This website has me speechless. I’ve seen this kind of thing before but I’m still just stunned that anyone could be competent enough to find some decent illustrations and make a website and at the same time truely and fervently believe things which are so out in left field they boggle the mind. No this does not appear to be a joke and indeed there are pages as nutty as this.

Not only are there people who believe this stuff, there are more than one might think. In the more mainstream anti-science movement claims this severe are usually (but not always) relegated to the back pages of websites, however it’s amazing how many more popular sites will cite or link back to concepts like this. At some point it becomes difficult to draw the line between “totally unsubstantiated” and “you would probably need to be very mentally ill to buy into this.”

Here’s the basics:

Depleted Uranium is part of a conspiracy to destroy unwanted humans. It’s “nuclear waste from reactors” and it is highly toxic. The use of it in Iraq has resulted in a six fold increase in lung cancer all the way back in the United States. It has also become so despersed in the atmosphere that it’s unavoidable. It’s a “new kind of nuclear warfare” which is actually worse than the standard nuclear weapons of the past.

Additionally, it’s found its way into space. And it is now interfering with a comet. Comets are made out of antimatter, but NASA (and presumably the ESA and Russian Space Agencies and every other major scientific body) does not want to admit this for political reasons. The comets – which are made of antimatter – are somehow being affected by the depleted uranium.

This has caused comet SW-3 to break apart. A large fragment of it will hit earth in May 2006 (the website is a bit out of data it seems). This was first discovered from a crop circle in England. The crop circle contained an encoded diagram of the solar system and demonstrated the comet would hit earth. No human could create it, so it must have been created by aliens who are concerned and want to warn the human race by flattening crops.

The meaning of the crop circle was not immediately apparent. it was not until, to quote: Eric Jutien tells us that he first saw the collision in a lucid dream in 2003, and then later received a “telepathic message from extraterrestrial friends” on April 7, 2006, giving the date of May, 26, 2006. While the origin of the message cannot be verified or be disproved, and could have come from concerned Astronomers who were aware of the fact, it is interesting to note that Eric Julien perceived the date of May 26 before being even aware of the existence of SW-3 and its historic close encounter with the earth and the comet’s fragmentation.

We have entered a new age where depleted uranium is causing our solar system to destabalize and comets are coming to kill us. We must listen to the alien warnings, which are transmitted into our dreams.

Oh, and also, depleted uranium is the reason for the H5N1 Bird Flu in Asia. If we continue to use depleted uranium it will also cause Ebola to become more contagious and spread in the atmosphere.

Oh and also, I’ve seen this page linked to on a bunch of other anti-depleted uranium pages and other pages from the same site cited.

Not long ago I noticed that during some flaming and name-calling on the the anti-depleted uranium crowed stated that “If you love depleted uranium so much why don’t you have it for dinner.” Well, personally, I don’t “love” depleted uranium any more than I love tungsten, lead, bismuth or any other metal. If I have any affection for the stuff at all, it’s simply that it’s “fertile” for creating nuclear fuel.

But I thought that sounded like a good idea. So I called the bluff and had some depleted uranium for dinner. Here’s a little video that makes light of it. I threw in a few graphics to try to keep people’s attention and admittedly because I had to cut the video down a bit. After all, I don’t want to cram my dinner into such a short period of time, as I might get indigestion.

Hope it does not seem rude to eat in front of everyone, but it’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor, after all.

Some background info:
Why Baseless Anti-Depleted Uranium Rhetoric Bothers Me
Depleted Uranium and Opposition to Wars
Information on Depleted Uranium
Consumer Products Containing Depleted Uranium

Recently I was sent a link to the film Poison DUst, which will be showing at a film festival in Orlando. It’s the kind of totally unfounded shock-fest of inflated claims of Depleted Uranium danger which has become all to common these days. However one thing I noticed was that it had the name of Dr. Micho Kaku on it. Doing some searching, it turns our Dr. Kaku has been also been quoted a few times on the topic of Depleted Uranium dangers (the ones which don’t actually exist). This really bothered me. Dr. Kaku is an accomplished scientist who has done some significant work in Theoretical physics.

He is also known for hosting a radio show and several television specials on science and technology. Dr. Kaku’s work popularizing science is something which we can always use more of and his ability to live in both the worlds of scholarly research and public media is all to rare. However, becoming too involved in advocacy can be a real danger to the credibility of a scientist as well as tending to reinforce bogus information. This can be especially dangerous when someone like Dr. Kaku steps too afield from their field of expertise and becomes a mouthpiece of a movement on the fringes of extremism.

I don’t know if he’ll listen to me (or ever see it), but I wrote an e-mail to Dr. Kaku. I went for a non-accusatory tone and letter format. Here it is:

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This is a slightly old story, but it has just recently come to my attention. It reminds me a great deal of what happened to the Staten Island man trying to make an honest living selling some common industrial chemicals. It’s also a bit reminiscent of the the incident where Boston went into a state of panic when officials found some LED-Illuminated Mooninites, as well as numerous other.

It seems a Florida couple back in 2006 bought some surplus tools from a NASA government auction. If you can get in on these auctions you can often get some pretty good stuff at a very low price thanks to the US government’s policy of auctioning surplus equipment to the public, often at a very discounted price. All was fine until the couple took one of the tool boxes home. That’s when they found a small chunk of some kind of metal. This is where they made their biggest mistake: They called the state to ask what to do and whether it was dangerous.

A hazmat team was immediate dispatched and identified the material as depleted uranium. Being that it is “uranium.. isn’t that like nuclear or something,” it’s not surprising that within minutes Ranger Danger and the Keystone Cops had evacuated the neighborhood for the rest of the day and confiscated the material on the grounds that it’s “toxic and poses a risk to the public.” None of the news reports indicated whether officials also confiscated the couple’s car battery and any fishing weights, solder, old car fenders, cordless phone batteries, golf clubs or any other materials also containing toxic and dangerous heavy metals. Presumably they didn’t because those are not “OH MY GOD RADIOACTIVE HIROSHIMA TERRORISTS CANCER BOMB MUSHROOM CLOUD CHERNOBYL OMG RUN PANIC!”

One official stated that the couple could have experienced radiation poisoning if they had kept the depleted uranium in their pocket. (Never let the truth get in the way of scoring PR points and trying to justify idiotic government actions.) Now if it had been me finding such an item in a surplus lot I’d probably think “Cool, this is an interesting thing to have. It’s getting hard to find chunks of DU for a reasonable price.” But then again, I already own some (thought not as much.) If you’ll excuse me, there are some men in moon suits and a robot at my door, so I better go see what they want…

Since I’ve gotten a lot of response and views on the latest post on depleted uranium, I have compiled some sources on depleted uranium in general and its health and enviornmental effects. These are basically reference sources which are intended to provide the vital data, as opposed to policy or advocacy links. However, the scientific data is quite compelling in general. The sources come from a vast spectrum ranging from chemical references to recent studies and major scientific bodies.

(In other words, there are no shocking attention-grabbing pictures or political cartoons of George W. Bush and the Grim Reaper here).

The data ranges from very easy to understand primers to a few indepth scientific reviews with very thoroughly cited data.
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Due to some plugin issues with Wordpress I’ve deactivated the anti-spam word requirement but this page continues to impliment other behind-the-scenes antispam measures.   We’ll see if it works.  If the robots attack then we’ll have to reinstate it.

I’m really getting sick and tired of all the crap out there about how depleted uranium is poisoning everyone from US soldiers to Iraqi and Afghan civilians. Just searching for it on youtube, for example, shows a real lot of bull that lacks any basis in science. There are not enough websites or other information sources out there which are actually providing an accurate message about the toxicity of this material, which is pretty well established in science and has been for some time.

I’d like to point out that depleted uranium is not exactly limited to weapons of war and thus I’ve created a list of civilian and consumer products which make use of the same material which many claim is so deadly. Many of these products contain only small amounts of DU, but remember: According to the critics, just living in an area downwind from where DU has been used can have major health effects. Thus, if these claims are to believe, then one must consider depleted uranium so dangerous that even exposure to micrograms quantities is highly dangerous.

Depleted uranium is really not much different than “natural” uranium. The only difference is that it is nearly 100% uranium-238, while naturally occurring uranium is about 99.2% U-238, .7% U-235 and about .1% U-233, U-234 and other isotopes. It’s chemically identical and slightly less radioactive than natural uranium. Depleted uranium has replaced natural uranium in most non-nuclear applications. It’s a byproduct material but not really “waste.”

It would be fair to include natural uranium sources which someone is likely to encounter on a regular basis. These include numerous minerals as well as products ranging from kitty litter to other mineral-based products, which contain small, but significant amounts of uranium. However, since it’s “Depleted Uranium” that seems to get everyone up in arms, this list is limited to items which contain depleted uranium which was intentionally added to the product.

Non-Military Items Which Contain Depleted Uranium:

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If you’re going to start a blog or a website or something and you think you’ve come up with a clever name, you really ought to at least Google the name and see if it’s been used before.   This is especially true if someone already owns a domain with it.   Yeah…   I guess we’ll consider it flattery here at the “real” Depleted Cranium.

http://depletedcranium.blogspot.com/

This is something which is really annoying me a lot.   I see a lot of websites out there which do a very good job of making it seem like opposition to Bush’s war-mongering and war in general and the use of depleted uranium in munitions are the same issue.   They seem to indicate that opposing depleted uranium is part of the effort to oppose the war in Iraq and that depleted uranium rounds are part-and-parcel of the whole plan Bush has for the Middle East and the world.  These pages also indicate that somehow if the European Union enacts anti-depleted uranium policies that this will somehow indicate disapproval of the war in Iraq and other American policies.   There also is an undertone that those in Europe who would use DU weapons, such as Brittan and France are somehow part of the problem.

Well let me just go on the record here about something:

I do not support President Bush’s policies in general and I will be happy to see him leave office.  I supported and continue to support military action in Afghanistan, because the Taliban was closely allied with Al Queda and actively protected and aided Bin Laden and others who were directly involved in major terrorist attacks.   However, I have been less than satisfied with the way the war in Afghanistan has been handled and the general policy in that area.

I never supported the war in Iraq.  I always thought it was, at best, unnecessary.   Was Saddam Husein a tyrannical and murderous dictator?  Yes, but there are others in the region and certainly other countries which are a much greater threat to stability and peace (Iran, Syria, North Korea,  Sudan).  We cannot just go around invading and overthrowing every country that has an unjust government or we’d always be at war.  Iraq posed, at most, a very minimal danger to stability because Saddam’s army had been all but destroyed in the first Gulf War.  Going to Iraq was a detraction from the real problems internationally; it cost many lives and a great deal of money; it only served to worsen the stability in the region and alienate potential allies.   The situation in Iraq is now a mess which it will be impossible to get out of without either costing a great deal more in terms of lives and money or causing a great deal more trouble by causing the country to loose any semblance of control it may have and possibly become a province of Iran.

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Now I find this to be just a bit funny, in a sort of ironic way. I posted this thread back a while ago in which I responded to a homeopathic practitioner about the whole issue of homeopathy. Between I said and my readers posted, it seemed that “Doctor” Sunil Sharma was looking rather bad, failing to post much in the way of proof and being generally rather vague about the “proof” of homeopathy. However, soon there were some who fell on the side of homeopathy. Jenni, Pjmilli, VKN and others started posting. Even a woman and her daughter (Paula and Cathy) showed up. It turns out Cathy is her daughter and practices homeopathy in the US. Another “doctor” showed up too and before long India, the US and Canada were all represented.

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