this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2025
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There's always a relevant xkcd.
With 3,174 comics and counting - it’s becoming more and more probable!
Just like how The Simpsons can be credited with predicting a whole bunch of things; volume is key!
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Cobalt 60 has a half life of 5.27 years. Assuming that a language lost to time is at least 500 years old, the rod should be fairly safe to handle. Heck, even after only 100 years less than 0.01% of the original amount of radioactive material would be left.
But that aside - One of the items that can be found in the video game series Avernum is Uranium bars, which give you a nice unhealthy glow :)
If it's actively glowing blue, I don't think it's safe to handle.
If it's actively glowing blue it means it's under water producing Cherenkov radiation and the water should shield you from the alpha particles.
But if it's a blue flash, that's a completely different effect and there was a criticality accident and you're probably going to die.
Ah, I remember this story:
on September 24, Ivo, Devair's brother, successfully scraped some additional dust out of the source and took it to his house a short distance away. There he spread some of it on the concrete floor. His six-year-old daughter, Leide das Neves Ferreira, later ate an egg while sitting on the floor. She was also fascinated by the blue glow of the powder, applying it to her body and showing it off to her mother.
What a horrible way to die :(
My favorite podcast did an episode about that!
Highly recommend if you like leftism, and also want to listen to an engineer talk at length about what this blue glowing powder is, the series of bad decisions that led to some scrap collectors finding it, and the even longer series of even worse decisions people made regarding what to do with this blue glowing powder
You can skip the Goddamn News if you want, discussion of the spicy rocks starts at 20:28
Somebody casted Repair on the rod
i cast mending on the pile of lead, giving me a solid cubic foot of weapons grade plutonium.
Sadly I got around to looking up decay chains and the isotope of lead that is at the bottom of the chain containing [plutonium 243](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_plutonium] ends at lead 207 which is only 22% of the lead on Earth, so you're unlikely to get anything instantly dangerous. Though if your lead came from an ancient natural reactor your chances are much better
giving me a solid cubic foot of weapons grade plutonium
Briefly
hey DM what's the range of mending? as long as it's over a few kilometers i should be fine
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What if it was stored in a fridge
That’s what you get for not casting it on the “This is not a place of honour” sign near the jagged black obelisks after encountering the colony of glowing cats
I assume "danger" and "drop & run" would be straightforward enough, but does casting comprehend languages cause the wizard to understand the concept of radiation (or cobalt, or how large a 'curie' is)?
Hmm, I think as a DM I would roll an arcana check to see if the wizard would conceivably have heard of radiation from arcane studies. It's reasonable to assume people with arcane knowledge would be the first to hear about the strange metal chunks that everyone keeps dying around. One of them would have had to have come up with a word, if not some variation on "death cursed"
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I'd personally translate it to the closest word they have.
If I decided they didn't have a word that was directly equivalent, in this case I'd use the closest word, "light-emitting".
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That is a really good question...
I feel like radiation should have some sort of translatable element as a generic radiant danger, but for the rest... if it doesn't make sense without context in the source language, does it make sense after 'comprehend language'? Kinda feels like we need a 'comprehend science' or something if they wanted to grasp the idea of specific elements and units of measure.
Researchers came up with a warning symbol for this exact scenario
"In the aftermath of repeated incidents where the public was exposed to radiation from orphan sources, a common factor reappeared: individuals who encountered the source were unfamiliar with the trefoil radiation warning symbol, and were in some cases not familiar with the concept of radiation. During a study in the early 2000s, it was found that only 6% of those surveyed in India, Brazil and Kenya could correctly identify the meaning of the trefoil symbol."
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This forest of thorns looks really cool, I bet deeds are commemorated here
It's only glowing blue because there are orcs nearby.
“This is not a place of honour…
I wonder what the damage would be holding it for 15 seconds.
If the rod is glowing, probably a fuckton.
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I'm not feeling creative today so I'll just write "Dildo joke".
Haha good one. "Punny answer."
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Isn't the blue glow only present under water (or other transparent medium with a similarly high index of refraction)?
It's technically slightly visible in air; if actually visible at all in air it means the level of radiation is ludicrously deadly
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I am curious where this drop and run source comes from.
Typically, they're sealed in a shielded box, where you can open a small windows that the gamma say can escape and are used for field radiography when inspecting bridge/pipeline solder. Definitely not a drop and run thing
I'm guessing it's short for "If you don't know what this is and you find it outside of any shielded box, shit has gone very wrong and you should not be near this, let alone touch it". The probably best way to get people to stop touching it is to suggest that it poses an acute threat, hence the urgency in the phrasing "drop and run".
So if you're operating a device wherein it's properly contained, you don't see the label. If you're removing it while protected appropriately, you already know the label doesn't apply to you. If you know how to handle it, you don't need instructions.
I am guessing the idea is to induce terror in the holder such that, if they did not intend to hold a vial of Co 60, they would not mess with it further. It conveys the appropriate level of danger, if not an appropriate set of handling instructions.
Edit: So I looked it up and I misunderstood: if you can read that (especially by the blue glow) then its rapidly killing you. I really don't understand how dangerous some radiation is lmao.
Time for a rewatch of Chernobyl.
If your are very lucky, you can find one by the side of the road in Australia.
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Ok love this one XD
Nothing would happen it is so incredibly dangerous for its short half life time and reasonable amount of energy that's freed by its decay.
Its just fucking lead, bro.(Well, nickel)
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