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Road signs to help people limit radiation exposure in contaminated areas

theautopian.com

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Re: Road signs to help people limit radiation exposure in contaminated areas

#41

Post by hardibro »

pessimizer wrote: post #40
wiseowise wrote: post #20

[flagged]

> Autoplaying sticky video Not only autoplaying, but I've got my browser settings so screwed with and tuned that I haven't had a video autoplay on me in at least a year, and this one broke right through. They should be proud. It's probably the most invasive ad on the web.

It shouldn't be playing sound, so I hope that didn't happen. Also, we use one of the three biggest off-the-shelf video players. We're a very small independent publisher so it's not like we tuned it specially. In fact, we put more restrictions on the video player than most of our competitors (and make less money because of it).

Re: Road signs to help people limit radiation exposure in contaminated areas

#42

Post by somerandomqaguy »

redox99 wrote: post #22

The title and some of the comments assume it would be something like if you take 15 extra minutes you would just die . When in reality it would just be an increase in cancer risk. If it were THAT contaminated they'd use the AREA CLOSED the article mentions anyways. To be fatal within days you need about 10,000 mSv of exposure. Even with heavy fallout, exposure would probably be around 10 mSv per hour.

I'd imagine the concern is the radioactive dust / fallout getting stuck onto the vehicle, clothes, and hair which would increase your exposure time; getting through that zone as quick as possible could limit that dust sticking. But that's just my guess.

Re: Road signs to help people limit radiation exposure in contaminated areas

#43

Post by thfuran »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #9
mugwumprk wrote: post #6

Weird. I wonder how those signs were supposed to be installed. So dangerous you need to blow through at 120mph, but safe enough for a worker to stand there for awhile installing a new sign.

Worse, they mention supervised traffic, so presumably at some point people standing outside next to speeding traffic and radiation. Also, how fast is "safe" when seemingly you'll regularly be encountering crashed cars from people who didn't make it?

What do you mean crashed cars from people who didn't make it? The sign is basically a "minimum speed 40 mph" sign routinely seen on the interstates but with a bit more teeth. The sides of highways aren't usually lined with crashed cars (except occasionally when winter gets feisty).

Re: Road signs to help people limit radiation exposure in contaminated areas

#44

Post by hardibro »

karamanolev wrote: post #37
hardibro wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, publisher here. We tend to look at our competition and do half or less the number of ads. That means there's an ad unit every sixth node, not every two paragraphs (so three paragraphs, two images an embed or five paragraphs or whatever). The video player doesn't stick if you're a member, because we are partially member-supported. If you'd like to see fewer ads you can become a member!

I appreciate the comment. FWIW, I understand you need to survive and I also think it's not the worst I've seen.

Thanks, it's tough being a small publisher. Many of our competitors use a ton of ads, which screws with ad rates, and we use the usual off-the-shelf tools, but people still get mad that we have any ads. It's exciting.

Re: Road signs to help people limit radiation exposure in contaminated areas

#45

Post by killjoywashere »

> engineers mused over whether there was anything to be done top stop a torrent of enemy missiles falling across the nation. These superweapons seemed to promise destruction on an overbearing scale, threatening the very existence of human civilization itself.

THEY STILL DO!!!!

This is what drives me nuts about our politics: so many people seem to think we can flirt with the sort of nationalism (1) that led us into WWI and WWII. But, friends, that road leads to your death in every direction. Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing. Nuclear peace only works as long as all parties persistently work toward de-escalation, which can be measured by adherence to consensus and norms. Nationalism is antithetical to that posture. The iconoclast leaders of national populism are rooted in rulebreaking. They also tend to embrace strong foreign policy talk as a short term bolster to domestic support, again, antithetical to de-escalation.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism

Re: Road signs to help people limit radiation exposure in contaminated areas

#46

Post by adamredwoods »

redox99 wrote: post #22

The title and some of the comments assume it would be something like if you take 15 extra minutes you would just die . When in reality it would just be an increase in cancer risk. If it were THAT contaminated they'd use the AREA CLOSED the article mentions anyways. To be fatal within days you need about 10,000 mSv of exposure. Even with heavy fallout, exposure would probably be around 10 mSv per hour.

Some Chernobyl radiation levels recorded in 2009, were not this high. (They were higher in the blast, though.)

https://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/radiatio...

Re: Road signs to help people limit radiation exposure in contaminated areas

#47

Post by bpye »

XorNot wrote: post #32
teractiveodular wrote: post #28

Interestingly enough, the Fukushima exclusion zone has roads that pretty much fit the bill. They're the pink lines on this map (PDF), with the exclusion zone in gray: https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/roadmap/pd... You are permitted to drive through but not stop or get out of your car. I presume ordinary speed limits apply though, so no exciting post-apocalyptic signage.

That's likely because alpha and beta emitters are trivially blocked by common car materials, but getting your skin covered in them or inhaling them does much more damage (this is actually what killed a lot of Chernobyl firefighters: they wore their dust covered coats for hours, and died of sepsis from extensive beta burns. Had they been decontaminated quickly, they would've survived).

I’m not 100% convinced by that as motorcycles are also permitted in some cases?

Re: Road signs to help people limit radiation exposure in contaminated areas

#49

Post by manquer »

slackfan wrote: post #27
manquer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Not-really volunteers as well) There were many volunteers at Chernobyl, like the three engineers who went underwater to close the valves, many people fully understood the risks associated and still worked on it voluntarily. Lets not belittle their sacrifices by snide political commentary

Let's also not belittle the sacrifice of the unwilling prisoners sent to die

That is the normal state of things in most countries. Yes their efforts should be remembered too.

There are currently 800+ "voluntary" prisoner who are working firefighters battling the wildfires in Southern California for less than $5-10/day risking higher injuries than professionals with limited healthcare.

Every country in times of need uses their prisoners as does Russia today for their war and they don't get treated the same as civilians in terms of rights.

Forced labor in high risk jobs is also true to every draft and conscription in every military ever, not just for soviet union or other oppressive regimes.

This is the social contract between a country and its citizens.

Nobody is dismissing the all firefighters in California as forced labor without choice in their sacrifice because some of them are prisoners who have limited choice as parent post was implying.

I think people who worked in Chernobyl deserve the same courtesy of considering all their sacrifices as voluntary independent of how they got there.

---

On a side note we have the least standing to comment on forced work by prisoner in other countries, Slavery is still legal in the constitution for prisoners, we have the highest incarceration rates anywhere in the world even more than most regimes[1] in the world and for-profit prisons who charge prisoners from phone calls to soap a lot of money and also pay very little for the work they do while incarcerated .

[1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2024.html

Re: Road signs to help people limit radiation exposure in contaminated areas

#50

Post by matthewdgreen »

killjoywashere wrote: post #45

> engineers mused over whether there was anything to be done top stop a torrent of enemy missiles falling across the nation. These superweapons seemed to promise destruction on an overbearing scale, threatening the very existence of human civilization itself. THEY STILL DO!!!! This is what drives me nuts about our politics: so many people seem to think we can flirt with the sort of nationalism (1) that led us into WW…

The current government is going to weaken Western alliances. China is going to take Taiwan. Japan and South Korea are going to rapidly develop nuclear weapons programs. North Korea will increase the range of its missiles to reliably hit the entire US. The entire Middle East is going to nuclearize, with Iran first and then Saudi Arabia (the Trump white house was trying to arrange this last term, I suppose they'll succeed this time.) You cannot have a world where every single nation has nuclear weapons mounted on ICBMs and not have a war in the medium term.
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