Bizarre national radiation background readings?!

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Richard Hull
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Bizarre national radiation background readings?!

Post by Richard Hull »

I realize the URL given below is not a scientific one, nor is this report, but if even a fraction of this is true it is alarming. I think those here with a good two inch mica windowed pancake probe GM counter might go out and report your current outdoor background reading.
If all you have is a CDV 700 then note this when reporting as it will be far lower and can be accounted for. Make sure the probe is open to expose the sensitive thin metal of the GM tube. All others reporting please advise the details of your system. (make, model, type and size of detector.)

As there is some jabber of fukashima causing it all, our west coast members are exhorted to take measurements, though the central states also are said to report oddball readings.

Check out

http://www.naturalnews.com/047996_radia ... enial.html

I personally find it hard to believe that these are genuine, but science demands proof. Many supposed reporting stations claim the readings have spikes! These are over hours long in some cases. Sounds fanciful, but it needs to be investigated. I figure we have a decent amount of folks with good counters scattered all over the US and even a number of foreign folks, too.

Is there anything to this? My background here in Richmond, VA in my back yard is typically 50-60CPM with lows of 30cpm and as high as 70, so I would say 50CPM normal here over the last 10 years or so.

Get out there and report back in this thread. If a 2" pancake reports over 120 cpm outdoors, that is high, but not dangerously so for most anywhere in the US. We need to see if this report is just a bogus, hype media splash or if some interesting stuff is happening.

I'll be the first.
Conditions: 2" pancake probe on tripod 5 feet off the ground. Temp 44 deg F, Time 10-11PM EST
Location: Northern part of city of Richmond, VA .
Data: Four readings of ten minutes each and separately averaged....56 cpm, 59 cpm, 46, cpm and 58 cpm
Total average cpm rate for four long term readings... ~55 cpm (totally normal for this area for many years.)
Note* I moved way out on the corner of my property to avoid reading my ore samples or calibration sources.

To detect supposed spikes, a long term GM monitoring might be worth setting up and charting. I might put a programmed arduino in charge of this chore here. In some of the reported, cases the higher readings are more or less very long term and not spikes which are reported as bizarre and severe.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Jerry Biehler
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Re: Bizarre national radiation background readings?!

Post by Jerry Biehler »

I dont have a 2" probe but I will set up my PDR-27R and see what it says over a long period connected to a pulse counter. But right now I am getting somewhere around the 50-60 range which is pretty normal for it. I am by Portland, OR.
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Adam Szendrey
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Re: Bizarre national radiation background readings?!

Post by Adam Szendrey »

For the fun of it I might put my counter back together and take some readings...One thing I wonder about when I come across such an article, is why the hell do I read the comments. Although in this case at least I had a few giggles.
JakeJHecla
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Re: Bizarre national radiation background readings?!

Post by JakeJHecla »

"Natural news" is an absolute travesty. It lives by breeding anti-pharma, anti-vaccine, anti-nuclear crackpottery and selling it to the masses as "the truth." I'll put money on it that it's completely fabricated.
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Richard Hull
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Re: Bizarre national radiation background readings?!

Post by Richard Hull »

Like I said, We have the instruments to give this the lie, provided we get off our butts and do just a little experimental work by going outside and catching a few rays of sunlight and using our instruments in a scientific manner. Plus, it would be cool to see just what some of the nation's locales around public housing read as a background.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
JakeJHecla
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Re: Bizarre national radiation background readings?!

Post by JakeJHecla »

While proving them wrong is certainly cathartic (and might yield some interesting data!), they won't retract any statements or even reply to valid concerns with their articles. A while back there was a video posted that showed the radioactivity of dust on a recently-driven vehicle from my area. Naturally, they claimed it was Fukushima related, and that we were all going to die from the horrible, terrible, very scary radiation. It made me grumpy enough to repeat the experiment and send them HPGe spectra of the mildly-hot dust as well as some others of fission products. I made it clear that there were no detectable fission products in the dust, and that their article was a travesty. I didn't even get a reply.

In this case, and in most others related to radiophobia/vaccine phobia/naturalnews, Brandolini's Law holds: "The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."
Jon Rosenstiel
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Re: Bizarre national radiation background readings?!

Post by Jon Rosenstiel »

Anaheim, California, 12/17/2014 @ 09:00
Inspector Alert with 2" pancake GM tube.
Detector on top of storage shed roof in a zip lock baggie.
30-minute count produced 1334 counts.
1334/30 = 44.5 cpm... completely normal.

Jon Rosenstiel
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Adam Szendrey
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Re: Bizarre national radiation background readings?!

Post by Adam Szendrey »

Jake:
Consider the response in the comments, to someone asking about sources:
"Legitmate illuminati controlled sources for the walking dead? You are so blind through normalcy bias and programming that your instinct will be to reject any actual truth."

Obviously you are part of the system trying to misdirect them or hide the truth...You might even be a reptilian agent!
Jerry Biehler
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Re: Bizarre national radiation background readings?!

Post by Jerry Biehler »

If you go through the comments there are others on that forum that have detection equipment and are calling BS on the site. Of course they are being called shills for the nuclear industry...
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Adam Szendrey
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Re: Bizarre national radiation background readings?!

Post by Adam Szendrey »

This is related:
http://www.uradmonitor.com/

Not sure if it has been linked here before, but the map is useful to track radiation levels worldwide. Doesn't replace personal measurements, but can be a good reference maybe.
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Richard Hull
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Re: Bizarre national radiation background readings?!

Post by Richard Hull »

I thank those few who actually went out and did the work. So unless you live on a rad waste site or are on a thorium laden feldspar pile, it looks like all reporting had between 50-60 CPM.

The effort was never to refute the article. It was more about trying to see if anyone, anywhere in the US had an elevated background which might represent a locale anomoly.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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