This kills me that we'd waste plutonium on this shit. We're literally running out of the stuff to use for deep space probes. Missions to Jupiter, where the sunlight is 3% as bright as it is around earth are forced to rely on solar power because that's really all that's available.
this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2025
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They lost a nuke in near savannah Georgia the state and it is still missing. They’ve lost them more times than anyone would be comfortable with knowing.
There is a Savannah in the nation of Georgia?
For anyone who hasn't read the article it wasn't a bomb and isn't enough nuclear material to make a bomb. You could maybe use it to make a dirty bomb, but there are almost certainly better options for that (E.G. scavenged radioactive sources from medical devices). It was a fairly standard radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) of the type used on many deep space probes and rarely on satellites as well as somewhat famously by the USSR in a lot of their remote installations. It's not enough material to really make anything out of, but frustratingly it is enough to be very dangerous to anyone that found it and didn't know what it was. There was a famous case some years back where some scavengers found one of the old Russian RTGs in an abandoned base and carried it off before they all became too sick from radiation poisoning and died.
That's honestly even more infuriating, as RTGs are in short supply now.
Don't worry though, we have lost plenty of nuclear weapons that were never recovered. Due to how SAC preferred readiness in the 50s and 60s, there's at least a dozen American nukes in the world that have never been accounted for after their planes went down or they needed to be dropped without arming for one reason or another. Those are the ones we know about that haven't been covered the hell up by the Air Force.
Behind the Bastards did a 5-parter on nuclear brinkmanship, it's well worth the listen.
Your Russian story is a little off. It was strontium-90 isotope from the rtg and of the three guys who found it, only one of them died, after like 3 years of pain, suffering, and surgeries. One of the others took surgeries and like a year to recover. It's known as the Lia incident. The poor guys were out in the winter snow way up in some woods and snow and found the two containers of strontium after seeing steam rolling off of them and no snow anywhere around them. Then decided these magical lil containers that looked old as hell and were still literally too hot to hold would be great to carry around and camp up against to keep nice and warm. It happened around 2001, but I'm sure a lot of people around the globe wouldn't put two and two together about not messing with mystery hot boxes found in bfe.
-Used to be an emergency haz mat tech.
Sr-90 that was involved in cases you mention is strong beta emitter, but Pu-238 isn't, it's mostly-alpha emitter, so it'll only get dangerous if somebody ingests it, but it's a piece of ceramic inside a strong case
speak for yourself. if it was me, I'll turn it into a laptop battery and will never have to charge my laptop. and if used on my lap, I wont need birth control.
Per the article:
The porters jockeyed with one another to carry the plutonium capsules, Captain Kohli and Mr. McCarthy said.
“The Sherpas loved them,” Mr. McCarthy said. “They put them in their tents. They snuggled up next to them.”
Reminds me of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident
If you ever find an inexplicably warm object in the middle of the snowy wilderness, don't cuddle up with it no matter how tempting it may be.
The Lia radiological accident began on December 2, 2001, with the discovery of two orphan radiation sources near the Enguri Dam in Tsalenjikha District in the country of Georgia. Three villagers from Lia were unknowingly exposed. All three men were injured, one of whom eventually died. The accident was a result of unlabeled radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) cores which had been improperly dismantled and left behind from the Soviet era.
They ate dinner and had a small amount of vodka, while remaining close to the sources. Despite the small amount of alcohol, they all vomited soon after consuming it, the first sign of acute radiation syndrome (ARS), about three hours after first exposure. Vomiting was severe and lasted through the night, leading to little sleep. The men used the sources to keep them warm through the night, positioning them against their backs,
Two days after exposure, on December 4, patient 2-MG visited a local doctor but did not mention the mysterious heating source, and the doctor assumed he was drunk.
I notice how the article casually mentions that there were like 300 lost in Georgia alone
That's how you get mutant babies.
x-men theme song begins to play in the background
The climbers scampered down the mountain after stashing the C.I.A. gear on a ledge of ice, abandoning a nuclear device that contained nearly a third of the total amount of plutonium used in the Nagasaki bomb.
It hasn’t been seen since.
And that was 1965.
it's not the type of plutonium that is fissile, 40% of it decayed by now, and it was formed into hard, chemically resistant ceramic in the first place
No, you're totally right. This is fine.
'Scampered' lol.
Wouldn't be the first time. There are at least 4 missing nukes on us soil, just waiting to be found
How Did the C.I.A. Lose a Nuclear Device?
Oh probably because they're incompetent as fuck?
Or they wanted to "lose" it because they were actually selling it to some insane rich villain in another country
have you read the article
No. What happened?
Nothing. That's why the CIA won't talk about it.
I'm stuck on level five. They say I'm too dumb. Could you help me to leave level five, please?
In a book or movie it wouldn’t be lost, it would a heist or a sale. Lost is the coverup. In a book or a movie.
WTF? It's at the big arrow in the sky! Why don't they just go get it? Are they stupid?
Ferb, I know what we’re gonna do today!
You want my nukes? You can have them! I left everything together in one place. Now you just have to find it!
God damnit Steve, again? Fuck, you know how much paperwork I have to process now? And I find out about it on fucking lemmy?
Oopsie.