the old Suisse Tourist who set off the HAZMAT alarms in Honduras / a suvenir Snowglobe from Hell / Death looms for Grampa in the Hot Garage, but he's left his young loved ones all his Nifty Hot Stuff

Click Click Click to enlarge.

Vleeptron awards this medal to every member of the Afficianodos who have visited Chernobyl. (So far nobody's made it to or near Fukushima.) We've sent 2 Intrepid Explorers to get in the Kiev van and a local woman drove them to allowable zones in the Chernobyl complex (until the wearable rad monitors started to click bricks frantically, then Ludmilla pushes you back in the van, We're Out of Here Now).

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Not sure if this is a good place for this discussion. G**, if you disagree, go ahead and delete.

I am going through setting up a will, and such papers and deciding what to do if I become incapacitated or die, so as not to be a burden on my offspring.

(Not that I'm planning to any time soon. . .)

But that brought up what to do with my radioactive collection. I've asked the kids already and none of them are interested. Does anybody have any good ideas about what to do with a bunch of mixed radioactive materials in such a case?

I have a hundred or so radium clock hands, a dozen or so gas mantles, 

[the old Coleman camping lantern mantles were made of  thorium, it's enthusiastically radioactive, makes Geiger-Muller detectors go wild.]

and some pretty hot uraninite crystals, a couple of Fiesta ware plates, and a Fiesta ware salt and pepper shaker set.
 
The kids seriously don't want them.

I've thought that a couple of days before I die, I should put them in a cardboard box and try to drive into Mexico, but that presumes that I'll be capable of driving and making such decisions at that point. There are lots of ways of dying that preclude that option.

Does anybody have any better ideas?
Thanks!

H*****


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Hi H*****

I like your phrase "if I die." It gives me a little new hope that maybe I won't ever die.

Thanks for reminding me how old I am and what a Mess I really ought to simplify and maybe decontaminate or render more Planet-Friendly.

Driving the stuff through any/either border is a Real Bad Idea. About ten years ago a truckload of "pre-owned" steel pipe tried to enter the USA from Mexico. It was destined to be a new recreation yard in a USA public school. The kids never got the chance to climb on that special jungle gym.

ALL the Red Lights and Alarms started flashing. Assume your border crossing is equipped with radiation monitors as this US border crossing had been. At the very least, a few weeks of your Golden Years will be spent in government offices explaining your wonderful collection to various federal officials.

But in Mexico if you get jammed up, a generous donation to the local law enforcement fund will usually get you sped on your way. Never drive on highways at night. Leave A Comment if you know why.

Central American countries use a phrase "... like a Swiss tourist ..." to suggest that a good strategy is to act convincingly like someone from far away whose strange behavior is just the misunderstandings of a lost and ignorant fool in Bermuda shorts. (He actually speaks 3 languages fluently, but Español ain't one of them.)

How well the Swiss Tourist does in cases of radioactive sources I can't guess.

None of the kids wants this wonderful stuff? Are these your natural children, or from a different gene pool that lacks our interests and desires?

Bob
Massachusetts USA

P.S. I think Houdini had an arrangement with his wife that the one who went first would send back a sort of Postcard Message or Spiritual Tweet From Beyond. Also maybe a small souvenir if they have a gift shop at the entrance.
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News, Global Warming, Mozart, Sports, Intergalactic Travel, sausages, VOLCANOS!!! opera, PIRATES!!! Filth in Extinct Lingos, Alternative Facts & Fake News, Big Integers & BOINC: http://VleeptronZ.blogspot.com/
Remarkable Older Stuph: http://Vleeptron.blogspot.com/

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PIZZAQ! Before the Flying Saucer destroyed the Washington Monument and almost smooshed Little Bobby to peanut butter, how long does it take a besbol dropped from the top to hit the ground?

Click to enlarge. Flee for your life. 

I was born and grew up in Washington DC USA. One summer day I visited the Washington Monument. Suddenly with no warning an evil, hostile Flying Saucer from Outer Space smashed into the Monument, and toppled it over. Dozens of tourists were smooshed to peanut butter; I barely escaped with my life. Other Saucers destroyed the U.S. Capitol.

This really happened; it's not Fake News. Anyone who says these images are really from the movie "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" is probably a teenager in Macedonia with a laptop. In other news from Macedonian laptops, the USA Democratic Party is keeping children as sex slaves in a popular pizza restaurant in Washington DC.

Notice the height of the Monument. Every DC kid had to memorize this height for trig and physics class. PIZZAQ! If you drop a besbol from the top of the Washington Monument, how long does it take for the besbol to hit the ground? (Naturally you do this experiment in a vacuum.) (4 slices Chicago-style pizza with extra mozarella.)

PIZZAQ: I was certain I saw a UFO. We weren't stoned, even though it was northern California in 1971.

Click to enlarge.

A historical catalog of sighted varieties of Unidentified Flying Objects, mostlikely extraterrestrial (as opposed to secret Earth superpower experimental craft).

Before calling all these sightings hogwash, I testify that in 1971, driving south on the Pacific Coast highway in northern California at night with other educated adult passengers, for 45 minutes we watched an aerial object zip around the sky at huge speeds, change shape and size rapidly -- for those 45 minutes we were all convinced that whether we liked it or not, the crazy thing was an extraterrestrial UFO.

Well, it wasn't a UFO. PIZZAQ: If it wasn't from outer space, if it was an honest, natural Earth phenomenon, what was it? (Large with shallots & endives.)

Foo Fighter: nice fuzzy bunny or genocidal freakazoid?

 Click to enlarge maybe. 

Plastic kit glue now contains nasty odor and you can't huff it anymore to get high or suppress appetite.

Forwarded by my old Army buddy what resideth in the USA state shaped like the palm of a right-hand mitten. This UFO has many hostile anti-Earth characteristics. Hawking says we can only guess what real aliens will be like from the only actual example of sentient life we have encountered: Us. (We drop nuclear weapons on our human neighbors, and do genocide stuff. That's our only authentic example. We ain't bunnies.)

The first UFOs human claim to have seen were called (by Allied pilots in World War 2) Foo Fighters. They'd whizz past and around and over and under our propeller planes as if we were standing still.

At bottom, a recent scrum of outer-space aliens (as opposed to illegal aliens) photographed at Ann Arbor, Michigan USA county fair.

Why do they fly 891.4 parsecs to look up our butts?