Depleted uranium--covert genocide

reply to post by fritz


Did you watch the videos?

The reason I ask is because while I know that there were so many chemicals injected into the atmosphere, I was wondering if any of them have the ability to scramble, break or otherwise alter the genetic makeup of an individual.

The issue in the link I provided is that they proved that the DNA of some of these guys had been reather screwed up. So in addition of damage to the internals of a soldier via the toxic soup that was flying around, the DNA was rearranged as well.

I haven't heard of your mentioned chemicals doing this but I could be wrong.

b

reply to post by Bspiracy[/url]

Very sensational but I would like to think that my post a couple of pareagraphs ago, has been and is, completely vindicated.

If the views expressed in these videos are correct about US Command staff of whatever rank 'turning a blind eye' when NBC warning equipment alarms, then I am afraid that US Vets have every right to sue their government.

We [The Management of] in the UK believe that there is a Gulf War Syndrome, but there are so many differing views on what has caused this phenomena, that the original causes have been lost in the dimness of time.

The clip about damage to the brain from Sarin is enlightning if only because the piece said that exposure to 'small quantities of sarin' may damage the brain.

With regards to DU ammunition, as I said previously, only exposure to the DU dust or exposure via destroyed vehs or buildings would cause any health problems.

Whatever the case, there is no evidence that the US Government or any of its agencies [real or imaginary] are 'downsizing the Continental US population by means of nuclear fallout from test explosions or from the testing of DU ammunition' in its nuclear test facility in Nevada - unless somebody near Nevada knows to the contrary!

Depleting the US population? What kind of fantasy world do you live in, OP? The US is one of the few industrialized countries that still has a strong growth rate, while the majority of developed nations have stopped growing entirely or have begun to depopulate. And an increase in diabetes? Are you sure that isn't because of, say, the ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF PROCESSED SUGARY FOODS CONSUMED EVERY DAY?

I'll remind you that there was a population boom brought on by the end of WW2 going on during a good part of the testing. It's not like it sterilized people.

Originally posted by BlasteR
We were trained to understand that the depleted uranium within the tips of these 30mm rounds is not dangerous (since it is depleted). The only odd thing that I did notice is that some structures containing this 30mm combat mix still had the radiation sign on the door of the building (as a notice), as well as text at the bottom of the sheet telling you not to eat or drink anything while you are in the building. This may be standard practice as far as I know, but I thought it was odd that this sign was posted on a door where no radiated items were being held. If, indeed, the rounds are depleted and not dangerous, why would this sign be on the door telling you it was. I never was able to figure out why. I asked my supervisor once about it and even he didn't know.

I'm not saying there's a conspiracy going on. But I did find it odd. Although I never worked with anything nuclear, we were trained to understand that the military has strict guidelines and limits as to how much radiation an individual can be exposed to per year. However, this structure with the sign on the door did not house any nuclear components or weapons. I never worked with anything nuclear (as far as I know), nor did I want to.

-ChriS

All uranium, depleted or not, is a toxic heavy metal, like mercury. You'd want to wash your hands first before drinking anything, regardless of how radioactive it is. I don't know if they jacket DU rounds like they do lead rounds.

They're probably just trying to cover their asses. It's hard to successfully sue the military or US government, but it can be done.

Depleted uranium is nasty stuff by any standards. It's just not *that* nasty. being in the same room as some isn't going to do anything. ingesting any, through any means isn't a good idea though. You especially don't want to breathe the dust.

I, for one, would stay well away from any destroyed tanks or buildings shot with the stuff for at least a good few days, preferably a week or more. DU penetrators go pyrophoric on impact, and burn up. that puts it into the air.

Originally posted by fritz
1. Once expended [used], DU ammunition emits alpha, beta, and gamma particles.

6. Half Lives. This is in effect a 'trick' explanation, because science cannot guarantee absolutely, the Life of any given nuclear element. They simply do not know.

Some nuclear elements decay in a matter of seconds [Alpha & Beta Particles] whilst Gamma & X-Rays decay over many days or years depending on the isotope used and its Atomic Weight.

Half Lives are, at best, a 'SWAG' - or Stupid Wild Arsed Guess, arrived at via computer programmes fed with what is 'currently' known about a given element.

Except for these points, you post was correct.

Depleted uranium does not release gamma rays. The uranium itself does not release beta particles either, but rather thorium, it's decay product does.

The half-lives for all the involved atoms and their decay products are well known and very accurate, when the number of atoms present is taken account. They are far from being wild guesses. They are known to far better precision than many things you take for granted. Depleted uranium is composed almost entirely of U238, and has a half life of 4.5 billion years, or approximately as long as the earth has existed. This means it's not very radioactive at all.

Upon research, I answered my own question...

Shattered OUT...

[edit on 17-4-2008 by ShatteredSkies]

reply to post by dolphin23


Dear OP, this thread has been starred and flagged! Good Job!!!!

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES OF DEPLETED URANIUM TRUTH- THIS IS HAPPENING:




WELL PERHAPS A MOD WILL BE UPSET OVER A FEW DIRTY WORDS?




Protecting children under the age of 18 is fine...But holding the truth back from them is a crime against humanity. Its their world too





[edit on 17-4-2008 by dk3000]

reply to post by fritz

you said it was sensational and I still haven't seen a response to the DNA scrambling. They have the genetic markers neatly displayed and explained for you in the clip. It clearly shows a mutation.break or scramble.

Do the chemicals do this like radiation could ?


b

Originally posted by Bspiracy
reply to post by fritz

 

you said it was sensational and I still haven't seen a response to the DNA scrambling. They have the genetic markers neatly displayed and explained for you in the clip. It clearly shows a mutation.break or scramble.

Do the chemicals do this like radiation could ?


b

DNA is "scrambled" by all kinds of things, natural and man made. Radiation, of course, does this directly. Carcinogens are chemicals can cause cancer, Nothing is perfect, so it happens through simple replication errors when you cells divide sometimes. Excess heat can damage DNA.

UV rays from the sun are quite powerful at damaging your DNA. This generally just kills your skin cells, but it can eventually cause cancer.

Remember though: unless it occurs in one of your gametes, DNA mutations that happen after you're born DO NOT AFFECT YOUR CHILDREN. For that matter, they don't even effect all of you. There is no mechanism that spreads the mutation to all your cells, so it stays in the affected cells. Now with certain DNA damage, like damage to your telomere chains, this happens naturally and due to age, so it happens to all your cells about equally, eventually killing you. The other case where damage spreads is in cancer. With cancer, the affected cell divides out of control, and eventually kills you. The cancer doesn't effect the DNA of the healthy cells, though, it just spreads itself.

To affect your children, the mutation has to directly affect the gametes. Female eggs are a fair bit better protected than male sperm, but sperm cells have to compete for fertilization, so that usually, but not always, weeds out damaging mutations.

That's why almost everyone is more or less healthy, despite the fact that DNA is INTENTIONALLY "scrambled" during meiosis, in each of the germ line cells that went into their DNA, in order to increase variety.

We still receive something on the order of twenty or more mutations at birth, but this is natural and generally considered necessary for the health of the species.

reply to post by dk3000


I understand the shock value of the video but the use of DU isn't shocking. The real shock is how the government has treated the problem from the beginning.

From Wikipedia:

In 1996 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gave an advisory opinion on the "legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons".[22] This made it clear, in paragraphs 54, 55 and 56, that international law on poisonous weapons, – the Second Hague Declaration of 29 July 1899, Hague Convention IV of 18 October 1907 and the Geneva Protocol of 17 June 1925 – did not cover nuclear weapons, because their prime or exclusive use was not to poison or asphyxiate. This ICJ opinion was about nuclear weapons, but the sentence "The terms have been understood, in the practice of States, in their ordinary sense as covering weapons whose prime, or even exclusive, effect is to poison or asphyxiate." also removes depleted uranium weaponry from coverage by the same treaties as their primary use is not to poison or asphyxiate, but to destroy materiel and kill soldiers through kinetic energy.

This loophole allows the U.S. to continue using DU armor piercing bodies and other countries to follow-suit like Britian and France. But that doesn't mean it is right..

The Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the United Nations Human Rights Commission,[23] passed two motions[24] the first in 1996[25] and the second in 1997.[26] They listed weapons of mass destruction, or weapons with indiscriminate effect, or of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering and urged all states to curb the production and the spread of such weapons. Included in the list was weaponry containing depleted uranium. The committee authorized a working paper, in the context of human rights and humanitarian norms, of the weapons. The requested UN working paper was delivered in 2002[27] by Y.K.J. Yeung Sik Yuen in accordance with Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights resolution 2001/36. He argues that the use of DU in weapons, along with the other weapons listed by the Sub‑Commission, may breach one or more of the following treaties: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Charter of the United Nations; the Genocide Convention; the United Nations Convention Against Torture; the Geneva Conventions including Protocol I; the Convention on Conventional Weapons of 1980; and the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Yeung Sik Yuen writes in Paragraph 133 under the title
"Legal compliance of weapons containing DU as a new weapon":

[B]Annex II to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material 1980 (which became operative on 8 February 1997) classifies DU as a category II nuclear material. Storage and transport rules are set down for that category which indicates that DU is considered sufficiently "hot" and dangerous to warrant these protections. But since weapons containing DU are relatively new weapons no treaty exists yet to regulate, limit or prohibit its use. The legality or illegality of DU weapons must therefore be tested by recourse to the general rules governing the use of weapons under humanitarian and human rights law which have already been analysed in Part I of this paper, and more particularly at paragraph 35 which states that parties to Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 have an obligation to ascertain that new weapons do not violate the laws and customs of war or any other international law. As mentioned, the International Court of Justice considers this rule binding customary humanitarian law.[/B]

Then in 2001 this..

In 2001, Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, said that NATO's use of depleted uranium in former Yugoslavia could be investigated as a possible war crime.[28] Louise Arbour, Del Ponte's predecessor as chief prosecutor, had created a small, internal committee, made up of staff lawyers, to assess the allegation. Their findings, that were accepted and endorsed by Del Ponte,[29] concluded that:

There is no specific treaty ban on the use of DU projectiles. There is a developing scientific debate and concern expressed regarding the impact of the use of such projectiles and it is possible that, in future, there will be a consensus view in international legal circles that use of such projectiles violate general principles of the law applicable to use of weapons in armed conflict. No such consensus exists at present.[30]

So, basically, our government has fought for this ammo from the beginning always knowing that it had the potential for negative health risks but not caring. The benefits of the density of the material and the pyrophoric properties it provides outweighed the risk to human life in their eyes. Through the years our government has probably threatened other countries like Yugoslavia not to pursue this and this last statement confirms this to a degree. You just have to read between the lines.

Our government will not start looking for an alternative to DU in military ammunition until the government acknowledges there is a problem with it. Most politicians would avoid the question of whether or not DU is harmful because they already know the answer but don't want to say it. Everybody knows that radiation is harmful, the only reason DU is actually even internationally legal is because of what the radioactive portion is used for. That doesn't take away from the other consequences of using DU and it doesn't take away from the health concerns.

For whatever reason our government has chosen to fight the rest of the world on this, who have in large part quit using DU because of moratoriums and the health concerns. So, the government is forced to find loopholes or ways to work around the legality of the matter while keeping it's respect within the international community (which doesn't really make sense at all).

-ChriS


[edit on 18-4-2008 by BlasteR]

reply to post by BlasteR


Loophole? Please. It states that poisonous weapons are weapons made for poisoning people. DU ammunition is made to kill people by being rammed through their vehicles at high speeds. That's be like trying to ban lead bullets, because they're made of lead, which is similarly toxic.

You can't create a new definition of a war crime and retroactively indict people or organizations for it. That's illegal. Be thankful you can't make laws that take retroactive effect. That would effectively allow the people in power to do anything they want to you.

The government IS looking at alternatives, in response to public pressure, NOT scientific consensus. The new Small Diameter Bomb was to use tungsten shrapnel instead of DU, for it's similar properties, and because tungsten isn't radioactive at all. Unfortunately on trials on mice, tungsten shrapnel was found to cause cancer MORE frequently than the depleted uranium did (to my great surprise).

Essentially, the US government would rather make our soldiers more effective, thus saving some of their lives, and is prepared to accept some collateral damage to enemy civilians and US personnel from inhaling vaporized DU from around destroyed enemy materiel. The political impact of some veterans having a shortened lifespan due to exposure is less than the immediate political impact of the death statistics during wartime.

The risks are real, but often overstated, often drastically, like in the OP. And occasionally understated, as from some politicians.

Originally posted by mdiinican
reply to post by BlasteR

 

Loophole? Please. It states that poisonous weapons are weapons made for poisoning people. DU ammunition is made to kill people by being rammed through their vehicles at high speeds. That's be like trying to ban lead bullets, because they're made of lead, which is similarly toxic.

You can't create a new definition of a war crime and retroactively indict people or organizations for it. That's illegal. Be thankful you can't make laws that take retroactive effect. That would effectively allow the people in power to do anything they want to you.

The government IS looking at alternatives, in response to public pressure, NOT scientific consensus. The new Small Diameter Bomb was to use tungsten shrapnel instead of DU, for it's similar properties, and because tungsten isn't radioactive at all. Unfortunately on trials on mice, tungsten shrapnel was found to cause cancer MORE frequently than the depleted uranium did (to my great surprise).

Essentially, the US government would rather make our soldiers more effective, thus saving some of their lives, and is prepared to accept some collateral damage to enemy civilians and US personnel from inhaling vaporized DU from around destroyed enemy materiel. The political impact of some veterans having a shortened lifespan due to exposure is less than the immediate political impact of the death statistics during wartime.

The risks are real, but often overstated, often drastically, like in the OP. And occasionally understated, as from some politicians.

1)I worked in munitions systems in the Air Force for 6 years and in my last job I handled 30mm ammunition regularly. I strongly recommend you read the thread before stating things that I already know and have commented on multiple times previously.

2)I'm not calling for anyone's head, but the point is that we should be pretty sickened by the truth of what is going on. I am quite aware of what is legal and illegal with DU because it was me who first posted the legality material from wikipedia in the first place. I understand why it is legal and not illegal.. I just did the research.

3)That is not an alternative to DU in weapons it is currently being used in. That is an alternative to DU in new weapons being developed. There is a big difference. If the government is going to change it's mind due to public pressure then it is going to have to get rid of millions of dollars worth of DU while it already has a working alternative. That means that first the research and development needs to be conducted to find that alternative. The government isn't going to spend the money to find an alternative for the entire military unless the government has a justifiable economic need to do so, which means that the government would first admit that using DU is dangerous and wrong due to the potential health concerns (which it hasn't yet).. From there everything would move forward.

Now, how can you tell me that a working alternative to DU in ammunition as an armor piercing projectile has already been developed or is being developed when none of these things have happened yet? You may have contractors and companies doing R&D for the military that are willing to acknowledge the health concerns and work around DU altogether in new weapons and weapons systems. But not the government, at least not yet.

The truth is that we are going to be hard-pressed to find something with the extreme density of DU while still retaining the pyrophoric properties of the metal itself. Our military isn't going to take a step down the technological ladder in order to make a compromise, get rid of all of it's DU, and use something that isn't as good but isn't radioactive. That won't happen. Then the government is stuck with the burden of somehow destroying it's entire stockpile of radioactive ammo (how many millions is that gonna take and how long?)

-ChriS




-ChriS

[edit on 18-4-2008 by BlasteR]

[edit on 18-4-2008 by BlasteR]

reply to post by mdiinican[/url]

Actually old chum, you are wrong! Please read the following links - but carefully:

www.gulflink.osd.mil...

www.stopnato.org.uk...

www.fas.org...

For the more anal amongst us, I found the following WHO information pages which, I would hope, dispells some of the scaremongering in this thread:

www.who.int... and also this page:

www.idust.net...

I have now given up trying to explain about radiation,to those of you who cannot grasp the fundamentals of CBRN or NBC [as I still know it]

I have made other threads about 'The Characteristics and Effects of a Nuclear Explosion' and Chemical Weapons and Chemical Agents.

May I respectfully point doubting posters in their direction - via the ATS Search facility - located top right of the page you are viewing. That's right! Just below the ATS Logo and Adbar.

Originally posted by Bspiracy
you said it was sensational and I still haven't seen a response to the DNA scrambling. They have the genetic markers neatly displayed and explained for you in the clip. It clearly shows a mutation.break or scramble. Do the chemicals do this like radiation could ? b

I am going to be quite stern with you on this point, Bspiracy. Your grasp of the English launguage and its dual nuances is not what it should be.

Yes! I did say the filmclips were 'sensational'. By 'sensational', I was referring to the factual presentation of the work carried out by the doctors and other agencies involved.

Instead of taking me to task for 'misleading' other posters, I suggest you re-read this thread from the start instead of jumping in half way through.

[which of course you may have done in which case I apologize but if you did not - ]

Regarding the 'scrambling' of DNA as a result of partial irradiation of the human body, there is evidence 'out there' to suggest that this 'scrambling' may well be the body's reaction to the radiation and its attempt to fight it.

Apparently our DNA is coloured Red or Green [I cannot remember which] and, following several years of intense investigations, the former residents of Chernobyl and Prypat were found to have altered DNA - it had changed colour.

More surprisingly, apart from those brave fireman who tackled the blaze from the outset, there are only 35 recorded deaths [17 chilkdren] as a direct result of whole body radiation.

Also Tom Parker-Bowles visited Chernobyl during his series 'The Year of Eating Dangerously' where he ate potatoes and lamb, drank locally produced vodka and eventually went to a market on the outskirts of Kiev where he produced a local dish from local products - all grown or raised well within the contaminated area.

Apart from a slightly raised level of radiation - which the body naturally excreted, he suffered no side effects.

During the recording of this particular episode, his 'guides' were former Russian soldiers who still lived in Chernobyl; he met and was fed by an elderly married couple who refused to leave their farm near Prypat and discovered that scores of locals were 'living' in an area supposedly contaminated with high levels of residual radiation but who
'surprisingly', were sufferin g no ill effects.

This is totally against what I have been teaching soldiers over the last 30 odd years. All the books say that if you are exposed to radiation above a certain level [about 800 cGys an hour] you will die, simply because radiation levels are cumulative and irreversible.

Apparently not!

[edit on 19-4-2008 by fritz]

Absolutely. That's the entire reason the air force has a 5 rem limit on how much radiation nuke personnel can be exposed to annually. They monitor exposure with great care. It's alot lower if you're pregnant but I can't remember how low. I remember doing the studying for my CDC's to upgrade to a 5 level in my job in the AF back in 1998. The point is that the biological effects of radiation are cumulative and irreversible.

Radiation is bad for the human body. It isn't necessarily going to kill you to be exposed but it all depends on the time and rate a human is exposed. Long term exposure to this ammunition will not kill you (just as wikipedia states, external radiation of DU ammunition is about the same as high radiation found naturally in rocks/soil). The primary concern is when some DU is inhaled in the form of small particles either...

1-When the DU is dispersed after being fired at a target.

or

2-When the DU is dispersed after the rounds become damaged somehow other than being fired. The weapons that fire DU are not flawless. this means that sometimes the weapon can become damaged, thus, damaging the rounds and in some cases exposing load crews or tank crews, etc.. The gau-8 gatling gun I talked about earlier is a prime example. After working in munitions I've seen 30mm HEI rounds completely ripped in half because the load crew downloaded the ammo so fast and the gun had a defect. I've also seen it with 30mm TP ammo.

If the aircraft are firing at targets on the ground that, then, the ground troops are exposed to, then obviously there is a risk of exposure that cannot be avoided. Whether or not each individual would inhale the particles is another story, but the risk would remain.
Just stuff to think about.

There are always inherent risks when using radioactive armor piercers inside ammunition regardless of whether or not the politicians or the military acknowledge that. This means that the opinion of the military and the government is that it is completely safe and there is no need for the military of the U.S. to move on to something non-radioactive. There may not be any "direct" evidence of a health risk for DU in particular but that doesn't matter since we know that radiation can be harmful to the human body and DU is radioactive and treated as low-grade nuclear waste. Also, there isn't any evidence that there aren't any health concerns either, so the opinions of the government and the military that DU is safe really don't matter. Their opinions are based on economic factors, political factors, military and technological factors, etc.. Pretty much everything other than pointing out the harmless health factors of DU because they know that it is bad stuff they just refuse to say that.

When I was in the Air Force, working in munitions, we all knew that it was harmful, we just played it safe and took our time when working with it. combat mix ammo that includes the DU penetrator is constantly kept in munitions storage in what we refer to as "igloos". Some buildings at certain bases are stacked to the roof with this stuff wall to wall and in all the 6 years I was in the AF I only saw one radiation warning sign on a building holding combat mix 30mm ammo (though wikipedia sais that DU is treated as low grade nuclear waste??). Aircraft never fire the combat mix ammo in peacetime so it all stayed in the buildings at the bases I was at. We only had to move it around when we were trying to get at certain cans of ammo that needed a periodical inspection of a specific lot number.

-ChriS

[edit on 20-4-2008 by BlasteR]

[edit on 20-4-2008 by BlasteR]

reply to post by fritz


First, what do I have wrong? You've just posted links to sites that say the stuff is very slightly radioactive, but chemically toxic. That's about what I've been saying. I might be a little more concerned than those links about the consumption of the stuff, forgive me if I'm a bit paranoid about having alpha emitters inside my body.

oh, haha, but despite that, I've lost a piece of slightly radioactive thorium in my bedroom somewhere, and that doesn't concern me.

Anyway, About the guy in the pripyat exclusionary zone. The area is only "highly radioactive" when compared to the natural background radiation in most of the world. It's not really high enough to be dangerous in the short term to any of the squatters or wildlife, except in the area immediately around the sarcophagus.

That he could go there and eat food grown there and suffer no short term ill effects doesn't mean much. Unless you're getting a massive dose of radiation, you won't get ill. The body is pretty good at repairing damage. There is danger, however, in eating foods from the area, especially things like dairy products, which contain calcium. The calcium is used in your bones ((and nerves, but less so), and so if the calcium has been transmuted into a radioactive isotope, it will be fixated in your bone, and potentially remain there for years. This raises the chance of leukemia, often dramatically. This does not apply to depleted uranium, though. It doesn't tend to transmute other atoms, no is it particularly radioactive, or bioabsorbable itself.

Now I can believe that the Chernobyl exclusion zone is mostly safe to live in, since it's been over twenty years, and the more active radioisotopes have all decayed to insignificance. That does not mean, however, that it's absolutely safe. It's very likely that the area would take five or more years off of a person's life expectancy, were they to be permanent residents, living off the land.

There is, of course, a rate of radiation intake that is fatal, and over the short term of a day or so, radiation exposure is functionally irreversible. It does take a fair bit of time to excrete consumed radioactives. It might be more than 800 cGys an hour, but I'm not going to complain about the government telling me that that level is deadly, and correspondingly limiting my exposure to levels far below harmless. I'm sure everyone is more concerned about the opposite scenario. Evidence suggests that such a case is unlikely.

If DNA is said to be colored, it's probably false-color or some kind of esoteric categorization that doesn't have to do with it's actual color. The stuff is a nucleic acid made of sugars, phosphates, and nitrogenous bases. It's probably more or less clear. Perhaps the body has a protective mechanism that winds up DNA tighter when there's radiation afoot, but it's not really relevant. Radiation exposure won't do much to DNA except ionize the occasional atom in it, either breaking it apart, or changing one of the bases. This will either do nothing, kill the cell, or, rarely, cause cancer. Since mutations don't spread except through cell reproduction, as long as it doesn't cause cancer, it isn't much of a concern unless you're receiving enough radiation to kill a large number of your cells throughout your body.

reply to post by mdiinican[/url]

No, no,no. I was not being critical. I was merely pointing out that, according to those links, that spent DU DID emit Alpha & Beta Particles and Gamma Rays, when you said they did not.

For the rest about Chernobyl, Kiev, Prypat and the Exclusion Zone, I am afraid that I have no intention of arguing with you.

I am simply reporting what doctors, scientists and residents of those areas were reporting - nothing more and nothing less.

As to scrambled DNA again, I am not going to argue the toss with you. DNA was taken from inhabitants within the exclusion zone and the surrounding areas.

It was subjected to a variety of tests under all sorts of programmes and the results were startling.

So much so, that as I said previously, I have had to rethink my training on NBC [CBRN] and re-evaluate the information that we here in the UK teach our men & women in the armed forces.

I have to say that I am not interested in DU dust or what happens when a building or AFV is destroyed by DU ammo.

All I know is that servicemen & women should not work inside them without CNRN IPE or whatever they should wear these days.

I remember the manuals talking about nuclear weapons in detail but the main focus on degradory health effects is focused on the main forces created by a nuclear blast..Things like

1 - Initial shock front/overpressure
2 - EMP (although not necessarily harmful to the human body)
3 - The extreme heat generated by the release of energy
4 - Radioactive fallout

The average military member needs to understand those things to some degree so they know what to do in the event a nuclear attack were to occur. In the air force when we would conduct exercises for days on end they would occasionally simulate chemical attacks where we would have to don our mop gear (gas mask, glove liners, gloves). We wore everything else all the time during the exercise. I think a couple of times they also simulated a nuclear attack.

The point I'm making is that the average military member doesn't really need to know the details of nukes or radiation in general (although radiation is already taught to some degree in junior high and high school). Not necessarily anyway. I'm sure there are some military members who need to know those things but probably not your average enlisted personnel.

The good thing is that now that you've been participating in the discussion you can answer questions if these guys come up to you and ask you questions about this stuff.

The only place that even munitions members learn about the radioactive nature of DU is in tech-school where they train you for your job and even there they don't really teach you about why DU is dangerous. Later on down the road if you work with DU in ammunition the information is all in the T.O. (technical order) for that specific type of round but noone really reads that stuff in detail. In 6 years I don't know anybody who looked at the T.O. manual for DU to find out more about the radiation it contains other than myself. The whole time I worked in Korea and other locations I always assumed that since it was called "depleted" that it was completely non-harmful and benign but it isn't. it is when it's in the cans in storage but that's really the only time it isn't dangerous to use as ammunition.

Even master sergeants I later on spoke to about combat-mix ammo with DU told me that this is bad stuff and that even they wouldn't touch it.

-ChriS

[edit on 23-4-2008 by BlasteR]

[edit on 23-4-2008 by BlasteR]