Radiation and potassium

[amashilu]

https://forum.dyatlovpass.com/index.php?topic=1319.msg27760#new

Since Halloween is approaching, at least in the US, let's indulge and get spooky!

I've been re-reading the above thread in which Ryan shares his interest in the radiation on the Rav4's clothes. He meticulously walks us through his logic as to the possibility that the radiation could have come from potassium. [Ryan, if you're still around, correct me when I need it.]

Quote from Ryan:
A caustic chemical like KOH won’t dissolve the bodies like the people staging this mistakenly believe, but it may have physical effects too. I’m also wondering if this might explain Dubinina’s missing eyes and tongue. I am very well aware that animal predation could also cause this. But a caustic chemical could dissolve some exposed soft flesh, and additionally could account for the more advanced decomposition Ivanov noted in these four bodies.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the deaths of our hikers were caused by some terrible military bomb experiment that went wrong, but before the military realized what had happened, the bodies were collected and brought to the morgue, as the nurse said, washed, and taken away in coffins, but then the military realized what had happened, panicked, cleaned up the scene and had the bodies re-dressed in their old clothes (putting most of the clothes on the wrong people), and taken back to the mountain. The five who had no serious injuries were dropped in the snow as if they had simply died of hypothermia, but the four that were so terribly injured were deliberately placed in the WATER and had KOH dumped on them in the hopes that they would dissolve before anyone found them and an investigation initiated.

Wow! What an idea! First the military kills them by a clumsy, horrible bomb accident, then they dump them in the creek and try to dissolve the bodies with potassium! Now THAT is something worth hiding from the world for 66 years!

[Falcon73]

It's too bad Mythbusters is no longer on the air.  We could have asked them to try crushing tests on ballistic dummies as well as placing a pig head in running water under similar conditions to see what tongue looked like after 3 months.

[amashilu]

Not just water -- don't forget the pig head would need potassium dumped on it, too.

[Ziljoe]

I think it would be easy for the theory regarding potassium to be checked . Just see what readings you get by a similar machine?

Maybe some has the tool to do so. Likewise , just burning some wood to make ash or pot ash , we could see if it could simulate the readings. They were burning wood in a wood stove and fire pits , if the trees they burnt in these fires were contaminated then there might be a concentration .

I have zero knowledge on this subject but given Ryan's suggestion, it would be great to eliminate the radiation readings.

[amashilu]

Yes, it would be great to be able to try this out. Ryan's focus on the radiation is intriguing. Where DID the radiation come from? It does sound crazy, but someone trying to dissolve the Rav4 with potassium would explain the missing eyes and tongue, as well as the strong radiation signature caught by the Geiger counter.

[Ziljoe]

The missing eyes and tongue are most lightly due to the environment and the time they were decomposing. I am hesitant to link the the loss of of eyes and tongue with the suggestion that potassium in one form or another caused this.

Because there was a certain amount of radiation found on their clothing does not in the first instance link to intentional potash or the like.

We have to think of the reasons to dump bodies in an empty ravine in the first instance, any conspiracy to do this makes little sense . No stagers would know that the ravine would conveniently fill up to the height of 3 meters . Plus, there was no debris trail found by the Mansi that suggests there was any other movement other than the trail from the cedar to the den.

On that basis , there seems there was little to no activity by others .

Anyway, my juices have been flowing  . If there had been nuclear fallouts that had not been reported in previous years and we know of one 2 years before although I think it was 300-500 miles away, there are other potential avenues to contamination with this potassium.

For me , northern 2 is a possible suspect. I do not have enough knowledge about this subject but we know there was a mine and the hikers touched the core samples , whether this would be enough for such readings I do not know.

They also burnt wood from the buildings that may have had some sort of contamination, we don't know where the wood was processed to build the huts, but they broke wood to make a fire that night  in northern 2 and cut their hands on old nails. Could this wood to build the huts be taken in from further away that may be contaminated?

Also, the river around northern 2 is reported to have hot springs ( Yuri yudins diary)  .

I will follow up

[Ziljoe]

What it says about hot springs , and point is , could there be a mundane reason for the readings.

Potassium is a naturally occurring element in hot springs, but its concentration can indicate contamination from sources like urine, especially in highly trafficked public or swimming pools. High potassium levels can also be found in geothermally active areas due to the radioactive decay of naturally occurring isotopes like $^ {40}$K, and are sometimes associated with other elevated levels of elements like arsenic, lead, and boron. While hot spring water contains essential minerals like potassium, it's risky to ingest water from non-commercial springs due to potential contaminants like bacteria, heavy metals, and pollutants.

[amashilu]

Thanks, Ziljoe. It's good to explore this and to look at all possibilities, even those outside the proverbial box, since the radiation level on their clothing was still well above the "safe" range, even after months of being continuously rinsed in running water.

[Axelrod]

I graduated from the Institute of Physics and Technology. But I was more involved in programming, so I'm interested in taking becquerels (ddecays per second) and converting them to bytes (1 byte = 8 bits) for better understanding. Becquerels are too abstract.

Punched paper cards were once used, with a capacity of 80 bytes (80 characters, or a text line on the screen). I used these punched cards as sheets of paper for notes, but not as real storage use, because I used floppy disks (5 inches, later 3.5 inches). The radioactivity of natural potassium is 30 bytes; this is the fraction of a punched card. The proportion of radioactive potassium in natural potassium is small. If you had only radioactive potassium, its activity would be comparable to the capacity of a floppy disk of 360 kilobytes or more.

As you know, the capacity of a DVD is 4.6 gigabytes, or 4.6 billion bytes. I worked for a publishing house that had been in business since 1993 and initially used floppy disks, then CD-ROMs from 1996, and DVDs from 2003 to 2013. Later, the need for hard drives disappeared.
For comparison, the radioactivity of iodine-131 is 4.6⋅10¹⁵ Bq per gram, equivalent to a million DVDs or thousands of terabyte hard drives. In the first days after the Chernobyl accident, this background radiation circled the globe several times over, but quickly decayed.

Radiation can be caused by large amounts of a weakly radioactive substance (such as potassium) or dust from a highly radioactive substance (such as iodine), whose activity is comparable to terabytes or more.

[Ziljoe]

I graduated from the Institute of Physics and Technology. But I was more involved in programming, so I'm interested in taking becquerels (ddecays per second) and converting them to bytes (1 byte = 8 bits) for better understanding. Becquerels are too abstract.

Punched paper cards were once used, with a capacity of 80 bytes (80 characters, or a text line on the screen). I used these punched cards as sheets of paper for notes, but not as real storage use, because I used floppy disks (5 inches, later 3.5 inches). The radioactivity of natural potassium is 30 bytes; this is the fraction of a punched card. The proportion of radioactive potassium in natural potassium is small. If you had only radioactive potassium, its activity would be comparable to the capacity of a floppy disk of 360 kilobytes or more.

As you know, the capacity of a DVD is 4.6 gigabytes, or 4.6 billion bytes. I worked for a publishing house that had been in business since 1993 and initially used floppy disks, then CD-ROMs from 1996, and DVDs from 2003 to 2013. Later, the need for hard drives disappeared.
For comparison, the radioactivity of iodine-131 is 4.6⋅10¹⁵ Bq per gram, equivalent to a million DVDs or thousands of terabyte hard drives. In the first days after the Chernobyl accident, this background radiation circled the globe several times over, but quickly decayed.

Radiation can be caused by large amounts of a weakly radioactive substance (such as potassium) or dust from a highly radioactive substance (such as iodine), whose activity is comparable to terabytes or more.

Thank you axelrod . My knowledge on such things is next to zero.

I ask if what you state ,because I do not understand such things, is there any possible way that the radioactive readings that were taken be confused with some potential natural cause that could exist in the the natural environment?

Thus giving a beta reading that could be misinterpreted to the uneducated as radio active. Or to put it another way , are the readings that significant that it directly implies that there is no way that such results could occur out with anything in the natural environment?

To add, could the contamination be post discovery of the bodies and if it was significant, like the order to investigate the cuts in the tent to establish if all cuts were made from the inside or outside, why not establish if all clothing and equipment were also contacted?

Obviously you may not be able to answer all of r the above but I welcome all thoughts , speculative or otherwise.

[Axelrod]

If the increased radioactivity was caused by some toxic substance falling on the bodies in the ravine, then all clothing should have increased radioactivity. In this case, we only have three items of clothing with increased radioactivity.

I also don't understand the very first line—the sweater's belt. I've never seen a sweater with it. Perhaps it was the saltwater puttee found by Ortyukov in May.

As for potassium carbonate, I doubt the residue from the watering will cause noticeable increased radioactivity, caused by K-40 or C-14. Also C-14 is not detectable on this device.

[Axelrod]

I think the concentration of radioactive potassium in natural potassium is very low.
Of course, this concentration could be increased by centrifuges used to separate uranium isotopes.
Perhaps something like that happened.

[amashilu]

If the increased radioactivity was caused by some toxic substance falling on the bodies in the ravine, then all clothing should have increased radioactivity. In this case, we only have three items of clothing with increased radioactivity.

One of Ryan's main points was that it is false that only 3 items of clothing showed increased radioactivity. Ryan says that every piece of clothing on the Ravine4 was contaminated, some more than others. I can go back and find his source, if anyone wishes.

[Axelrod]

Let me explain it more clearly...
I've had a radiation meter at home since 2005.
This meter displays gamma radiation levels from 5 to 25 microroentgens.
If the battery is dead, it displays zero, and the battery needs to be changed.

This meter has never shown anything higher (for example, 80), as it did for three items of clothing.

[amashilu]

Axelrod,

Like Zijoe, I know next to nothing about radiation numbers, but I have looked at the Radiological Analysis Report from the DPI files. This is at:   https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-371-377?rbid=17743

It breaks down the contamination of every piece of clothing from the Ravine4. As Ryan notes, everything had some level of contamination, some more than others.

[Axelrod]

Axelrod,

Like Zijoe, I know next to nothing about radiation numbers, but I have looked at the Radiological Analysis Report from the DPI files. This is at:   https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-371-377?rbid=17743

It breaks down the contamination of every piece of clothing from the Ravine4. As Ryan notes, everything had some level of contamination, some more than others.

There's report about insignificant radioactivity.
Converted to kilograms, that's 1,000 to 9,000 decays, and converted to grams, that's 1 to 9 decays(isintegrations&) per second, or Becquerel. 1-2 Becquerels is within the normal range for natural contamination; but 9 Becquerel is an incomprehensible excess.

But this person assumes that the radioactivity of clothing should be zero, not 1,000-2,000 decays per kilogram of clothing.
Maybe he is incompetent in this questions.

AI says me: Animal fur contains the radioactive isotope potassium-40 (K), which is naturally present in all living things, as it enters the body from soil and water and then accumulates in tissues, including fur, like other potassium isotopes. The concentration of potassium-40 in fur corresponds to its concentration in other tissues and the body.


My dosimeter only shows zero when the battery dies. I've never seen a figure below 5 microroentgens per hour after 40 seconds of measurement.

[amashilu]

Ahhhhhh ... I'm beginning to understand what you are saying. You think Ryan misread the chart by taking zero as the base rate, but in actuality every living thing has some radioactivity naturally, so the base rate is never zero.

Fair enough. But looking at the chart, the 3 highest concentrations in those pieces of clothing were 5600, 5000, and 9900. I'll take the report's word for it that those are high numbers, since I don't have any education in this area, but other pieces of clothing were at 2000, 1920, and 1840, for example. While not as high as the high-3, those could not actually be called low, correct?

Apologies for continuing to press this issue. I hope it is not annoying to you.

[Axelrod]

To build a proper picture, we need to understand why Ivanov ordered this examination in the first place.

https://dyatlovpass.com/stanislav-bogomolov-2-ru

https://dyatlovpass.com/stanislav-bogomolov-2

Answer 2 of Stanislav Bogomolov (2019):
"No, he didn't say anything about why he decided to check their clothes for radiation. He changed the subject. Much later, almost this year, I learned from a lawyer that another lawyer told him that Ivanov ordered this examination because he noticed how the hikers' clothes lying on his office floor were glowing."

If the clothes were indeed glowing, then we need to look for the source of radiation in the list of phosphors and Luminophores.

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D1%8E%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%84%D0%BE%D1%80

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8E%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%84%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%8B
ENGLISH: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphor

Because gamma radiation alone doesn't cause glow, even in the event of an accident at the facility (Chernobyl, Fukushima).

The data from the examinations is generally difficult to interpret. While grams or kilograms are indicated in organ examinations, the weight of the clothing is not specified in any way when examining clothing. Potassium radiation should emit 11% gamma radiation, but this hasn't been determined. Take it as you wish. The fact that the clothing glowed is a more valuable indication than the data from its examination.

As a comparison, a DNA test could be ordered for a person. There will be complex results, but this examination will determine that the person belongs to the Chinese or Black group, which is already obvious from his face and appearance.

[amashilu]

"Answer 2 of Stanislav Bogomolov (2019):
"No, he didn't say anything about why he decided to check their clothes for radiation. He changed the subject. Much later, almost this year, I learned from a lawyer that another lawyer told him that Ivanov ordered this examination because he noticed how the hikers' clothes lying on his office floor were glowing."

Rather than Ivanov ordering the radiation check because a lawyer told another lawyer who told Ivanov .... I recall reading on this site a first-hand interview with a woman, possibly a nurse, or not a nurse but someone who was working with the bodies in the morgue, that she had undressed the bodies and put their clothing in a pile in the corner, and then she turned to a person working with her, a male, and said, do you see that there is a strange purple glow to the clothing in the corner? and the male acknowledged it.

I apologize, I've been searching for over an hour and can't relocate this interview to get the exact quote. It must be that this nurse-person and her male co-worker told someone about it, who then told X who told Y who told Ivanov. But it is always best to get the seminal source, so I can keep looking. Too bad I don't remember her name.

[Axelrod]

This is written in the book by journalist Gushchin, "The Price of State Secrets: Nine Lives."
Henrietta [CHURKINA] recalls: I was also present at the forensic examination of the corpses, conducted by Boris Vozrozhdenny. I remember well that when they removed their clothes and hung them on clotheslines, we immediately noticed that they had a strange light purple hue, even though they were of various colors.

Since the information was recorded from hearsay, it's possible she mentioned the glowing clothes.
But since journalist Gushchin wasn't a physicist, how could this be? And instead of mentioning the glow, he wrote about the purple hue.

[Ziljoe]

There might be some method in the madness of all of this. The statements might be true but people just didn't know what they were observing . Glow and a hue of colour could easily have a misinterpretation by anyone.

So , we have some dots in a picture that we can potentially join. I'm not sure which clothes were hung to dry that may have had a purple hue . If it was the ravine 4 , this could be interesting from a perspective of Teddy's chain of thought?.

When searching formaldehyde, this is a AI response

While there is no specific purple dye used in modern mortuary processes, some embalming fluids contain colorants (often fluorescent pink or orange) to simulate blood flow and achieve a more natural appearance, which can appear purple under certain lighting or when mixed with body tissues.


I don't know if formaldehyde would have been used in the bodies bags to help stabilise the rot BEFORE being flown off 1079 or later at the mortuary but if the bodies had been transported to and from and back again. The process of  formaldehyde may have already been started and this is why the ravine 4 were put in the stream , perhaps with some mild radiative chemical to cover up the staring of a process.

If it was staged to this level , it may give us indication why the bodies are in the stream and thus would imply the ravine was empty at the time of alleged staging and the bodies were laid in running water but NOT covered with snow . It would be the running water that was needed to get rid of anything suspicious and not the decomposition of the bodies an being buried . No one would be able to predict that the ravine would fill with snow?.

This is only a thought exercise that might get some lateral thinking from others. 

[amashilu]

That is just what I have been thinking, Ziljoe.

It's interesting to explore, that the bodies of the Ravine4 were treated differently than the others in an attempt to hide their severe injuries. It is pretty clear that the Ravine4 and the two Yuris were dragged or dumped or "placed" after death, so if someone actually was staging all this, as has been suggested by Teddy and others, then the Ravine4 could have been placed together in the stream, which had no snow at that point, and had some chemical put on them in the crazy hope that their tissues would dissolve and their injuries never uncovered.

This out-of-the-box kind of thinking also aligns with this whole incident being covered up by a government that needed to avoid being viewed by the world in an unflattering light.

[Ziljoe]

For me it's only a potential variation amashilu regarding the bodies being placed.

The two URIs do look like they were manipulated, as far as I can tell , they were laid or lying on fir, spruce, cedar branches .

The ravine 4 are a puzzle.

 If the ravine was already full of snow on the night of the incident, then it's a no brainer , they were under a snow bridge or building snow hole , it collapsed and crushed them there and there.

If the ravine was not already full of snow then I truly struggle to see how the ravine 4 came to be lying in what would be a stream bed with potential flowing water . Something poisons or consumed and they all desperately needed water but that doesn't add up either.

If they had climbed Teddy's tree in parallel with the known cedar that they climbed , then Teddy's tree may have fallen because of the weight of the climbers and caused the crush injuries . Because of Lynda injuries , her body is in a position that would probably allow here the most comfort to breath but the opposite is for Zolo as he wouldn't be lying on the side of the fractured ribs for comfort although the stream could have moved his body position .

I don't think the tissues were to be dissolved and the injuries would not be known as no autopsy had taken place on the bodies .( If the had already been taken and returned) . So the skull fractures wouldn't be known and the rib fractures would not be know either ,other than from a a hand on inspection.

What I'm trying to say is, you would need to know that you fractured skulls and broke ribs to decide you needed to hide these injuries but you wouldn't know. But you would also know that you couldn't hide broken bones and fractures by dumping in a stream with some chemicals.

[Axelrod]

It's pointless to dump chemicals into the gully because most of these chemicals will flow out with the water.
There's a more interesting example, but I don't yet see its application to the situation in the ravine.

Example from book 16 about Fantomas ("Fandor's Disappearance"):



"So," thought Juve, "how the hell did the bathtub remain full of water until yesterday evening?" After examining the pipes more closely, Juve discovered pieces of wax stuck to the drain hole.

– Parblet, – said immediately policeman, – this is what we had to do: fill this bathtub with acid, a very strong acid and in connection with this smell of sulfur, which I immediately noticed. An hour is enough to tell me: this bathtub was filled with sulfuric acid. To prevent the bathtub from emptying, it was blocked with a piece of wax, which is very slowly destroyed and dissolved by sulfuric acid. After doing this, the murderer must have thrown the victim's body into the acid. Slowly but surely, this acid decomposed the body floating there. Sulfuric acid eats everything, eats everything automatically.

Therefore, the victim's body was destroyed in this bathtub. Let's think about it. When the body was completely dissolved, the sulfuric acid became transparent again. In all respects, it is analogous to water. Moreover, slowly continuing its action, this acid continued to corrode the wax plug blocking the bathtub. When the blockage was completely cleared, the bathtub was empty and all traces of the crime were washed away. What a wonderful crime. What a wonderful idea – this murderer's idea!

[amashilu]

Yes, I asked AI if people in 1959 generally thought potash or lye could be used to dissolve bodies, and AI responded:

"Used by criminals: In later years, drug cartels have also used the same technique to dispose of human remains, demonstrating that the method has been known and used illegally for a long time.

Different from modern use: The modern, regulated application of this process, known as alkaline hydrolysis or aquamation, was developed much later in the 1990s. This controlled, high-pressure, and high-heat process is used to safely and legally dispose of animal and human remains. In 1959, the idea of dissolving bodies would have been associated with illegal activity, not a legitimate, environmentally friendly alternative to cremation."

[sarapuk]

https://forum.dyatlovpass.com/index.php?topic=1319.msg27760#new

Since Halloween is approaching, at least in the US, let's indulge and get spooky!

I've been re-reading the above thread in which Ryan shares his interest in the radiation on the Rav4's clothes. He meticulously walks us through his logic as to the possibility that the radiation could have come from potassium. [Ryan, if you're still around, correct me when I need it.]

Quote from Ryan:
A caustic chemical like KOH won’t dissolve the bodies like the people staging this mistakenly believe, but it may have physical effects too. I’m also wondering if this might explain Dubinina’s missing eyes and tongue. I am very well aware that animal predation could also cause this. But a caustic chemical could dissolve some exposed soft flesh, and additionally could account for the more advanced decomposition Ivanov noted in these four bodies.

Taking speculation to new heights. The autopsies were carried out properly and if you read those autopsy reports you will see no mention of chemical or radiation injuries.