Frame said the ring likely used polonium-210 because it was the most accessible substance that could produce the alpha particles required to make the effect work. However, polonium-210 has a relatively short half-life of 138 days, meaning that approximately half the polonium in the ring would have been gone within about four and a half months. In other words, a vintage Atomic Bomb Ring isn’t going to be producing any scintillations.
Even while the ring’s effect was still happening, though, kids weren’t really in danger. Alpha radiation can be dangerous when ingested, but it’s also the easiest type of radiation to block — even a sheet of paper is enough
meaning that approximately half the polonium in the ring would have been gone within about four and a half months
So basically the whole effect that sells the thing is gone within a year. Talk about planned obsolence
young kids never swallow random stuff
Fascinating and apparently true.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kix-lone-ranger-atomic-bomb-ring/
Newspaper ad here:
This is straight out of Fallout lol
Via Calvin and Hobbs and their Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.
Yea, but Kinder Surprise eggs are illegal as fuck in the US…
My first exposure to nuclear physics came at the age of 10 in 1947, two years after the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima.
Nothing much to do with the Lone Ranger, but everything to do with being proud we invented nukes and used them on a civilian population. Spinning it into the potent propaganda of children’s cereal toys. That’s pretty MAGA.
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On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko was poisoned and later hospitalised. He died on 23 November, becoming the first confirmed victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome.
If you’re in the US, it actually is possible and legal to order small quantities of radioisotopes even today.
https://unitednuclear.com/radioactive-isotopes-c-2_5/
Just note, they DO NOT ship internationally. And if you try to order 10,000 disk sources, you WILL be getting an angry knock on your door from the NRC.
Huh and how many discs would it take to make a small generator for a house so I can tell my electric company to fuck off LMAO
For legal reasons that was a joke
So dumb, you can just order 8,000 discs and then order another 9,000 to your neighbor and they won’t even know 🙄
Talk about inflation! These atomic rings were only $0.15 in 1947! And those disks for polonium210 are $120
Kind of cool but i wouldn’t know what to do with it and i don’t need an expensive hobby lol
you can make a cloud chamber with clear plastic containers, a really cold frozen thing, high proof alcohol, and hot water (example)
these can visualize cosmic radiation, or you can always hold a smoke detector next to it to see it really pop off
so you can literally have an inexpensive hobby involving nuclear physics haha
I like to imagine radiologic security checks are done by border agents with cloud chambers. Not fancy electronic detectors, just literal cloud chambers. Just imagine there’s some customs guy at a port in LA. He’s standing outside a shipping container. In his hands he has a giant glass dome filled with fog. And he’s just awkwardly waving this giant impractical object all over the surface of a shipping container.
that’d be WAY more fun than a pancake GM or whatever the hell they use lol
it’s kinda steampunk
YES! Make it a glass sphere adorned with many brass fittings. And they track the counts/minute by manually counting and using a brass stopwatch that matches the design of the cloud chamber.
FETCH THE FANCY STOPWATCH COUNTING-BOY
Yes! Each customs agent needs at least one, preferable several, scrappy apprentices.
+5 rads per second
That’s kinda awesome
Still some on eBay, too rich for my blood. Love one for my curio cabinet of weird shit.
Looks like perfect swallowing size.
Since when did the lone ranger have nuclear weapons?
If it had real nuclear material does that mean that little bomb could have actually made a little nuclear explosion? 🤔
Now I wanna know what the smallest nuke you could make would be like… How big would the explosion of the world’s smallest nuclear bomb be?
if you define nuclear bomb as “exothermic reaction resulting from decay of an atomic nucleus,” there’s a shit ton of single-atom nuclear bombs going off in your body rn lol
