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Comment by ndsipa_pomu | Hacker News Reader

What I've found surprising is that there's a whole genre of memes based around the demon core. (e.g. https://imgur.com/t/demon_core)

There's something uniquely terrifying about a substance that is safe to handle in one orientation, but utterly deadly in another.

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Not to mention Karameru's recurring character "Demon Core-kun".

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZIjbX1gj88

As bizarre as it is, Karameru's weird shorts probably brought a lot of attention to the Demon Core seeing as they're rather popular (even just that one is currently at 4.1M views.)

I'd wager this is the weirdest thing I've ever found an excuse to link to on HN.

I've always found the Tokaimura accidents to be a little "creepier." A vat of liquid can end up in a state of mixture and configuration that causes it suddenly become critical. [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accidents

> A vat of liquid can end up in a state of mixture and configuration that causes it suddenly become critical.

It can indeed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Kelley_criticality_accid...

Wow what an interesting article, especially the part about the plutonium liquid vortex reaching criticality. Fascinating (but sad) stuff. Shame how his widow was treated afterwards.

I have seldom come across a casual sentence as chilling as "bone marrow that was watery and contained no red blood cells".

Gallows humor is a popular go-to for multiple popular internet fora. The topic was also brought up by a few influential YouTube science explainers (here's Kyle Hill semi-apologizing for popularizing the meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z497lu4t5XI, although I don't think the Google Search history suggests his 2017 video was the primary mover of the popularity spike).

In addition to the aspect of its horror that you highlighted, radiation is also a go-to science bogeyman because how how cause and effect are perceptually disjoint. You can feel absolutely fine absorbing way past an LD50 of radiation at the moment it happens; the suffering comes later, from hours to days later. Like firing up a computer with an already-damaged hard drive, you won't have a problem until the OS needs that data and loads garbage instead of useful routines.

Always fun to spot one in the wild too, like this example: https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/139kybg...

Yes, it's a bit surprising how much of a meme the demon core is on Twitter. Some other popular radiation memes: "drop and run", LANL plutonium rods, "3.6 Roentgen not great not terrible" and "This is not a place of honor". Am I missing any?

I suppose "Completely normal phenomenon" fits the bill.

It’s not exactly safe to handle, it’s just not acutely fatal until it’s supercritical. Plutonium forms an oxide that easily flakes off so handling any sized demon core is full of danger. Bump it against something, scratch it, or even if the environment is particularly humid the powder will get everywhere.

Ingesting or inhaling any of that oxide would result in a slow and very painful death.

The core was nickel plated to prevent oxidation.

The 'ol spicy ball.

There was also a whole thing where a guy faked creating one and the subsequent radiation burns, etc. And shared it all on social media.

Are you maybe thinking of this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VMyNQCVS410

That wasn't something quite as dangerous as the demon core, but a fake "orphan source".

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