Less than a year ago I downloaded a joke Geiger Counter app that would sound like something hot was nearby if you turn your phone a certain way. I played with it at the grocery store to try to mess with people but I don’t think anyone even noticed. I made a Facebook post about doing this and a friend told me he has an actual Geiger Counter (a CDV-700). He brought it over and it turned out that it’s literally nothing more than the yellow case, nothing inside, not even the meter in the window (still has the depleted uranium check source on the side though). I quickly ended up buying a real CDV-700 on Ebay; I almost grabbed a CDV-715 instead because it was cheaper, but once I learned that the 715 can only measure high levels of radiation (whereas the 700 measures low levels, like for checking food and water sources for contamination for example), I knew that it would be essentially useless (I do have one now though).
Then I joined a couple Facebook groups to learn more about Geiger Counters, and that’s where I learned about Fiestaware and uranium glass (which I now have a bunch of). I was already following a few pro-nuke meme pages before all this but didn’t actually know a ton about it. I learned about Molten Salt Reactors and got really excited about nuclear as a power source, and have just been learning a ton ever since. A lot of what I now know I’ve learned as I go, googling unbiased info to the best of my ability to refute anti-nuke arguments, as all science on the matter points to nuclear being the cleanest, safest most reliable power source currently in existence. I then had the idea to write something that would be super simple to understand that breaks down all the arguments for and against nuclear and addresses them scientifically. Thus, my previous nuclear posts, which I will continue with eventually.
Other groups that really sparked my interest in nuclear activism are Generation Atomic, Environmental Progress, and The Pragmatic Environmentalist, all of which you can find on Facebook, along with many other good sources of information. Generation Atomic also has an app called Atomic Action, where you can learn by watching videos and you can earn points with the possibility of getting free merch; I myself have received a T-shirt and a beanie, both of which were free. 🙂
Here is a picture of the empty CDV-700; I put some LED lights in it and a Pop Vinyl of the Lich from Adventure Time (and I used Legos to keep everything in place). Anyone who knows much about Adventure Time should understand why this was absolutely appropriate. 😉
Mikl Moose 