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Somewhere in FSB headquarters there's a room with a bunch of eBay bots buying these up from collectors and a bunch of dudes in hazmat suits with hammers and Tup
by jzellis 5y ago
Somewhere in FSB headquarters there's a room with a bunch of eBay bots buying these up from collectors and a bunch of dudes in hazmat suits with hammers and Tupperware bowls smashing em up as they arrive and saving the bits for later
- xattt 5y agoHalf-life of polonium (138 days) is a limiting factor in stockpiling these things. If you are the state, you will go straight to the literal source for these things.
- Maursault 5y agoFor ingestion, a median lethal dose is around 238 μCi or 50 nanograms. [1] The article doesn't specify exactly how much Polonium is in these, but offers hints: > The beads, approximately 20 to 60 um in diameter But how many? > The Po-210 activity is often on the order of 200 to 500 uCi at the time of manufacture, but this activity decreases quickly according to the 138 day half-life of Po-210. Sounds like if the product was new, and Polonium harvested, there might be enough there to kill one or two people, if ingested, except... > the polonium is bound up in a ceramic matrix so that it should not be assimilated if the spheres were ingested A little moisture also defeats static, but it would be reckless and irresponsible to try and put that in an anti-static product. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko#Poison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...
- cperciva 5y agoThe polonium being bound in a ceramic matrix protects it from accidental release, but it's easy enough to extract it deliberately.