GHung wrote:Tanada wrote:.....
Also a perfect stranger Can buy a winning lotto ticket and mail it to me so I can be a Lotto Winner. But the odds are very low and I am not going to base my life decisions on such low probability events. Your bones and liver are already saturated with naturally radioactive materials with a far higher emission rate than Plutonium 239. You don't have to love that fact, but it is a scientifically verified fact and wishing it away won't change it a single iota from being true.
"Your bones and liver are already saturated with naturally radioactive materials", that, as naturally-occurring materials, our bodies have adapted to dealing with over eons of evolution. As the article states, plutonium is a non-naturally-occurring element that has been in our environment for just a few generations. The same is true of many substances we've developed in our recent history. I neither claim these substances are damaging or relatively benign, but refuse to flippantly dismiss them as well, especially the ones which remain in our environment for millennia. But maybe you think things like the Superfund, spending billions to sequester these substances, and the many other things we do to try and protect future generations from the consequences of growth, are silly, reactionary responses. Either way, the lawyers love it.
I expect that, as is often the case, the consequences will be cumulative. Just another factor in our 'death by a thousand cuts' path.
That turns out not to be the case. The source of the particles or radiant energy is irrelevant, only the effects matter. It can be plutonium, carbon 14, potassium 40 or plain old sunshine, what matters is dose type, energy level and rate.
As for the theory of a thousand cuts look at it this way. If every day someone makes a 2 inch cut somewhere on your body that is skin deep you will live a very long time and slowly accumulate a great many tiny scars. On the other hand if someone makes 1000 two inch long cuts in your skin over a period of five hours you are most likely going to die before they finish the last cut. In the same way a low radiation rate source, like Plutonium, doses you a tiny bit over a long time, Iodine 131 on the other hand with its 8 day half-life hits you over and over again with tiny doses in very rapid fashion like your five hour session with the torturer.
In addition to that your cut a day has more than enough time to heal itself the same way the low dose constant radiation that is natural to your body heals.