Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed for March 10, 2021

That’s a lot of scraping.

Fire drill, going to need every one to stand at the agreed on meeting spot fifty miles away.

“Duck and Cover!”

I recall reading about a teenager who was doing radiation experiments in his parent’s yard shed. He got the material by going around telling people he was collecting Smoke Detectors for a scouting project (or something like that) and actually pieced together enough material from the sensors to create a radioactive source. The government came knocking when they somehow spotted the excess radiation coming from said shed. He managed to irradiate himself a bit but he stated it was worth it because he learned so much. I THINK that might have been around this time.

Radium isn’t fissionable.

A lot of workers in watch factories contracted radium poisoning from painting those watch hands.

So, he wants us to believe that he’s just scraping by?

Now we know why Oliver is losing his hair…

Two things keep people from building bombs in their garage. Weapons grade materials are very difficult to obtain or make from ore. (98% U235, for example). Once you have the materials it is very, verry, dangerous, as in toxic or radioactive or explosive, to handle and machine them into the needed shapes. If you get that far without killing yourself, you are left with the minor problem putting the shapes together long enough for a chain reaction. The design of a workable bomb is well known.

A former industrial site near us became to object of a major environmental cleanup effort in the 90’s due to contamination from radium paint used on instrument dials.

“Cool your jets”? I don’t think I have ever heard Oliver speak in such a “hip” fashion. His speech is usually quite formal (unless maybe when arguing with his computer).

He’d have better luck if he scraped the radioactive stuff out of 9700 smoke detectors… there was a kid here in MI who did that and caused a big mess.

I don’t remember, but is this before or after his competition with Stephen Hawking and their fight to be the first to find the “Grand Unification Theory.”

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/eagle-scout-nuclear-reactor/

I LOVE the teacher: “OK, people; fire drill!”

this storyline is Fission for stuff.

Hey, all you worrywarts! Didn’t you hear Oliver? The safety’s on!

Excuse me, but I just remembered I have a pending roadtrip to, uhh, to the Black Hills. Yeah, that’s it, to the Black Hills!

I have a friend who makes jewelry out of old watch components. A friend of hers was showing off his super cool new toy to her… a radiation detector. It beeped at something she’d made with glow in the dark hands. She had to contact several buyers to have them return recent radioactive purchases.

I think that teacher still teaches in most every school in America.