavy (about 80% heavier than lead).

Not quite, there are two points in this I would like to talk to.
First is this idea that Alpha particles cannot penitrate flesh, and there for are not harmful. While it is true that Alpha will not penitrate to any meaningful degree from an out-of-body radiation source, it is still a concern. Human skin contains a layer of more-or-less dead and desicated cells, in order to resist penitration by contaminants, both organic/living ( bacteria, virii etc) and chemical ( which is why you are able to handle salt for example). This outer layer of skin is sacrifical and over time ablates to be replaced by the next layer. Alpha is too large and slow to pass this layer, and is instead trapped, takes electrons and becomes helium.
This is not what happens if the emitting particle is, say dust, and is inhaled or swallowed. If inhaled or swallowed, it has a good chance of lodging against the mucus membranes of the lung or colon.
These mucus membranes, being absorbitive surfaces do not have the skins ablative layer of protection, and can be harmed by alpha decay. This would more likely damage the cell membrane, rather than structures further inside the cell, however a breach of the membrane is fatal to that cell.
Now if the amount of emitting material injested/inhaled is small enough, the body is able to replace cells as fast as or faster than they are damaged/destroyed, other than a slight reduction in resources available to fight disease no harm done.
If, however, the amount of emitting material is large enough to damage to the cells of the mucus membrane faster than the body can replace them, then problems such as protien leakage in the gut, or fluid build up in the lung can start to develop. This will take time, unless there is an overwheliming doseage of high energy radiations ( gamma for example), symptoms do not show up over night.
Now the presence of dust from DU materials is a likely phemomina on a battlefield where DU ordinance, or DU coated ordinance is being fielded.

The second thing that I have a problem with, in that statement, is the apparent assumption that alpha is the only radiological decay mechinism that U-238 ( the major isotope of DU) undergoes.
A lump of radiologicaly active material does not just emit one type of radiation cleanly and forever until it dissapears. It uses the release of radiation to change states, from one isotope of a given element to a diffrent isotope of a diffrent element ( Except in the case of isometric gamma). And it keeps this up, releasing various forms of radiation until it reaches a stable isotope of some element.
The decay chain for U-238 is mostly Alpha and Beta-negitive forms of radiation ( not truely scarey stuff, but still needing respect), but does include some isometic gamma.  Smaller rounds of DU would not emit enough gamma to be seriously threaterning, except to the microorganisms in the ground around them, but rounds lodges in animal tissue, and dust concentrations could cause an increase in cancer and deformity cases ( genetic damage). Particles from smaller and larger shells may leach into the ground water, and from there become injested.

( I am assuming the majority of rounds will end up in the soil, but that a few fragments may remain entrapped within animal and human victims)

Statistics is very counterintuitive to humans, but when you notice something going on the best first step is not to step forward and try and figure out what is causing it but rather to step back and assess whether or not what you have noticed is out of the ordinary.

Agreed, understanding basic statistics and sampling is something that humans do not seem to be inately suited for. However it is very important in order to begin to understand what is going on.
Risk assesment for example, It is somewhat harder to assess the degree of conciquence and level of threat, where there are mutliple paths for problems.

@Aganippe, I agree completely with everything you said. I will point out that it's bad news to get shot with a lead bullet too (lead fragments are also bad for you) and that it takes a special kind of incompetence to end up with a fragment of a round in you with out that round going off.

rose macaskie wrote:
It is stupid not to notice if your rate of having children differs from former generations of sailors , not to have thought that maybe it is because of the absensce of your husband that your friends aren't having children and it is so normal for people to think oothers are stupid without thinking they have gone very far on tha t front tha t6it i snecessary to be very on our guard about it.  The most normal and biggest human problem is that we underestimate each others abilities and as we think all others are stupid we dont even think we have greatly underestimated them while we enormously underestimate each other, it seems so normal to do so. It makes you think tha tpeople who insist on th edifference between person an dperson instead of the similarity which allows us to write books we are so sure that others will understand what we are talking about, are crazy.  To do anything to increase the difference between people is to increase a problem that is already enormouse. I find men cut me out of a lot of activities on the reasoning that as i am different i dont enjoy what they do.  rose macaskie.

It's not that they are too stupid to notice, it's that either (a) I'm way off about the size of a coffee clutch and it's really hundred of women or (b) they literally cannot notice for very solid mathematical reasons.

Imagine if you will that there is one navy wife who has her first child 10 months after getting married and it's a girl. Now it is possible that there is something wrong with her husbands sperm and that he can only have inviable offspring or girls, or, it's also possible that they just had a girl. Can this woman, with what she has as her experience base, then notice that there is something wrong with her husband that prevents him from having boys? Is it a matter of stupidity? no matter how smart or dumb she may be she cannot notice from that fact that she has a husband who can only have daughters. Now lets take 1000 navy wives, all of their husbands served of the U.S.S. Example and they were assigned there randomly from all over the country, and these women all proceed to have only daughters. Can they notice that something is wrong with their husbands? Yes absolutely they can.Does it matter if they are smart or stupid? No it doesn't.

Now, is a coffee clutch more like the lone mother or more like the group of 1000 wives? If you answered more like the lone mother who cannot notice then you are correct. If you answered more like the 1000 wives then you need to take a basic course in statistics.

That is interesting but still a lone mother can notice a difference between ten women with no children and nine with children and one without. Also they will have talked to their husbands to find out if what they observe is also a phenomenon in other parts of the navy and they are part of the navy, a very big group which makes it easy for them to compare with many others and they are bound to have thought of comparing their fertility with that of women in a like situation, like the navy wives of ten years before to make sure it is not just the result of living part time with their husbands because they are not stupid, it is what i would do, so I should think they would to. Any way wasn’t it a wife commenting on the comment of her husband a soldier in contact with other soldiers. They are making a claim for a large group of people not for one person this would lead them to look around, do a little bit of home statistics, unless you think they are half witted. Girls are only half witted in films.
    In adult life people have always  treated me as if i was too stupid to have taken elementary precautions before asserting anything. For example I say, “so and so is horrible to her husband”, the answer is maybe he was not nice to her at some time. And many other things that deny this possibility. You can’t think how long I spent weighing up whether it might not have been him that had been at some time nasty causing her nastiness and all I could observe was it was always her who had the clever, clever, answers that allowed her to get away with blue murder not him,  I had weighed up the idea that I had not walked her road before commenting on the nastiness of the wife. Anyway putting a person into total Coventry and getting everyone else to do so is a punishment that is even against human rights. I don’t understand why adults think they would have thought of something or been careful about something that  other adults would not think or be careful about when they judge the assertions of adults who have experienced the situation they are talking about. If they have hearing a situation they have not lived through they should not disesteem the word of qa witness without a lot of careful questions to determine if the other adult is lazy and careless in their thinking habits and yet my experience is that nearly all adults  disesteem the opinion of others without even exploring how far the witness has taken different aspects into consideration.
  It is the sort of subject that it is always better to take seriously, the consequences of not doing so are so bad for the soldiers and we know how irresponsible big ventures can get with the welfare of their workers though they do not mean to be irresponsible things get out of hand apparently with a big business there are to many heads and no one takes responsibility for any one action, the psychology of groups is interesting. We know what is possible though we might rather think it was not. Rose macaskie

rose macaskie wrote:
That is interesting but still a lone mother can notice a difference between ten women with no children and nine with children and one without. Also they will have talked to their husbands to find out if what they observe is also a phenomenon in other parts of the navy and they are part of the navy, a very big group which makes it easy for them to compare with many others and they are bound to have thought of comparing their fertility with that of women in a like situation, like the navy wives of ten years before to make sure it is not just the result of living part time with their husbands because they are not stupid, it is what i would do, so I should think they would to. Any way wasn’t it a wife commenting on the comment of her husband a soldier in contact with other soldiers. They are making a claim for a large group of people not for one person this would lead them to look around, do a little bit of home statistics, unless you think they are half witted. Girls are only half witted in films.

This is not correct, Run a Z-test and you will see that it doesn't work. Your sample size is too small, and it will always be too small to detect changes in the rate of such a common occurrence as "girls not boys" or "birth defects".

It is the sort of subject that it is always better to take seriously, the consequences of not doing so are so bad for the soldiers and we know how irresponsible big ventures can get with the welfare of their workers though they do not mean to be irresponsible things get out of hand apparently with a big business there are to many heads and no one takes responsibility for any one action, the psychology of groups is interesting. We know what is possible though we might rather think it was not. Rose macaskie

I am taking it seriously, After what you said before why would you assume I hadn't given it some serious and actual thought? The consequences of not moving when there is a problem are bad, so are the consequences of jumping to conclusions. We haven't got much evidence of an effect. We know to an extremely high degree of certainty that (in the even that there was no effect) this level of response is as good as guaranteed to happen.

What if we spun this around, what if we were to start looking at coffee clutches of women who eat organic food (though tea is more likely). I'll bet that looking around the world I could find at least one cluster who had all had some problem or another (say all girls), would I then be justified in jumping to the conclusion that eating organic food means that women can't have sons?

Edit: fixed formatting

what I think Emerson is getting at, is something called sampling bias, or selection bias.
Basicly it is that people group together based on sameness, weither that is their intention or not, and indeed weither they are concious of it or not.
Because of this, it is not possible to assert a self selected group like that, as represtentive of the source population.
What you really need, if you wish to assert representivness, is a randomly selected group of suffient size to capture the statistic you are looking for. This can vary depending on the population and how heterogenious/homogenious ( samethroughout or mixture throughout) it is. the larger the group relitive to the population size, the greater the statistical certainty with which you can state a condition.
Idealy, you would also wish to compare against a control sample group, under almost identical conditions, only without the exposure to DU.

so the "TL/DR" verision : I beleave Emerson is basicly asking/pointing out, that the group from which the observation has been recorded may be subject to an effect that could possibly distort the data.
However it is enough to suggest that someone might like to do a propper formal study to check if there really is such an effect occuring

      I agree that it is just necessary for some one to study the group to find out what ever about them, however it is so common for adults to imagine other adults have not thought  of many of the ins and outs of a thing, and those who doubt the veracity of an observer or a group of observers are so  lazy about asking questions like how large a porcentage of the group, of  the battalion have you heard of as suffereing from these problems and who told you, are you sure of those people who passed the information on to you and such, that it is worth saying, to those who doubt tha tability of an obsever, "eh are you suggesting these gilrs are stupid? Are you suggesting that you would be a more careful observer than anyone else, discounting those who are recognised brains or famouse. It seem to me you are". When it come to people deciding their judgement is better than people who are direct observers of the subject under scrutiny is absolutely incredible frequent that other adults take what observers say as totally not worth looking into and especially so if the observers are women of or of an uniportant social group the religiose say gettign a good job and having money are empty values i find that people only listen to those with a good job though in these days a large porcent of the poppulation have had a high level of education education does not alway s get you a good job.
      It is still a question of whether or not these women when they talk of the occurence of illness in the group have made inquiries and looked at the group as a whole rather than just their circle of friends and i would bet that they had. I find it hard to believe that dust trails grandaughter would be a careless person, mind you a lot of things can happen between generations, still dust trails seems to believe her . dusty trails does talk of htis on another threasd so that my memory of his premise is not only that of of what heads this thread.

      If the whole group ate organic food and had all the same health problems, of course it would be normal to look into the possiblity that their problems were due to the organic food diet they all used, however there is no suggestion that they are all organic food enthusiasts.
      It is normal for populations to be very tardy in examining the possiblity that a job that is usefull or supposedly useful to the populaton as a whole might be unnecessarily risky for those whose job it is. They would prefer to think that nothing to bad was being asked of anyone for the good of the group, the fear of looking into means that they dont even know enough to ask that no unecessary risk be taken. agri rose macaskie.

I would take the whole thing as an observation, not absolute cause and effect. Trying to find cause and reason for an observation like this is tedious, and I think most of them know that. I am sure someone knows or could find out easily. Interesting enough, they signed up to do as they were told and have little recourse other than the terms under the contract they signed. If good data (multiple ships and through time) came about, I'm sure it could put some pressure on solutions, should people refuse those jobs or refuse to enlist.

Outside those working the hanger deck, I know know boys and babies born to navy families, cute and in good health. Being in the military exposes you a lot of potential hazards that come with the job. Vaccines, food, radio waves, heavy metals, nano particles... but you tend to be in better shape and better trained than a lot of civilians. Add to the list, a hanger filled with all types of weapons, sounds plausible. It may come out 40 years from now that the ship was not shielded properly. Be interesting to hear about the offspring of the females serving in those positions and people on other nuclear ships and personnel on the ship during different deployments (pretty sure that ship has been in and out a few times).

doing some searches on radiation and sperm count and radiation and sex of babies, it appears there is a lot of talk on it. One in particular to falluja. A lot of studies on RF radiation (cell phone, laptop) for men, and fetus in the womb exposure. If I were in their position, it might be time to find some potassium iodide or something similar along with a change in underwear to reduce exposure. I have seen studies on nutrients needed for dna replication which might help too. it would be interesting if a coffee group could put together a simple solution to their issue. I feel for them.

On the topic of environmental hazards...

Is it American to buy Americium?
and would you or have you ever put it in your home?

For fun, next time you are in the store, ask them which isle the radioactive material is on. If they don't know or look puzzled, let them know it is not for a dirty bomb, you just thought it would be a good idea to hang from the ceiling incase you ever needed it.

In looking for the ideal place to live, I thought it would be good to get away from nuclear reactors. Those things are everywhere. Time to settle Mars.

It is many orders of magintude safer to live next to a nuclear plant than it is to live next to coal or natural gas. Additionally living next to a coal plant means that you are exposed to more uranium than you would be living next to a nuclear plant.

Emerson, given a choice, would you choose to live next to a nuclear, coal, natural gas power plant? I would prefer to live away from them. I am not sold on other people having my best interest at heart and mistakes happen. Besides, there are a lot of beautiful lakes (with a warmer section) with artistic concrete structures.

You seem to understand the radiation levels. Do you know how safe Americium is in the levels people put it in their houses (smoke detectors)?

Emerson White wrote:
It is many orders of magintude safer to live next to a nuclear plant than it is to live next to coal or natural gas. Additionally living next to a coal plant means that you are exposed to more uranium than you would be living next to a nuclear plant.

I think the people of Chernobyl & surrounding areas might disagree with you.  That place is still pumping radiation into the sky which falls all over Russia, China, Alaska, Canada and the US each time it rains.  Chernobyl facility is still in operation & the 'China Syndrome' is still continuing as they try to figure out how to contain it. 

As for statistics.  If you have taken the class then you know they can be made to say anything the statician wants it to say.  Fact of the matter is this.  Radiation, no matter where it is from is bad for you.

Chernobyl is not representative of nuclear plants. The type of reactor that Chernobyl used was only built in the USSR because the rest of the world refused to build such a poor design. It was staffed with workers from a coal mine, no one had any training in how a nuclear reactor works. One group of people decided to do a dangerous test, and another didn't want them too so they shut off the safety system that they were testing, they did the test anyways, but did it during a shift change, so they hit the button then walked out and no one knew what was going on. It was a perfect storm of poor decision making that can't really happen in a country ruled by laws.


All that being said it was/is still safer to live next to Chernobyl than it is to live next to a coal plant. Someone did the calculation and found that we would need something like 18 Chernobyl events a year in the US just to match the number of deaths that we already have from coal plants.

In case anyone is interested in the wild life that has continued post this nuclear disaster, here ya go.

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/

Emerson, I'd count Chernobyl as an example of worst case. Those that faired the best were those that lived further away. If a natural gas or coal power plant had a melt down, it wouldn't be as bad. But those are comparing short term risks over the long term vs the risk of a catastrophe. I am of the opinion that most power distribution systems are wasteful and unnecessary, and they have been for a long time. There are better ways.

Pakanohida, thank you for the link. She is going to get a bit more traffic to the site.

Pakanohida wrote:
I think the people of Chernobyl & surrounding areas might disagree with you.  That place is still pumping radiation into the sky which falls all over Russia, China, Alaska, Canada and the US each time it rains.  Chernobyl facility is still in operation & the 'China Syndrome' is still continuing as they try to figure out how to contain it. 

As far as I have managed to learn, the Chernobyl nuculer power plant is non operational since 2000, with only monitering operatations continuing to occur. ( wikipedia has value)
I would be highly surprised to find any additional particulate being released from this site.
They are working on a stronger containment housing for the reminants of reactor four, as the hastily built sarcophagus is sowing signs of decay. There is also work, apparently, on an improved long term fuel storage facility, as the existing fuel ponds are not sutiable for long term storage.

As for statistics.  If you have taken the class then you know they can be made to say anything the statician wants it to say.  Fact of the matter is this.  Radiation, no matter where it is from is bad for you.

As light and certain forms of heat are radiation, I would posit that if you tried to live with nil radiation exposure, then you ... wouldn't be of the best health.
As with most things however, there is a fine balance between getting enough, and getting too much

Pakanohida wrote:As for statistics.  If you have taken the class then you know they can be made to say anything the statician wants it to say.  Fact of the matter is this.  Radiation, no matter where it is from is bad for you.

I know we can make them say anything to people who don't understand them. That doesn't mean that they can really be made to say anything.

Emerson White wrote:
Chernobyl is not representative of nuclear plants. The type of reactor that Chernobyl used was only ... It was a perfect storm of...

I know I took a bit of what you said (Emerson) out of context in the quote above. Just trying to lead into current events. In context (for future reference), this is in regards to the Japan earthquake/tsunami followed by the nuclear power plant issues which are said to have released radiation into the atmosphere.

Emerson and anyone else in the know (about different power plant construction, radiation, etc) here are a few questions I have:

* Are the current events that happened in Japan something to worry about in the states and if so, when? (I have heard many places in the states have sold out of Potassium Iodide.) (State monitoring map) (Japan monitoring map)

* Is this worse than Chernobyl?

* How much radiation is actually going to reach the States and is that enough to take precautionary actions?

* Is a similar event possible here in the states given how our power plants are built. (I am not familiar with the differences in different plant designs and vulnerabilities.)

* If one were going to be exposed, what precautionary actions would you take?
- staying inside vs outside? (seems like an underground house or wofati would be good)
- Potassium Iodide, Potassium Iodate, Iodine? Which ones, how do they work? (have read a little on it and a bit confused on if you can use Iodine or if Potassium Iodide is necessary)
- What do you do if you can not get any? Are there other minerals, forms of Iodine (topical antiseptic), foods you can eat, simple methods to extract it from table salt?
- Is shelf life of Potassium Iodide really that bad?

Just curious. Would prefer a permaculture way to handle it, but not sure Nuclear Radiation is a fundamental building block of Permaculture. Having a plant to use in these situation might be a nice alternative to trying to keep up with demand of a relatively short shelf life product. Read Potassium Iodate has a longer shelf life, but not approved in the states? Figured maybe we had learned something from Chernobyl and which plants might be used for the purpose.

Thanks in advance. I know it is a lot of questions. Feel free to move this to another thread or let me know and I can do it.

Dr_Temp wrote:

* Are the current events that happened in Japan something to worry about in the states and if so, when?

* Is this worse than Chernobyl?

* How much radiation is actually going to reach the States and is that enough to take precautionary actions?

* Is a similar event possible here in the states given how our power plants are built. (I am not familiar with the differences in different plant designs and vulnerabilities.)

* If one were going to be exposed, what precautionary actions would you take?
- staying inside vs outside? (seems like an underground house or wofati would be good)
- Potassium Iodide, Potassium Iodate, Iodine? Which ones, how do they work? (have read a little on it and a bit confused on if you can use Iodine or if Potassium Iodide is necessary)
- What do you do if you can not get any? Are there other minerals, forms of Iodine (topical antiseptic), foods you can eat, simple methods to extract it from table salt?
- Is shelf life of Potassium Iodide really that bad?

the danger is very low a few miles from the plants on the scale of getting 20-300 unnecessary x rays
over here it will never be detectable over background

same with our plants the water cooled reactor designs are simply unable to release the type of lasting radiation that a sodium cooled plant like Chernobyl can

taking potassium Iodine if you are not in real danger of being exposed to radioactive Iodine is a bad idea the amounts in the tabs will cause minor iodine poisoning http://www.buzzle.com/articles/iodine-poisoning-symptoms.html ; the idea is to fill up the thyroid with safe iodine so that the radioactive iodine does not lodge there. the topical antiseptic is also potassium iodine

in America if you live inside the hazard area the local reactor folks will send out pamphlets and iodine tabs yearly, keep out of reach of children

Iodine is funny stuff its a vital nutrient (the thyroid fails without it) and a poison.

I was a trained naval nuclear power operator, and loved playing with the test meters. Hope this puts your mind at ease

Dr_Temp wrote:

* If one were going to be exposed, what precautionary actions would you take?

I am sure I am already getting exposed along with everyone else in the Pacific Northwest since the radiation is coming here already from Chernobyl, Russia... ..let alone Japans current problems.  As such, I need to stay out of the rain much as possible, and eat plenty of miso soup with Wakame seaweed in it.

Japan found out after they had 2 nukes dropped on them that the soup with seaweed in it helps remove the bad stuff from your post exposure. -Source: Wild Fermentation

There is no possible way to combine the ingredients of those 4 plants to make a Chernobyl sized even. The Chernobyl reactor was controlled with graphite rods while the Japanese reactors are controlled with cesium. Graphite burns just a mite bit better... and they use a whole lot more of it. A fake map of a radiation plume was circulated which showed the entire west coast getting a lethal dose of radiation within 6 days, and that scared everyone into buying the KI pills. If stored properly KI should last forever, it's a simple inorganic salt, like table salt, only 1 and 2 periods lower for the respective ions.

Doesn't matter if it makes a Chernobyl size event.  Fact is Chernobyl has not stopped to this day spewing radiation into the atmosphere, & another world event just added to the amount of radiation is being dumped into the atmosphere.

Edit - I personally have been exposed to lots of xrays, the equipment, etc, nuclear bone scans and what not.  I have a reason to want to dump heavy metals from my body.  Clay works amazingly well too.

Chernobyl is still spewing radiation, it is not spewing radioactive material. It's a huge difference. Clay is not an effective way to remove heavy metals from the body. If anything but mercury is expelled to the gi tract by the liver it's already as good as gone. And methyl mercury does not complex strongly enough to be held out by the clay. Clays are more useful for complex organics that need to be broken down before they can be taken up, but I digress.

Radioactive material can leak out, but in that case it can be picked up just like we pick up a diesel oil spills.

"* Is a similar event possible here in the states given how our power plants are built. (I am not familiar with the differences in different plant designs and vulnerabilities.)"

One of the news stories I was listening to said that there are 23 reactors in the US of this type. Didn't talk about the locations.

The six reactors at the Japanese plant were engineered to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis - but not of this magnitude. They engineered for the most likely events, not all possible events, and that is the issue. So yes, a huge San Andreas event could damage west coast reactors, a huge event involving the Yellowstone volcano could damage any reactors in that area, and a huge event involving the New Madrid fault could damage reactors in the midwest. I doubt that the money was spent for engineering for an 8.9 magnitude event.

All commercial reactors that I know about include cooling ponds for the spent fuel rods, and damage to these ponds is thought to be the root cause of the Japanese situation. This type of plant does not enclose the pools in a double containment system, while others do have the double enclosure.

BTW, right now I am living near the San Andreas, and we have had two noticeable shakes since Friday. Hard not to think that they are "sympathy" shakes.

jacque g wrote:
"* Is a similar event possible here in the states given how our power plants are built. (I am not familiar with the differences in different plant designs and vulnerabilities.)"

One of the news stories I was listening to said that there are 23 reactors in the US of this type. Didn't talk about the locations.

The six reactors at the Japanese plant were engineered to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis - but not of this magnitude. They engineered for the most likely events, not all possible events, and that is the issue. So yes, a huge San Andreas event could damage west coast reactors, a huge event involving the Yellowstone volcano could damage any reactors in that area, and a huge event involving the New Madrid fault could damage reactors in the midwest. I doubt that the money was spent for engineering for an 8.9 magnitude event.

All commercial reactors that I know about include cooling ponds for the spent fuel rods, and damage to these ponds is thought to be the root cause of the Japanese situation. This type of plant does not enclose the pools in a double containment system, while others do have the double enclosure.

BTW, right now I am living near the San Andreas, and we have had two noticeable shakes since Friday. Hard not to think that they are "sympathy" shakes.

Anytime Eastern Asia has a sizable earthquake, the other side of the Ring of Fire has after-quakes, if not a full on quake.

The 6 reactors in Japan were also built & run by a company that has numerous health & safety code violations in Japan, along with a long record of lying to, well, everyone.

Is it possible we can have a "Chernobyl" or another 3 Mile Island situation, you betcha.  Anything any human makes will eventually break down.  It's nature.

The only way to have another Chernobyl is if we do it on purpose. The plants we have in the US cannot be made into something as damaging as Chernobyl. We could have another 3 mile island for sure, but we could have one of those per week and be just fine.

Did a bit of reading and decided to get some, you never know when you need it and there is Lots of Nuclear near me, Plant, ships, subs...

Read that you can use topical Iodine (Topically not orally) to get some effect, but only a few studies on getting it through the skin, takes 2 hours, for potentially less effectiveness and harder to dose.

Read some stuff on another permie form iodine: cure for flu and cold? and figured I might give it a try when the time comes.

Still think there has to be some plants, fungi, bacteria that would bind this stuff up in some way and put it to good use or no use. Maybe the GMO people can work on that one? 

Thank you all for the valuable info and insight. Lots of conflicting stories out there. Only confirmed one is that you shouldn't count on there being enough supply of Potassium Iodide if you ever need it. Guess that goes for other things too, food, water, fuel...

Time will tell about the radiation reaching us. Heard someone say some of the fuel rods blew out of the plant and into the pacific ocean. Clever way to keep it cool.


Emerson, thank you for all your input. You still have me thinking of a way to power my house with pecans.

Mekka Pakanohida, you made me hungry for miso soup.

( Note : This is all as I understand it. I claim no specific training in Nuclear engineering.)

The degree of risk of a nuclear incident post natural disaster depends largely on the age and class of design of the reaction in question.
Chernobyl occurred due to a combination of a deliberate stand down of some of the safety systems ( for a scheduled test of their back ups), and miscommunication ( failure to brief test conditions on shift change hand over).
Can this happen again?: Yes, absolutely. People are still people, but this is reiterated in their training, and there is an actual event to point to to get plant operators to follow the rules here.  Probability reduced but not eliminated. ( It is not possible to eliminate a human factors component to any threat, only to limit it)
Can the actual failure mode of the Chernobyl reactor number four occur in the US? : No. Similar reactors in the western world have been decommissioned and shut down many years ago. newer designs, less prone to steam flash-over and graphite fires have replaced them. This does include in Japan.
Then what is different about Japan?
In Chernobyl, the reactor never completed it's SCRAM action ( the emergency insertion of control rods in order to shut down the reactor). The various Japanese reactors *did * SCRAM correctly. This is where people get confused. Fissionable material will produce heat anyway. This heat needs to be removed from the core to prevent it building up to levels that will damage the reactor.
The class of reactors that are having problems do have several systems of pumps to make sure that at least some cooling circulation occurs through the reactor core at all times. there is also some limited passive cooling ( not enough on it's own) via the fuel storage ponds, above the core.
So why are things going wrong? : Well, those pumps, all in separate systems.. they need electricity. With the reactors in SCRAM, they power plants can't make their own, they need to get some from the grid ( There is some battery backup, but that will be exhausted by now). Problem: There is no grid any more. Not there anyway.
These plants were all built along the coast, where they can access large amounts of water if they need to. This unfortunately exposed their infrastructure to damage from Tsunami, and this Tsunami has done more damage to the electricity infrastructure than expected by the designers of the plant.
That said, the damage to any of the plants is much less severe than what happened to the reactor number four Chernobyl. The cores of the plants have not been exposed, and while some fires have occurred due to water decomposition ( hydrogen and oxygen are a flammable mix), Chernobyl's fire was much, much worse.

So can this happen in <insert country here> ? :  Short answer, yes. Long answer : yes, if your country happens to have reactors of the same generation. ( pretty much everyone that *has* reactors).
There are newer designs that do not have this weakness, that is, they are able to maintain under maximum safe temp at SCRAM whilst fully removed from grid connectivity.

Is it worth while to get KI tablets :  In an general case, yes. Regardless it would pay to have a minimum supply of all essentials ( food , water, etc), as well as the ability to deal with foreseeable disasters. However, despite knowing this, people don't.