"my doggy pickles might get sick, please help, we need iodine pills now!!!"

seems everyone out here, sans yours truly, is in a complete panic over the japan reactors. people are literally panicking over it thinking radioactive fall out is headed our way to wipe us, and our medcinenal pot dispenseries on every corner, off the face of the earth and are calling the white house, makers of iodine pills etc night and day demanding medcine that can kill them and give them thyroid cancer. i cant make this stuff up! :

Nevertheless, thousands of people are seeking potassium iodide. CVS’s online pharmacy sold out of it over the weekend, a spokesperson said.

“I’m very concerned,” said Laurie Akey, 58, of Newport Beach, Calif. After studying news reports and weather patterns, Akey ordered enough potassium iodide for her husband, four children, three grandchildren, grandparents and Lizzy, her 5-year-old King Charles Spaniel. “This thing is blowing apart over there. If this thing keeps blowing it could come over in a cloud and land on our shores.”

i say give 'em all the pills they want, lettum kill themsevles off then maybe we can get back to some state of normalcy here...

gonna take a lot of pills....

These people are getting all bent out of shape over something that hasn't happened over here.
The radiation being released now are alpha and beta. Alpha radiation is stopped by just a couple inches of air, paper, or clothing. Beta radiation can penetrate further like several feet of air.

Gamma radiation is only created during fission process, so these people taking these pills now might just make their thyroid worst. Heck people with granite counter tops, smoke detectors, radon live every day with low radiation doses. If one of them reactors do let loose, then we should worry, as its the gamma radiation we have to worry about. Common paper, metal can stop alpha and beta, but gamma can pass through thick concrete and can only be stopped by lead.

most things worth stopping are stopped by lead.

it's crazy out here....the sheep are literally nuts. i dont even turn on the news or normal tv anymore. i just watch dvd's or netflix. i cant even deal with the legal stupidity that comes over the boob tube anymore.

idiots are gobbling up these pills like they are candy w/o even realising they are on a very short road to a slow painful death.

if i had some capitol i'd invest in these companies for a short term gain. some of these compaines stocks are gonna skyrocket.

what realy fries me is that no one is aknowladging the things these reactors just went through yet are still standing and safe for the most part. the wacko run media is hyping so much doom and gloom, like the always do, no one is getting the facts. these things just got slammed by tsunamis and a 9.0 quake!!! just once id like to see a plus side of things in the news. fat chance i know.

Sad part is, most of these people don't know that the pills are only good for up to 12 hours, and its a waste to take them when there is no high levels of radiation. 5000 - 6000 miles from the reactors is an awful long way and even the gamma radiation would not reach the west coast. But leave it to the media to hype it up and cause more chaos. Potassium iodide, a salt also known as KI, has just one use: It shields the thyroid from radioactive iodine. It blocks no other type of radiation, and protects no other body part. So if you were in Japan near a plant right now and you been taking the pills and a plant exploded, you might as well kiss it goodbye cause gamma rays would get you unless you lived in a lead house.
Also Stovey, I talked to the wife during her lunch break and I think I might go with your idea for short term investment in some of these companies as long as the media hypes this up, I couldn't have better advertisement.

wohoo! my usual 10% finder fee applies so....

Red wine or yoghurt would do as good as pot iodine.. and taste a hell lot better.
maybe you can get some betadyne and swap them with good vintage wine..

If you gotta go, at least you go happy

ill drink to that!

Ominivision1 wrote:

5000 - 6000 miles from the reactors is an awful long way and even the gamma radiation would not reach the west coast.

It will be interesting to see what happens. It was one of the best kept secrets of WWII that the Japanese successfully bombed the US mainland by arming weather balloons and using the high-altitude jet stream to float them to the US. We have had sand storms from Africa make it to the US. Time will tell how much radiation does.

Stovey, do you want me to send some I-pills your way? You could use them to barter with!

stovepipe wrote:

what realy fries me is that no one is aknowladging the things these reactors just went through yet are still standing and safe for the most part. .

The 0 to 10 scale is flawed as damage is called by the acceleration of the earth when a earth quake happens. And the scale is not linear.

Where as the quake giving a .35 g of acceleration, on reactors that were designed for 0.18 g, and have survived a 0.125 g quake in 1978, that was 7.7 on the scale (or 5.32 megatons of TNT).

The Japanese were quick to react and flood the cores with sea water, which caused hydrogen build up that lead to the tops blowing off as I understand it but as you can clearly see that is a designed "feature" to prevent the actual core containment from being over pressured and breached.



So abit of radiation has escaped due to the steam of the salt water coming out of the reactors, the cores should be relatively "cool" by now. And therefor safe from the fears of melt down leading to a Chernobyl. However we all must remember, at the end of the day it doesn't mean its all that bad, look at 3 Mile Island and what happens when people have the necessary safety plans in place to limit the damage that is caused. This ain't communist Russia we are talking about after all.

Plus a few 3 eyed fish floating around cant be all that bad tasting.

slimjim wrote:

It was one of the best kept secrets of WWII that the Japanese successfully bombed the US mainland by arming weather balloons and using the high-altitude jet stream to float them to the US.

I don't know how successful you'd call 9,300 balloons and only 300 making it to the US mainland and a mere 6 deaths.

Dimitri

I guess very successful if you were one of the 6

Stovey, here is a website that shows radiation levels in the US and is updated every minute. You could check it in the mornings before you go to work and determine if you need to stop and get some i-pills.

current.com/1c5dp4c

Oh, the NYT reports the radioactive plume is supposed to get to So. Cal. late on Friday! Better stock up now!

www.nytimes.com/2011/0....html?_r=1

I cannot believe all the hype the media is putting out on the radiation reaching the US. Having worked at the Zion, ILL nuclear power plant for 9 years from 1980 - 1989 the reactors in Japan were built by G.E. and the Zion plant reactors were built by Westinghouse. Watching cnn show them dumping water from helicopters imo is not the way to cool the cores, it's kind of like putting a few drops of water onto a red hot iron skillet. Hopefully they will use water cannons till they can get power restored to operate the coolant pumps again.

As I said before KI is only good to counteract radioactive iodide. Reactor isotopes also include uranium, plutonium, strontium, cesium, etc. And If you were close enough (60 mile radius) to inhale these isotopes (400 mSv+), a bad thyroid will be the least of your worries.

The only thing thats going to be hurting is the pocketbook and wallet of the people that buy into the hype to purchase these pills.

there's more radiation in my safe from my watch and trijicon sights than is coming over here to la-la land from japan.

"my labradoodle pickle's is glowing in the dark, where's my i-pills!!! and my tin foil hat! ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!"