Site status
All web and mail services are currently NORMAL.
Nature
There has been an increasing frequency of destructive earthquakes in the Mediterranean area. Climate is NORMAL (Pleistocene interglacial baseline). Solar weather is currently strong.
The strong solar activity might cause interference with space assets used for nuclear war detection.
Seismic activity around Santorini and Campi Flegrei volcanoes seems to have calmed down, but since the underlying cause for the increased activity isn’t understood, I would be very careful there.
Geopolitical status
Tensions between great powers are high. The global economy is in a compromised state. Banking system is in early stages of collapse. NATO and RF are currently in a state of proxy war in Ukraine. USA is signalling possible war with China and/or Iran in the near future. Diplomatic, economic and cultural connections between great powers are disrupted. There have been increasing signs of totalitarian mindset in the Western states: the state is implementing heavy surveillance, the press is tightly controlled, the social media is heavily censored and monitored, and instruments for restricting individual freedoms have been put in place. The danger of nuclear war is HIGH, and I’m starting to publish radiation measurements.
The Trump administration is stirring up things very radically and the consequences of this might be completely unpredictable.
Economy
There’s an extreme discrepancy between the extreme amount of naked shorting of the “paper” metals, and the high institutional demand for physical metal; basically, the central banks are buying gold but they don’t want you to know that it’s the place to be. As Wranglerstar would say, “act accordingly”. The world is being separated into two groups: the one that is migrating towards a new, commodity-based currency and a real economy, and the West which is doubling-down on insanity. There is a huge number of zombie companies in the West – basically, they are dead but they fumble along because nobody told them yet. The prices of everything are up and this is increasingly pressuring the poor. The American government is doing everything to prop-up the broken system and hide the symptoms of outright collapse for as long as possible. The danger of economic collapse and global fiat currency collapse is HIGH.
Trump just introduced tariffs on everything produced anywhere, and that’s upon sanctions America already has against most of the world.
Radiological status
NORMAL. Readings were consistently elevated by 10% since 11. Aug 2023 late afternoon, which probably means that some ammo depot containing depleted Uranium or something in Ukraine has been hit, but it hasn’t been publicised. It is now mostly back to the previous baseline.
Measurements
Current radiation level, measured in my home using Radiascan 701A :
Official radiation monitoring site: https://remap.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
Subjective evaluation of the measurements: NORMAL. Nothing is going on at the moment.
1 milisievert is 1000 microsieverts. Basically, the baseline is a tenth of a microsievert per hour. Milisievert is the order of magnitude for annual exposure to background radiation. 1 Sievert is 1000 milisieverts. The rule of the thumb is that if radiation is measured in microsieverts/h, you’re fine. If it’s measured in milisieverts/h, you need to worry and reduce exposure the best you can. If it’s measured in Sieverts/h, you’re fucked, but you need to understand that this is a function of time. If it’s 1Sv/h, and you’re exposed for ten seconds, this means you received a dose of 1/360 Sv, which is around 2.7 mSv, which is an annual dose of background radiation. If you stay in the “hot” area for hours, you die.
The radiation dosimeter is connected to a NUC on my LAN via USB, the software is capturing the screen periodically and pushing it to the web server every 15 min. It was previously connected to my desktop workstation, but that one uses cca. 200W of power, and the NUC uses cca. 20W, so this is more energy efficient and I can leave it on permanently. You might need to perform a hard-reload of the page (<ctrl>-F5 in Windows) to display the most recent reading.
Last update: 2.5.2025.
Negdje sam naletio na zanimljivu ideju. Stvar ide otprilike ovako: Ljudi nabave geigerov brojač i kad jedanput ovaj počne pokazivati neobične vrijednosti ljudi se odluče za stav da sa uređajem nešto ne štima i da je u kvaru. Onda je uslijedio savjet da treba nabaviti komad posuđa ili neki drugi predmet koji su izvor ionizirajućeg zračenja i imati ga kao tester kojim se tu i tamo može dokazati/testirati da geigerov brojač radi kad i kako treba.
Ja sam na TOMTOP-u našao povoljne Pudibei NR-750 i NR-850 monitore radijacije i kupio jedan a kasnije još par komada za rodbinu (i dostavljeni su za dva tjedna otprilike). Ono, imam manji stres ako stvari završe tamo kud uporno idu.
Danas sam na Dravi imao oba uređaja upaljena i nije bilo nikakve anomalije.
Sad pak doma na stolu se upalio alarm na PUDIBEI NR-850 na 5 sekundi. Prag za alarm je podešen na 0,5 microSv/h. Otprilike nije otišao dalje od tih 0,5 microS/h. Radiascan je bio tiho i nije registrirao moment.
Pošto su čudna vremena, da se netko uz jedan aparat i ovakav moment ne uznemiri.
Očito je nešto okinulo preko PUDIBEI-a u trajanju 5 sekundi. I dok sam ovo pisao dogodilo se još jedanput. Oba uređaja na posuđe koje emitira reagiraju promptno i uglavnom slično pokazuju dose-rate.
Neobično je da je u dva navrata kroz PUDIBEI proletjelo nešto, ali ok. Navodim ovo kao zanimljivost.
Ja bih rekao da je Radiascan naprosto bolji uređaj sa skupljim i kvalitetnijim senzorom koji je manje sklon random glitchevima i lažnim uzbunama. To je jedan od problema s jeftinijim uređajima: s njima nikad ne znaš jesu li digli uzbunu zato što se nešto dešava, ili zato što su loši. S Radiascanom nema takvih problema, kad on pokaže da se digla razina zračenja, to je uvijek zato što se stvarno digla razina zračenja, i vjerojatno je dovoljno pametan da ne digne paniku oko par fotona.
Since ionizing radiation is harmful to humans, it is reasonable to assume that people are safely away from it for their entire lifetime. Professional services are responsible for keeping people away from dangerous sources of ionising radiation. As a result, people have no practical experience of most types of ionising radiation. Of course, everyone has had a roentgen diagnostic at least once in their lifetime, which is exposure to one type of ionizing radiation. Technicians always go into a shielded room when they are imaging a patient using x-rays.
I have read a few texts and watched a few youtube-videos, but the usability and usefulness of the information you have provided to your readers is your hallmark. In your article you simply explain the concept of Sievert/h , and that it is a function of time.
As you say, if someone finds himself in an environment where the Geiger counter measures 1Sv/h, the first concern is of course to get out of that place as quickly as possible because that determines how much damage to body tissue his body will receive.
So if 1Sv/h in 10 seconds equals 2.7mSv. And if 2.7mSv is the normal annual background radiation dose. An additional picture in the whole information regarding this situation is that if a person’s body cells are exposed to 2.7mS over a period of one year, the cells can recover by the body’s regenerative mechanisms. If the body’s cells are exposed to 2.7mSv in just 10 seconds, this means that they are more densely and more severely damaged and that the chance of the body’s own regenerative mechanisms being able to regenerate themselves is reduced, and that the cells will die, become dysfunctional or possibly become cancerous.
The point is that the time window in which you receive a certain dose of ionizing radiation is also very important.
And Cloud chambers at the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_zwLuNJ5Ck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i15ef618DP0
There are several factors about radiation that are generally unknown, so I’ll elaborate.
First, one needs to understand that human body, and other animals and plants that evolved here on Earth, have a built-in mechanism for dealing with radiation damage. If not, they wouldn’t have lasted very long, since radiation is a way of life here. My dosimeter “clicks” frequently enough that I had to turn off sound, and every click means that its small, coin-sized sensor has been hit by a high-energy photon. This means that every piece of our body that is the size of that small sensor gets hit with the same frequency, which means that we are getting constantly pierced by gamma rays. Obviously, this level of radiation is not a problem since our bodies can deal with it. So, how do they deal with it? Gamma rays basically eject electrons from atoms, which in case of atoms that share an electron in their highest orbital means that the molecular bond is broken. I think the cells know how to fix minor damage of this kind, but if it gets too much, something in the cell’s chemistry changes sufficiently that the immune cells recognize it as damaged/foreign, and start attacking it. The cell then dies and its content is disposed as any other waste.
This gives us three corollaries: first, that cancer should never happen if the immune response is healthy, which means that cancer is basically disease of the immune system, which does not perform its normal function of recognizing and attacking damaged cells. The second corollary is that radiation sickness is basically a state when the body is overwhelmed by garbage disposal from all the damaged/destroyed cells. This is why acute radiation damage is so dangerous, and why it’s a rule of the thumb: if enough cells die to overwhelm your kidneys, liver and other organs, you die. If not, you just get very sick during the garbage disposal phase, which, incidentally, is the same thing one suffers when they take antibiotics that are very effective against bacteria: all the garbage from the dead bacteria overwhelms the body. If the antibiotics don’t work, you won’t feel anything at all. The third corollary is that body will deal with radiation damage in a matter of days and weeks; basically, everything that is damaged will be killed off and disposed, except if your immune system is suppressed, in which case you will get cancer. Also, one should absolutely never have sex during this phase, because that’s when the genetically damaged children get conceived. After the body had the time to purge the damaged cells, it’s safe. The disclaimer is that this is empirical data obtained from irradiated men. I don’t know irradiated women handle the damaged ova, because it’s the men who statistically got irradiated and thus were unfortunate enough to provide me with a statistical sample.
Also, and this is not really recognized by science at this point, but I have the empirical data from Chernobyl, the initial burst of high radiation is absolutely deadly, and does exactly what you would expect. However, the long-term elevated doses of radiation seem to be more-less harmless, and this is a shocking datapoint, because there are carp merrily swimming in the super-radioactive lake near the exploded reactor, and they are fine. They are radioactive as all fuck, to the point that their bones make the Geiger-counter scream, but eagles that are supposed to be highly sensitive to the accumulation of heavy metals on top of the food chain are also fine; they eat radioactive carp from the radioactive lake and they are fine. The wolves, also the top of the food chain, are similarly fine, and they have a very healthy population there. Old people who refused to evacuate from the exclusion zone eat radioactive cheese and milk from their radioactive cows, and they are all fine. For the animals, the radioactive exclusion zone is heaven on Earth. As for the mutations, that’s another funny thing – there aren’t any. Radiation doesn’t increase the speed of mutation, because the mutated DNA is recognized as damaged, and is routinely destroyed by the immune system. There was an evolutionary preference for black frogs over the normal ones, because apparently melanin stops gamma rays the same way it stops UV light, and increases survival rate; since those frogs live in the super-radioactive lake, the initial deadly radiation probably preferentially killed the low-melanin frogs. The corollary of this is that one should hide from the initial strong radiation immediately and effectively, but later on the body seems to adapt to the higher amounts of ionizing radiation and is able to cope even with the doses that would be expected to be deadly.
Cancer is actually the least of the problems; cataract, sterility and lethal stress are much more probable, because the population from Chernobyl exclusion zone showed that almost all elderly people who evacuated quickly died from stress-related conditions, while those who remained had no issues whatsoever and lived to very old age. Also, among the highly-irradiated engineers in the station itself the main causes of death are myocardial and cerebral infarctions; I would guess that radiation damages the inner linings of their blood vessels, which likely promotes clotting. That’s the weird thing – nobody seems to get cancer from radiation. However, stress will really fuck you up, especially if you believe all the hype about radiation and if you have to evacuate from your home and basically restart your life.