*Thanks for watching.* This was a slightly different [HLH] -- one where we attempted the first investigation of an incident -- so I hope you enjoy it. As always, I tried my best and I take these stories very seriously. I hope that shows. There's a fine line to walk between educating and fear mongering, meme-ing and investigating (as you can see from my merch). *NOTE:* A few of you have emailed me that the Tumblr account in question was posting some clear anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in their messages shown here. Obviously, I in no way support this or the accounts, and was unaware at the time of recording.
Kind of reminds me of David Hahn. I read the book, "The Radioactive Boy Scout," some years ago. I wonder if they'd ban this book from schools, it's one that NEEDS to be out there as a cautionary tale, perhaps with some of the techniques redacted, anyway.
I admired your investigative process my man! I want to ask, since it’s so crazy, what was your first reaction when you saw it led to Rye’s rather…interesting account?
@@justaguy6100 For years after I'd read that story in an old Reader's Digest I wondered what ever became of Hahn. I thought he would've gone on to become a nuclear researcher or something, but unfortunately due to depression after the incident he kind of fizzled out. Such a shame.
@@ShumaiAxeman True. Bright kid that overran his brilliance, and sadly paid a price for most of his life, and subsequently became a fentanyl statistic, apparently.
Yeah it's a terrifying thought that something can be so dangerous to you and completely invisible until after you're already royally screwed. As a power source, we've seen from this channel time and again that it can be handled perfectly safely, in fact safer than some other more common power sources, but as a potential danger to encounter in the wild, it's particularly terrifying because you'll never know it hit you until after the fact. Just walking by a 'Drop and Run' tube without seeing it there is enough to put your life in danger.
I've known people who were terrified of electricity that still use light switches. The unrestrained power of a natural force is always scary, but the utility can be safe and common place
I can easily see how "strange warm rock", "glowing sand" or "pebbles that mess with my camera" would go absolutely viral both on Social Media and in the local area...until it's too late. Especially now that knowledge of what nuclear accidents look like is starting to fade from the public consciousness
That's basically what happened in Goiânia, if I remember the story well, it was a powder used in X-ray machines or something like that, people took the powder that sparkled and kept messing with it, I don't know if it's true, but I heard say that there was a guy who powdered his dick with the powder and had sex with his wife, and another who gave it to his daughter to play with
I also heard that there was a guy who kept running away from the quarantine zone and pissing on the light and power poles there, leaving them irradiated, causing them to have to be replaced
Immediately knew it was fake because that camera static wouldn’t have gone away if he put his hand over it, Gamma radiation can pierce through 6 feet of concrete and 1 foot of lead, even that container wouldn’t realistically be thick enough to prevent the radiation from escaping.
@@davgames1206 Well, Cs137 decays primarily through beta and gamma radiation. (Alpha particles don't travel far and can easily be stopped by your outermost layer of dead skin cells, it doesn't pose a health risk, unless ingested.)
It's not as simple as that, sure a hand wouldn't stop it, but technically no amount of shielding completely stops neutral charge ionization radiation like gamma rays. Adding more material simply exponentially reduces the amount of radiation exposure outside the shielding. So with a weak enough source you can absolutely attenuate the source to below background with a container like that. I studied nuclear engineering and we did labs with very weak sources all the time and you could completely block the weak gamma sources with a little block of lead.
It's rare indeed to have "I searched through NRC documents for an orphaned source of deadly radiation" and "I slid into a rubber pony's DMs for an interview" in the same video.
I was watching this video at work, Kyle started saying "pony play fetish" and it was at that moment the manager decided to start listening and ask me "what's a demon core?" I gotta stop watching videos on speaker...
@@warped_rider Rotfl! It's moments like that which convince me we are entertainment for someone or something, somewhere.. Whether reality show for aliens or personal comedic ant farm for God or a God, whoever or whatever it is, we must provide them w some funny moments I feel 😂
The thought of peeking into a container and seeing a tiny little pebble but knowing that seeing it could mean death is terrifying to me. Its like you looked into Medusa's eyes and then had months to think about your quick dumb mistake as you turned to stone
@@Weazle13XIII I was surprised to see that someone misinterpreted what you said. Maybe you could add "instead of the usual seconds" or "instead of the myth-accurate seconds" right after the end of "your quick dumb mistake". (Although, maybe I misinterpreted it too, but in a different way)
@@cobaltchromee7533 this is exactly what OP means. Medusa kills instantly. Here it’s as if you looked at her but you turn into a stone very slowly, with no effect at first. Hence slowed down version of dying - you gazed at a pebble, instead of gazed at Medusa 💁🏻♀️
As you felt your body start to change as it dies and the cells aren't replenished, while expelling your own guts as they fall apart, knowing that your skin sliding off like a wetsuit was only the beginning... It would be a rough few weeks
@CobaltChromeE it was an analogy my guy, I know Medusa kills you instantly, but I'm talking about the topic of the video, I wasn't exactly trying to be lore accurate
This is actually a good example of biases related to even a professional's experience. The expert in radiation's effect on digital recording said "Nah absolutely fake," because he works with radiologically damaged footage and how to shield against it. He saw the obvious difference, and knew how hard it would be to stop high-energy gamma rays. Meanwhile, the guy who specializes in nuclear disasters and sees so many incidents just like what is described is perfectly willing to accept it as truth. Even though it's quite rare to encounter an orphan source, he sees that exact scenario a hundred times over again. It's not at all rare to him.
yeah, can't lie though the second guy was a bit of an idiot, just with my mild understanding of what radiation does to people and cameras I was like "gotta be a fake" but he was certain it was real, and he presumably knows a lot more about this stuff than me...
More than that there's also the fact that the guy who worked in radiology if you ask me was taking everything that was said about what it was and what was going on at face value as in believing that it was cesium and thus should have been gamma radiation which rightly so would not have been stopped by a hand nor would it have caused that minimal level of damage relatively speaking of course but that's assuming that it actually was cesium and in general also just comes from a very different perspective like you mentioned
Here's the thing. The disaster expert is probably trained to err on the side of caution, because, IONIZING RADIATION ISN'T SOMETHING YOU FU€K WITH If he's wrong, he wasted time and money due to an overabundance of caution. If the skeptic is wrong? They don't write DROP AND RUN on the containers for shits and giggles! It'd be a capital D Disaster!
Who would you rather be wrong? The believer, "that's worrisome and should be investigated", or the skeptic, "nah it's fake, gamma radiation isn't stopped by a hand"? Sure, it'd be a waste of money investigating something which is ultimately a false alarm, but if it were REAL?! They don't write "DROP AND RUN " on the container for sh!ts and giggles! Such an incident would qualify as a capital D Disaster. To write it off as a hoax out of hand is a career k!lling oversight, if you're wrong.
Real journalism doesn’t sell. Mainstream follows the most amount of money and actual investigation like this being short and sweet? They’d be fired for trying to air this.
I don't care whether it is fake or not, prior to my degree in physics, I was trained in nuclear density testing using Caesium-137 pellets. My immediate reaction was to wince and try to run away when he looked inside and the camera became distorted. In Australia a Caesium pellet was lost in January of 2023 and it became a national incident for good reason. Radiation is scary! It is invisible, you can be exposed without realising it, and many encounters end in an early death. However, the biggest problem with it is that it doesn't kill instantly and the road to death is excruciating. 💀
Yeah I'm currently studying nuclear physics and watched a fellow student brick their phone by playing with a radioactive pellet emitting alpha radiation. Edit we were wearing protective suits and they somehow snuck their phone through
The scariest thing about radiation to me is just how delayed the damage is, and how many of the effects that would warn off an educated person would instead draw attention from the ignorant. People "playing" with radiation without understanding they are killing themselves is horrifying. In some ways the viral video does a better job about showing such a realistic scenario than any demon core memes. As it shows how small and innocuous an orphan source can be.
To be fair, you can replace 'radiation' with 'lead' in that sentence and it'd not really change a thing. Same with 'asbestos' and other happy joy fun things you absolutely don't want to mess with.
@@MayaPosch True but lead and asbestos don't really do anything to make them stand out. They don't make someone who is clueless actively want to mess with it, like something that glows in the dark or messes with cameras would.
What's scary is; how inevitable it is, there's almost nothing that can be done and it makes the victim suffer, almost like torture, from just a seemingly harmless and painless entry.
It's Lovecraftian horrifying stuff. Cthulu drives you mad just looking at him, radiation rots you just for being too exposed to it, and bar for "too exposed" is really low.
Actually when I first saw the video I wrote it off for the exact reason of “the noise on the camera shouldn’t stop with his hand over it because it’s gamma radiation”
"I think everyone understands its fake" Meanwhile, Kyle's informant was like "YEP 100 PERCENT REAL DEFINITELY NOT FAKE" lmao. Good on you Kyle putting in the effort to make sure people see that it is a fake though.
In defense of Lucas, the Nuclear Contamination Expert, he's probably seen shit like this all the time that's 100% legit, so he probably has plenty of reason to have no doubts at all something as stupid as that can actually happen... which in itself is a terrifying thought.
Yep, reminds me of the houseMD episode where the kid picks up the radioactive piece from a junkyard his dad works at and dies as a result, which is almost certaintly based off any amount of actual cases where someone takes something radioactive, with no idea of its horrific dangers. this certaintly happens often enough for it to be a recognized issue
Kyle, thanks for spending hours of your time to research this thoroughly! Thinking that someone could just post a video about an orphaned source and _putting their hand right on it_ is absolutely terrifying.
I figured the video was fake. I've seen radiation "grain" effects on digital cameras and it's usually more sparkly. Also, I figured if the video was real, this story would end up on the news in a week or so after I first saw it on Tumblr.
@@Bacopa68 i dont like how rye was thinking everybody knowing it was fake, he's way too optimistic to think people are that smart... I mean he even fooled someone as educated as Kyle or even higher. On the topic of finding him, I'm surprised there wasn't a 4chan campaign to find him from just his hand shape and stuff on the table
I used to operate a cyclotron in a nuclear medicine pharmacy and we had cesium-137 and cobalt-60 sources that were in trace amounts. Regardless of them being reasonably "safe", we had to do rigorous spot checks throughout the day, everyday, to make sure this stuff was still contained. This story was scary as hell, glad it's fake.
@nicksurfs1 I was a cyclotron tech/operator (which is basically a circular particle accelerator). It was incredibly interesting, but because of the short half-life of f-18 (radioactive fluorine, used in PET scanning) it had to be made 3rd shift to be ready for hospitals in the morning. Takes a toll on you.
Last month or so on Reddit, a user posed a photo of two strange metal objects he had found in the estate of a late relative, asking what they where. They were quickly identified as naked radiation sources, but so old that they were not THAT dangerous. I think the OP sought medical care (with no injuries recorded) and that the sources were taken care of by authorities.
I was an industrial radiographer. We used Iridium 192 and during training we were told the horror stories of people like that guy whom put a source into their pocket. Like the Yanago incident.
@@sirgeorgioalastrata4104 current industrial radiographer. If you’re at the point holding this and having some sort of digital video affect your losing a body part or probably getting cancer in the short to mid future. Your allowed 5R legally a year as a radiographer. Most company’s allow only 350MR a month short of the 500mr your allowed legally a month. It’s potent enough basically to make a dirty bomb that could kill a city, with the radioactive fall out. The sources we use for industrial stuff like weld inspection, or radiographing concrete to take a look at concrete stress cables could range from selenium, iridium or cobalt. Cobalt sources or insanely radioactive, the housing for them is a couple hundred pounds of pure depleted uranium or other dense metals. You hand crank the source out and run like the wind.
@@sirgeorgioalastrata4104 The radioactive particles can be absorbed by human tissue and react causing DNA damage. This will make it so that the cells cannot reproduce and thus this has been described as rotting from the inside out. It's horrific.
It really does. Kyle showing the banner really, in my brain, is the stuff of nightmares (and I'm no prude), it gives me "Griffith will now have his fun with you" vibe.
I can appreciate the fact that the person behind this was actually willing to answer your questions about it for the sake of getting a clear understanding. Good on you for both bringing attention to the facts and the morals regarding the scenario, as it definitely falls into that gray area.
Yeah, though the voice distortion made the final conversation a little hard for me to follow, unfortunately. Also rather unnecessary, given it wasn't the person's actual voice.
@@michahogelo I meant the distortion on the voice was unnecessary, not the voice itself. I'm blind, so for me the audio really was necessary - I wouldn't use "necessary" in your case, if you're admitting it was pure laziness.
When Kyle does his quiet serious voice, I pay extra attention. So imagine how shocked I was to hear serious Kyle talk about pony play in an orphan source video. Strange world we live in.
My first reaction was "theres absolutely no way someone would give themselves radiation poisoning for the lulz" but I remember I had the exact same thoughts about people eating tide pods back when that was a thing
Theres a sad, viral 4 chan post about a russian Stalker who was chasing radiation and secured some old RAW uncased radiation sources from soviet era systems. Posted an image with his geiger counter going extremely hot along side it, and then vanished. And unfortunately what was in the image was verified. I forget the exact number, but it was the kind of "you wont be alive next month" level of nukage. Everytime I see it, its a mix of memes and just sombre realisation that that dude is certainly dead.
I live in Germany and the amount of people finding unexploded ww2 ordnance and then trying to sell it, or posting online asking what this is, is terrifying.
This incident, real or not, is just another example showing us that we need to start educating people about radioactivity and nuclear power. Also Kyle's serious voice is scary.
I agree. Instead the popular media, especially here in Germany, teaches us that radioactivity is scary and nuclear waste will kill us all, if the NPPs don't explode first like Chornobyl. The children in German schools are being forced to read 'The Cloud', which is a book that contains basically all anti-nuclear power lies you can imagine, leading to the people rather accepting having a few more thousand people die due to burning coal each year than letting NPPs run longer. There's also a lot of fearmongering about cesium-137 in the forests from Chornobyl, even though the dose you can acquire from even mushrooms isn't any concern. But hey, radiation is scary :)
Like it or not, it is the inevitable next stage of human civilization, as we demand more and more energy sources. Hush hush about it and think it's just for the scientific people is definitely harmful. The unknown produces fear.
As someone who’s been trained with adobe premire and after effects, i have to say that the radiation grain effect is INCREDIBLY easy to make, its kinda concerning to me that something i can do in two or three clicks could fool the world like this
wait- how was the world fooled?? I'm pretty sure nobody in the biden administration or any of our NATO partners took it seriously, i neglected to see even one article reporting on it in the real news media like WAPO or the TIMES, so if people were fooled it was just kids and gullible people on social media, right? I mean "fooling the world" would require the world being aware that this even happened, and it was completely a new thing for me, and i'm even more addicted to social media than anyone in my family(who also had no idea this even happened)
Did Kyle just become a journalist? Hearing about a story, wondering about its validity and then hunting for the truth, following leads, locating a source, interviewing the creator of the original story and then publishing the story for people to see... Yeah I think that qualifies Kyle as a journalist, hell thats more work then the media does now a days. Well done sir. 👍
Actually, Journalist dont do that. They run with the headlines and assume their fact for clicks. Kyle in fact did not do that and I appreciate him for it.
So you're telling me people thought this was real because of the film grain being introduced on the camera sensor due to the radiation, but then in the second follow up video at 2:42 when he uses the Geiger counter to prove high radiation, nobody noticed that there was no film grain this time? (Even though the lid was open again?)
So you're telling me when I watch a random video I have to go watch the entire series and subscribe to every single video they make? maybe people only saw one video and never saw the follow up, as what usually happens with viral videos.
The thing that stood out to me was Kyle's nuclear contamination friend seemed convinced despite the previous expert saying that gamma radiation would go right thru your hand. I would expend a nuclear contamination expert to know this...kinda worrying.
I don't recall Kyle saying the two sources talked to each other or had been told what the other said. Assuming both interviews were blind to each other, (benefit of doubt) there are many types of experts and they're not all schooled or trained the same way. The video fellow, for instance, (don't remember his name, sorry,) might be one of just a handful of people doing the kind of work he does, so his knowledge of the video interaction _may be_ relatively unique. I don't know/remember Lucas' history beyond being one of the Chernobyl tour guides that Kyle worked with. His experience with contamination and accidents may be limited to larger, more newsworthy events. I don't know the schooling of either person. Nuclear science has a broad range as any other energy subject, but unfortunately a shallow history due to public phobia preventing energy from being more prevalent. There aren't _that_ many experts out there for this stuff and Kyle's level of academic and journalistic knowledge on the subject is rare, despite him not knowing "everything." (Hence deferring to others on specific details.) Just because info is out there, doesn't mean everybody does or needs to know it. Lots of people doing jobs only have the info they need to do their particular job at that particular company, plus a little more they pick up from coworkers. Even very technical jobs don't always directly rely on one's schooling. ETA: It is worrying that the info can be compartmentalized so much because the knowledge base is relatively small for how important and potentially dangerous nuclear science is. I'm not saying that's not a problem, just that it's not necessarily a fault or deficiency of any given person in this broad field. If anyone is to blame, society and people like coal lobbyists are worthy of scrutiny. We need more people doing nuclear jobs, because we need more nuclear power. (And yes, more study of it to know all the weird crap that can happen when things don't go right.)
Cs-137 is primarily a Beta emitter, and beta can easily be attenuated by a hand. I also don't believe it is correct that gamma radiation is needed to create the static effect in a camera, as anything that interacts with the sensor in the camera at a high enough energy is basically going to turn that pixel white.
@@VoltisArt To add to the defense of Lucas, I wouldn't be suprised if Dr. Seltzman needed to look up what type of radiation Cesium-137 produces. Also, a small correction: Dr. Seltzman (as far as I know) wasn't interviewed. A screenshot email from him was part of the tumblr thread.
One was speaking from the perspective of evidence, while the other was speaking on the believability of the post. Evidence wise, the guy thought it was clearly impossible for it to be real. On the side of "believability" making an assumption that something is real just because "who would go so far to fake this?" is a realllly bad approach, especially when looking at things on the internet.
In a world where people may just be dumb enough to post a real orphan source, I feel like videos such as this one you've made make a major difference in the grand scheme of things. Huge respect to the effort that went into this.
The thing is, if they don't know its an orphan source, its really not their fault. I can see this happening with a real orphan source that emitted gamma radiation, causing the camera to become fuzzy as it would. Someone with no knowledge of this would think its neat that the item would cause the camera to do this every time it was opened or exposed to the lens. Can you really call them dumb for that? Though in all honesty, there is defiantly people out there dumb enough to do this with full knowledge of what they are about to do and the risks associated, and yet they do it for the clout and 15 minutes of fame. There are prank youtubers who have been shot and killed for "pretending" to mug/rob someone.
@@PilotTed Phone cameras have the capability to determine if they are blasted with radiation, what i don't understand is why is the camera app not programmed to warn people if the thing they are filming or shooting is radioactive... It's fairly easy to determine there is something blasting the sensor and circuitry with beta, gamma or X-rays...
I'm so glad you did your research for the second half of the video, what an out of pocket and hilarious conclusion. Not to mention I learned a lot about radiations effects on film, and the way rays interact with human flesh. Fantastic video
I think the fact that it was done well enough to make people question: "is this a fake?" is the worrying part of this meme. I remember seeing it blow up on Imgur and even I wasn't sure if it was legit or not. I am glad that it is a fake, but to Rye Pony's point, it has sparked a broader discussion about orphan sources and the need to be careful of them out in the world. I am grateful that both you and Plainly Difficult do cover and discuss these accidents in order to educate the masses on how dangerous they can both be, and how innocent they can look if you are not paying attention.
we're about to hit the age of AI produced CGI, governments are going to explode if people don't start to get a handle on the fact that video's are not proof without additional supporting evidence
I was there during the Goiania incident, I used to live just a few miles away from the site and I very much appreciate how much attention you bring to that event Kyle. Thank you so very much.
All I'm saying is: I knew nothing about Orphan sources, and I'm the kind of person who would buy something like it for some unfathomable reason. So: at least for me, this video has legitimately made me aware of a danger. I had no idea you could actually buy something like that.
Buying it is one thing, the scarier thing is occasionally its possible to literally find something like this at the roadside or hiking.. fairly rare to find a source that way for sure but far from impossible
The horse mag in the background was a clue nobody looked at twice. Fake videos are usually something I don't find funny, but this man upgraded it to an art.
the person who uploaded this video originally is a horse-themed degen the mag isn't really anything extraordinary or out of character for this guy if anything the entire video was out of character
Radioactivity is one of the few truly terrifying existential threats in my mind. If you stumble across something (or worse don’t even see the object) and are around it for even an hour, you could very well die and there is nothing to be done about it.
There are a lot of chemical threats out there that are just as deadly as radioactivity and most of them don't give any perceptible indication of smell or taste that they're present. Unless you're line-of-sight and quite close to a radioactive source you're almost always safe, not so much for being near a leak of, say, phosgene. The US Chemical Safety Board posts videos on chemical and industrial plant accidents, what went wrong and what the results were. They're a useful rebuttal resource if anyone ever suggests to you that some business is "over-regulated".
It is only terrifying if you are irrationally afraid of it. At worse you can get a Geiger counter or similar cheap instruments and voilà. Now compare that to real, commonplace poisons that you can't detects and that are actually slowly killing you.
I think we should take a moment to realize just how scary it is that Kyle was able to dig up that much information on a person to track them down about a video they had posted years ago. Reminder to be safe with what you post online!
If RyePony hadn't still been active enough on Twitter to answer a DM, or had chosen not to answer, I think the trail would've gone cold for good there, and I'm satisfied with that. Though the metadata scrape didn't turn up the kind of identifying or locating information Kyle was hoping for, it's still a good reminder to consider turning off location tagging on your own photos and videos.
That is a good point from a privacy and security standpoint, though in this case, I believe that this information was used in a positive way. If you're really looking for good information about how to make your devices more secure and private, there are youtubers like TheHatedOne and Mental Outlaw that go way more in depth than just "get a VPN." I highly recommend those two channels, there's a lot of knowledge between them, and they both explain things so even people without a background in IT can understand.
I sincerily think that Kyle's Half life serie should be seen in school. They're highly educative, easy to understand, and Kyle's voice and delivery carries just the right amoubnt of seriousness.
Thanks for putting in the work on this Kyle. It would be terrifying to think an orphan source had killed some dummy and was just sitting on a shelf somewhere.
After Australia's recent "orphan source" incident (it "fell" out of a truck convoy carrying equipment) - I've become a LOT more aware of the potential dangers of these things. Love the video, Kyle. I just wish more actual journalists would exercise at least a modicum of the due diligence that you do.
He had more time than your average journalist, and could make good use of it. That is the crux of modern information. You recieve an endless stream of it, and even deciding which of all that is supposed to become part of your output, takes more time than you have to do your work. As a result, the quality of journalism deteriorates, and this in turn makes the work of common journalists so superficial that the confidence in what they are doing, is declining as well. With dire consequences to our political landscape.
"why would someone go to the trouble of posting about a fake injury to almost no one" it's tumblr. lying on tumblr to almost no one is like, what happens there. both in a for fun way like our beloved not real movie and in the horribly transphobic dog whistle filled way unfortunately
This was a rollercoaster of a story lol learning about how being viral really works, to being impressing by Kyle’s research determination, and laughing about the account.
The funny thing is, that meme DID educate me about orphan sources and the danger they pose... I had never heard of them before, had little to no interest in nuclear energy or accidents, but I came across it on Tumblr, the replies lead me to this channel, and now I've watched the Half-Life series and other video essays on similar topics that I never would have thought I'd be interested in.
@@nlald well it certainly raised awareness which is what the guy said he thought it would do. Same here- never heard of them before this video and without said meme, this video wouldn't exist.
also the mention of the person on tumblr saying that their doctor told them that only 41% of people who get this surgery make it long term. nearly every trans person who's been on the internet knows what kind of person is saying that stuff.
@toxic_195 yeah in the video where the person who reposted rhe video onto Tumblr, the same person who used the phalloplasty scar image to show what their skin graft looked like said to someone that their doctor told them that only 41% of people who get the surgery (the one to have the tissue from their hand removed and the "skin graft") make it long term. I think that Tumblr poster is just an obvious transphobe.
Definitely one of those “I’ve seen enough fake tumblr stories to have significant doubts, but holy shit this could be monumentally serious” reactions when I saw the video. Thanks for doing the due diligence, Kyle!
@@spvillano Not necessarily, there have been examples of invisible radiation affecting the CMOS sensor while still making usable video data. It really depends on the intensity, direction of the source, location of the camera's memory and CPU, and whether or not those electronic components are protected by metal shielding. I imagine alpha or beta radiation would not ruin the camera, but gamma may.
@@mitchellspanheimer1803 metal shielding is even worse, especially with beta. Remember, Cs-137 is a 0.5 Mev beta source and a 0.6 Mev gamma source. Bremsstrahlung radiation will be emitted by metal when a particle impacts the metal atoms, which can then ionize a path through the chip itself. Some plastics would be far more effective in protecting the circuitry than metal. In space, one faces mostly protons and beta, along with x-ray and a touch of gamma, all save the EM generating bremsstrahlung radiation from the spacecraft hull. Thankfully, one doesn't have neutrons or protons to really foul the camera in the case of Cs-137, but damage from gamma should be minimal to absent at that energy level. As a hint, thunderstorms can generate gamma in the 100 Mev range, we don't see cameras failing from that. Pair production is quite unlikely at that flux and energy level. Oh, another tidbit, I-131 is used in nuclear imaging, had such testing done for my thyroid. It puts out around 0.364 Mev, which goes clean through the body to be easily detected. The Cs-137 is harder by a little, but magically was blocked by a hand that should've only barely attenuated some of the beta and not a lick of the gamma. Were such an offer real and I ran into it and could verify it as a source of some type, I'd buy it and call a friend who's a nuclear health physicist to verify by a proper survey. Then, if it was something like Cs-137, call the NRC and the military installation he works at to see who wanted to take custody of the damned thing. Better to get it off the street and market and into proper custody than pray it doesn't turn up used in some terrorist attack or irradiating a neighborhood. I'd also get the tag number of the seller and if possible, the VIN from the dashboard. The NRC would certainly want to have a conversation as to where such a hazardous source originated.
Yeah, after seeing the surgery scars and then the "41% suicide" comment it was pretty clear to me the person was just a troll. Also, I love how the most replayed moment for this video was when Kyle mentioned "Pony Play" for the first time. Love it.
Came here to say this. I think it deserves some more attention because it’s just glaringly obvious to me, as a trans person, that the phallo scar image poster is probably not op but also just a transphobic troll. “after I’ve done this to myself […] walking around looking like a freak”, “41% of people who go through this surgery don’t make it long term”, “makes you wonder if there’s another way to help me”…. Like come on!!! That’s definitely just a terf being an ass off the back of a viral post just for the sake of it, no f*ckin shame 🙄
@@Sprite_real_ assuming you’re genuinely asking : - 41% is a figure often touted by transphobes, it’s the suicide rate of trans people. people waving it around often complete wave off the fact that this is inflated by the hostile environment we live in. - “i’ve done this to myself [and I’m a freak now]” is pretty self explanatory. common point among transphobes that trans people are ugly, don’t pass and look disfigured. - “makes you wonder if there’s another way to help me” common argument among gender criticals and terfs ; trans people shouldn’t transition according to them and their point is conversion therapy should be the answer to every instance of gender dysphoria/incongruence. - “I’m just following the science” is just an expansion of the last point, it’s pretty much the idea that “science” got it wrong and trans people are delusional and the scientists working on gender reassignment therapies just don’t want to hurt our feelings and are after the money of what they deem to be an expanding “market” regardless of the fact that many healthcare professionals not only often refuse us healthcare a lot but also make it purposely difficult for us to access it in the first place. this whole idea is often linked with antisemitic conspiracy theories linking trans healthcare to affluent jewish people supposedly funding it. If you’re genuinely curious about how deep this sort of thing goes I suggest Shaun’s video on a british transphobic activist whose relationships within that sphere span closer and closer to antisemites trying to etch themselves into mainstream politics. All these dog whistles serve an important goal of plausible deniability when we point them out. On the surface, it does all seem to be possible coincidences but to a trained eye they are very blatant. I didn’t catch them on my first watch, either, I only noticed it when showing the video to my fiancé and catching the 41% mention and then everything just fell into place. I also noticed the mention of them being a transphobe by a random reddit account on a screen cap a little before that segment.
@@Sprite_real_ the surgery is a photo of a skin graft taken for FTM transitional surgery, and "41%" is a transphobic joke regarding a statistic from a few years ago regarding rates of suicidal ideation among transgender people.
"makes you wonder if _anyone should be doing this at all_ or _theres another way to help me"_ "whatever im just following the science" is a very very nonsensical thing to say about their situation?? it literally only makes sense if you realize what theyre talking about. so genuinely annoying
The most worrying fact in this entire case is the nuclear physicist saying that orphaned sources are often found at flea markets... Even if the video was fake, enough orphaned sources are out there to convince an expert that it might as well have been real 😰
Yeah, returning to that point would have made an excellent conclusion. Yes the video was fake, yes it educated people, yes it may have also been slightly harmful for a variety of reasons, but the true horror is that it's an apparently highly plausible story.
If I were a betting man I would say in most cases it comes in the form watches. As they used radium paint as luminescence for decades. Toys are another source but they are incredibly rare. It could also tritium if you are looking for it in the form of gun sights and there are a few watch companies that use tritium tubes for luminescence. My point is yes you can find orphan sources at flea markets. What you won't find are hunks of cesium in homemade containment units.
Could a cesium pellet have been sourced from the inside of an old x-ray machine? If so, think of how many x-ray machines there are, and therefore how common this threat could be.
ok but the whole "why would someone go this far to fake an injury, even making separate posts to a smaller audience" severely misunderstands the tumblr userbase lol. people commit to the bit there lmao
Nuclear materials are scarier if you don't understand them or how easy it is to get around. information keeps everyone safe, even if we don't think it. Thank you Mr. Hill for keeping this series going, its been a big help to begin explaining to others about the subject.
Idk knowing how painfully and decisively radiation can kill me is a lot scarier than ignorance. The only saving grace of knowing this information is now i know i havent come across any dangerous orphan sources in my life, because id already be either dead or crippled if I did.
@@dane1382 well if it is any consolation, you recieve plenty of naturally occuring radiation from space and from the nuclear decay happening under our feet, why its important to have well ventilated basements to prevent Radon build up.
scarier when you understand them, and consider world ending weapon stockpiles, plus every commercial reactor in existence being weaponizable, we've been one decision away from the end at least twice in just a century.
@@MorphingReality humans and this planet are far more resillient than you'd honestly ever give credit for. this is the same planet that's had millenia of ash and fire, volcanic explosions and an asteroid slap it. life finds a way, we find a way.
@@swapertxking on the contrary, i often make the claim that the biosphere is somewhat paradoxically both fragile and resilient in different ways. but civilization doesn't survive nuclear war.
I do bullet casting to shoot old black powder guns (civil war and earlier) and these lead cylinders from radiation treatments are a common source of good lead for bullets. I've never heard of anyone getting one that was still hazardous in anyway, but I can imagine it happens every now and again.
Hey, I'm in this video! I'm so honored to have been included and possibly of help. Thanks so much for including my Reddit comment, Kyle! Means a lot to me!
God the anxiety I felt watching this was extreme. For a moment there I was convinced I was watching someone die, and I understand at least on the personal and human level why you were so concerned, Kyle.
I'm Brazilian and your video on the Goiânia accident made me take a detour on a recent trip to see the city for the first time. To this day, everyone who has suffered from the disaster gets paid 960R$ (194 USD) a month by the government, which, in my opinion, is far from enough to cover even basic needs, let alone medical bills. They want the city to build a memorial about the accident, but it has been denied for years. I passed through street 57 and the only thing that hints to the massive disaster that unfolded there is a small plaque and the stories the residents are willing to share with you. An artist, named Siron Franco, has made two projects about the city and presented them to the mayor's office for aproval, they were both denied. It seems that the idea of a memorial being built five years after the accident took place was just a political strategy to get votes, they never did anything about it.
@@patrickhenry1249 I'd vote for that; but it'll never pass congress, the house of commons, or whoever makes laws locally; because they themselves would be at risk of being kicked out for lying. Good idea, but impossible to enact, because human nature. Like the argument that Communism could work very well; but human nature prevents it from succeeding, because the wrong people are always in power. I love that Canada claims to be a democracy, but it's a lie. We are so manipulated into voting how they want, that it is anything but a democracy. I'll stop at that before this turns into a virtual nuclear war as politics/religious topics tend to do.
@@antonioarroyas7662 I know, it's not about publicity though, it's about paying respect to the victims of this accident by giving them something to be remembered for. It may be surprising to anyone who reads this, but most people in my country aren't aware of this tragedy, especially the new generations. It bothers me because it was promised five years after the accident that a memorial was going to be built to honor the victims, and it played a huge role in the elections that follow. It's a complete lack of respect and slap in the face of society.
As someone who has studied and worked in the nuclear field as a technician for the last 5 years I greatly appreciate the care and respect for this topic Kyle never shys away from the very real danger of nuclear radiation and really gives it everything he has to explain the subject and report on its largest problems it may not get as many views as his old pop culture videos but it's something he's truly passionate about and it shows.
I love that you managed to get to the bottom of this. Most people would probably come to a realization of "What am I doing, it's just a meme", but you documented the entire story. Love your videos
@@sonia625Yeah really, from the way the guy talked “41% don’t make it long term. Not sure what that means lol” like obviously anyone would know what that means. Guy was such an obvious troll. Not to mention the nuclear physics expert that said it didn’t make sense from the video. I don’t know how qualified this friend of his he called is if he doesn’t even know gamma radiation passes through hands very easily.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention Kyle! I remember when i also read about the Cobolt 60 rods as well that say "DROP AND RUN" and honestly it's terrifying how deadly these orphan sources are.
If it makes you feel any better, it's always been this hard. We just have mass communication so we as a population can start to see the man behind the curtain. Fun fact: AI machine learning has been used by the US government since the 60's. It's been used on the USS Toledo (SSN-769) submarine for a long time to passively interpret sonar, so who knows what crap was faked in the last 40 years...
This is actual investigative journalism in the modern era. Kyle, you have once again outdone yourself and set a new standard for UA-cam creators. This is exactly the type of content I wish more people took the care and effort to create.
I've been using Cesium 137 to add film grain as an in camera special effect since the advent of digital cameras, and all six of my arms are perfectly fine.
I work in mineral exploration so I get the occasional safety notice when someone misplaces something radioactive (usually it gets found fairly quickly or is too low level to easily find) there have been a few concerning incidents where density tools and moisture gages with intense neutron sources in them have been stolen. One got pinched out of a truck relatively near where I live back in 2019 and as far as I know hasn’t been found.
It's rare that I get legit concerned about random videos/images on the internet, but surprise radiation is the kryptonite to my apathy. I'd never seen this before, but the slight possibility that this might have been real got me soooooo concerned for a total stranger (and everyone around him) that I was squirming in my chair. Great work, Kyle
And that is why I think this is better than harmless and far below harmful, it's effective. This video brought awareness to far more people than most educational material does. There aren't people out there trying to replicate it in reality and make it a real radioactive disaster, so while it may have made people struggle with their feelings over the potential misery another human may go through, it also taught us that these things ARE actually sold at flea markets and while this was fake, it COULD have been real. This is an effective way to teach people about the potential for disaster without there actually needing to be a disaster.
As troublesome as the potential incident could be, this kinky person has probably raised awareness of how these objects and their spicy air could very well end your curiosity. Many people will have learnt not to play with this sort of item and what can happen while the fascination may have lead some down a rabbit hole of learning. Something like this meme made into an actual safety advert could have once been a valuable tool ironically before such a meme could be created.
I don't ever want to read one of these comments again, begone foul soul. Not the stuff about spreading radiation poisoning awareness just everything before that.
Ok so a friend of mine worked at the surplus department at a local state university. In the 10 or so years he was there at least three times orphan sources nearly made it up for sale to the general public and had to be collected by a special hazmat team. It is absolutely possible that a source could have made it to a flea market.
Oof… I looked up the images of the poor man in Yanango. Totally get why you didn’t want to show them. I feel SO bad for him, he never asked for that, and his quality of life after “recovery” was so poor. I couldn’t seem to find out if he’s still alive. These kind of incidents are terrifying,the curiosity of a person leading to horrendous radiation injuries, and so sad as they had no idea what would happen to them as a result of handling these things.
hi! surgical tech here! skin grafting isn't usually that perfectly rectangular, this looks more like a donor site rather than a recipient site. the rectangular shape comes from the dermatome which is a straight blade and would explain the shape. also, recipient sites would have a "fish net" appearance to them for recipient sites even when healed it is still noticeable in majority of scarring
It is a donor site. That photo is from a phalloplasty, revealed by the OP going on to talk about a "mystery surgery" that "41%" of people dont survive. The OP is a transphobic POS, and the whole "41%" is the sewer slide rate of trans people. OP is just trying to fear monger about Gender-Affirming care, and used the radiation thing to try and scare people.
it's definitely a phalloplasty donor site. i'm not a surgeon or anything but i am a trans man that's spent hours looking at pictures of scars just like that one.
@@joe____apparently his account was found to be filled with anti-lgbtq content, so i’m guessing it was someone else’s phalloplasty scars and he used it in order to show the “horrors” of gender affirming surgery by passing it off as a surgery necessitated by a radioactive injury
I'm not scared of much, but radiation scares the crap out of me, and especially after seeing the after photos of the Aochi incident (I hope I spelled his name right), and knowing how it pretty much liquifies you from the inside, and over the course of several weeks. It actually gives me the shivers
If you want to freak yourself out more, there's a couple incidents of improper disposal of radiation-based cancer treatment equipment that had cobalt-60 in and they ended up in scrap yards, and the people working there ended up irradiated, a few died, some lost fingers and hands from damage from handling it. One was in Brazil, I think, there was one in India and another in either Vietnam or Thailand, I can't remember. But someone who didn't know what it was found it and sold it at a scrapyard to other people who didn't know what it was, and there you go. Kyle talked about the Brazil one I think.
Those photos were faked. They weren't of Ouchi, but of a severe burn victim. The Japanese govt. never released the photos. No... what he went through was way worse. Watch Wendigoon's video on it, but only if you're ready for some graphic descriptions.
the idea that something that radioactive and is found and sold at flea markets all of the time is genuinely one of the scariest things I'll be thinking about for the rest of my life now
It is not true however, the seller would open the capsule to see if anything of value is inside and they would get sick before they could even take it to the market. It makes absolutely no sense, how do you price something if you don’t know what it even is? Also big searches are conducted when these materials go missing.
The nuclear age was a helluva thing. He's right, they really do turn up in odd places enough to have full time agencies for doing something about it when they do
One thing to take into consideration while reverse-searching an image, is that most types of changes done to an image will make it impossible to find the original source. Sometimes, cropping an image, reducing its resolution, size, or changing its orientation or mirroring it, will give you 0 results after. As much I'm glad the video is indeed fake, I also found funny to consider that you had to learn about pony play :p
I'm not afraid of the radiation. If it kills me it kills me. I'm afraid of what happens if Kyle joins such a fetish group and decides we need to be involved too.
only issue i'm having with this is that he completely passes over the fact that the original tumblr post stated that the twitter account was fake and not him
@@jeffreykirkley6475 the problem is, orphan sources so abandoned by death makes that form of death communicable, as others then expose themselves unknowingly.
They're usually found in abandoned healthcare facilities from x-ray or other medical equipment, or in sterilization plants that radio-sterilize medical equipment and lab equipment. You might see on a sterile scalpel, gauze, or other disposable sterile object: sterilized by gamma radiation, or something to that effect. The first time I read one of those I was genuinely a little spooked. I'm chronically ill and my mom is a retired RN, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with healthcare, but wondering if something is safe to use after it has been irradiated is an uncomfortable feeling. I quickly shut down that inner voice by telling myself that if it were unsafe they wouldn't be packaged in bulk and used by the thousands, or more, every day, but not everyone thinks like that. I do like how completely thorough Kyle is and how good his research is. I haven't seen many content creators who are willing to take the extra time and energy to really get to the bottom of a topic. I think of it like using a rubber spatula to get every
I think that is my take on this whole thing too. Now no-one who has seen the meme and runs into a weird can like that that does weird things to electronics is going to be sticking their hand into it.
You probably wont even hear about most cases like that ever. Just look at the former Soviet Union for example. A lot of facilities were straight up abandoned after the fall and because many documents from that time were purposefully destroyed, the successor governments might not even know what is around their country. We know that the US has lost a bunch of nuclear warheads over the years and most of them were never rediscovered. We almost know nothing about how many the soviet union lost because the data was destroyed, but it is certain that they lost way more in the chaos of the collapse of the USSR.
@@bomber9912 Oh I well remember that right after the fall there was a LOT of concern over rogue nations and/or terrorist groups making off with nuclear warheads (or former Soviet soldiers/officers selling them to make money before fleeing the country)
I live near Goiânia, people are still very paranoid about radiation here. Some old people are really afraid that cellphones, AA batteries or wi-fi might kill them of radiation. And every now and then there is some vengeful ex-wife who calls the police saying that her husband has a cesium 137 capsule hidden in the yard and the whole state screams.
This kind of irrational fear and ignorance is probably a worse killer than ionizing radiation itself. Yes, ionizing radiation is dangerous, as is the UV light from the sun (which is _not_ ionizing). Flying is also inherently dangerous, and most people do not know how to pilot or build an air plane, yet many people fly every day without fear because the dangers are controlled. The radiation from your radiators at home that keeps you warm in the winter is not dangerous.
Yes, that is obviously a transphobic troll post, but I understand that you would need some knowledge of the subject to see that. Still leaves the question why, and what would it achieve.
I'd never heard of this before. I'm glad you did the deep dive into it and got to the bottom of it. Anything radioactive out in the wild scares me to my core. Thanks for all you do man.
The letter in plain sight. "Rye Pony" is smart and snarky, with STEM background and specialized knowledge. I have a few hypotheses about who they could be but I won't say a goddamn word. It's so much funnier this way. Plus, if I'm right, I respect that person 1000× more.
Me and my friends used to go urban exploring. I always joked about taking pictures of random objects and then going back on the photos later that night only to realize that we were just being blasted with radiation that we only could've seen with our pictures. Thinking back, I know I would've been terrified out of my mind had I known we were messing with nuclear energy.
@chuharry5360 when you take pics of radioactive elements, the radiation causes the camera quality to be very grainy. I just thought it'd be scary to take pictures of things and then when I'm looking back at the pictures I realize I was exposed to deadly radiation
Taking pictures in the dark (doesnt matter what time of day) even with flash on can make pictures grainy. Unless you were fucking around in government facilities or any sort of facility that had sources of radioactive materials readily available you were perfectly fine.
Late to the comment section, but a friend of mine was the first one to visit a animal research lab and he brought me in immidiatelly after that. It was not only full of glass jars with embryos and all the equipment like microscopes, it had an entire storage room full of containers with radioactive warnings everywhere, little vials with fluid with radioactive warnings, and those lead containers that this video talks about were inside a fridge with more small vials in them too. Was very unsettling even though we did bring a (cheap) geigercounter than didn't measure any significant numbers.
The scar on that person's arm is consistent from a donor site from a phalloplasy surgery, and you can find example images of like those on surgeon's sites that will not show up on Google image search because they are kept behind certain automation checks.
I love to learn but I shouldn't have googled that seeing as I figured out what phalloplasty was from it's root words. Now I am very confused. Maybe this video is real and this guy really is a dumb ass who lost his little buddy in a similarly poorly thought out prank.
@@AcidGambit419it can be for that, as it used to be used for vets who lost their bits in a war, but now it's widely used by trans masculine people as part of gender/sex reassignment surgery.
While I can understand your concern, I think this is actually a very good way to bring awareness to the issue. Often times, the public isn't aware of these problems until a disaster happens. Essentially, Rye created a disaster without a disaster. It's created awareness and conversation of just how dangerous these orphan sources are and how in reality, this would kill a person. In this case, as far as we can tell, outside of journalistic effort, no other critical resources were wasted (like first responders.) There wasn't a really huge panic, but there was concern. Definitely need to be careful, but it was done, I think, as responsibly as it could be.
It's true, but also risky as it could have the complete opposite effect. Knowing that it's fake, people will question the motivations behind the making this video. And although it's just an armless prank, you can be sure that for some people it's in fact another manipulation from the medias/government/NASA who try for some reason to convince people that radioactivity is dangerous or whatever, and they are trying to cover up something important (like : they don't want you to make your own nuclear reactor, or some other absurdity of this level). My point is that, even if you're meaning well, and regardeless of your stance and ideas you're defending, you should never relie on lies to argue your point. Because as soon as it is demonstrated that's a lie or a fake, it is also demonstrated that you can't be trusted.
The real amoral person in the story was the tumblr that faked the injuries; which seems unrelated to the original creator. Stole content and falsified injuries literally just to lie. Rode on Mr. rubber ponies work for attention.
As an electronic engineer, I bought long ago a Pro Geiger counter, just for safety, as a development engineer you never know for sure what they send you via mail. And as a licensed radio amateur and working for many years for a broadcast company. Some antennas have nuclear products in it, same with lightning rods. These have even more of these in them (older systems) but then it's handy when you have that counter in your tool basket.
The ending can be interpreted in a far more sinister way than usual here. “I am at least glad that this isn’t history’s first example of social media literally ‘going nuclear.’ Unfortunately, of course, we might not be able to tell if and when it actually does…until next time.”
I start to think about getting radiation detector given number of orphan sources floating around and not just that but amount of just data related radiation from phone and internet antennas. For some just the EM radiation alone from home appliances can cause negative effects to their health, most likely effecting iron in their blood.
@@Hellsong89 Bro. Learn the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation please. Antennas and the internet aren't giving you cancer, it's non-ionizing electo-magnetic radiation. If you're so concerned about getting irradiated, never go in the sun again because it is giving you ionizing radiation, and cancer.
Oh well, nuclear. I mean, we already have influencers. Something less bad than that, such as nuclear accidents is kind of like a point we've already passed. 😉
@@Hellsong89 I got a little Geiger counter off of Amazon. Best 100 bucks I ever spent. The only thing it doesn´t measure is FUN. And alpha lol. I wouldn´t worry about phones and stuff though. I have alot of uranium glass and radium clocks, and my levels are still at normal background.
My grandpa told me about his colleague, who at the time they were working in post Soviet Kazakhstan, bought and brought home 3 canisters like these, they were supposed to have “extreme resell value”. Until he sold them they managed to store them on their flats balcony. 2 years later him and his whole family died of cancer, including some neighbors from nearby apartments. This is so scary to think about that at this moment your body can be falling apart because of unknown radiation source. If you want any details about to story (maybe I don’t remember everything exactly) I can ask him and provide the answer. STORY UPDATE BELLOW
I think you mean "colleague" at the beginning, not "college"-- I'm only mentioning it because I didn't understand the rest of the story at first because of the mix-up. I thought your grandpa was the one who died, and then you said you would ask him for more details... I hope you don't mind the correction 😅
tbh im not at all surprised that the ponyplay fetish account is owned by someone who's a STEM major. it's like furries in IT. some of the smartest people out there also have slightly strange interests and are very open about it, and i cant help but be amazed and happy for them for being able to be openly strange without losing their jobs (because they are so important in their workplace that something weird but ultimately harmless that some other jobs would fire you for would mean at best having their workforce crippled, and at worst actively have things like huge IT sectors go down)
Ive got to say. One if the most terrifying sounds in existence would have to be a geiger counter. Just the thought of something invisible slowly killing me is insane. this is something that I think of in my nightmares.
An even spookier way of thinking about it is something is slowly lighting a fire in your body that will only go out long after you've burned to death on a cellular level.
More terrifying is the fact that there's a clear, audible point where you know the geiger counter has confirmed you've been exposed to a fatal dose. Just the idea of there being a noise frequency or speed that can basically tell you "Yep, you're fucked" is horrifying.
funny, this video - along with a reddit thread about someone finding out their roommate had a radium collection - were what gave me an anxiety spiral that in the end made me start to binge your content. The thought that there are just orphan sources out there in the world - hell, just radioactive stuff in general like old wrist watches - that I could come across and not realize it until I suddenly fall ill is absolutely terrifying.
That sort of anciety is unhealthy, and I ask that you consider seeking help to manage it. With that sai, geiger counters can be purchased online relatively cheaply and easily, and may help show you that your local environment is pretty safe.
@@LordPhobos6502 To be clear, it's not an every day occurance that I get anxiety spirals that severe. It was just one of those days where existential dread got to me.
If small and properly stored and not just randomly sitting in the open on a shelf that is probably not particularly dangerous. I have a little Ra-226 sample myself in a little glass box which blocks pretty much all of the radiation from it. When touching the outside of the box the reading is around 10% above background so unless you were to glue it to your skin for decades you would be hard pressed to notice any difference. Taken out of the box it is significantly higher but this is why I keep it in there where I can still have it on display but without irradiating the place any more than having an ionising smoke detector in the room would.
@@seraphina985 I think personally I still wouldn't consider starting a collection of my own xD Sadly though, according to the redditor, her roommate was a dumbass that didn't keep his collection contained, and it resulted in radiation of 224 pCi/l in the apartment's main room, over 500 pCi/l in her bedroom, and most likely had radon gas that traveled through the entire complex. The post is still up on r/legaladvice, it's titled "[Wyoming] Roommate exposed us to toxic radon gas, what can I do legally?"
When people say "I wasn't ready for the journey this would take me" I usually pass it off as exaggeration but I can say that this was a crazy rollercoaster of a ride
Reminded me of hbomberguy research videos regarding people... You are 15 minutes in and by the time he finishes you are like, "Yup, did not see that coming."
i ve read about a whole nuclear bomb carried by a plane that crashed in some southeast part of Usa and didn't detonate... the worrying part is that it was never found
It's better that way. Whenever investigating things of this magnitude, one should always assume it's real unless 100% proven not. If one day, something like this happens, but everybody goes "That's fake" just for it to turn out real, except that nothing was done about it until longer than if people had assumed it was real, then a LOT of harm would be done.
I read a mystery book where Ir-192 was the murder weapon and the description of the autopsy and what happened to the coroner was visceral and disturbing and really made me frightened of radiological sources. Before that book I didnt truly appreciate how dangerous radiation was. The name of the book is Bones of Betrayal by Jefferson Bass for reference
*Thanks for watching.* This was a slightly different [HLH] -- one where we attempted the first investigation of an incident -- so I hope you enjoy it. As always, I tried my best and I take these stories very seriously. I hope that shows. There's a fine line to walk between educating and fear mongering, meme-ing and investigating (as you can see from my merch). *NOTE:* A few of you have emailed me that the Tumblr account in question was posting some clear anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in their messages shown here. Obviously, I in no way support this or the accounts, and was unaware at the time of recording.
Kind of reminds me of David Hahn. I read the book, "The Radioactive Boy Scout," some years ago. I wonder if they'd ban this book from schools, it's one that NEEDS to be out there as a cautionary tale, perhaps with some of the techniques redacted, anyway.
I admired your investigative process my man! I want to ask, since it’s so crazy, what was your first reaction when you saw it led to Rye’s rather…interesting account?
30 seconds
@@justaguy6100 For years after I'd read that story in an old Reader's Digest I wondered what ever became of Hahn. I thought he would've gone on to become a nuclear researcher or something, but unfortunately due to depression after the incident he kind of fizzled out. Such a shame.
@@ShumaiAxeman True. Bright kid that overran his brilliance, and sadly paid a price for most of his life, and subsequently became a fentanyl statistic, apparently.
I am terrified of radioactivity. Not in an anti-nuclear-power kind of way, but in a "staying clear of shit like this" kind of way.
That's the correct response. I ain't having my skin melt off any time soon
I think you mean, you have the correct and appropriate reaction and feeling towards radioactivity.
I used to have nightmares about radioactivity as a child. Crazy!
Yeah it's a terrifying thought that something can be so dangerous to you and completely invisible until after you're already royally screwed. As a power source, we've seen from this channel time and again that it can be handled perfectly safely, in fact safer than some other more common power sources, but as a potential danger to encounter in the wild, it's particularly terrifying because you'll never know it hit you until after the fact. Just walking by a 'Drop and Run' tube without seeing it there is enough to put your life in danger.
I've known people who were terrified of electricity that still use light switches. The unrestrained power of a natural force is always scary, but the utility can be safe and common place
"I searched iFunny's website"
This constitutes a hazardous exposure far more deadly than any demon core
At least he didn’t have to go into collective since it was in featured for a while.
@pleaseuseOdysee
Darwin predicted all of this, you know, ALL OF THIS.
Let the fools take their rewards.
@@jeaton1224happy to say ive been off the app for two weeks now
Ifunny is the superior social app
I took in a lungful of air like a drowning man when he said the word ifunny
I can easily see how "strange warm rock", "glowing sand" or "pebbles that mess with my camera" would go absolutely viral both on Social Media and in the local area...until it's too late. Especially now that knowledge of what nuclear accidents look like is starting to fade from the public consciousness
Don’t forget about glowing dust. Or salt.
That's basically what happened in Goiânia, if I remember the story well, it was a powder used in X-ray machines or something like that, people took the powder that sparkled and kept messing with it, I don't know if it's true, but I heard say that there was a guy who powdered his dick with the powder and had sex with his wife, and another who gave it to his daughter to play with
I also heard that there was a guy who kept running away from the quarantine zone and pissing on the light and power poles there, leaving them irradiated, causing them to have to be replaced
lol fukishima says what about me everyone always forgetting about me.
I thought it was just Dragon sand from the Eyes of the Dragon!
Immediately knew it was fake because that camera static wouldn’t have gone away if he put his hand over it, Gamma radiation can pierce through 6 feet of concrete and 1 foot of lead, even that container wouldn’t realistically be thick enough to prevent the radiation from escaping.
The static looks a bit off. I have seen cameras lowered into a reactor and while grainy looks a bit different.
Agreed. And did anyone notice in the clip with the Geiger counter - there was no film grain…
None that I noticed at any rate.
how do you know its gamma radiation and not another type like alpha or beta radiation?
@@davgames1206 Well, Cs137 decays primarily through beta and gamma radiation. (Alpha particles don't travel far and can easily be stopped by your outermost layer of dead skin cells, it doesn't pose a health risk, unless ingested.)
It's not as simple as that, sure a hand wouldn't stop it, but technically no amount of shielding completely stops neutral charge ionization radiation like gamma rays. Adding more material simply exponentially reduces the amount of radiation exposure outside the shielding.
So with a weak enough source you can absolutely attenuate the source to below background with a container like that.
I studied nuclear engineering and we did labs with very weak sources all the time and you could completely block the weak gamma sources with a little block of lead.
If you see your camera go crazy like that when filming something, you probably don't wanna be near that thing.
You just know a 4channer would use it as a buttplug.
high-level radiation is known to fuck up electronics very easily. it will literally melt circuit boards and wires on the inside.
unless it's just lasers and the dipshits running the venue thought it'd be funny to level them at the crowd
So basically ghost hunters are half right?
@@RedRavenRulerlol that's pretty far fetched
It's rare indeed to have "I searched through NRC documents for an orphaned source of deadly radiation" and "I slid into a rubber pony's DMs for an interview" in the same video.
I was watching this video at work, Kyle started saying "pony play fetish" and it was at that moment the manager decided to start listening and ask me "what's a demon core?" I gotta stop watching videos on speaker...
Lol tru
@@warped_rider Rotfl! It's moments like that which convince me we are entertainment for someone or something, somewhere.. Whether reality show for aliens or personal comedic ant farm for God or a God, whoever or whatever it is, we must provide them w some funny moments I feel 😂
@@patricknez7258 Perhaps this unintentional humour is proof of the whole "Universe is a simulation" theory?
😂
The thought of peeking into a container and seeing a tiny little pebble but knowing that seeing it could mean death is terrifying to me. Its like you looked into Medusa's eyes and then had months to think about your quick dumb mistake as you turned to stone
@@cobaltchromee7533 I'd always assumed you were dead once you were turned to stone, I meant it like the process of turning to stone took months
@@Weazle13XIII I was surprised to see that someone misinterpreted what you said. Maybe you could add "instead of the usual seconds" or "instead of the myth-accurate seconds" right after the end of "your quick dumb mistake".
(Although, maybe I misinterpreted it too, but in a different way)
@@cobaltchromee7533 this is exactly what OP means. Medusa kills instantly. Here it’s as if you looked at her but you turn into a stone very slowly, with no effect at first. Hence slowed down version of dying - you gazed at a pebble, instead of gazed at Medusa 💁🏻♀️
As you felt your body start to change as it dies and the cells aren't replenished, while expelling your own guts as they fall apart, knowing that your skin sliding off like a wetsuit was only the beginning...
It would be a rough few weeks
@CobaltChromeE it was an analogy my guy, I know Medusa kills you instantly, but I'm talking about the topic of the video, I wasn't exactly trying to be lore accurate
This is actually a good example of biases related to even a professional's experience. The expert in radiation's effect on digital recording said "Nah absolutely fake," because he works with radiologically damaged footage and how to shield against it. He saw the obvious difference, and knew how hard it would be to stop high-energy gamma rays.
Meanwhile, the guy who specializes in nuclear disasters and sees so many incidents just like what is described is perfectly willing to accept it as truth. Even though it's quite rare to encounter an orphan source, he sees that exact scenario a hundred times over again. It's not at all rare to him.
yeah, can't lie though the second guy was a bit of an idiot, just with my mild understanding of what radiation does to people and cameras I was like "gotta be a fake" but he was certain it was real, and he presumably knows a lot more about this stuff than me...
More than that there's also the fact that the guy who worked in radiology if you ask me was taking everything that was said about what it was and what was going on at face value as in believing that it was cesium and thus should have been gamma radiation which rightly so would not have been stopped by a hand nor would it have caused that minimal level of damage relatively speaking of course but that's assuming that it actually was cesium and in general also just comes from a very different perspective like you mentioned
Here's the thing.
The disaster expert is probably trained to err on the side of caution, because, IONIZING RADIATION ISN'T SOMETHING YOU FU€K WITH
If he's wrong, he wasted time and money due to an overabundance of caution.
If the skeptic is wrong?
They don't write DROP AND RUN on the containers for shits and giggles! It'd be a capital D Disaster!
Who would you rather be wrong? The believer, "that's worrisome and should be investigated", or the skeptic, "nah it's fake, gamma radiation isn't stopped by a hand"?
Sure, it'd be a waste of money investigating something which is ultimately a false alarm, but if it were REAL?!
They don't write "DROP AND RUN " on the container for sh!ts and giggles!
Such an incident would qualify as a capital D Disaster.
To write it off as a hoax out of hand is a career k!lling oversight, if you're wrong.
Someone needs to send this to "mainstream media" so they can see what real journalism looks like. Well done, Kyle.
They wouldnt know what real journalism was if it slapped them in the face
💯
Real journalism doesn’t sell. Mainstream follows the most amount of money and actual investigation like this being short and sweet? They’d be fired for trying to air this.
@@theonewhouploadsnothing1704 Exactly! Nobody wants actual facts, they just want the next source of hype and/or outrage.
after watching the internet historian's documentary on Floyd Collins i realized they've been like this since the 1800s.
I don't care whether it is fake or not, prior to my degree in physics, I was trained in nuclear density testing using Caesium-137 pellets. My immediate reaction was to wince and try to run away when he looked inside and the camera became distorted.
In Australia a Caesium pellet was lost in January of 2023 and it became a national incident for good reason. Radiation is scary! It is invisible, you can be exposed without realising it, and many encounters end in an early death. However, the biggest problem with it is that it doesn't kill instantly and the road to death is excruciating. 💀
Yeah I'm currently studying nuclear physics and watched a fellow student brick their phone by playing with a radioactive pellet emitting alpha radiation.
Edit we were wearing protective suits and they somehow snuck their phone through
I remember that, did they ever find it?
@@NoPrefect Haha yeah, they eventually found it. It took a couple of weeks and a lot of people. 😅
And that phone became contaminated by said rad exposure
These people are insane.
The scariest thing about radiation to me is just how delayed the damage is, and how many of the effects that would warn off an educated person would instead draw attention from the ignorant. People "playing" with radiation without understanding they are killing themselves is horrifying. In some ways the viral video does a better job about showing such a realistic scenario than any demon core memes. As it shows how small and innocuous an orphan source can be.
Absolutely, and it has happened quite a few times.
Just look at the Goainia incident, a little girl playing with glittery sand... Horrible.
To be fair, you can replace 'radiation' with 'lead' in that sentence and it'd not really change a thing. Same with 'asbestos' and other happy joy fun things you absolutely don't want to mess with.
@@MayaPosch True but lead and asbestos don't really do anything to make them stand out. They don't make someone who is clueless actively want to mess with it, like something that glows in the dark or messes with cameras would.
What's scary is; how inevitable it is, there's almost nothing that can be done and it makes the victim suffer, almost like torture, from just a seemingly harmless and painless entry.
It's Lovecraftian horrifying stuff. Cthulu drives you mad just looking at him, radiation rots you just for being too exposed to it, and bar for "too exposed" is really low.
Actually when I first saw the video I wrote it off for the exact reason of “the noise on the camera shouldn’t stop with his hand over it because it’s gamma radiation”
"I think everyone understands its fake" Meanwhile, Kyle's informant was like "YEP 100 PERCENT REAL DEFINITELY NOT FAKE" lmao. Good on you Kyle putting in the effort to make sure people see that it is a fake though.
Well, the guy was a nuclear expert, not a photoshop expert, so he's at least understandably concerned.
offtopic but nice pfp
Spoilers!!!
@@MeanBeanComedy stop reading the comments and watch the video and u wouldn’t be spoiled
@@keeferChiefer I do both.
In defense of Lucas, the Nuclear Contamination Expert, he's probably seen shit like this all the time that's 100% legit, so he probably has plenty of reason to have no doubts at all something as stupid as that can actually happen... which in itself is a terrifying thought.
Hmm
Yep, reminds me of the houseMD episode where the kid picks up the radioactive piece from a junkyard his dad works at and dies as a result, which is almost certaintly based off any amount of actual cases where someone takes something radioactive, with no idea of its horrific dangers. this certaintly happens often enough for it to be a recognized issue
@@ungabunga7879 Almost certainly based on the Brazilian incident
@@TastiLead never read anything about it, but a good amount of stuff in the show is based off real incidents so, yeah
Yeah, dumb shit just kind of happens sometimes
Kyle, thanks for spending hours of your time to research this thoroughly! Thinking that someone could just post a video about an orphaned source and _putting their hand right on it_ is absolutely terrifying.
I figured the video was fake. I've seen radiation "grain" effects on digital cameras and it's usually more sparkly. Also, I figured if the video was real, this story would end up on the news in a week or so after I first saw it on Tumblr.
This exactly, but I bet some people would :(
Recalling the story about the "Nuclear Boyscout," I wouldn't be too surprised.
@@Bacopa68 i dont like how rye was thinking everybody knowing it was fake, he's way too optimistic to think people are that smart... I mean he even fooled someone as educated as Kyle or even higher. On the topic of finding him, I'm surprised there wasn't a 4chan campaign to find him from just his hand shape and stuff on the table
Read about the Goiânia accident. This happened. Even a lot worse
The horse magazine in the background is the icing on the cake.
I used to operate a cyclotron in a nuclear medicine pharmacy and we had cesium-137 and cobalt-60 sources that were in trace amounts. Regardless of them being reasonably "safe", we had to do rigorous spot checks throughout the day, everyday, to make sure this stuff was still contained. This story was scary as hell, glad it's fake.
What’s it like working in a nuclear medicine pharmacy? Sounds interesting. Are you a pharmacist, pharmacy tech, or something else?
@nicksurfs1 I was a cyclotron tech/operator (which is basically a circular particle accelerator). It was incredibly interesting, but because of the short half-life of f-18 (radioactive fluorine, used in PET scanning) it had to be made 3rd shift to be ready for hospitals in the morning. Takes a toll on you.
@@_ElisDTrailz no you weren't
They should have jailed the person. There’s numerous laws that would allow for it.
@@XenocideNeckerchief How would you know? Do you know these person?
Last month or so on Reddit, a user posed a photo of two strange metal objects he had found in the estate of a late relative, asking what they where. They were quickly identified as naked radiation sources, but so old that they were not THAT dangerous. I think the OP sought medical care (with no injuries recorded) and that the sources were taken care of by authorities.
Hot damn that's some Western States shit
So the halflife on those must have been quite high to not post danger anymore
@@Ikxi yes, in theory. But in fact - they can be still dangerous, even after 20-30years and it is very depends of a radioactive material
@@Ikxi High? You mean low, a long halflife would be dangerous for a longer period
@@Renoh74nooooo, low half life means it decays faster, which means you get exposed to more radiation in less time.
I was an industrial radiographer. We used Iridium 192 and during training we were told the horror stories of people like that guy whom put a source into their pocket. Like the Yanago incident.
what is so dangerous about this? its just little dots
@@sirgeorgioalastrata4104 go test it and find what’s so dangerous. Tell us what happens afterwards.
@@sirgeorgioalastrata4104 current industrial radiographer. If you’re at the point holding this and having some sort of digital video affect your losing a body part or probably getting cancer in the short to mid future. Your allowed 5R legally a year as a radiographer. Most company’s allow only 350MR a month short of the 500mr your allowed legally a month. It’s potent enough basically to make a dirty bomb that could kill a city, with the radioactive fall out. The sources we use for industrial stuff like weld inspection, or radiographing concrete to take a look at concrete stress cables could range from selenium, iridium or cobalt. Cobalt sources or insanely radioactive, the housing for them is a couple hundred pounds of pure depleted uranium or other dense metals. You hand crank the source out and run like the wind.
@@D9526328443789 if you can't explain why just stfu lmao
@@sirgeorgioalastrata4104 The radioactive particles can be absorbed by human tissue and react causing DNA damage. This will make it so that the cells cannot reproduce and thus this has been described as rotting from the inside out. It's horrific.
14:46 "... and not realizing my account... is a kink account."
This documentary deserves every award that ever existed.
It really does. Kyle showing the banner really, in my brain, is the stuff of nightmares (and I'm no prude), it gives me "Griffith will now have his fun with you" vibe.
I was even more terrified of the kink account than gamma rays..
I can appreciate the fact that the person behind this was actually willing to answer your questions about it for the sake of getting a clear understanding. Good on you for both bringing attention to the facts and the morals regarding the scenario, as it definitely falls into that gray area.
Yeah, though the voice distortion made the final conversation a little hard for me to follow, unfortunately. Also rather unnecessary, given it wasn't the person's actual voice.
Just like me
@@hughcaldwell1034 for me it was very helpful as im too lazy to read. so rather necessary
yeah and I got a new fetish out of it so big plus there
@@michahogelo I meant the distortion on the voice was unnecessary, not the voice itself. I'm blind, so for me the audio really was necessary - I wouldn't use "necessary" in your case, if you're admitting it was pure laziness.
When Kyle does his quiet serious voice, I pay extra attention. So imagine how shocked I was to hear serious Kyle talk about pony play in an orphan source video.
Strange world we live in.
.
Thank you for the warning
Boy, this comment sure was confusing until most of the way through the video.
Pony play is serious business, apparently.
My first reaction was "theres absolutely no way someone would give themselves radiation poisoning for the lulz" but I remember I had the exact same thoughts about people eating tide pods back when that was a thing
Clout is one hell of a drug, and modern humans are addicted.
Theres a sad, viral 4 chan post about a russian Stalker who was chasing radiation and secured some old RAW uncased radiation sources from soviet era systems. Posted an image with his geiger counter going extremely hot along side it, and then vanished. And unfortunately what was in the image was verified. I forget the exact number, but it was the kind of "you wont be alive next month" level of nukage. Everytime I see it, its a mix of memes and just sombre realisation that that dude is certainly dead.
it was only a handful of teenagers that actually ate tide pods, and then a fucking tidal wave of news coverage making it out to be some epidemic
@@smtmonke clout? 🤦
Idiocracy.... It's happening.
I live in Germany and the amount of people finding unexploded ww2 ordnance and then trying to sell it, or posting online asking what this is, is terrifying.
I like how the radiation distortion to the footage stops when the gieger counter comes out to help us see the reading. That’s handy
This incident, real or not, is just another example showing us that we need to start educating people about radioactivity and nuclear power.
Also Kyle's serious voice is scary.
I agree. Instead the popular media, especially here in Germany, teaches us that radioactivity is scary and nuclear waste will kill us all, if the NPPs don't explode first like Chornobyl. The children in German schools are being forced to read 'The Cloud', which is a book that contains basically all anti-nuclear power lies you can imagine, leading to the people rather accepting having a few more thousand people die due to burning coal each year than letting NPPs run longer.
There's also a lot of fearmongering about cesium-137 in the forests from Chornobyl, even though the dose you can acquire from even mushrooms isn't any concern. But hey, radiation is scary :)
Absolutely.
Like it or not, it is the inevitable next stage of human civilization, as we demand more and more energy sources. Hush hush about it and think it's just for the scientific people is definitely harmful. The unknown produces fear.
You give humanity too much credit. People even when properly educated will tend to do dumb and dangerous things because they just can.
A lot of people do things for the lols
As someone who’s been trained with adobe premire and after effects, i have to say that the radiation grain effect is INCREDIBLY easy to make, its kinda concerning to me that something i can do in two or three clicks could fool the world like this
wait- how was the world fooled?? I'm pretty sure nobody in the biden administration or any of our NATO partners took it seriously, i neglected to see even one article reporting on it in the real news media like WAPO or the TIMES, so if people were fooled it was just kids and gullible people on social media, right? I mean "fooling the world" would require the world being aware that this even happened, and it was completely a new thing for me, and i'm even more addicted to social media than anyone in my family(who also had no idea this even happened)
Is not fool the world but is better to be safe then sorry and if it even smells like radioactive material run away.
@@dish9849 So no more bananas then?
Sure but it looks fake af
@@eg0zb what looks fake
Did Kyle just become a journalist? Hearing about a story, wondering about its validity and then hunting for the truth, following leads, locating a source, interviewing the creator of the original story and then publishing the story for people to see... Yeah I think that qualifies Kyle as a journalist, hell thats more work then the media does now a days.
Well done sir. 👍
He's in fact a science journalist.
Im a journalist now too
@@blahblahgdp Do a journalism for us plz
Actually, Journalist dont do that. They run with the headlines and assume their fact for clicks. Kyle in fact did not do that and I appreciate him for it.
@@AmocideB No no Kyle did what journalists are supposed to do. These "journalists" now a days are little more then propaganda peddlers
It's also a lesson that experts aren't always right. They have knee-jerk reactions too.
So you're telling me people thought this was real because of the film grain being introduced on the camera sensor due to the radiation, but then in the second follow up video at 2:42 when he uses the Geiger counter to prove high radiation, nobody noticed that there was no film grain this time? (Even though the lid was open again?)
Finally, someone with brain
I'm less concerned that people were fooled than some nuclear safety expert who didn't notice this.
@@bartink and even after all that obvious bs u still convinced that he's a Real nuclear safety expert? now u sounds like a real concern to me
@@homeland1128 what do you mean that there is not any real safety nuclear experts?
So you're telling me when I watch a random video I have to go watch the entire series and subscribe to every single video they make? maybe people only saw one video and never saw the follow up, as what usually happens with viral videos.
The thing that stood out to me was Kyle's nuclear contamination friend seemed convinced despite the previous expert saying that gamma radiation would go right thru your hand. I would expend a nuclear contamination expert to know this...kinda worrying.
Agreed
I don't recall Kyle saying the two sources talked to each other or had been told what the other said. Assuming both interviews were blind to each other, (benefit of doubt) there are many types of experts and they're not all schooled or trained the same way. The video fellow, for instance, (don't remember his name, sorry,) might be one of just a handful of people doing the kind of work he does, so his knowledge of the video interaction _may be_ relatively unique.
I don't know/remember Lucas' history beyond being one of the Chernobyl tour guides that Kyle worked with. His experience with contamination and accidents may be limited to larger, more newsworthy events. I don't know the schooling of either person.
Nuclear science has a broad range as any other energy subject, but unfortunately a shallow history due to public phobia preventing energy from being more prevalent. There aren't _that_ many experts out there for this stuff and Kyle's level of academic and journalistic knowledge on the subject is rare, despite him not knowing "everything." (Hence deferring to others on specific details.)
Just because info is out there, doesn't mean everybody does or needs to know it. Lots of people doing jobs only have the info they need to do their particular job at that particular company, plus a little more they pick up from coworkers. Even very technical jobs don't always directly rely on one's schooling.
ETA: It is worrying that the info can be compartmentalized so much because the knowledge base is relatively small for how important and potentially dangerous nuclear science is. I'm not saying that's not a problem, just that it's not necessarily a fault or deficiency of any given person in this broad field. If anyone is to blame, society and people like coal lobbyists are worthy of scrutiny. We need more people doing nuclear jobs, because we need more nuclear power. (And yes, more study of it to know all the weird crap that can happen when things don't go right.)
Cs-137 is primarily a Beta emitter, and beta can easily be attenuated by a hand. I also don't believe it is correct that gamma radiation is needed to create the static effect in a camera, as anything that interacts with the sensor in the camera at a high enough energy is basically going to turn that pixel white.
@@VoltisArt To add to the defense of Lucas, I wouldn't be suprised if Dr. Seltzman needed to look up what type of radiation Cesium-137 produces.
Also, a small correction: Dr. Seltzman (as far as I know) wasn't interviewed. A screenshot email from him was part of the tumblr thread.
One was speaking from the perspective of evidence, while the other was speaking on the believability of the post. Evidence wise, the guy thought it was clearly impossible for it to be real. On the side of "believability" making an assumption that something is real just because "who would go so far to fake this?" is a realllly bad approach, especially when looking at things on the internet.
In a world where people may just be dumb enough to post a real orphan source, I feel like videos such as this one you've made make a major difference in the grand scheme of things. Huge respect to the effort that went into this.
Thankfully, this person was just horsing around.
The thing is, if they don't know its an orphan source, its really not their fault. I can see this happening with a real orphan source that emitted gamma radiation, causing the camera to become fuzzy as it would. Someone with no knowledge of this would think its neat that the item would cause the camera to do this every time it was opened or exposed to the lens. Can you really call them dumb for that? Though in all honesty, there is defiantly people out there dumb enough to do this with full knowledge of what they are about to do and the risks associated, and yet they do it for the clout and 15 minutes of fame. There are prank youtubers who have been shot and killed for "pretending" to mug/rob someone.
@@GerardMenvussa I see what you did there. And I don't think the person who made that video is entirely stable.
@@neuralmute Hay, that's not farrier
@@PilotTed Phone cameras have the capability to determine if they are blasted with radiation, what i don't understand is why is the camera app not programmed to warn people if the thing they are filming or shooting is radioactive... It's fairly easy to determine there is something blasting the sensor and circuitry with beta, gamma or X-rays...
I'm so glad you did your research for the second half of the video, what an out of pocket and hilarious conclusion. Not to mention I learned a lot about radiations effects on film, and the way rays interact with human flesh. Fantastic video
I think the fact that it was done well enough to make people question: "is this a fake?" is the worrying part of this meme. I remember seeing it blow up on Imgur and even I wasn't sure if it was legit or not. I am glad that it is a fake, but to Rye Pony's point, it has sparked a broader discussion about orphan sources and the need to be careful of them out in the world. I am grateful that both you and Plainly Difficult do cover and discuss these accidents in order to educate the masses on how dangerous they can both be, and how innocent they can look if you are not paying attention.
I think Plainly Difficult does just too much disaster porn.
I mean, i just assume people don't get a hold of orphan sources aside from 4chan
@@angrydragonslayer might wanna watch the whole video then. He talks about how plausible it is to find them abandoned.
we're about to hit the age of AI produced CGI, governments are going to explode if people don't start to get a handle on the fact that video's are not proof without additional supporting evidence
@@Hamstray Why else do we watch it? He has a second channel about recording music with some good tunes.
I was there during the Goiania incident, I used to live just a few miles away from the site and I very much appreciate how much attention you bring to that event Kyle. Thank you so very much.
All I'm saying is: I knew nothing about Orphan sources, and I'm the kind of person who would buy something like it for some unfathomable reason. So: at least for me, this video has legitimately made me aware of a danger. I had no idea you could actually buy something like that.
I'm the kind of idiot who buys oddities, and I don't frequent flea markets, but yeah...
Bro same, I buy weird random stuff all the time from places like that. I had no idea that could actually happen
I am the *exact* type of person who would find something like this and be like "is there anything cool inside?" and open it.
Buying it is one thing, the scarier thing is occasionally its possible to literally find something like this at the roadside or hiking.. fairly rare to find a source that way for sure but far from impossible
well, it's highly illegal
This takes "the toxicity of social media" to a whole new level.
The horse mag in the background was a clue nobody looked at twice. Fake videos are usually something I don't find funny, but this man upgraded it to an art.
the person who uploaded this video originally is a horse-themed degen the mag isn't really anything extraordinary or out of character for this guy if anything the entire video was out of character
@@ExceptionallyUndersizedThanos
“Horse-themed degen”
Is this English?
@@randomjunkohyeah1 degenerate
@@randomjunkohyeah1 yes
@@randomjunkohyeah1 "degen" being short for "degenerate" or "degeneracy"
Radioactivity is one of the few truly terrifying existential threats in my mind. If you stumble across something (or worse don’t even see the object) and are around it for even an hour, you could very well die and there is nothing to be done about it.
The mind comment is most prescient: Statistically, this isn't going to happen - and yet...
There are a lot of chemical threats out there that are just as deadly as radioactivity and most of them don't give any perceptible indication of smell or taste that they're present. Unless you're line-of-sight and quite close to a radioactive source you're almost always safe, not so much for being near a leak of, say, phosgene.
The US Chemical Safety Board posts videos on chemical and industrial plant accidents, what went wrong and what the results were. They're a useful rebuttal resource if anyone ever suggests to you that some business is "over-regulated".
This and Prions are my two ‘it’s probably fine but I’m still going to worry’ fears lol
It is only terrifying if you are irrationally afraid of it.
At worse you can get a Geiger counter or similar cheap instruments and voilà.
Now compare that to real, commonplace poisons that you can't detects and that are actually slowly killing you.
Death from radiation really just means "forced suicide," no point in dying that painfully.
I think we should take a moment to realize just how scary it is that Kyle was able to dig up that much information on a person to track them down about a video they had posted years ago. Reminder to be safe with what you post online!
If RyePony hadn't still been active enough on Twitter to answer a DM, or had chosen not to answer, I think the trail would've gone cold for good there, and I'm satisfied with that.
Though the metadata scrape didn't turn up the kind of identifying or locating information Kyle was hoping for, it's still a good reminder to consider turning off location tagging on your own photos and videos.
That is a good point from a privacy and security standpoint, though in this case, I believe that this information was used in a positive way. If you're really looking for good information about how to make your devices more secure and private, there are youtubers like TheHatedOne and Mental Outlaw that go way more in depth than just "get a VPN." I highly recommend those two channels, there's a lot of knowledge between them, and they both explain things so even people without a background in IT can understand.
If you enter the public square, you're accountable for what you say and do there.
i mean... yes, always, but what he found is the account that posted the video on twitter. Nothing about the person
digital footprint
As soon as I saw the fuzz, I instinctively said “CLOSE THAT LID IMMEDIATELY!”
I sincerily think that Kyle's Half life serie should be seen in school. They're highly educative, easy to understand, and Kyle's voice and delivery carries just the right amoubnt of seriousness.
I agree. If I had seen some of these videos in high school physics it would have been super cool
Well said
Maybe cut out the part about them being a pony play account and this video is very school friendly
Are you crazy? The teachers' unions would go batshit. To teach kids is not their goal anymore.
As part of my modern physics course, I showed my high school students the Demon Core video.
Thanks for putting in the work on this Kyle. It would be terrifying to think an orphan source had killed some dummy and was just sitting on a shelf somewhere.
After Australia's recent "orphan source" incident (it "fell" out of a truck convoy carrying equipment) - I've become a LOT more aware of the potential dangers of these things.
Love the video, Kyle. I just wish more actual journalists would exercise at least a modicum of the due diligence that you do.
Oh Aussies
Some sources say we were creating an orphan source every 3 days back in 2021
He had more time than your average journalist, and could make good use of it.
That is the crux of modern information. You recieve an endless stream of it, and even deciding which of all that is supposed to become part of your output, takes more time than you have to do your work. As a result, the quality of journalism deteriorates, and this in turn makes the work of common journalists so superficial that the confidence in what they are doing, is declining as well. With dire consequences to our political landscape.
I remember thinking "yeah some dumbcunce are gonna find it, play with it and die from rad sickness"
At least it was out the back of bumfuck nowhere 🤣🤣🤣
"why would someone go to the trouble of posting about a fake injury to almost no one" it's tumblr. lying on tumblr to almost no one is like, what happens there. both in a for fun way like our beloved not real movie and in the horribly transphobic dog whistle filled way unfortunately
This was a rollercoaster of a story lol learning about how being viral really works, to being impressing by Kyle’s research determination, and laughing about the account.
"Atomically twisted wounds" is a new terrifying phrase that now exists.
Pretty bitchin' band name too.
The funny thing is, that meme DID educate me about orphan sources and the danger they pose... I had never heard of them before, had little to no interest in nuclear energy or accidents, but I came across it on Tumblr, the replies lead me to this channel, and now I've watched the Half-Life series and other video essays on similar topics that I never would have thought I'd be interested in.
I don’t think the meme educated me; Kyle’s explication of the meme did, though.
@@nlald well it certainly raised awareness which is what the guy said he thought it would do. Same here- never heard of them before this video and without said meme, this video wouldn't exist.
So memes are not ALWAYS a waste of brain cells!
My first thought from that scar was it looked like the kind you get when getting a phalloplasty
also the mention of the person on tumblr saying that their doctor told them that only 41% of people who get this surgery make it long term. nearly every trans person who's been on the internet knows what kind of person is saying that stuff.
@@tabithal2977 Bro what? Someone’s out there telling people 41% make it long term? Yea we can tell what kind of person that is 💀
@toxic_195 yeah in the video where the person who reposted rhe video onto Tumblr, the same person who used the phalloplasty scar image to show what their skin graft looked like said to someone that their doctor told them that only 41% of people who get the surgery (the one to have the tissue from their hand removed and the "skin graft") make it long term. I think that Tumblr poster is just an obvious transphobe.
@@tabithal2977 yeah that was my immediate thought lmao
@@tabithal2977 looks like all of us saw the same thing and connected the dots right quick
Definitely one of those “I’ve seen enough fake tumblr stories to have significant doubts, but holy shit this could be monumentally serious” reactions when I saw the video. Thanks for doing the due diligence, Kyle!
If the radiation is significant enough to effect the video, it'd also be impacting the memory and CPU equally.
A crashed camera makes no video.
It was obviously fake IMO, you just add a cheap video effect and that's it
@@spvillano Not necessarily, there have been examples of invisible radiation affecting the CMOS sensor while still making usable video data. It really depends on the intensity, direction of the source, location of the camera's memory and CPU, and whether or not those electronic components are protected by metal shielding. I imagine alpha or beta radiation would not ruin the camera, but gamma may.
@@mitchellspanheimer1803 metal shielding is even worse, especially with beta. Remember, Cs-137 is a 0.5 Mev beta source and a 0.6 Mev gamma source. Bremsstrahlung radiation will be emitted by metal when a particle impacts the metal atoms, which can then ionize a path through the chip itself. Some plastics would be far more effective in protecting the circuitry than metal.
In space, one faces mostly protons and beta, along with x-ray and a touch of gamma, all save the EM generating bremsstrahlung radiation from the spacecraft hull. Thankfully, one doesn't have neutrons or protons to really foul the camera in the case of Cs-137, but damage from gamma should be minimal to absent at that energy level. As a hint, thunderstorms can generate gamma in the 100 Mev range, we don't see cameras failing from that. Pair production is quite unlikely at that flux and energy level.
Oh, another tidbit, I-131 is used in nuclear imaging, had such testing done for my thyroid. It puts out around 0.364 Mev, which goes clean through the body to be easily detected. The Cs-137 is harder by a little, but magically was blocked by a hand that should've only barely attenuated some of the beta and not a lick of the gamma.
Were such an offer real and I ran into it and could verify it as a source of some type, I'd buy it and call a friend who's a nuclear health physicist to verify by a proper survey. Then, if it was something like Cs-137, call the NRC and the military installation he works at to see who wanted to take custody of the damned thing. Better to get it off the street and market and into proper custody than pray it doesn't turn up used in some terrorist attack or irradiating a neighborhood.
I'd also get the tag number of the seller and if possible, the VIN from the dashboard. The NRC would certainly want to have a conversation as to where such a hazardous source originated.
Its also tumblr, known to have batshit crazy users. Fake or not, its undeniably tumblr to play around with something radioactive and post it.
Yeah, after seeing the surgery scars and then the "41% suicide" comment it was pretty clear to me the person was just a troll. Also, I love how the most replayed moment for this video was when Kyle mentioned "Pony Play" for the first time. Love it.
yeah it was fairly obvious at that point 💀💀
Came here to say this. I think it deserves some more attention because it’s just glaringly obvious to me, as a trans person, that the phallo scar image poster is probably not op but also just a transphobic troll. “after I’ve done this to myself […] walking around looking like a freak”, “41% of people who go through this surgery don’t make it long term”, “makes you wonder if there’s another way to help me”…. Like come on!!! That’s definitely just a terf being an ass off the back of a viral post just for the sake of it, no f*ckin shame 🙄
@@Sprite_real_ assuming you’re genuinely asking :
- 41% is a figure often touted by transphobes, it’s the suicide rate of trans people. people waving it around often complete wave off the fact that this is inflated by the hostile environment we live in.
- “i’ve done this to myself [and I’m a freak now]” is pretty self explanatory. common point among transphobes that trans people are ugly, don’t pass and look disfigured.
- “makes you wonder if there’s another way to help me” common argument among gender criticals and terfs ; trans people shouldn’t transition according to them and their point is conversion therapy should be the answer to every instance of gender dysphoria/incongruence.
- “I’m just following the science” is just an expansion of the last point, it’s pretty much the idea that “science” got it wrong and trans people are delusional and the scientists working on gender reassignment therapies just don’t want to hurt our feelings and are after the money of what they deem to be an expanding “market” regardless of the fact that many healthcare professionals not only often refuse us healthcare a lot but also make it purposely difficult for us to access it in the first place. this whole idea is often linked with antisemitic conspiracy theories linking trans healthcare to affluent jewish people supposedly funding it.
If you’re genuinely curious about how deep this sort of thing goes I suggest Shaun’s video on a british transphobic activist whose relationships within that sphere span closer and closer to antisemites trying to etch themselves into mainstream politics.
All these dog whistles serve an important goal of plausible deniability when we point them out. On the surface, it does all seem to be possible coincidences but to a trained eye they are very blatant. I didn’t catch them on my first watch, either, I only noticed it when showing the video to my fiancé and catching the 41% mention and then everything just fell into place. I also noticed the mention of them being a transphobe by a random reddit account on a screen cap a little before that segment.
@@Sprite_real_ the surgery is a photo of a skin graft taken for FTM transitional surgery, and "41%" is a transphobic joke regarding a statistic from a few years ago regarding rates of suicidal ideation among transgender people.
"makes you wonder if _anyone should be doing this at all_ or _theres another way to help me"_ "whatever im just following the science" is a very very nonsensical thing to say about their situation?? it literally only makes sense if you realize what theyre talking about. so genuinely annoying
The most worrying fact in this entire case is the nuclear physicist saying that orphaned sources are often found at flea markets... Even if the video was fake, enough orphaned sources are out there to convince an expert that it might as well have been real 😰
Yeah, returning to that point would have made an excellent conclusion. Yes the video was fake, yes it educated people, yes it may have also been slightly harmful for a variety of reasons, but the true horror is that it's an apparently highly plausible story.
If I were a betting man I would say in most cases it comes in the form watches. As they used radium paint as luminescence for decades. Toys are another source but they are incredibly rare. It could also tritium if you are looking for it in the form of gun sights and there are a few watch companies that use tritium tubes for luminescence.
My point is yes you can find orphan sources at flea markets. What you won't find are hunks of cesium in homemade containment units.
Could a cesium pellet have been sourced from the inside of an old x-ray machine? If so, think of how many x-ray machines there are, and therefore how common this threat could be.
Often means almost never.
@@minitea4315 naive me likes to believe they dont just dump those somewhere and have to follow strict protocol for disposal.. right?
ok but the whole "why would someone go this far to fake an injury, even making separate posts to a smaller audience" severely misunderstands the tumblr userbase lol. people commit to the bit there lmao
Nuclear materials are scarier if you don't understand them or how easy it is to get around. information keeps everyone safe, even if we don't think it. Thank you Mr. Hill for keeping this series going, its been a big help to begin explaining to others about the subject.
Idk knowing how painfully and decisively radiation can kill me is a lot scarier than ignorance. The only saving grace of knowing this information is now i know i havent come across any dangerous orphan sources in my life, because id already be either dead or crippled if I did.
@@dane1382 well if it is any consolation, you recieve plenty of naturally occuring radiation from space and from the nuclear decay happening under our feet, why its important to have well ventilated basements to prevent Radon build up.
scarier when you understand them, and consider world ending weapon stockpiles, plus every commercial reactor in existence being weaponizable, we've been one decision away from the end at least twice in just a century.
@@MorphingReality humans and this planet are far more resillient than you'd honestly ever give credit for. this is the same planet that's had millenia of ash and fire, volcanic explosions and an asteroid slap it. life finds a way, we find a way.
@@swapertxking on the contrary, i often make the claim that the biosphere is somewhat paradoxically both fragile and resilient in different ways.
but civilization doesn't survive nuclear war.
At least one thing that I hope comes out of this is that more people get educated on what an orphan source is and what to do if they find one.
I hope I NEVER need to use this knowledge of what orphan sources are if I'm totally honest
@@al145 Well, personally if someone was like "hey look at this cool sealed, hollow, thick metal cylinder I found" I just... wouldn't screw with it.
@@colbyboucher6391 yeah, that's how you end up as a news article. Like those people that find old WWII bombs in their backyards and stuff.
I do bullet casting to shoot old black powder guns (civil war and earlier) and these lead cylinders from radiation treatments are a common source of good lead for bullets. I've never heard of anyone getting one that was still hazardous in anyway, but I can imagine it happens every now and again.
And at least one person learned what pony play was
Hey, I'm in this video!
I'm so honored to have been included and possibly of help. Thanks so much for including my Reddit comment, Kyle! Means a lot to me!
wow somebody saw your comment get a life
YOURE FAMOUS!!!
Call your mom ur famous! 👍👍
God the anxiety I felt watching this was extreme. For a moment there I was convinced I was watching someone die, and I understand at least on the personal and human level why you were so concerned, Kyle.
I'm Brazilian and your video on the Goiânia accident made me take a detour on a recent trip to see the city for the first time. To this day, everyone who has suffered from the disaster gets paid 960R$ (194 USD) a month by the government, which, in my opinion, is far from enough to cover even basic needs, let alone medical bills. They want the city to build a memorial about the accident, but it has been denied for years. I passed through street 57 and the only thing that hints to the massive disaster that unfolded there is a small plaque and the stories the residents are willing to share with you.
An artist, named Siron Franco, has made two projects about the city and presented them to the mayor's office for aproval, they were both denied. It seems that the idea of a memorial being built five years after the accident took place was just a political strategy to get votes, they never did anything about it.
That incident is memorialized in the textbooks of nuclear science. Memorial or not it will never be forgotten.
@@patrickhenry1249 I'd vote for that; but it'll never pass congress, the house of commons, or whoever makes laws locally; because they themselves would be at risk of being kicked out for lying.
Good idea, but impossible to enact, because human nature.
Like the argument that Communism could work very well; but human nature prevents it from succeeding, because the wrong people are always in power.
I love that Canada claims to be a democracy, but it's a lie. We are so manipulated into voting how they want, that it is anything but a democracy.
I'll stop at that before this turns into a virtual nuclear war as politics/religious topics tend to do.
@@patrickhenry1249 I'm with you. We actually had a protest like this a few weeks ago in our city due to pomises that were never completed.
The fact that they did that as a political stunt pisses me off
@@antonioarroyas7662 I know, it's not about publicity though, it's about paying respect to the victims of this accident by giving them something to be remembered for. It may be surprising to anyone who reads this, but most people in my country aren't aware of this tragedy, especially the new generations.
It bothers me because it was promised five years after the accident that a memorial was going to be built to honor the victims, and it played a huge role in the elections that follow. It's a complete lack of respect and slap in the face of society.
As someone who has studied and worked in the nuclear field as a technician for the last 5 years I greatly appreciate the care and respect for this topic Kyle never shys away from the very real danger of nuclear radiation and really gives it everything he has to explain the subject and report on its largest problems it may not get as many views as his old pop culture videos but it's something he's truly passionate about and it shows.
A hooyah technician?
regardless of the story's conclusion, i'm yet again blown away by the level of research and care you put into this--wonderful job, as always
I recall this guy, he came out and explained how he faked it.
I love that you managed to get to the bottom of this. Most people would probably come to a realization of "What am I doing, it's just a meme", but you documented the entire story.
Love your videos
and yet he still came to the same conclusion of "fuck it, it's just a meme". so was all that effort really necessary?
@@sonia625Yeah really, from the way the guy talked “41% don’t make it long term. Not sure what that means lol” like obviously anyone would know what that means. Guy was such an obvious troll. Not to mention the nuclear physics expert that said it didn’t make sense from the video. I don’t know how qualified this friend of his he called is if he doesn’t even know gamma radiation passes through hands very easily.
A nuclear accident went WHAT
The viruses are nuclear now??? 😳😳😳
Viral, but not in a virus way
THEY'RE GOING VIRAL NOW???!!!
Wait til a virus goes nuclear, you'll lose your sh1t
Venereal
Thank you for bringing this to our attention Kyle! I remember when i also read about the Cobolt 60 rods as well that say "DROP AND RUN" and honestly it's terrifying how deadly these orphan sources are.
It's scary how hard it can be to find out if something is real or not these days. And it's only going to get worse.
If it makes you feel any better, it's always been this hard. We just have mass communication so we as a population can start to see the man behind the curtain.
Fun fact: AI machine learning has been used by the US government since the 60's. It's been used on the USS Toledo (SSN-769) submarine for a long time to passively interpret sonar, so who knows what crap was faked in the last 40 years...
The better technology gets at CREATING fakes, the better technology needs to get at DETECTING fakes.
@popdewoze not being literal but it definitely feels like some "I have no mouth and I must scream."
@popdewoze Remember the DCS Ukraine dogfight fakes? yeah...
@@jerryhook5906 We need DS9 type "IT'S A FAKE" detection, otherwise, photo, video and audio evidence becomes useless in a court of law
This is actual investigative journalism in the modern era. Kyle, you have once again outdone yourself and set a new standard for UA-cam creators. This is exactly the type of content I wish more people took the care and effort to create.
I've been using Cesium 137 to add film grain as an in camera special effect since the advent of digital cameras, and all six of my arms are perfectly fine.
Cesium 137 cured my erectile dysfunction! I mean… his name is Richard and he wants to be an artist but at least he works.
ok, Peter Parker
@@phanlee4621 No he would need 8. With six he would be an ant man.
lol only good comment in th is video
@@flux0841You’re damn right I do. Too bad all my paint is white and salty.
I work in mineral exploration so I get the occasional safety notice when someone misplaces something radioactive (usually it gets found fairly quickly or is too low level to easily find) there have been a few concerning incidents where density tools and moisture gages with intense neutron sources in them have been stolen. One got pinched out of a truck relatively near where I live back in 2019 and as far as I know hasn’t been found.
It's rare that I get legit concerned about random videos/images on the internet, but surprise radiation is the kryptonite to my apathy. I'd never seen this before, but the slight possibility that this might have been real got me soooooo concerned for a total stranger (and everyone around him) that I was squirming in my chair. Great work, Kyle
At first when you find yourself questioning if it’s real you get a knot in your stomach!
Definitely made my palm sweaty as well.
And that is why I think this is better than harmless and far below harmful, it's effective. This video brought awareness to far more people than most educational material does. There aren't people out there trying to replicate it in reality and make it a real radioactive disaster, so while it may have made people struggle with their feelings over the potential misery another human may go through, it also taught us that these things ARE actually sold at flea markets and while this was fake, it COULD have been real. This is an effective way to teach people about the potential for disaster without there actually needing to be a disaster.
SURPRISE RADIATION, GO! *blue light comes from my pocket*
As troublesome as the potential incident could be, this kinky person has probably raised awareness of how these objects and their spicy air could very well end your curiosity. Many people will have learnt not to play with this sort of item and what can happen while the fascination may have lead some down a rabbit hole of learning.
Something like this meme made into an actual safety advert could have once been a valuable tool ironically before such a meme could be created.
Huh
I don't ever want to read one of these comments again, begone foul soul. Not the stuff about spreading radiation poisoning awareness just everything before that.
Lol you know nothing of the folly of man
Spicy air! 😂
Ok so a friend of mine worked at the surplus department at a local state university. In the 10 or so years he was there at least three times orphan sources nearly made it up for sale to the general public and had to be collected by a special hazmat team.
It is absolutely possible that a source could have made it to a flea market.
Oof… I looked up the images of the poor man in Yanango. Totally get why you didn’t want to show them. I feel SO bad for him, he never asked for that, and his quality of life after “recovery” was so poor. I couldn’t seem to find out if he’s still alive. These kind of incidents are terrifying,the curiosity of a person leading to horrendous radiation injuries, and so sad as they had no idea what would happen to them as a result of handling these things.
hi! surgical tech here! skin grafting isn't usually that perfectly rectangular, this looks more like a donor site rather than a recipient site. the rectangular shape comes from the dermatome which is a straight blade and would explain the shape. also, recipient sites would have a "fish net" appearance to them for recipient sites even when healed it is still noticeable in majority of scarring
It's a phalloplasty scar the OP ripped from a bottom surgery database to shit on trans people
It is a donor site. That photo is from a phalloplasty, revealed by the OP going on to talk about a "mystery surgery" that "41%" of people dont survive. The OP is a transphobic POS, and the whole "41%" is the sewer slide rate of trans people. OP is just trying to fear monger about Gender-Affirming care, and used the radiation thing to try and scare people.
it's definitely a phalloplasty donor site. i'm not a surgeon or anything but i am a trans man that's spent hours looking at pictures of scars just like that one.
@foogriffy My guy really tried to pass his phalloplasty pics off as radiation damage. A good a use as any for them I suppose.
@@joe____apparently his account was found to be filled with anti-lgbtq content, so i’m guessing it was someone else’s phalloplasty scars and he used it in order to show the “horrors” of gender affirming surgery by passing it off as a surgery necessitated by a radioactive injury
I'm not scared of much, but radiation scares the crap out of me, and especially after seeing the after photos of the Aochi incident (I hope I spelled his name right), and knowing how it pretty much liquifies you from the inside, and over the course of several weeks.
It actually gives me the shivers
Hisachi Ouchi
If you want to freak yourself out more, there's a couple incidents of improper disposal of radiation-based cancer treatment equipment that had cobalt-60 in and they ended up in scrap yards, and the people working there ended up irradiated, a few died, some lost fingers and hands from damage from handling it. One was in Brazil, I think, there was one in India and another in either Vietnam or Thailand, I can't remember. But someone who didn't know what it was found it and sold it at a scrapyard to other people who didn't know what it was, and there you go. Kyle talked about the Brazil one I think.
@@laerzzyziz2381 ouchi ouch
Those photos were faked. They weren't of Ouchi, but of a severe burn victim. The Japanese govt. never released the photos. No... what he went through was way worse. Watch Wendigoon's video on it, but only if you're ready for some graphic descriptions.
@@jacobkeefe1534 the photos his video showed will never leave my mind.
the idea that something that radioactive and is found and sold at flea markets all of the time is genuinely one of the scariest things I'll be thinking about for the rest of my life now
It is not true however, the seller would open the capsule to see if anything of value is inside and they would get sick before they could even take it to the market. It makes absolutely no sense, how do you price something if you don’t know what it even is? Also big searches are conducted when these materials go missing.
"I'll let you have that static rock and funny tube for $20. This other guy said he would take it for $30 though..."
When i accidentaly explode my thorium reactor in mindustry:
I like how Lucas was all like “Yeah, bro. People sell Caesium at the side of the road all the time.”
They sell WHAT casually?!!
I'm sure that in 1985, plutonium is available at every corner drug store.
@@thegardenofeatin5965 crazy
The nuclear age was a helluva thing. He's right, they really do turn up in odd places enough to have full time agencies for doing something about it when they do
Who was he? Lol
One thing to take into consideration while reverse-searching an image, is that most types of changes done to an image will make it impossible to find the original source. Sometimes, cropping an image, reducing its resolution, size, or changing its orientation or mirroring it, will give you 0 results after.
As much I'm glad the video is indeed fake, I also found funny to consider that you had to learn about pony play :p
I'm not afraid of the radiation. If it kills me it kills me. I'm afraid of what happens if Kyle joins such a fetish group and decides we need to be involved too.
only issue i'm having with this is that he completely passes over the fact that the original tumblr post stated that the twitter account was fake and not him
@@jeffreykirkley6475 the problem is, orphan sources so abandoned by death makes that form of death communicable, as others then expose themselves unknowingly.
as ml researching adressing this will become less of an issue
The hell is pony play?
Edit: Nevermind
This is the wildest video i have ever seen in my entire life. A true roller-coaster
This was my first time hearing about orphan sources, so this is actually an amazing way to teach people about it
They're usually found in abandoned healthcare facilities from x-ray or other medical equipment, or in sterilization plants that radio-sterilize medical equipment and lab equipment. You might see on a sterile scalpel, gauze, or other disposable sterile object: sterilized by gamma radiation, or something to that effect. The first time I read one of those I was genuinely a little spooked. I'm chronically ill and my mom is a retired RN, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with healthcare, but wondering if something is safe to use after it has been irradiated is an uncomfortable feeling. I quickly shut down that inner voice by telling myself that if it were unsafe they wouldn't be packaged in bulk and used by the thousands, or more, every day, but not everyone thinks like that.
I do like how completely thorough Kyle is and how good his research is. I haven't seen many content creators who are willing to take the extra time and energy to really get to the bottom of a topic. I think of it like using a rubber spatula to get every
I think that is my take on this whole thing too.
Now no-one who has seen the meme and runs into a weird can like that that does weird things to electronics is going to be sticking their hand into it.
This series is seriously fascinating.
It's also scary finding out how many of these incidents have happened that most people have never even heard of.
Ikr!
You probably wont even hear about most cases like that ever. Just look at the former Soviet Union for example. A lot of facilities were straight up abandoned after the fall and because many documents from that time were purposefully destroyed, the successor governments might not even know what is around their country. We know that the US has lost a bunch of nuclear warheads over the years and most of them were never rediscovered. We almost know nothing about how many the soviet union lost because the data was destroyed, but it is certain that they lost way more in the chaos of the collapse of the USSR.
@@bomber9912 Oh I well remember that right after the fall there was a LOT of concern over rogue nations and/or terrorist groups making off with nuclear warheads (or former Soviet soldiers/officers selling them to make money before fleeing the country)
I live near Goiânia, people are still very paranoid about radiation here. Some old people are really afraid that cellphones, AA batteries or wi-fi might kill them of radiation. And every now and then there is some vengeful ex-wife who calls the police saying that her husband has a cesium 137 capsule hidden in the yard and the whole state screams.
Em Goiânia césio 137 é farofa
This kind of irrational fear and ignorance is probably a worse killer than ionizing radiation itself. Yes, ionizing radiation is dangerous, as is the UV light from the sun (which is _not_ ionizing). Flying is also inherently dangerous, and most people do not know how to pilot or build an air plane, yet many people fly every day without fear because the dangers are controlled. The radiation from your radiators at home that keeps you warm in the winter is not dangerous.
Muito pior que radiação ionizante, é mulher traída
The one comment about '41% not making it' with the picture resembling a phalloplasty scar is throwing huge "transphobic troll" flags up for me.
Yes, that is obviously a transphobic troll post, but I understand that you would need some knowledge of the subject to see that. Still leaves the question why, and what would it achieve.
@@eeweeweew it's a troll post there isn't any reason aside from them laughing to themselves afterwards.
I'd never heard of this before. I'm glad you did the deep dive into it and got to the bottom of it. Anything radioactive out in the wild scares me to my core. Thanks for all you do man.
you could say it scares you to your... demon core?
Well said I concur
@@evancountryman8248 lol ohhh you
It was right in front of our faces the entire time. The horse magazine in the background was the key to solving the puzzle.
holy shit, @8:58 your right.
I was just about to comment this 😭😭😭
The letter in plain sight. "Rye Pony" is smart and snarky, with STEM background and specialized knowledge. I have a few hypotheses about who they could be but I won't say a goddamn word. It's so much funnier this way. Plus, if I'm right, I respect that person 1000× more.
Me and my friends used to go urban exploring. I always joked about taking pictures of random objects and then going back on the photos later that night only to realize that we were just being blasted with radiation that we only could've seen with our pictures. Thinking back, I know I would've been terrified out of my mind had I known we were messing with nuclear energy.
@chuharry5360 when you take pics of radioactive elements, the radiation causes the camera quality to be very grainy. I just thought it'd be scary to take pictures of things and then when I'm looking back at the pictures I realize I was exposed to deadly radiation
Sure it wasn't just the grain from taking pictures in the dark? That can produce similarly grainy photos
Taking pictures in the dark (doesnt matter what time of day) even with flash on can make pictures grainy. Unless you were fucking around in government facilities or any sort of facility that had sources of radioactive materials readily available you were perfectly fine.
Where is the Imgur link?
Late to the comment section, but a friend of mine was the first one to visit a animal research lab and he brought me in immidiatelly after that. It was not only full of glass jars with embryos and all the equipment like microscopes, it had an entire storage room full of containers with radioactive warnings everywhere, little vials with fluid with radioactive warnings, and those lead containers that this video talks about were inside a fridge with more small vials in them too. Was very unsettling even though we did bring a (cheap) geigercounter than didn't measure any significant numbers.
The scar on that person's arm is consistent from a donor site from a phalloplasy surgery, and you can find example images of like those on surgeon's sites that will not show up on Google image search because they are kept behind certain automation checks.
I love to learn but I shouldn't have googled that seeing as I figured out what phalloplasty was from it's root words. Now I am very confused. Maybe this video is real and this guy really is a dumb ass who lost his little buddy in a similarly poorly thought out prank.
@@AcidGambit419 I assure you after seeing a different comment thread it is not
It could also belong to OP or a friend, considering how tumblr has a higher queer user base than most social medias.
It could also belong to OP or a friend, considering how tumblr has a higher queer user base than most social medias.
@@AcidGambit419it can be for that, as it used to be used for vets who lost their bits in a war, but now it's widely used by trans masculine people as part of gender/sex reassignment surgery.
While I can understand your concern, I think this is actually a very good way to bring awareness to the issue. Often times, the public isn't aware of these problems until a disaster happens. Essentially, Rye created a disaster without a disaster. It's created awareness and conversation of just how dangerous these orphan sources are and how in reality, this would kill a person. In this case, as far as we can tell, outside of journalistic effort, no other critical resources were wasted (like first responders.) There wasn't a really huge panic, but there was concern. Definitely need to be careful, but it was done, I think, as responsibly as it could be.
It's true, but also risky as it could have the complete opposite effect.
Knowing that it's fake, people will question the motivations behind the making this video. And although it's just an armless prank, you can be sure that for some people it's in fact another manipulation from the medias/government/NASA who try for some reason to convince people that radioactivity is dangerous or whatever, and they are trying to cover up something important (like : they don't want you to make your own nuclear reactor, or some other absurdity of this level).
My point is that, even if you're meaning well, and regardeless of your stance and ideas you're defending, you should never relie on lies to argue your point.
Because as soon as it is demonstrated that's a lie or a fake, it is also demonstrated that you can't be trusted.
exactly. noone was harmed, and people were made aware this is a real risk.
Iwhat about the people who think it's cool and attempt to replicate the vide
@@garethwillis Good point. Although the availability of the material limits by itself the problem.
The real amoral person in the story was the tumblr that faked the injuries; which seems unrelated to the original creator. Stole content and falsified injuries literally just to lie. Rode on Mr. rubber ponies work for attention.
I just want to say "she metal on my gear till its rising" is an incredible username
True, lets make out
But only if you want to
Too long for a name
@@SpaceGhostMars94says who? *clearly* not the tumblr username limits.
@@SpaceGhostMars94 spot the non-tumblr user challenge; impossible difficulty
As an electronic engineer, I bought long ago a Pro Geiger counter, just for safety, as a development engineer you never know for sure what they send you via mail. And as a licensed radio amateur and working for many years for a broadcast company. Some antennas have nuclear products in it, same with lightning rods. These have even more of these in them (older systems) but then it's handy when you have that counter in your tool basket.
The ending can be interpreted in a far more sinister way than usual here.
“I am at least glad that this isn’t history’s first example of social media literally ‘going nuclear.’ Unfortunately, of course, we might not be able to tell if and when it actually does…until next time.”
I start to think about getting radiation detector given number of orphan sources floating around and not just that but amount of just data related radiation from phone and internet antennas. For some just the EM radiation alone from home appliances can cause negative effects to their health, most likely effecting iron in their blood.
@@Hellsong89 Bro. Learn the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation please. Antennas and the internet aren't giving you cancer, it's non-ionizing electo-magnetic radiation. If you're so concerned about getting irradiated, never go in the sun again because it is giving you ionizing radiation, and cancer.
Oh well, nuclear. I mean, we already have influencers. Something less bad than that, such as nuclear accidents is kind of like a point we've already passed. 😉
@@nvelsen1975 just like a kitchen knife, one moment of complacency can be dangerous.
@@Hellsong89 I got a little Geiger counter off of Amazon. Best 100 bucks I ever spent. The only thing it doesn´t measure is FUN. And alpha lol. I wouldn´t worry about phones and stuff though. I have alot of uranium glass and radium clocks, and my levels are still at normal background.
My grandpa told me about his colleague, who at the time they were working in post Soviet Kazakhstan, bought and brought home 3 canisters like these, they were supposed to have “extreme resell value”. Until he sold them they managed to store them on their flats balcony. 2 years later him and his whole family died of cancer, including some neighbors from nearby apartments. This is so scary to think about that at this moment your body can be falling apart because of unknown radiation source. If you want any details about to story (maybe I don’t remember everything exactly) I can ask him and provide the answer.
STORY UPDATE BELLOW
How did they get rid of the containers after realizing the damage being done to them? Very sad but simultaneously interesting comment
You should get more details and send it to Kyle to research any more official details! Sounds wild
That's insane, and scary
I think you mean "colleague" at the beginning, not "college"-- I'm only mentioning it because I didn't understand the rest of the story at first because of the mix-up. I thought your grandpa was the one who died, and then you said you would ask him for more details... I hope you don't mind the correction 😅
@@srahhh autistic
The most normal STEM major
YOUR PROFILE SCARED ME OH MY GOD
@@campingdev5233 all these years I finally got someone :)
@@campingdev5233 same lol
Can't be STEM without a hardcore kink
tbh im not at all surprised that the ponyplay fetish account is owned by someone who's a STEM major. it's like furries in IT. some of the smartest people out there also have slightly strange interests and are very open about it, and i cant help but be amazed and happy for them for being able to be openly strange without losing their jobs (because they are so important in their workplace that something weird but ultimately harmless that some other jobs would fire you for would mean at best having their workforce crippled, and at worst actively have things like huge IT sectors go down)
That was a rollercoaster.
Really enjoy your investigative stuff way more than the silly stuff (good in small doses). Great vid Kyle. 👍👍
Ive got to say. One if the most terrifying sounds in existence would have to be a geiger counter.
Just the thought of something invisible slowly killing me is insane. this is something that I think of in my nightmares.
An even spookier way of thinking about it is something is slowly lighting a fire in your body that will only go out long after you've burned to death on a cellular level.
@@robadc oh thanks 🙄😅
Look at cloud chambers to see the things flying outwards.. it's insane
More terrifying is the fact that there's a clear, audible point where you know the geiger counter has confirmed you've been exposed to a fatal dose. Just the idea of there being a noise frequency or speed that can basically tell you "Yep, you're fucked" is horrifying.
@@IrisCorven As the clicking turns to a screech... _WRONG WAY! GO BACK!!!_
funny, this video - along with a reddit thread about someone finding out their roommate had a radium collection - were what gave me an anxiety spiral that in the end made me start to binge your content. The thought that there are just orphan sources out there in the world - hell, just radioactive stuff in general like old wrist watches - that I could come across and not realize it until I suddenly fall ill is absolutely terrifying.
That sort of anciety is unhealthy, and I ask that you consider seeking help to manage it.
With that sai, geiger counters can be purchased online relatively cheaply and easily, and may help show you that your local environment is pretty safe.
@@LordPhobos6502 To be clear, it's not an every day occurance that I get anxiety spirals that severe. It was just one of those days where existential dread got to me.
You'll probably would have never encountered anything like that in rl but with your level of awareness I'd say your extra safe
If small and properly stored and not just randomly sitting in the open on a shelf that is probably not particularly dangerous. I have a little Ra-226 sample myself in a little glass box which blocks pretty much all of the radiation from it. When touching the outside of the box the reading is around 10% above background so unless you were to glue it to your skin for decades you would be hard pressed to notice any difference. Taken out of the box it is significantly higher but this is why I keep it in there where I can still have it on display but without irradiating the place any more than having an ionising smoke detector in the room would.
@@seraphina985 I think personally I still wouldn't consider starting a collection of my own xD
Sadly though, according to the redditor, her roommate was a dumbass that didn't keep his collection contained, and it resulted in radiation of 224 pCi/l in the apartment's main room, over 500 pCi/l in her bedroom, and most likely had radon gas that traveled through the entire complex.
The post is still up on r/legaladvice, it's titled "[Wyoming] Roommate exposed us to toxic radon gas, what can I do legally?"
When people say "I wasn't ready for the journey this would take me" I usually pass it off as exaggeration but I can say that this was a crazy rollercoaster of a ride
Reminded me of hbomberguy research videos regarding people... You are 15 minutes in and by the time he finishes you are like, "Yup, did not see that coming."
i ve read about a whole nuclear bomb carried by a plane that crashed in some southeast part of Usa and didn't detonate... the worrying part is that it was never found
there were 4 nukes dropped in a swamp in north carolina...they recovered 3 but the 4th was too dagerous to dig out so there it remains
I love that Kyle's source was all, "Yup its real." Just for Kyle to learn it was all made for a kink.
It's better that way.
Whenever investigating things of this magnitude, one should always assume it's real unless 100% proven not. If one day, something like this happens, but everybody goes "That's fake" just for it to turn out real, except that nothing was done about it until longer than if people had assumed it was real, then a LOT of harm would be done.
@@Bomkz This is true. I didn't think of it that way, but I agree, when dealing with something of this nature.
I think he meant that. It is better to believe it is real and act accordingly.
how would you even get off to that
@@ViolenceActs you ever hear about the wonderbread guy? the 4chan big knees thread? theres a lot of weird people who get of on even weirder shit.
I read a mystery book where Ir-192 was the murder weapon and the description of the autopsy and what happened to the coroner was visceral and disturbing and really made me frightened of radiological sources. Before that book I didnt truly appreciate how dangerous radiation was. The name of the book is Bones of Betrayal by Jefferson Bass for reference
Litvinenko story
Thanks for the suggestion, that sounds right up my alley. Ill be picking that up ASAP.
Is there a movie version
@@ItzGiooo ah... No, I don't think so.
there is an audio book but the VA kinda sucks imo NaturesTemper spoiled me