Comment by kev009 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kev009 | Hacker News Reader

As a kind of thought experiment I wonder how being the new "owner" of this would be anything other than a terrible curse. It's not really useful in any way to most people so you probably decide to hawk it. You have the full might of the DoE and other government agencies monitoring for it. Let's say you somehow establish contact with a weapons dealer or foreign government agent. They are just as likely to whack you and take it to clean up the trail as any other outcome. There's basically no way to win, and no zero sum in this game.

In Brazil, in the 1980s, a couple of burglars broke into an abandoned hospital and stole a supply of cesium chloride from a radiotherapy machine. The difference between your scenario and this one is that the thieves didn't know what it was -- it just looked important and expensive. The whole thing was a huge screw-up, and a number of people -- including one of the burglars -- died from exposure to radiation before the authorities sorted it all out.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

I thought of that story right away and, man, there’s a lot of heartbreaking elements to it. Also incompetence all around. Who thinks leaving something with that much potential for harm in an abandoned building?!

Edit: ...is a good idea?!

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