einsteins

It occurred to me last night, while doing some editing for Agent BB2, that the reason there is such a disconnect between the use of depleted uranium munitions and tank armor, the gifts that just keep on killing, and our ability to get it through our bone heads that it is in use, notwithstanding our abhorrence of radiation poisoning, is because the Einsteins who cleared it for such uses only measured its gamma decay. Woops. If only they had measured its alpha decay before they started making all the munitions with it, and plating all the Bradleys with it, they'd have known it was going to kill the soldiers who used these things, and keep killing the creatures who will inhale the particles of it that are now blowing in the atmosphere for millions of years to come.... Or... did they know it and count on us not to be willing or able to figure it out? We could ask Alexander Litvinenko about the hazards of alpha radiation. Oh. No. Oops! Sorry. He's dead.