I was quite surprised that I hadn’t heard of this event. Took a nice long dive down the wikipedia rabbit hole.
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Also reported by The Washington Post, NBC, CBS, The Telegraph, Environews, Smithsonian Magazine, USAToday, Forbes, etc.
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Radioactive contamination of mushrooms and wild game in Germany as a result of the Chernobyl reactor accident:
Caesium-137. The gift that keeps on giving.
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Except it doesn’t illustrate those risks, at all, because – according to universal tradition – writers feel no need to even vaguely quantify the consequences, if any, of what actually happened. Once the terrifying boogie-word has been mentioned, it is implicit that everyone within a 100-mile radius probably shat out their internal organs within the hour, or something.
If an accident released, say, a gallon of cyclohexane in a mall food court, the reporting probably would illustrate the risks of cyclohexane, because even a cub reporter would include facts about the actual health risks, recommended exposure limits and so on. But if we’re talking about r-r-radioactive isotopes, why bother with facts? Just let your imagination go bonkers!
This is why we can’t have nuclear power
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There’s this big fusion thingy nearby whose radiation we can harness.
I hear it’s good to go for another 5 billion years or so.
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Don’t they vent particles from the crematorium?
Radioactive medicine is just not a question that is asked by the funeral home. At least here in the UK it isn’t.
Should it be? Or should the onus be on the family to declare it?
I seriously need to go to bed.
I totally read the title as “radioactive corpse reanimated.”
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That body could be quite useful now that we are totally out of plutonium for radioactive thermal generators. Hope the family won’t mind.
This is information which should be traced from the hospital onwards.
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The not hugging part sounds terrrible, I didn’t know about that.
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Of course. The funeral home liaises with the hospital to recover the body. This information should be provided at that stage.
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Well, it was sorta okay for us, as grownups. It sucks, but you understand the reason and know that it’s just for 48 hours or so.
A colleague of mine had to explain to his 4 y/o son that he couldn’t get close to his sick mum.
Fuck cancer.
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I always get a kick out of this kind of thing:
Yup. Roe deer: up to 400 becquerel per kilogram. Boar: up to about 1,600 becquerel per kilogram.
So, the deer don’t eat as much of the truffel named for them as the wild boar do.
Makes sense.
Also, armer Obelix. 
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From what Ive been reading about drugs polluting the waterways, this isn’t even the worst such problem. The attitude seems to be regulation stops once the patient has taken their meds.
All this focus on how compliant the sick person is, but no measuring compliance on the part of big pharma… yeah, we are sick of this all right!
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One of my cats was treated years ago. I wasn’t supposed to let him sit on my lap. It was OK to flush the poopies but not to put them in a landfill. And, if he died within 90 days of treatment, I had to take him back to the vet for disposal. He made it six months. I miss that kitty!
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It should probably fall to the certified professional to ask. Wanting the family to think to declare something they may not understand in a time of crisis is just asking for avoidable trouble.
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There are other reasons why funeral professionals should always ask doctors about medical history.
I agree about not relying on family members. When my nana died my granda wasn’t in a state to say if she had radioactive medicine/a pacemaker or not (she didn’t), he was trying to get other family members to take her valium ‘to help them calm down’. My dad had to take the bottle away from him before he could accidentally overdose on them.
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The Telegraph is another questionable source. Some of the others would have convinced me though.
Just to be clear, it’s not that they are both right wing biased, it’s that they have a history of lying.
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Understood. As far as “radioactive boars”, Japan had the same problem and that created by the Fukushima meltdown. That was also widely reported on. Notwithstanding the veracity of this or that source, the reported mode of contamination was the same in the case of Chernobyl and Fukushima: ingestion of radioactive mushrooms. Boars like mushrooms, apparently. And the science supports mushrooms’ proclivity for absorbing Cesium, so it all makes sense.
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